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Conflagration   /kˌɑnfləgrˈeɪʃən/   Listen
Conflagration

noun
1.
A very intense and uncontrolled fire.  Synonym: inferno.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Conflagration" Quotes from Famous Books



... current, they soon found the scene of the conflagration, which was in the very heart of those masses of warehouses, or stores, that John Effingham had commented on, so lately. A short street of high buildings was already completely in flames, and the danger of approaching the enemy, added to the frozen condition ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... times had he wished that the Ward liner which had crossed the path of the boats and picked them up the morning after the fire had left him at least to perish. A full half-dozen tugs and steamships had been sent to the scene of the conflagration there to cruise about until some trace of the missing should be found. A Clyde vessel had sighted the burned steamship, a mere mass of charred and twisted frames and plates, sinking low in the sea. A Government cruiser and a revenue cutter ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... steppes, the camels, the tents, the snowy and the sandy deserts, are not beyond the scale of our modern representative powers, as often called into action in the theatres both of Paris and London; and the series of situations unfolded, beginning with the general conflagration on the Wolga—passing thence to the disastrous scenes of the flight (as it literally was in its commencement)—to the Tartar siege of the Russian fortress Koulagina— the bloody engagement with the Cossacks in the mountain passes at Ouchim—the surprisal by the Bashkirs and the advanced ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... he said, glancing through a window at the lurid light of the conflagration. "We couldn't be of any use going over there and, after all, it isn't our affair ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne

... that is in the world through the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; from the wrath that is coming upon you." "What is your beloved city? " cried a watchman, "but a huge charred roof over the mouth of hell, and were ye here ye should see the conflagration beyond your walls ready to burst in and consume you even unto the bottomless pit." Some mocked, others, menacing, bade them have done with their wicked nonsense; yet one here and there would ask, "Whither ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... the worst of it. As recognized leader of the team, Bill could endure Jan's officious zeal, and even make shift to suffer the big hound's real supremacy, while by craft he could avoid a conflagration. So far, then, Bill had remained a force making for discipline and the working efficiency of the team. As wheeler, he became at one stride a crafty and embittered mutineer, aiming primarily at Jan's discomfiture, and generally at the disruption ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... the scarcity of matches we understand that many smokers now adopt the plan of waiting for the fire-engine to turn out and then proceed to the conflagration to get a light. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various

... their camp-fire on the borders of the lake, and one day—it was just at nightfall—it got away from them, fired the forest, and destroyed their fence and habitation. His picture in 'Roughing It' of the superb night spectacle, the mighty mountain conflagration reflected in the waters of the lake, is splendidly vivid. The reader may wish to compare it with this extract from a letter written to Pamela ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... over the raging element below; while ever and anon came a crash that reverberated far away in the gorges—the crash of falling trees, at the overthrow of which there went up a cloud of sparks and cinders and ashes. Sweeping along its terrible path, the tramp of that conflagration filled the air with an uproar like the bursting of billows ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... proud self- complacency, while that of the man of nature often beats in sympathy; and every man seeks for nothing more than to save his wretched property from the general destruction, as it were from some great conflagration. It is conceived that the only way to find a shelter against the aberrations of sentiment is by completely foregoing its indulgence, and mockery, which is often a useful chastener of mysticism, slanders in the same breath the noblest aspirations. Culture, far from giving ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... the river-side a flat stone the size of a sieve, placed it in the trunk, heaped burning coals upon it, and afterwards continually added more fuel, watching only that the decayed wood on the inside did not ignite and cause the conflagration of the whole tree. He said that he did this in order that "nothing should bite the great master and the bibi." In fact it appeared that this was not a useless precaution, for as soon as smoke filled the interior of the tree and spread ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... the sticks; and when the building is full of tobacco the laborer in charge ignites the logs that fill parallel trenches in the dirt floor, and a high rate of temperature is soon produced, and is maintained for several days, during which a watch is kept to replenish the flames and prevent a conflagration. As soon as the tobacco has changed from a deep green to a light brown, it is removed on a wet day to the general barn. The same process of curing is going on in many barns on the same plantation, and occasionally one is burned down; for the tobacco ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... ships that carried towers he would dash one upon another; he would pull them up and [Sidenote: (FRAG. 56^31?)] LIFTING THEM HIGH WOULD LET GO ALL IN A MASS so that when they fell into the water they were sunk by the impact. At last in an incredible manner he destroyed the whole Roman fleet by conflagration. By tilting a kind of mirror toward the sun he concentrated the sun's beams on it; and as the thickness and smoothness of the mirror cooeperated to ignite the air from these beams he kindled a great flame, all of which he directed upon the ships that lay at anchor in the path of ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... the blows that fall upon any. The circle of participants and sufferers spreads ever wider. A number of obligations, assumed in the hope of a long continuance of prosperity, cannot be met, and thus new fuel is added to the conflagration of the crisis, whose flames rise higher from month to month. An enormous mass of stored-up goods, tools, machinery, becomes almost worthless. The goods are got rid of at great sacrifices. Not only their proprietor is thereby ruined, but also ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... small army, the troops of Cyaxares of Media; and, at the mouth of a twisting valley, suddenly sees before him the town of Sinope in flames, the shipping in the harbour blazing likewise, all but one bark, which seems to be flying from more than the conflagration. A fine comic-opera situation follows; for while Artamene is trying to subdue the fire he is attacked by the traitor Aribee, general under the King of Assyria, who is himself shut up in a tower and seems to be hopelessly cut ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... that clearly enough in my mind's eye, feeling in my expectancy a sensation of awe as the conflagration went on—this gradual burning of the spirits in the casks, which kept on exploding one by one with a ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... swift and furious; and that, accordingly, one foretold a heavy judgement, slow but severe, terrible and frightful, as was the plague; but the other foretold a stroke, sudden, swift, and fiery as the conflagration. Nay, so particular some people were, that as they looked upon that comet preceding the fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely, and could perceive the motion with their eye, but even they heard it; that it ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... eyes, made them smart fiercely. Not only that, but the fire could be seen in a dozen places behind them, leaping up into the trees as the dried foliage offered such a splendid torch, and the wind urged the conflagration along. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen

... had come. A wild and sudden shriek from that part of the beleaguered district in which the women and children were congregated, drew all eyes in that direction where the whole line of tents and dwellings were in a bright conflagration. The emissaries had done their work ably and well, and the devastation was complete; while the women and children, driven from their various sheltering-places, ran shrieking in every direction. Nor did ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... barrier, he noticed, over Paris, a reddish glow which filled the whole sky. Above the chimney-pots the factory chimneys rose grotesque and black, against this fiery mist, seeming to look down with a ridiculous familiarity upon the mysterious conflagration of a world. The few passers-by whom he met on the boulevard strolled along quietly, without raising their heads. Although he knew that when cities are wrapped in night the moist atmosphere often reflects the lights, becoming ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France

... was dropping behind Herm into a dark bank of clouds which lay all along the western sky. Behind the clouds the heavens seemed ablaze with a mighty conflagration. Long level shafts of glowing gold streamed through the rifts, like a hot fire through the bars of a grate, and our faces and all the bold Sercq cliffs were dyed red. The sun himself looked like a fiery clot ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... are pointed at the door, and the flames encircle the cupola! The man whose stoicism would enable him to philosophize coolly under these circumstances would fiddle while the Capitol was burning, and laugh at the horror and anguish that surrounded him in the midst of the conflagration! I claim not the possession of these remarkable feelings. I concede them all to those who think that the savior of New Orleans ought to be treated like a criminal for not possessing them in a higher degree. ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... eternal conflagration must have an outlet for the vast quantity of vapor generated, and Ashman wondered that he had not noticed the ascending smoke on his way thither. He recalled that when he and his friend were coming up the Xingu, far below ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... about them at all times; in the winter were the stars; in winter often, too, the northern lights, a firmament of wings, a conflagration in the mansions of God. Now and then, not often; not commonly, but now and then, they heard the thunder. It came mostly in the autumn, and a dark and solemn thing it was for man and beast; the animals grazing near home would bunch together ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... awakened suddenly, almost at the same instant, by a red flame glowing between the slats as fire glows between the bars of a grate. Springing from our curtains we fling open the shutters, expecting to see a great conflagration, and behold, it is ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton

... command of Colden the whole column moved into the forest, but Tayoga, Willet and a half dozen others ran about from house to house, setting them on fire with great torches, making fifty blazes which grew rapidly, because the timbers were now dry, uniting soon into one vast conflagration. ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler

... Louvois was now on the wane. The jealous king became weary of his increasingly haughty assumptions. The conflagration of the Palatinate raised a cry of indignation which the king could not but hear. The city of Treves had escaped the flames. Louvois solicited an order to burn it. The king refused to give his consent. Louvois insolently gave the order himself. ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... principal portion of the cargo was stowed. Like a fool, although it might have been pleaded for him that he was constitutionally nervous, he let fall the dishes he was carrying on a tray, in his fright at the sight of this evidence of a conflagration below, instead of going quietly up to the captain and telling him what he had seen; and, to make matters worse, he called out at the same time in terrified accents, as loud as he could bawl—"Fire! fire! the ship's ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson

... bombketches successfully engaging four forts at once, that far outnumbered them in guns; but so good were James's arrangements that neither his ships nor his men suffered harm. Soon after midday a magazine exploded in Severndroog; the conflagration spread, and, before long, men, women, and children were seen taking to their boats, and escaping to the mainland. Numbers of them were intercepted and taken by the Swallow and the Mahratta gallivats. The bombardment ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph

... well" was a right that should not be withheld. The spirit of sullen determination that he should be given up had taken deep root. They had arrived at the point when the igniting of a spark would have created a conflagration. There was to be no more chattering. They meant business, and were resolved that they would stand no more red-tape fussy nonsense from either their Government or the Government who kept a regiment ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... judged us, but thou wouldst not! What dimm'd thy reason's piercing light, That Russian hearts thou understoodst not, From thine heroic spirit's height? Moscow's immortal conflagration Foreseeing not, thou deem'dst that we Would kneel for peace, a conquer'd nation— Thou knew'st the Russ ... too late ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... the hen-coop was a mighty conflagration. The fact that the point of the pencil was broken profoundly surprised me. We had a perfectly gorgeous time. It's a beastly shame that I missed my car. It is awfully funny that he should die. The saleslady pulled the washlady's hair. A cold bath is ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... of the schoolroom open. There are some spectacles which a man never forgets. The burning of Troy probably seemed a large-sized conflagration to the pious Aeneas, and made an impression on him which he carried away ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... traversing that solitary road, yet within hearing of this tremendous mass of revolt; or what I imagined in every roar, as it came mingled with the bellowing of the thunder. The attack might be commencing at the moment; the blaze that I saw might be the conflagration of the palace; the roar might be the battle over the bodies of the royal family. I never passed three hours in such real anxiety of mind, and they were deepened by the total loneliness of the whole road. I did not meet a single human being; for the inhabitants of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... narrower sense is the speaker's enthusiasm for the result. Eloquence may set fire to reason. But whatever may be thought of the redundant discourse before us, it had no chance of starting a present conflagration. If, in the long run, the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of free speech is that they should be given their chance and have their ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... domesticity. A quiet evening at home stands small chance, even in an old-established community, against a dog fight on the corner or a fire in the next block; and here were men fights instead, and a great, splendid, conflagration of desires, appetites, and passions, a grand clash of interests and wills that burned out men's lives in the space of a few years. It was a restless time, full of neglected women. This neglect varied in degree to be sure. Nan was lucky there. No other woman ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... by horror to the spot, a bright light arose, which rapidly increased, as a conflagration well might in such a wind, and soon the whole horizon was illuminated. I knew but one homestead in that direction—the fortified ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... pink crept over the heavens, rolling up like the gradual unfolding of a giant canvas, dragging along in its wake hues verging toward golden yellow, until the whole eastern sky, aflame with the light of approaching day, was a conflagration of pinks and yellows in all their manifold mixtures, promising, but not yet realizing, a warmth which would dispel the spring chill left by the long night. Then, with the whole east blazing with molten gold, there came the ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... so. "Mark Twain's Pageant," it was called by one of the papers.—[There was a dinner that evening at one of the colleges where, through mistaken information, Clemens wore black evening dress when he should have worn his scarlet gown. "When I arrived," he said, "the place was just a conflagration—a kind of human prairie-fire. I looked as out of place as ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... ages long since passed away, the war-whoop resounded through the forest. The shriek of mothers and maidens pierced the skies as they fell cleft by the tomahawk; and all the horrid clangor of war, with "its terror, conflagration, tears, and blood," imbittered ten thousand fold the ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... passing Gondremark at the entrance to the Palace avenue, but feigning not to observe him; and as Kleinbrunn was seven good miles away, and in the bottom of a narrow dell, she passed the night without any rumour of the outbreak reaching her; and the glow of the conflagration was concealed by intervening hills. Frau von Rosen did not sleep well; she was seriously uneasy as to the results of her delightful evening, and saw herself condemned to quite a lengthy sojourn in her deserts and a long defensive correspondence, ere she could venture to return to Gondremark. ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson

... was making a triumphant entrance upon the day, rolling its molten gold horizontally over the streets, gilding the puddles, and painting the house fronts and window-panes with the reddening brilliancy of a conflagration. The town was now quite awake. The street-cars were crowded with people, and the sidewalks on either hand were lined with still drowsy laborers on their way to work, their lunch baskets hung over their shoulders and cigar butts in their mouths. Pairs ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... real founder of the douchobortzi, who believed in direct communion with the divinity by aid of the spirit which dwells in all men. The sparks scattered by this unknown vagabond flared up some time later into a conflagration which swept away artisans, peasants and priests, and ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... of disturbance confined to Naples. In Florence, too, the torch of war was alight, and if—as he afterwards swore—Cesare Borgia had no hand in kindling it, it is at least undeniable that he complacently watched the conflagration, conscious that it would make for the fulfilment of his own ends. Besides, there was still that little matter of the treaty of Forno dei Campi between Cesare and Florence, a treaty which the Signory had never fulfilled and never intended to fulfil, and Cesare was ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... Agatha, "'awful,' means full of awe. A cyclone, a cloudburst, a great conflagration are awful things. By no stretch of the imagination could ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... summers fled; The stars, as now, were waning overhead. Listen! Again the shrill-lipped bugles blow Where the swift currents of the river flow Past Fredericksburg: far off the heavens are red With sudden conflagration: on yon height, Linstock in hand, the gunners hold their breath: A signal-rocket pierces the dense night, Flings its spent stars upon the town beneath: Hark!—the artillery massing on the right, Hark!—the black ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)

... five years her brother, R.L. Eames, occupied the position of manager. At this time a change being deemed expedient, Mr. H.S. Stedman, who had been connected with the house since 1883, was elected as manager and secretary, continuing as such until the conflagration of 1906 destroyed the entire stock together with all the books ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... OF WHISKEY BURNS | | | |Firemen had to fight a canal full of blazing whiskey| |here to-day when a fire broke out in the building of| |the Distillery Company, Ltd. Twelve thousand casks | |of liquor were stored in the building. The | |conflagration spread rapidly and the explosion of | |the casks released the whiskey, which made a burning| |stream of the canal. | | | |Firemen pumped water from the bottom of the canal | |and played it on the blazing surface. The loss is | |estimated ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... sparks instantly, blazed up to heaven with a wild outburst of flame. Great red tongues of fire licked up the mouldering mass of leaves and twigs, and caught at once at the trunks of palm and li wood within. A huge conflagration reddened the sky at once like lightning. The effect was magical. The glow transfigured the whole island for miles. It was, in fact, the blaze that Felix Thurstan had noted and remarked upon as he stood that evening on the silent ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... or even increase their fury; but may God preserve me from such thoughts! My dear lords, put away your indignation, treat those poor peasants as a man of sense treats people who are drunk or insane. Quiet these commotions by mildness, lest a conflagration should arise and burn all Germany. Among these twelve articles there are certain demands ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... promises of reform, embodied in various firmans, were no more than vague statements of principle which had never had, and were probably not intended to have, any local application. In order to avert the risk of a general conflagration, therefore, he urged that the time had come for concerted action of the powers for the purpose of pressing the Porte to fulfil its promises. A sketch of the more essential reforms followed: the recognition rather than the toleration ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... constructed. Five hundred Karanos thus came into existence, and there was assembled at Hyogo such a fleet as had never previously been seen in Japanese waters. A number of these new vessels were destroyed almost immediately by a conflagration which broke out in the lodgings of Korean envoys from Sinra (Shiragi), and the envoys being held responsible, their sovereign hastened to send a body of skilled shipmakers by way of atonement, who were thereafter organized into a hereditary ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution. From one insignificant misunderstanding hatred and separation may finally issue. An enormous avalanche begins by the displacement of one atom, and the conflagration of a town by the fall of a match. Almost everything comes from almost nothing, one might think. It is only the first crystallization which is the affair of mind; the ultimate aggregation is the affair of mass, of attraction, of acquired momentum, of mechanical acceleration. History, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... burned down and much damage done. The creature could not be found, and only when the parchment with the Name, which could not burn, was discovered amid the ashes, was it known that she had been destroyed in the conflagration. ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa

... and set fire to the ships on either side. All three blazed furiously. The crews ran to quarters and did their best. But all to no purpose. Meanwhile the British batteries had turned every available gun on the conflagration, so as to prevent the French from saving anything. Between the roaring flames, the bursting shells, and the whizzing cannon balls, the three doomed vessels soon became an inferno too hot for men to stay in. The crews swarmed ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... brought down their pride to these terms, and to the humiliation of making overtures to a party whose voice was only the other day designated by John Russell as 'the whisper of a faction,' shows plainly how deeply alarmed they are at the general state of the country, and how the conflagration of Bristol has suddenly illuminated their minds. That incident, the language of the associations, the domiciliary visits to Lord Grey at midnight of Place and his rabble, and the licentiousness of the press, have opened their eyes, and convinced ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... extraordinary virtues arising from the very imminence of the danger. Great characters are then thrown into relief, as the edifices which are concealed by the gloom of night, are illuminated by the glare of a conflagration. At those dangerous times genius no longer abstains from presenting itself in the arena; and the people, alarmed by the perils of its situation, buries its envious passions in a short oblivion. Great names may then be drawn from the ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... between them incite them against each other, because the fear of any foreign enemy is remote. But show them the Roman arms and a body of troops, natives of another country, and they will run together as if to extinguish a common conflagration. These same Carthaginians defended Spain in a different manner from that in which they will defend the walls of their capital, the temples of their gods, their altars, and their hearths; when their terrified wives will attend ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius

... dark demon of destruction has now descended, as it fell on the next younger of our cities, Chicago, in 1872. It was the rage of the fire-fiend that desolated the metropolis of the lakes. Upon the Queen City of the West the twin terrors of earthquake and conflagration have descended at once, careening through its thronged streets, its marts of trade, and its abodes alike of poverty and wealth, and with the red hand of devastation sweeping one of the noblest centres of human industry and enterprise from the face of the earth. It is this ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... that you cannot tell what your powers of resistance are. Unfortunately, many of the world's noblest characters have had nerves so finely wrought and brain so vivid that a single drop of stimulant started a perfect conflagration within them. One of the ablest men this country has ever known, when questioned by a friend as to what had been the greatest pleasure of his life, said: "The greatest 'pleasure' of my life is the delirium of intoxication"; and then he went on to say how sure he was that if the fires of desire ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge

... not an afterglow in the usual sense of afterglows, but a sky of deep, smouldering red equally distributed from horizon to horizon; as though everywhere below the world a conflagration raged. I could not at first speak for the grandeur of it, and when I turned to her words were again checked by the look upon her face. For this dull, permeating glow—this enchantment from the heavens—touched ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris

... moment to which allusion may here be made was the great conflagration in the year 1504, when the Exchange of the German Merchants was burnt. This building, known as the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, occupying one of the finest sites on the Grand Canal, was rebuilt by order of the Signoria, and Giorgione received the commission to decorate the facade ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... beheaded thirty Portuguese officers, prisoners of war; and in the third and last act, Muley, mad with his wives, set fire with his own hand to a detached palace, in which they were shut up, and reduced them all to ashes.... This conflagration, accompanied with a thousand shrieks, closed the piece in a very diverting manner.—Lesage, Gil Blas, ii. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... had lain in a drugged sleep, unconscious of the shouts, the threats, the groans which had resounded from palace to palace on the very summit of the Palatine. When he awoke these terrifying sounds were already more subdued. The people had been driven by the storm-fanned conflagration which they themselves had kindled, to seek shelter under the arcades of the tabernae in the Forum below. But now, after a couple of hours of enforced inactivity, they were ready once more for mischief: ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... the bonfires flaring up one after another on the neighbouring heights. As far as their light reaches, so far, in the belief of the peasants, the fields will be fruitful, and the houses on which they shine will be safe from conflagration or sickness. At Volkmarsen and other places in Hesse the people used to observe which way the wind blew the flames, and then they sowed flax seed in that direction, confident that it would grow ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... driven back; they are raiding the Visayan Islands, and endangering the existence of the Christian communities formed there by the Jesuit missionaries. A letter from the cabildo of the cathedral (December 11) informs the king of the revolt of the Chinese, and the subsequent conflagration in Manila. The Dominican provincial complains (December 15) that the colony is going to destruction because the royal decrees have not been observed, especially those restricting Chinese immigration, and calls for a rigorous investigation of the conduct of the colonial authorities—to ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... themselves places, they brought the country by their inflammatory language to the verge of a revolution, and were the cause that many perished on the scaffold; by their incendiary harangues and newspaper articles they caused the Bristol conflagration, for which six poor creatures were executed; they encouraged the mob to pillage, pull down and burn, and then rushing into garrets looked on. Thistlewood tells the mob the Tower is a second Bastile; let it be pulled down. A mob ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... struggling now, with the death-rattle in his throat. From the corners of his mouth they sponged away the water and blood, which had welled up in quantities from his chest in writhing agony. Still the grand, glorious sun lit up all, like a conflagration of the whole world, with blood-laden clouds; through the aperture of the port-hole, a wide streak of crimson fire blazed in, and, spreading over Sylvestre's bed, formed a ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti

... search for the missing letters, but found none. They had probably been burned; and she doubted not that the ones she had ferreted out would have shared the same fate if Mr. Hawkins had not been a dreamer, void of method, whose mind was perhaps in a state of conflagration over some bright new speculation when ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... and inconsiderate proctors, two tutors, and five parietals, each with a mug and pail in his hand, in their great haste to arrive at the scene of conflagration, ran over the Devil, and knocked him down stairs.—Harvardiana, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... Artillery fire of considerable violence marked the next day, May 7, 1916. Russian batteries before Dvinsk caused a fire at Ill, the little town just northwest of Dvinsk on the Dvinsk-Ponevesh railway, and so well was this bombardment maintained that the Germans were unable to extinguish the conflagration before it had reached some of their munition depots. In the early morning hours very violent gunfire was directed south of Illuxt. But an infantry attack, for which this bombardment was to act as preparation, failed. Other bombardments were ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... make out the camp's exact position before it closes round us, so we reach it without any real difficulty. When we get there, about one o'clock, I find the men have kept the fires alight and Cook is asleep before one of them with another conflagration smouldering in his hair. I get him to make me tea, while the others pack up as quickly as possible, and by two we are all off on our way ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... one corner, sometimes in another, the fire burst out. Soon this fire would become the conflagration destined to enkindle the earth with the ardent sentiment of kinship, uniting all its peoples; destined to consume and reduce to ashes the rage, hate and cruelty by which we are mutilated; the conflagration which will embrace all hearts, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... their head, the Kauravas had challenged the Pandavas. That foremost of all wielders of weapons was at last mangled with weapons. As he careered in battle, scorching his foes in every direction, his course resembled that of a blazing conflagration. Alas, deprived of life, he now lieth on the ground, like an extinguished fire. The handle of the bow is yet in his grasp. The leathern fences, O Madhava, still encase his fingers. Though slain, he still looketh as if alive. The four Vedas, and all kinds of weapons, O Keshava, did not abandon ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... this and the following passages of the abstract notion, sin, from the sinner: as if sin were any thing but a man sinning, or a man who has sinned! As well might a sin committed in Sirius or the planet Saturn justify the infliction of conflagration on the earth and hell-fire on all its rational inhabitants. Sin! the word sin! for abstracted from the sinner it is no more: and if not abstracted from him, it remains ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... arguing about the expense of the fire-escape. It is, nevertheless, broadly true that they both were burned because I set fire to their house. That is the story of the thing. The mere facts of the story about the present European conflagration are quite as ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton

... late war is devoted to the problem of discovering, in the field of abstract thought, the influences that led to the great conflict. Nietzsche, especially, seems to have been held responsible for the European conflagration. As the philosopher of the New Germany, as the chief expositor of the doctrine of force, the inventor of the super-man and of the idea of the beyond-good, Nietzsche seems to stand convicted of furnishing precisely the concepts that have become the German's gospel of war; and since ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... and weavers, which showed that the crisis of their political distemperature was over;— there was something more of the old prudence in men's reflections; and it was plain to see that the elements of reconciliation were coming together throughout the world. The conflagration of the French Revolution was indeed not extinguished, but it was evidently burning out; and their old reverence for the Grand Monarque was beginning to revive among them, though they only called him a consul. Upon the king's ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt

... the English Grammar; for we find, in 1629, James Howell (Letters, Sec. V. 27) writing to Jonson that he had procured Davies' Welch Grammar for him, "to add to those many you have." The grammar that Jonson had prepared for the press was destroyed in the conflagration of his study; so that the posthumous work we now possess consists merely of materials, which were printed for the first time in 1640, three years after the ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume

... dangerous feat, but, amidst the breathless suspense of thousands of spectators, he coolly searched for and safely carried out, first one, and then a second, cask of this explosive material. Had the fire reached the powder, it was known that the worst consequences of the conflagration ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood

... Tron Church was blazing like a torch, and the large group of buildings nearly opposite the Cross still enveloped in flame from ground-floor to roof-tree, passed our work-shed, a little after two o'clock, and, telling us what he had seen, remarked that, if the conflagration went on as it was doing, we would have, as our next season's employment, the Old Town of Edinburgh to rebuild. And as the evening closed over our labours, we went in to town in a body, to see the fires that promised to do so much for us. The spire had burnt out, and we could but catch ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... abolishable. It is very notable, and touching, how this same Hope does still light onwards the French Nation through all its wild destinies. For we shall still find Hope shining, be it for fond invitation, be it for anger and menace; as a mild heavenly light it shone; as a red conflagration it shines: burning sulphurous blue, through darkest regions of Terror, it still shines; and goes sent out at all, since Desperation itself is a kind of Hope. Thus is our Era still to be named of Hope, though in the saddest sense,—when there is ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... continue in Germany. The latest include gutting of the Moabit Goods Station in Berlin wherein tanks of petrol, hydrogen, et cetera, exploded, resulting in the destruction of a part of Vilna and the township of Osjory near the Grodno conflagration station and a ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various

... turned from this immense scandal by a frightful calamity—the famous conflagration of Rome, which began the nineteenth of July of the year 64 and devastated almost all quarters of the city for ten days. What was the cause of the great disaster? This very obscure point has much interested historians, who have tried in vain ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero

... band of Indians, whose ravages had produced this consternation throughout the land, and whose numbers did not exceed one hundred and fifty, being satiated with carnage, conflagration, and plunder, retreated, bearing off spoils and captives. Intelligent scouts sent out by Washington, followed their traces, and brought back certain intelligence that they had recrossed the Allegany Mountains and returned to their homes on the Ohio. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... My convictions then were the same, they have always been the same. To me it seemed that God's most vehement utterances had been in flames of fire. The most tremendous lesson He ever gave to New York was in the conflagration of 1835; to Chicago in the conflagration of 1871; to Boston in the conflagration of 1872; to my own congregation in the fiery downfall of the Tabernacle. Some saw in the flames that roared through its organ pipes a requiem, nothing but unmitigated ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage

... a spectacle no less gloomy. A great part of Kingston was destroyed, some years ago, by an extensive conflagration: yet multitudes of the houses which escaped that visitation are standing empty, though the population is little, if at all, diminished. The explanation is obvious. Persons who have nothing, and can ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... Mr. Stephen Phillips's play he does not actually play on the lyre, but he improvises and recites an ode to the conflagration.] ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... of Colonel C——, in swimming rivers frozen, and galloping over roads impassable,) that one entire province perished by famine in the most melancholy manner, as follows:—In General Rostopchin's consummate conflagration, the consumption of tallow and train oil was so great, that the market was inadequate to the demand: and thus one hundred and thirty-three thousand persons were starved to death, by being reduced to wholesome diet! the lamp-lighters of London have since subscribed a pint ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron

... repulse of Sir William Phipps's attack upon the city, and further famed for the prophecy of a nun, that this church should be ruined by the fire in which a successful attempt of the English was yet to involve the Lower Town. A painting, which represented the vision of the nun, perished in the conflagration which verified it, in 1759; but the walls of the ancient structure remain to witness this singular piece of history, which Kitty now glanced at furtively in one of the colonel's guide-books; since her ill-fortune ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... a tremendous flash of lightning of a red copper colour broke out behind the obscure superposition of the horizon and the zenith; that sudden release of vermilion flame revealed the horror of the clouds; that abrupt conflagration of the depths, to which for an instant the first tiers of clouds and the distant boundaries of the celestial chaos seemed to adhere, placed the abyss in perspective. On this ground of fire the snow-flakes showed black—they might have been compared to ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... busy with her thoughts, as they sat in the warm summer night and watched the vivid line draw nearer. Mr. Clifford and Maggie came out from time to time, and were evidently disturbed by the unchecked progress of the fire. Alf had gone with his father, and anything like a conflagration so terrified Johnnie that she dared not leave her ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... and exhilarating effect. This is what explains the attraction of fireworks. But in that case the artistic regularity with which the fire is presented and the complete lack of danger give an impression of lightness and playfulness like the effect of a glass of champagne. A real conflagration is a very different matter. Then the horror and a certain sense of personal danger, together with the exhilarating effect of a fire at night, produce on the spectator (though of course not in the householder whose goods are being burnt) a certain concussion of the brain and, as ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... were to have all the rights and privileges of citizens, provided they had been born of free parents on both sides. The white people were enraged by the decision, turned royalist, and trampled the national cockade underfoot; and throughout the summer armed strife and conflagration were the rule. To add to the confusion the black slaves struck for freedom and on the night of August 23, 1791, drenched the island in blood. In the face of these events the Conventional Assembly rescinded its order, then announced that the original decree must be obeyed, ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... foreign countries, little better than so many uncaged beasts of prey. Here they enjoy liberty from all social restraint ... and become rejoicing monsters, who perhaps go on their way, after a hideous sequence of murder, conflagration, violation, torture, with as much gaiety and equanimity as if they had merely taken part in some student gambols.... Deep in the nature of all these noble races there lurks unmistakably the beast of prey, the blond beast, lustfully roving ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... apparently resting on their summits. The town and castle of Navarino presented a bright, picturesque look, and some spots of cultivation were to be seen. In the interior there rose in the air what looked like the smoke of some conflagration, and such we all believed was the case, as the Turkish soldiery had been employed in ravaging the country, and carrying away the inhabitants. An encampment of tents lay near, close to the castle, and large bodies of soldiers were easily discernible crowding on the batteries as ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various

... moderate price. The most generous policy seemed to have dictated the edicts which regulated the disposition of the streets and the construction of private houses; and as it usually happens, in an age of prosperity, the conflagration of Rome, in the course of a few years, produced a new city, more regular and more beautiful than the former. But all the prudence and humanity affected by Nero on this occasion were insufficient to preserve him from the popular suspicion. Every crime might ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... the strange phenomenon, endeavouring to account for it in various ways. It seemed to be rising higher against the blue sky—now resembling dust, now like the smoke of a widely-spread conflagration, and now like a reddish cloud. It was in the west, and already the setting sun was obscured by it. It had passed over the sun's disc like a screen, and his light no longer fell upon the plain. Was it the forerunner of ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... till Saturday that he came upon Bob. Daylight knew him for what he wanted the moment he laid eyes on him. A large horse for a riding animal, he was none too large for a big man like Daylight. In splendid condition, Bob's coat in the sunlight was a flame of fire, his arched neck a jeweled conflagration. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... skin of a slaughtered victim. Corinth, Argos, Sparta, yielded without resistance to the arms of the Goths; and the most fortunate of the inhabitants were saved, by death, from beholding the slavery of their families, and the conflagration of their cities."—Gibbon's Rome, ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... of hot light, a flood of dancing sparks entered. And under the sky, of the violet blue of a conflagration, the parched plain could be seen, stretching away in the distance, as if asleep or dead in the overpowering, furnace-like heat, while to the right, above the pink roofs, rose the belfry of St. Saturnin, a gilded tower with arises that, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... sanctity consist in destruction? The God who peoples the air with birds, the earth with animals, the waters with fishes—the God who animates all nature—is he then a God of ruins and tombs? Demands he devastation for homage, and conflagration for sacrifice? Requires he groans for hymns, murderers for votaries, a ravaged and desolate earth for his temple? Behold then, holy and believing people, what are your works! behold the fruits of ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... a bed on which NAPOLEON has been lying. It is not yet daybreak, and the flapping light of the conflagration without shines ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... withdrew." In these expeditions he was careful to avoid any excesses which would have made the injury inflicted appear irretrievable; his troops were forbidden to destroy dwelling-houses or buildings dedicated to the gods; indeed, on one occasion, when the conflagration which consumed the lands accidentally spread to the temple of Athena near Assesos, he rebuilt two temples for the goddess at his own expense. The Milesians sustained the struggle courageously, until two reverses at Limeneion and in the plain of the Maeander at ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... and floats, people yell out that somebody has set the life raft adrift; and if he basks at the water's edge, boats will come in and try to dock alongside him; and if he takes a sun bath on the beach and sunburns, there's so everlasting much of him to be sunburned that he practically amounts to a conflagration. He can't shoot rapids, craps or big game with any degree of comfort; nor play billiards. He can't get close enough to the table to make the shots, and he puts all the English on himself and none of it on the ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb

... suggestions for somebody else to execute, but nobody does anything. The municipal police nose about in the crowd, and at intervals seize upon some obscure and inoffensive citizen, propelling him violently in the direction of the conflagration with orders to "work." He half-heartedly picks up an old five-gallon petroleum can or a bamboo water-pipe, and starts off to the nearest well, but as soon as he is out of range of the policeman's eye he drops the article, shuffles back into the gazing crowd, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... to make a Nero. But, happily for Russia, for thirteen years the tiger was chained. Ivan was seventeen years of age when a frightful conflagration which broke out in Moscow gave rise to a revolt against the Glinski, his wicked kinsmen. They were torn to pieces by the furious multitude, while terror rent his youthful soul. Amid the horror of flames, cries of vengeance, and groans of the dying, a monk appeared before the trembling boy, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... remember that I was observing the heavy artillery of the attack on the conflagration. Individual campaigns were everywhere in progress. I saw one man standing on the roof of a threatened building. He lowered slowly, hand over hand, a small tea-kettle at the end of a string. This was filled by a friend in the street, whereupon ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White

... there; the desirability of Government aid for tree-planting, the trouble which the farmers experience in getting native labour, and so forth, and so on; but we must not derive from all this peripatetic fustian the erroneous impression that His Honour has been vacuously fiddling on the eve of a conflagration. The real business which took him to Lydenburg and Middelburg has no doubt been satisfactorily accomplished. Boer sentiment has been tested in secret, and the usual professions of fervid patriotism and of readiness for target practice with the Uitlander as the mark have been profusely ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... by Josephus, that when the Jews perceived the conflagration of the Holy House, they broke out into such groans and outcries that all the mountains round about ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford

... of the officers, the mess houses of the troops, and all the buildings between the native lines and Meerut were fired, and the whole became a roaring conflagration, whose glare at ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... them, and the families they were of, as soon as they saw to what a height things were gone, put on sackcloth, and heaped ashes upon their heads, and by all possible means besought the seditious, and persuaded them that they would set before their eyes the utter subversion of their country, the conflagration of their temple, and the slavery of themselves, their wives, and children, [12] which would be the consequences of what they were doing; and would alter their minds, would cast away their weapons, and ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... young eyes. Those missionary Bibles were always too small of print. Forty miles away from us, the heart of hell burst from the lofty mountains and gushed red-blood of fire-melted rock toward the sea. With the heavens in vast conflagration and the earth hulaing beneath our feet, was a scene too awful and too majestic to be enjoyed. We could think only of the thin bubble-skin of earth between us and the everlasting lake of fire and brimstone, and of God to whom ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... is the bridge underneath it, which in a series of arches spans the river, but both will be serviceable still after some repair. Huge stones, displaced from their settings and broken into small pieces, lie scattered on the bridge and its approaches. From the Viaduct I could see an immense conflagration in the neighbourhood of the Champ de Mars, and a combat between the troops and the Insurgents was going on. In the Place de la Concorde and the Rue de Rivoli, all down to the Trocadero, reserves were in waiting with their chassepots stacked on each side of the road, but there ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy

... things. One night, not long ago, a big residence burned down in the foothills back of our hotel. At the first alarm of fire one of the directors wakened us and we jumped into our clothes and were whisked in an automobile to the scene of the conflagration. The camera-man was already there and, while we had to dodge the fire-fighters and the hose men, both Flo and I managed to be 'saved from the flames' by some of our actors—not once, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne

... Franklin assured his friends. "We might as well have hindered the sun's setting. That we could not do. But since 't is down, my friend, ... let us make as good a night as we can. We may still light candles." It was not candles alone that were lighted, but a conflagration; a conflagration which soon spread from the New World to the Old and burned away, as with a renovating flame, so much that was both good and bad in that ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... smiled. "Yes; but, my boy, this enthusiasm is alarming." He laughed outright. "It seems to indicate another conflagration, ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... azure, half aether half dew. The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and its masses of entangled and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it colour, it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... It took no conflagration to hasten her preparations for descent on this occasion. She met Marty at the foot of the staircase. The boy's face was actually pallid, and against this background his freckles ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long



Words linked to "Conflagration" :   fire, inferno, wildfire



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