"Descent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... man of the epoch which ushered in the nineteenth century. Though an aristocrat by descent, he was in life, in training, and in quality neither that nor a plebeian; he was the typical plain man of his time, exhibiting the common sense of a generation which thought in terms made current by the philosophy of the eighteenth century. His period was the most tumultuous and ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... for this. He thrust the end of the stop-cock into the hole. It was screwed fast and the valve turned. This stopped the flow of gas and checked the descent of the ship. Then, by opening the tap the vapor was allowed to escape gradually, bringing the Flying Mermaid ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... valley nearly a mile away in its slow descent, stood the peaked tops of more than a score of Indian tepees. Horses were scattered all about. From the tops of the lodges little dribbles of smoke were coming. The wet of the morning kept the occupants within, but here and there a robed figure ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... superior in numbers to their adversaries then present and by that means got possession of Symbolon, having first ejected the inhabitants. In this way they were able to bring provisions from the sea, over a shorter stretch of country, and had only to make a descent from the plain to get them. For Norbanus and Saxa did not venture to offer them battle with their entire force, though they did send out horsemen to make sorties, wherever opportunity offered. Accomplishing nothing, however, they were rather careful ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... such recapitulation of his Title; but Mr. Pinchin was himself never tired of dubbing himself Esquire, and you could scarcely be five Minutes in his company without hearing of his Estate, and his Mamma, and his Right to bear Arms. I, who was by birth a Gentleman of Long Descent, could not forbear Smiling from time to time (in my Sleeve, be it understood, since I was a Servant at Wages to him) at his ridiculous Assumptions. And there are few things more Contemptible, I take it, than for a Man of really good Belongings, and whose Lineage ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... season with fortitude if not absolute cheerfulness, and our hope is that though the position here may not seem a very glorious one, it will be recognised henceforth as an example of the way in which British soldiers and colonists of British descent can bear themselves in circumstances that try the best qualities ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... on until the descent from the wall; he on the right side of the chair, and Nilo on the left. Down in the garden where they were following a walk across the terrace toward Sta. Sophia, Lael put her face to the window, and spoke to him. His ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... of the Britannia, to justify his new advancement, had introduced into a fresh edition of his book a good deal of information regarding the descent of barons and other noble families. This was York Herald's own subject, and he was able to convict Camden of a startling number of negligences, and what he calls "many gross mistakings." The worst ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... younger days, she had plighted her faith, and who had, in turn, given his faith to her. He was now a captive, and she had become one of the nobles of the empire. But his evil lot had not been of her procuring, being merely one of those ill fortunes which are cast broadly over the earth, and whose descent upon any one person more than upon another can be attributed to destiny alone. Nor, in accepting her high position, had she been guilty of breach of faith, for she had long awaited the return of her lover, and he had not come. And through all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ready to give her all the information she could. Princess Flachspinnenlosburg, it appeared, traced her descent from the incorrigibly lazy daughter of a poor and not over scrupulous mother; Baroness Belohnte von Haulemaennerschen from similarly humble folk, whose daughter was servant of all work to seven dwarfs, and afterwards ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... the rascally, breakneck precipice descended sheer among waste lands, scattered suburbs of the city, and houses in the building. I had never the heart to look for any length of time—the thought that I must make the descent in person some dark night robbing me of breath; and, indeed, on anybody not a seaman or a steeple-jack the mere sight of the Devil's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... absolutely required a display of daring, these young air pilots were "there with the punch," as Andy termed it. They had learned how to volplane earthward from a dizzy height with absolute safety, when conditions were just right, and necessity required a quick descent. On a few occasions Frank had even been known to hazard what is known as the "death dip;" but it was only when there happened to be a good reason for taking such chances, and not merely in a spirit of dare-deviltry, ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age. It is wonderful to me that, even after my descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion enough on me—a child of singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally—to suggest that something ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... kind of return for the pleasure I have received in perusing a certain MS. volume of poems in the possession of Captain Riddel. To repay one with an old song, is a proverb, whose force, you, Madam, I know, will not allow. What is said of illustrious descent is, I believe, equally true of a talent for poetry, none ever despised it who had pretensions to it. The fates and characters of the rhyming tribe often employ my thoughts when I am disposed to be melancholy. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... retired from Argos, and founded the city of Mycenae, the ruins of whose massive walls are still to be seen—Cyclopean works, which seem to show that the old Pelasgians derived their architectural ideas from the Egyptian Danauns. The Perseids of Mycenae thus boasted of an illustrious descent, which continued down to the last ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... of a prospect. The window commanded the various backyards of that quarter. As if to consider any possible chance of escape, he looked out. There was a projection beneath him, a convenient water-pipe—he might make a perilous descent, if need arose. But, somehow, he believed in that little Jew: he believed, much more, in the little Jew's greed for a hundred pounds of ready money. The little Jew with the cunning smile had seen his chance of making a quiet penny, and had taken it—it was all right, said Yada, all ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... rowed a hundred yards farther on in the same direction, toward the east, and Asgeelo made another descent. He came back with the ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... the Carolinas and Georgia the mother country could reckon upon staunch adherents, and a great majority of the inhabitants: and it never was to be supposed that our own Virginia would forgo its ancient loyalty. We had but few troops in the province, but its gentry were proud of their descent from the Cavaliers of the old times: and round about our Governor were swarms of loud and confident Loyalists who were only eager for the moment when they might draw the sword, and scatter the rascally rebels before them. Of course, in these meetings I was forced to hear many a hard word against ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... married to Emma Rooke, a chiefess partly of English descent, who both by her character and her talents was worthy of the position. By their personal exertions the king and queen succeeded in raising the funds with which to found the "Queen's Hospital" at Honolulu. Their little son, the "Prince ...
— The Hawaiian Islands • The Department of Foreign Affairs
... the ear at any time, but how much more to our drought-accustomed senses; continually sounding like the murmur in the sea-shell, which, as the poets say, remembering its ancient and august abode, still murmurs as it murmured then. The water fell from a height of 150 feet; the descent was not quite unbroken. A delightful shower of spray fell for many yards outside the basin, inviting to a bath, which we exquisitely enjoyed; the basin was not more than six feet deep. I am quite delighted with this new feature. There were ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... of the field, having effected the descent of the hills, were now trotting on in the valley below, sufficiently near, however, to allow our hill party full view of their proceedings. After drawing a couple of osier-beds blank, they assumed a line parallel to the hills, and moved on to a wood of about ten acres, the west ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... names in this paragraph. They are remarkable for the fact that three out of the four are unquestionably Nahuatl or Aztec, and hence they have given occasion for considerable theorizing in favor of the "Toltec" origin of the Maya civilization, and also of the Nahuatl descent of the ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... Contrive their own fulfilment. This Iona— 135 Well—you know what the chaste Pasiphae did, Wife to that most religious King of Crete, And still how popular the tale is here; And these dull Swine of Thebes boast their descent From the free Minotaur. You know they still 140 Call themselves Bulls, though thus degenerate, And everything relating to a Bull Is popular and respectable in Thebes. Their arms are seven Bulls in a field gules; They think their strength consists in eating beef,— 145 Now ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... slippery here," he explained. But there was no need to apologize for what she by no means considered a liberty. Indeed, though he was conscious of nothing so much as of her hand in his, he was aware that she felt in his own merely a needed support. As she leaned upon him in the descent, he divined that her fear increased, instead of diminishing, with their progress into the circumjacent darkness, as if the act of flight intensified an appreciation of the original cause. He strove to dispel the emotion his own words had done so much to arouse, not without a guilty self-congratulation ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... by the Chimnies, and continues to sail about in the air, till having lost the heat which gave it volatility, it falls in a dry shower of extremely fine black dust to the ground, obscuring the atmosphere in its descent, and frequently changing the brightest day into ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... descent into this region, at whose gate we believe there stands an archangel with an host; which gate when those pass through that are conducted down by the angels appointed over souls, they do not go the same way; but the just are guided to the right ...
— An Extract out of Josephus's Discourse to The Greeks Concerning Hades • Flavius Josephus
... on 18th February, 1564. He was the eldest son of Vincenzo de' Bonajuti de' Galilei, a Florentine noble. Notwithstanding his illustrious birth and descent, it would seem that the home in which the great philosopher's childhood was spent was an impoverished one. It was obvious at least that the young Galileo would have to be provided with some profession by which he might earn a livelihood. From his father he derived both by inheritance and by precept ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... great a recommendation to Mrs. Piozzi as his good looks, and he vindicated his claim to noble descent by his conduct, which was disinterested and ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Exchequer) for L500, which was soon granted: and from this time there is a great deal of correspondence (mainly with Mr Baily) upon the details of the experiment and the theory of the calculation.—On July 24th I saw the descent of the parachute by which Mr Cocking was killed. I attended the coroner's inquest and gave evidence a few ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... the Amsterdam merchant, the semi-civilized Aztec, the Moor of Barbary, the Castilian grandee, the roving Camanche, the Guinea negro, the Indian Brahmin, found themselves—could they but have known it—fellow-citizens of one commonwealth. Statutes of family descent, aided by fraud, force, and chicane, had annexed the various European sovereignties to the crown of Spain; the genius of a Genoese sailor had given to it the New World, and more recently the conquest of Portugal, torn from hands not strong ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... from one original, the Sanscrit, we give an explanation of that resemblance. In the same way the existence of identical structural roots, if I may so term them, entering into the composition of widely different animals, is striking evidence in favour of the descent of those animals from ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... in which by the man in meant Matthew, by the calf Luke, &c., be the common one, yet other holy men have held a different opinion, for as Bede relates on this point, Augustine understood by the lion Matthew, because in the beginning of his Gospel he describes the royal descent of Christ; by the calf he also understood Luke, because he wrote of the priestly descent of Our Lord; by the man Mark, because he omits the question of Christ's birth, and confines himself more especially to describing His acts as a man; by ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various
... through its gradations of advance in the morning of life. Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action, will look with veneration on the writer, who is at one time combating Locke, and at another making a catechism for children in their fourth year. A voluntary descent from the dignity of science is, perhaps, the hardest lesson that humility ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... joy flows there with a perpetual and abundant stream, nor needs any mound to check its course."—Carter. "When the voice rises, the gesture naturally ascends; and when the voice makes the falling inflection, or lowers its pitch, the gesture follows it by a corresponding descent; and, in the level and monotonous pronunciation of the voice, the gesture seems to observe a similar limitation, by moving rather in the horizontal direction, without much varying its ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... imperishable Gorgon. I may have heard some of this next day, and so confounded the testimonies of eye and ear. But I knew that there was a charge, and that the drivers were ordered to stand by their saddles, to run off the guns at any moment. The descent and bottom below me, were now all ablaze, and directly above the din of cannon, rifle, and pistol, I heard a great cheer, as ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... The expected descent on the Isle of Wight did not take place, for though Prince Rupert was High Admiral, so large a portion of the fleet was disaffected that it was not possible to effect anything. Before long, he went back to the ships he had ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pass. Here they must turn away from its course, climbing a steep shoulder of the mountain, making a difficult way along a seldom used trail, until they came to the crest of the ridge which shot down from the right. Another fifty yards, almost level going, a steep descent and suddenly the fury of the river was but a faint rumbling in their ears, the stillness of the mountains crept down on them and they were at the margin ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... proved talismanic, an insurmountable barrier." What a change had come over him since giving utterance to those words. He now boasted of his "rebel blood," which he declared would always be uppermost. "I am proud," he wrote, "of my descent from a rebel race."[273] And, as if this were not sufficiently specific, he added: "If the people felt as I feel, there is never a Grant or Glenelg who crossed the Tay and Tweed to exchange high-born ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... told how one Catharine, of lowly birth and the captive of a warlike raid, rose to be Empress of Russia. We have now to tell how a second of the same name rose to the same dignity. This one was indeed a princess by descent, her birthplace being a little German town. But if she began upon a higher level than the former Catharine, she reached a higher level still, this insignificant German princess becoming known in history as Catharine the Great, and having the high distinction of being ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... examine it, and see the result. You observe, I first take up the air, and then throw it back, as is evident from the ascent and descent of the water; and now, by putting a taper into the air, you will see the state in which it is, by the light being extinguished. Even one inspiration, you see, has completely spoiled this air, so that it is no use my trying to breathe it a second time. Now, you understand the ground of the impropriety ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... would invest the wooden wasp with all the terrible attributes which had belonged to the live wasps of the tree; and after a few centuries, when all remembrance of the tree, the wasp-prophet and chieftain, and his descent from the divine wasp—aye, even of their defeat and flight—had vanished from their songs and legends, they would be found bowing down in fear and trembling to a little ancient wooden wasp, which came from they ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... not do so. There is a strong natural sentiment in favour of the institution of heirlooms, for example; one feels a son might well own—though he should certainly not sell—the intimate things his father desires to leave him. The pride of descent is an honourable one, the love for one's blood, and I hope that a thousand years from now some descendant will still treasure an obsolete weapon here, a picture there, or a piece of faint and faded needlework from our days and ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... me back to Beauleigh, on some rotten pretence of legal business about mortgages; and made a descent on Mr. Vane. You know that he was as decent a soul as ever lived, and as sensitive. I'm afraid that there was a lot of Stryke & Wigram in that interview—you know, talk about having entrapped me into marriage with his daughter—the last man in the world ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... garrison an idea of the method in which the attack was to be made. It stated that ten ships were to be fortified, six or seven feet thick, with green timber bolted with iron, and covered with cork, junk, and raw hides. They were to carry guns of heavy metal, and to be bombproof on the top, with a descent for the shells to slide off. These vessels, which they supposed would be impregnable, were to be moored within half gunshot of the walls with iron chains; and large boats, with mantlets, were to lie off at some distance, full of troops ready to take advantage of occurrences; ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... at the descent to the bridge of Montereau, while the eight horses, lashed to a gallop, were bearing the carriage rapidly along (the First Consul already traveled like a king), the tap of one of the front wheels came off. The inhabitants who lined the route, witnessing this ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... at the Assyrian captivity (Judges xvii., xviii.). His position seems very different from that of Eli. The only point of resemblance is that both are hereditary priests, Levites so called, and trace their descent from the family of Moses,— of which more anon. But while Eli is a man of distinction, perhaps the owner of the sanctuary, at all events in a position of thorough independence and the head of a great house, Jonathan is a solitary wandering Levite ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... best authority in support of the opinion you desire to have established, which ought, and generally has, great weight in all cases. And, first, I have all antiquity on that side, which the more near it is to its origin and divine descent, the more clearly, perhaps, on that account, did it discern the truth in these matters. This very doctrine, then, was adopted by all those ancients whom Ennius calls in the Sabine tongue Casci; namely, that in death there was a sensation, and that, when men departed this life, ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... said. "After all, how easy the descent is, even for the greatest of us. I hope that James will not be long with that whisky and Apollinaris. My nerves are shaken. ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... guileless victim. A fungous gnat, enticed perhaps by the striped house of refuge from cold spring winds, and with a prospect of food below, enters and slides down the inside walls or the slippery, colored column: in either case descent is very easy; it is the return that is made so difficult, if not impossible, for the tiny visitors. Squeezing past the projecting ledge, the gnat finds himself in a roomy apartment whose floor—the bottom of the pulpit—is dusted over ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... expected to be. Unfortunately, this statement involves no definition of what might be considered moral, under the circumstances. Now, there will be disagreeing estimates of what a moral character, upon which there has been no descent of heavenly grace, or where grace has not supervened to essay its recreation, or its moulding anew, should be; and there will also, I think, be divergent views as to a code of morals to be practised which ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... streets, turning in at a cafe, or buying a peach, and doing "schneeze" with the "Flams." He does a little French now and then with people in the streets. I got into the Cathedral just in time to see the glorious Descent from the Cross, and (which I admire less) the Elevation ditto by Rubens. I must tell you this morning I went to high mass in the Cathedral. In fact I heard two masses and a sermon in Flemish. It ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... along the snow-covered ridge, taunting him with merry laughter as she left him clambering in cautious descent down the rock. Jan followed in pursuit, shouting to her in French, in Cree, and in English, and their two voices echoed happily ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... meaning of this trampled grass!" Resolutely, she gathered up her reins. "I will know!" she muttered. "And I'll know before very long, too. That is, I hope I will," she qualified, as the bay cayuse began to pick his way carefully down the steep descent to Monte's Creek. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... [15] Mahomet professed descent from Ishmael, and that he came to revive the religion which God had revealed to Abraham, who taught it to Ishmael. Mahometanism is the religion of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... with a general description of the character of Catiline. This talented person, though of a most wicked disposition, belonged to the patrician gens Sergia, which traced its descent to one of the companions of Aeneas. This is no doubt fabulous, but at any rate proves the high antiquity of the gens. The most renowned among the ancestors of Catiline was M. Sergius, a real model of bravery, who ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... Lord, my God, come now to my aid, for Thou knowest that my cause is righteous, and that I am aiding myself.' Then he gently let himself slide down the rope till he reached the ground. There was no moon, but the sky was clear, and once down he gazed up at the tower from which he had made so bold a descent, and went off in high spirits, thinking himself at liberty, which indeed was by no means ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... of the progress of the Japanese as a nation, we must not forget that the national records of the country date from nearly seven hundred years before the time of Christ on earth, and that a regular succession of Mikados, in lineal descent from the founders of their dynasty and race, has since that remote date been carefully preserved. Taking the Western Powers as a model, the Japanese have not failed to emulate them in nearly all the prominent features of civilization, promptly furnishing themselves with rifled cannon and torpedo ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... was speedily pacified. Some years later the greediness of Lord Donegal, who for the sake of gain evicted over 6,000 protestant families and replaced them by new tenants, many of them catholics, caused a rising in Antrim and Down. Already numerous presbyterians of Ulster, men of Scottish and English descent, had been driven by the destruction of the woollen trade and the disabilities imposed by the test act to emigrate to America, and many of Donegal's evicted tenantry followed their example. Ireland lost men who should have defended British interests, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... which was the best the emperor had in his disposal, was nothing else than a long cave dug in the earth, the vault of which was supported by two ranges of pillars. The descent was by a small stair, and there was no air but what was procured by small windows, placed on the head of the vault. The emperor keeps here his tents and war equipage. In fine, naked walls, spiders webs, bats and rats, were all that we could see in this dwelling. This building stands ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... they began the descent of a lofty hill, and the car glided into the road which is the old Flaminian Way, ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... of those of Halicarnassus. "When Memnon, the son of Orestidas by descent, but by adoption of Euonymus, was priest, on the —— day of the month Aristerion, the decree of the people, upon the representation of Marcus Alexander, was this: Since we have ever a great regard to piety towards God, and to holiness; and since we ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... conscience, if perversely and misguidedly self-asserting, has no rights against the decrees of the conscience of the nation: that it is the most detestable of crimes to perturb the pacific order of society either by active agitation or speculative restlessness; that descent from a long line of ancestors in great station adds an element of dignity to life, and imposes many high obligations. We do not say that these and the rest of the propositions which make up the true theoretic basis of a conservative creed, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... everybody, and not satisfactory to the natural yearnings of novel readers. In the traditions that he brought over, there was a key to some family secrets that were still unsolved, and that controlled the descent of estates and titles. His influence upon these matters involves [him] in divers strange and perilous adventures; and at last it turns out that he himself is the rightful heir to the titles and estate, ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Captain Hardy, "but you may be of a great deal of service here. You see New York is a difficult place to guard. This is our principal port. It is so vast that it is next to impossible to watch all of it, and there are hundreds of thousands of Germans or people of German descent living here. The Radio Chief needs sharp eyes and ears as well as trained fingers just now, and he knows that you boys combine these qualifications. He suggested that I send for four of you and see what you could accomplish. I chose you four because you have shown the ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... alternately moistened with rain and again dried. Those which have flowed during rain down a slope, disintegrate in the same manner. Such pellets often roll a little down any sloping surface; their descent being sometimes much aided by the wind. The whole bottom of a broad dry ditch in my grounds, where there were very few fresh castings, was completely covered with these pellets or disintegrated castings, which had rolled down the steep sides, ...
— The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the action of worms with • Charles Darwin
... off his shoes, and thrust one into each side-pocket of the old blouse he wore, partly to save noise, and partly to prevent his feet from slipping on the smooth stones of the chimney. Thus prepared, he climbed to the top, and commenced the descent of the smoky avenue. He found the opening much smaller than that of his previous experience in chimneys; and, after he had descended a few feet, the place became inconveniently dark. He could no longer hear the steps or the voices of his pursuers; ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... someone will give him a "bit and a sup." So he follows the ringing in his ears till he comes to the top of the great crag and sees "a mile off and a thousand feet down" the old dame in her garden. We lose our own breath in following him down that awful descent, find ourselves panting, and at last, suddenly, "b-e-a-t, beat!" After the old dame has given him the old rug and bidden him sleep off his weariness, comes the fever with the ringing of the church bells and the persistent, agonizing thought, "I must be clean, I must be clean." ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... powerful parts and free lives, whom a community of race, religion, language, and interest, united in a sort of Masonic association, whereof his house became one of the centres of reunion. There, aware of his gentle descent, and impressed with his transcendent abilities; charmed with his conversation—as pithy as it was apt to be impure—his wit, his taste, his information, his judgment; sensible, too, of the excellence of his wines, and luxuriance of his table, around which ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... between the United States and Great Britain. Say this in unofficial terms to Mr. Lloyd George, but impress upon him its very great significance. If the British Government should act successfully on this matter, our American citizens of Irish descent and to a great extent the German sympathizers who have made common cause with the Irish, would join hands in ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... the air like a bird and landed so close to the fire that Ned felt the warmth of it on his face. The wheels cut the earth at first, under the force of the quick descent, then stopped. ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... criticism of the judgment of the combating goats was correct. It was no place for a fair fight. One of the animals happened to get "up hill" and at the next charge the lower goat was lifted completely off its feet and came tumbling down the steep descent with the speed of ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... offered Russia her alliance in February. She was prepared to surrender Finland to Russia on condition that Russia should assist her in the conquest of Norway. A joint army was to effect this conquest and then make a descent on North Germany, threatening the rear of the French army of invasion. The adhesion of Great Britain was to be invited. On April 5 an alliance between Russia and Sweden was signed on the terms suggested. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... which a variegated leaved variety had been grafted, threw out a variegated leaved shoot below the graft. This can easily be explained. The growth of the trunk or stem of all exogenous plants, or those which increase in size on the outside of the stem, is brought about by the descent of certain formative tissue called cambium, elaborated by the leaves and descending between the old wood and the bark, where it is formed into alburnum or woody matter. Some think that it is also formed by ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... charity's like the light o' the sun, by which all things are cherished. It is the brightness of the soul, and the glorious quality which proves our celestial descent. Our other feelings are common to a' creatures, but the feeling of charity is divine. It's the only thing in which man partakes of ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... fix another arrow in his bow. Had we been in still water I might have lifted my rifle and shot the Indian, but I dared not leave my paddle for a moment. Down the rapid we dashed, then, paddling with might and main to turn the canoe so as to be ready for the next descent. The Indian had disappeared, but we heard his voice, calling, as we supposed, to his companions,—and directly afterwards we caught sight of him running along the bank among the trees; but he ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... he afterwards became such a distinguished ornament and support. The other Alexandrians under whom Proclus studied were Hero, the mathematician, a devout and religious pagan, Leonas, the rhetorician, who introduced him to all the chief men of learning, and Orion, the grammarian, who boasted of his descent from the race of Theban priests. Thus the pagans still held up their heads in the schools. Nor were the ceremonies of their religion, though unlawful, wholly stopped. In the twenty-eighth year of this reign, when the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... manners and customs of the country to be qualified to pronounce judgment upon them, and I shall therefore, on this head, confine myself to a few remarks. The manners seem, on the whole, to differ but little from those of Europe. The present possessors of the country, as is well known, derive their descent from Portugal, and the Brazilians might very aptly be termed "Europeans translated into Americans;" and it is very natural, that in this "translation" many peculiarities have been lost, while others have stood forth in greater relief. The strongest feature in the character of the European-American ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... should be entered upon fully appreciating the fact that by careless, easy descent we have reached a dangerous depth, and that our ascent will not be accomplished without laborious toil and struggle. We shall be wise if we realize that we are financially ill and that our restoration to health may require heroic treatment ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... before the white men set up their trading-posts on the Arkansas and Platte, a band of mountain hunters made a descent on what they took to be a small company of plainsmen, but who proved to be the enemy in force, and who, in turn, drove the Utes—for the aggressors were of that tribe—into the hills. Most of them took refuge on a castellated rock on the south side of Bowlder Canon, where they ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Scotsman by descent from Presbyterians of high moral and religious character, and as an Episcopalian by conscientious preference, I would fain see more of harmony and of confidence between all Scotsmen, not only as fellow-countrymen, but as ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... toy. For a moment Clayton stood with his face to the west, drinking in the air; then tightening his belt, he caught the pliant body of a sapling and swung loose from the rock. As the tree flew back, his dog sprang after him. The descent was sharp. At times he was forced to cling to the birch-tops till they ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... knelt before her, and, as he offered Althea his wreath, his dark eyes gazed so ardently into the blue ones of the red-haired Greek-like Queen Arsinoe, she was of Thracian descent—that Ledscha was now positively certain she knew for whose sake her lover had so ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... king turned a deaf ear to the exhortations of the Pope, and refused to make a descent upon England, Elizabeth was able to cope with Catholicism at home by peaceful measures. But the time was approaching when she could no longer refuse to give practical assistance to her struggling co-religionists on the continent. The Netherlands ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Bert had a somewhat similar experience shortly after he began to ride Sable. At a little distance from the house was a hill up which the street led, and then down the other side out into the country. The ascent was pretty steep, the descent not so much so, and Bert liked to walk his pony up to the top, and then canter down the other side. One afternoon, just as he reached the summit, a little street boy, probably by way of expressing the ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... which he was able to describe; and this opinion was confirmed by later discoveries of other bones and fragments, so that an almost complete skeleton of the Dinornis may now be seen in this country. Well, our knowledge of the Aryan people, and of our own descent from them, has been found out in much the same way. Learned men observed, as a curious thing, that in various European languages there were words of the same kind, and having the same root forms; they found also that these forms of roots existed in the older language ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... of the nineteenth of February, 1847, the relief party of Captain R. P. Tucker began the descent of the gorge leading to ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... may classify as the first of the three facts which lead up to Man and Superman. The second of the three facts may be found, I think, in Shaw's discovery of Nietzsche. This eloquent sophist has an influence upon Shaw and his school which it would require a separate book adequately to study. By descent Nietzsche was a Pole, and probably a Polish noble; and to say that he was a Polish noble is to say that he was a frail, fastidious, and entirely useless anarchist. He had a wonderful poetic wit; and is one of the best rhetoricians of the modern world. He had a remarkable power ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... in order to improve by our mutual observations, criticisms, and corrections. As language and expression were what we had in view, we excluded all considerations of invention by agreeing that the task should be a version of the eighteenth Psalm, which describes the descent of a Deity. When the time of our meeting drew nigh, Ralph called on me first, and let me know his piece was ready. I told him I had been busy, and, having little inclination, had done nothing. He then ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... countess was married after her brother's death to a Sir Richard Pole, a supporter and relation[211] of the king; and when left a widow she received from Henry VIII. the respectful honour which was due to the most nobly born of his subjects, the only remaining Plantagenet of unblemished descent. In his kindness to her children the king had attempted to obliterate the recollection of her brother's wrongs, and she had been herself selected to preside over the household of the Princess Mary. During the first twenty years of Henry's reign the countess seems to have acknowledged ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... and, amid the sound of bells and the cracking of whips, the carriage reached the national road from Paris to Beauvais, which, from Montsoult, passes around the railway by a rapid descent, from the summit of which is visible, on the right, the Chateau of Franconville; on the left, the village of Nerville perched ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... that his soldiers were murdered, and that the English were about to disembark. He saw himself dishonored if he lived, summoned before a council of war to explain his want of vigilance; then he measured with his eye the depths of the descent, and was springing towards it when Clara's ...
— El Verdugo • Honore de Balzac
... 1829, of Lombard descent; had a paternal grandfather, who was a wealthy chimney-builder of Paris during the first Empire, an employer of Joseph; he died in 1819. Mlle. Judici did not inherit her grandfather's fortune, for it was run through with by her father. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... descent on the far side of the vast hill by whose top they had been searching. There was a stiff slope beyond, and another mass of cliff loomed up, rising dimly against the sky, in a way that made Archy feel certain that, though so far their search had been ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... travelled in the disguise of an Afghan Peer or holy man, under the guidance of two Afghan Seyds, a race of men much looked up to and respected in all Mahomedan countries, on account of their obtaining, [whether true or not, I know not] a pure descent from the Prophet. Outram and his party fell in with several bands of fugitives, and actually came up and were obliged to travel a day or two with the harem and escort of Mehrab Khan's brother. As ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... to leave an open field, and upon the first ballot John A. King received 91 votes, James S. Wadsworth 72, Simeon Draper 23, Myron H. Clark 22, and Ira Harris 22. Thurlow Weed and the wheel horses of Whig descent, however, preferring that the young party have a governor of their own antecedents, familiar with political difficulties and guided by firmness and wisdom, had secretly determined upon King. But Wadsworth, although he quickly felt the influence of their decision, declined to withdraw. Wadsworth ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the other's voice. It was a pleasing voice, a cultured voice, and refined withal, nor could his fastidious ear detect the faintest trace of provincialism or vulgarity about it. The intonation was perfect. There is nothing so quick to betray to the sensitive ear any strain of plebeian descent as the voice, and of this no one was more thoroughly aware than Laurence Stanninghame. This man, he decided, was of ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... valleys and skims by boulder and foam. And Rua burst from the glen and leaped on the shore of the brook, And straight for the roofs of the clan his vigorous way he took. Swift were the heels of his flight, and loud behind as he went Rattled the leaping stones on the line of his long descent. And ever he thought as he ran, and caught at his gasping breath, "O the fool of a Rua, Rua that runs to his death! But the right is the right," thought Rua, and ran like the wind on the foam, "The right is the right for ever, and home for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shared with the political Congress the first place in the interest of New India, and crowds of educated Indians still assemble whenever Mrs. Besant, now the leading Theosophist, is to speak. One of the rules of the society, however, saved it from the descent into politics that has overtaken the [A]rya Sam[a]j and tainted it as a religious movement. Rule XVI (1884) forbids members, as such, to interfere in politics, and declares expulsion to be the penalty for violation ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... was that the English language seemed always more natural to Meurig Wynne than the Welsh. His sermons were always thought out in that language, and then translated into the vernacular, and this, perhaps, accounted in some degree for their stiffness and want of living interest. His descent from the Flemings had the disadvantage of drawing a line of distinction between him and his parishioners, and thus added to his unpopularity. In spite of this, Cardo was an immense favourite, his frank and genial manner—inherited from his mother, ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... thought of his brother's legacy came into his head like the sting of a wasp; but he drove it out indignantly, not choosing to allow himself to slip down that descent to jealousy. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... I saw, with the most perfectly patrician profile (if we imagine something delicately aquiline to be particularly patrician), was a groom who sat his horse beside Rotten Row, waiting till his master should come to command the services of both. He too had the look of long descent, but if it could not be said that he had cost the nation too much time and money, it might still be conjectured that he had cost some one too ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... forget who Number Seven is if I inform you that he specially prides himself on being a seventh son of a seventh son. The fact of such a descent is supposed to carry wonderful endowments with it. Number Seven passes for a natural healer. He is looked upon as a kind of wizard, and is lucky in living in the nineteenth century instead of the sixteenth or earlier. ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... 84. The Descent from the Cross. This print is beautifully executed, the composition is grand, and the head full of character; 1st and most ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... Woggle-Bug, "my father, although of ordinary size, was a famous Bug-Wizard in his day, and claimed descent from the original protoplasm which constituted the nucleus of the present planetary ...
— The Woggle-Bug Book • L. Frank Baum
... AEneas, clinging to the shrine, When thus the prophetess: "O Trojan Knight, Born of Anchises, and of seed divine, Down to Avernus the descent is light, The gate of Dis stands open day and night. But upward thence thy journey to retrace, There lies the labour; 'tis a task of might, By few achieved, and those of heavenly race, Whom shining worth extolled or Jove ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... slowly, "you and I are on the Western slope and have been for a long time. The Valley of the Shadow lies at the foot of the hill and the descent is almost made. But the boy is young, and most of the journey lies before him. You chose for yourself, and so did I. Shall we not grant him ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... them as in the sign for rain, Fig. 114, p. 344, the hand, however, being inverted. Rain in the Mexican picture writing is shown by small circles inclosing a dot, as in the last two figures, but not connected together, each having a short line upward marking the line of descent. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... of the courts of the State of Missouri, for that, to wit: the said plaintiff, Dred Scott, is not a citizen of the State of Missouri, as alleged in his declaration, because he is a negro of African descent; his ancestors were of pure African blood, and were brought into this country and sold as negro slaves, and this the said Sandford is ready to verify. Wherefore he prays judgment, whether this court can or will take further cognizance of ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... wicked woman was, and to a large extent is, the means employed by Satan in leading astray the unwary. The manner of her fall has been declared. It may be profitable to review the steps of her downward descent from the bliss of Eden to the woe of the desert; from the position of an equal to ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... full speed. The snow was nearly level with the top of the stone walls, and the wind carrying it diagonally from the road, it rolled over the little ridge of stones which remained above the drifts, and then swept across the field, down a long descent, like ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... the story itself. Long, long ago, in far bygone days, William de Soulis, Lord of Liddesdale, kept high state in his Castle of Hermitage. The royal blood of Scotland flowed in his veins, for he was sixth in descent from Alexander II., and could an ancestress of his have proved her right, he might have sat ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... weight. Aroused by the imminence of the danger, Arthur, by an instinctive attempt at self-preservation, drew cautiously back from the falling crag into the tree by which he had ascended, and turned his head back as if spell-bound, to watch the descent of the fatal rock from which he had just retreated. It tottered for two or three seconds, as if uncertain which way to fall; and had it taken a sidelong direction, must have dashed the adventurer from his place of refuge, or borne both the tree ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 371, May 23, 1829 • Various
... continued so persistently bad in the mountains that we voted the "hunt" at an end, and made the best of our way towards Mehadia, from which place we were in fact not so very distant. The descent was very rapid; at first through a thick forest, then into the open valley, where the heat became intense. The change of temperature ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... nothing but the prophets, he attained to a condition of ecstasy which at last led him to announce that he was Christ come down from heaven to save his fellow-men. Having lived so long on the footing of a son of God, he now was convinced of his direct descent, and his hearers going still further, were filled with expectation of some great event which should ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... situated on the eastern coast of the county Antrim. This, with all the territory known as the "Glynnes" (so called from the intersection of its surface by many rocky dells), from Glenarm to Ballycastle, was at this time in the possession of the MacDonnells, a clan of Scotch descent. The principal castle of the MacDonnells ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... creoles—that is, natives of French and Spanish descent, who speak in the French tongue. We do not understand them any more than if we were in a really foreign city. They seem a handsome, well-knit race. But they are idle and lacking in ambition, and for that reason are being crowded out of business by the active, thrifty ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... numbers of white slaves than of black. It was natural that a stream of black slaves should have poured into Egypt, because the chief line of Egyptian conquest and defense lay toward the heart of Africa. Moreover, the Egyptians, themselves of Negro descent, had not only Negro slaves but Negroes among their highest nobility and even among their Pharaohs. Mohammedan conquerors enslaved peoples of all colors in Europe, Asia, and Africa, but eventually their empire centered in Asia ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... staircase wall had fallen into the hall below. It very often, or almost always, seemed to occur under the glass dome which lighted the body of the house, and the falling object seemed to strike others in its descent, so that it was not ineffectively imitated by rolling a bowl along the stone floor of the hall, and allowing it to strike against the doors or pillars, when the peculiar echoing quality was fairly reproduced by the hollow domed roof ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... for more than a century. For a moment there flashed into his mind the thought of the eager lives that there had been trained and long since had passed over into the land beyond. Will himself was the fourth generation in direct descent in his own family to enter Winthrop, and as he now passed slowly up the rough, narrow, and worn stairway, he found himself thinking of his own father and grandfather and great-grandfather, all of whom doubtless had many a time been in the very same hallway ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... came upon a surging foam, pale, and with scintillating bubbles. The surges increased in volume, and boiled, hissing as with anger, like savage animals. Presently, the cockle-shell rose upon one very lofty swell, and Shibli Bagarag lost hold of it, and lo! it was overturned and engulfed in the descent of the great mountain of water, and the Princess Goorelka was immersed in the depths. She would have sunk, but Shibli Bagarag caught hold of her, and supported her to the shore by the strength of his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the other paraphernalia of the table suffered considerable diminution in the descent of these modern Ciceros, and a variety of speakers arising upon their downfall, created so much confusion, that our Heroes, fearing it would be some time before harmony could be restored, took ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... originally discovered. The auri sacra fames, which in 1541 urged the adventurous Gonzalo Pizarro to hunt for the fabled city of El Dorado in the depths of the South American forests, led to the descent of the great river by Orellana, a knight of Truxillo. The fabled women-warriors were said to have been seen in this notable voyage, and hence the name of the river Amazon, a name which in Spanish and Portuguese is in the plural. ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... to the time-killing purpose of the clever little machinator in arranging to have spent batteries given him, Blount, nevertheless, did his duty like a man, and the pair made a late descent upon the Gordon dinner-table. Though the dinner was informal, there were other guests besides the senator's party, and among them the traffic manager. Blount, sitting next to Patricia, made their tardiness an excuse and devoted himself to her, thus escaping the toils of the general ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... my descent then, it was, as is well known by many, of a low and inconsiderable generation; my father's house being of that rank that is meanest, and most despised of all the families in the land. Wherefore, I have not here, as ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... lacked opportunities for acquiring knowledge or refinement. If Mary and Salome were sisters, the blood of David's line was in John as well as in Jesus. It is something to have back of one's birth a long and noble descent. Besides, John was one of those rare men "who appear to be formed of finer clay than their neighbors, and cast in a gentler mould." Evidently he was by nature a man of sympathetic spirit, one ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... the Dutch blockade of Achin—Achin having been of late years the principal pepper-growing country—the natives are again turning their attention to this article. I may remark here that the people of Bundu claim and shew evidence of Chinese descent, and even set up in their houses the little altar and joss which one is accustomed to see in Chinamen's shops. The Brunai Malays call the Chinese Orang Kina and evidence of their connection with Borneo is seen in such names as Kina-batangan, a river near ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... did not, as a stranger might, in prudence, hasten his descent from the heights at which he stood while yet a gleam of daylight remained to him. For he was, from his boyhood, familiar with those solitary regions; and, beside this, the thin circle of the moon, hung in the eastern ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... thirteenth century, "English in speech and manners" (as Mr. Oman[5] guardedly describes them) is beyond doubt. Were they also English in blood? The evidence upon which the accepted theory is founded is twofold. In the course of the sixth century the Angles made a descent between the Humber and the Forth, and that district became part of the English kingdom of Northumbria. Even here we have, in the evidence of the place-names, some reasons for believing that a proportion of the original Brythonic ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait
... and people piled five and six deep on the cabin floor; and a solid deck-load of immigrants and harvesters down below, into the bargain. To get a first-class stateroom, you'd got to prove sixteen quarterings of nobility and four hundred years of descent, or be personally acquainted with the nigger that blacked the captain's boots. But it's all changed now; plenty staterooms above, no harvesters below—there's a patent self-binder now, and they don't have harvesters any more; they've gone where the woodbine twineth—and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... bachelor, aged almost forty, was another old Virginian grandee with proved descent from the First Families. He was a fine, majestic creature, a gentleman according to the nicest requirements of the Virginia rule, a devoted Presbyterian, an authority on the "code", and a man always courteously ready to stand up before you in the field if any act or word of his had seemed doubtful ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... V." Born in a country town in southern Michigan, Dec. 29, 1890, of Czech-Yankee descent. Has lived continuously since three years of age in one of the large cities of the Great Lakes. Graduated from a public high school, but was educated chiefly by ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... eleven warships, in the Straits of Magellan. Why, indeed, should not the Germans imitate, in the twentieth century, the deeds of Drake in the sixteenth? If they preyed ruthlessly upon English merchantmen, laden with the wealth of the West, if they made a descent upon the Falkland Islands, if then they were to disappear into the wide Pacific, a career of splendid adventure and of unbounded usefulness would earn for them both the respect and the plaudits of the world. Australian and Japanese warships were sweeping the eastern Pacific ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... anything, but really closely observing the approaches to the walls and the general features of the country outside. They now stole out, keeping in the shadow of the building, until they reached the staircase leading up to the battlements, close to the point Wulf had fixed upon for making their descent. This had been chosen chiefly because no sentry was placed on that part of the wall, the watch generally being careless, as Normandy was at present at peace with its neighbours. When they reached ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... River is down stream—a perfectly absurd and trite statement at first thought. On second thought, one reverts to the people who are always trying to fight their way up that adverse current, with the thrust of two miles perpendicular descent and the body of a thousand storms in ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... Rubens (1577-1640) an adequate expression of the tendencies and aspirations of the Counter Reformation in Belgium. Compared with the religious pictures of the Van Eycks and of Van der Weyden, such works as the "Spear Thrust" (Antwerp Museum), "The Erection of the Cross" and the "Descent from the Cross" (Antwerp Cathedral) form a complete contrast. There is no trace left in them of the mystic atmosphere, the sense of repose and of the intense inner tragedy which pervade the works of the primitives. Within a ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... kind of coordination is involved in all of them. Moreover, the difference between the training of ability to spell which comes from taking visual forms in a narrow context and one which takes them in connection with the activities required to grasp meaning, such as context, affiliations of descent, etc., may be compared to the difference between exercises in the gymnasium with pulley weights to "develop" certain muscles, and a game or sport. The former is uniform and mechanical; it is rigidly specialized. The latter is varied from ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... rank to these, there were found individuals of an inferior description, the common peasantry of the Highland country, who, although they did not allow themselves to be so called, and claimed often, with apparent truth, to be of more ancient descent than the masters whom they served, bore, nevertheless, the livery of extreme penury, being indifferently accoutred, and worse armed, half naked, stinted in growth, and miserable in aspect. Each important clan had some of those Helots ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... shame the labored beauties of the court? And then it was not only the artless charms of a wood-nymph he would present to the wondering throng, but a being whose majesty of soul proclaimed her high descent and peerless virtues. How did he congratulate himself, in contemplating this unsullied temple of virgin innocence, that he had never, by even the vapor of one impassioned sigh, contaminated her pure ear, or broken the magic spell, which seemed fated to crown him with happiness unknown, with honor ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... advance of the Greeks, but in occupation of a spur of high and precipitous ground overhanging immediately the road whereby the Greeks were to descend into the plain. When Cheirisophus approached, he at once saw that descent was impracticable in the face of an enemy thus posted. He therefore halted, sent for Xenophon from the rear, and desired him to bring forward the light-armed foot-soldiers to the van. But Xenophon, though he obeyed the summons in person and galloped his horse to the front, ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... know whether Browning had any Jewish blood in his body by descent, but he certainly had Jewish elements in his intellect, spirit and character. His sense of an ever-victorious Righteousness at the centre of the universe, whom one might always trust and be untroubled, was Jewish, but he carried it forward ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... to find a place of descent, I heard Egingwah shout that the bear had started down the canon and was climbing up the other side. Hurrying back through the deep snow and over the rough rocks, I suddenly saw the beast, perhaps a hundred yards away, ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... that she in that white waxen hill Hath seal'd the primrose of her utmost skill. But now my muse hath spied a dark descent From this so precious, pearly, permanent, A milky highway that direction yields Unto the port-mouth of the Elysian fields: A place desired of all, but got by these Whom love admits to the Hesperides; Here's golden fruit, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... the piston was drawn down to the bottom and the pump drawn up with its load of water; and a counter weight was attached to the pump-rod to always bring the piston to the top of the cylinder after each descent. This is a very brief description of this atmospheric engine; there were now only two cocks to open and close—the steam cock and water cock, and the engine only required a boy for this purpose, but the boy himself added ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... Nigel was himself again, with rifle in hand, but too late to fire. The moment he heard the thud of the tiger's descent, he slid down the tree, and, forgetful or regardless of danger, went crashing into the jungle, while the yells and shouts of hundreds of aroused natives suggested the peopling of the region with ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... great wonderment of The Boy, who to this day, after many years of foreign travel, knows little more of French than "Combien?" and little more of Italian than "Troppo caro." Why none of these qualities of mind came to The Boy by direct descent he does not know. He only knows that he did inherit from his parent, in an intellectual way, a sense of humor, a love for books—as books—and a certain respect for the men by whom ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... lovely in every detail as the preceding is the Fountain of the Setting Sun. It is in the opposite portion of the sunken garden where, when the sun is in its descent, it is shadowed by the Triumphal Arch of ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... she had maintained herself in her high position, among the first of her own people,—among the first socially and among the first politically. But had she married Phineas,—had she become Lady Laura Finn,—there would have been a great descent. She could not have entertained the leading men of her party. She would not have been on a level with the wives and daughters of Cabinet Ministers. She might, indeed, have remained unmarried! But she knew that had she done so,—had she so resolved,—that ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... a mountain slope. Nothing seems to weigh on one in those short, quick walks through the invigorating air of those heights, neither the body, nor the heart, nor the thoughts, nor even cares. On that day I felt nothing of all that crushes and tortures our life; I only felt the pleasure of that descent. In the distance I saw an Arab encampment, brown pointed tents, which seemed fixed to the earth, like limpets are to a rock, or else gourbis, huts made of branches, from which a gray smoke rose. White figures, men and women, were walking ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... London, and the first thing of which Banks must tell was of the riding-contest in Hyde Park, which I had omitted. It is easy to imagine how this should have tickled the captain, who always had my horsemanship at heart; and when it came to Chartersea's descent into the Serpentine, I thought he would go into apoplexy. For he had put on ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... companions fell over. The ladies shrieked, supposing that the young men had fallen down some frightful hollow; but the shouts of laughter which followed soon reassured them, as did the assertions of the guide, that there was no harm done. It was found that they had merely gone done a descent of four or five feet, and had quickly again picked themselves up. The guide followed them, and the ladies, assisted by the gentlemen, easily leaped down to a lower level of the cavern. They continued their walk without further interruption, till daylight ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... conducted the proceedings in Court against the head and front of the witchcraft prosecution; and the other had the courage, in the most fearful hour of the delusion, to give open testimony in the defence of its victims. It is an interesting circumstance, that one of the same name and descent, in his reprint of the papers of Calef and in other publications, has done as much as any other person of our day to bring that whole transaction under the light of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... were much debated. Mr. Weir must have supposed his bride to be somehow suitable; perhaps he belonged to that class of men who think a weak head the ornament of women - an opinion invariably punished in this life. Her descent and her estate were beyond question. Her wayfaring ancestors and her litigious father had done well by Jean. There was ready money and there were broad acres, ready to fall wholly to the husband, to lend dignity to his descendants, and to himself a title, when he should be called ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rash of sweat on his forehead. The bronze of his cheeks was darkened by the accession of blood. His black eyes glittered, and his nostrils were distended and eager. They were large nostrils, tokening his descent from savage ancestors who had survived by virtue of deep lungs and generous air-passages. Yet, unlike MacDonald, his voice was firm and customary, and, unlike Kearns, his hand did not tremble when ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... Italian characteristics in the Poet's face may serve, however, to introduce a curious fact, which can have no bearing on the main lines of his descent, but holds collateral possibilities concerning it. His mother's name Wiedemann or Wiedeman appears in a merely contracted form as that of one of the oldest families naturalized in Venice. It became ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... the degrees of the "Monadic Essence"— considered as an Evoluting Energy. Three stages in the elemental side; the mineral kingdom; three stages in the objective physical side—these are the seven links of the evolutionary chain. A descent of spirit into matter, equivalent to an ascent in physical evolution; a re-ascent from the deepest depths of materiality (the mineral) towards its status quo ante, with a corresponding dissipation of concrete organisms up to Nirvana—the vanishing ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... horse, she knew the trail, she knew herself,—but did she know THE MAN to whom she was riding? A cold chill crept over her, and then she shivered in a sudden blast; it was Night at last swooping down from the now invisible Sierras, and possessing all it touched. But it was only one long descent to Hickory Hill now, and she swept down securely on its wings. Half-past eight! The lights of the settlement were just ahead of her—but so, too, were the two lamps of the waiting stage before ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... depths of sin and misery. Drinking was the universal vice, and dragged many a seemingly steady character into every stage of degradation. Men and women alike fell under the temptation, and soon hastened down the descent ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... subjects with Bede's description of Cdmon's works. In this book we find a first part containing the most prominent narratives from the books of Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel; and a second part containing the Descent of Christ into Hades and the delivery of the patriarchs from their captivity, according to the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus and the constant legend of the Middle Ages. This comprises a kind of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Of all this, the part ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... the customary mass, it should be considerably more effective, and since he was already in what constituted a descent path, but for a few miles and a little extra velocity, there would not be the long fall afterwards to pick ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... service. It is to be hoped that their efforts may be crowned with success. It is not talent which is lacking in Brazil, it is not patriotism; but persistence is not perhaps the chief characteristic among races of Portuguese descent. In these days of competition it is difficult to accomplish anything great ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... letters! fram'd by skilfull trade With which that happy name was first desynd, The which three times thrise happy hath me made, With guifts of body, fortune and of mind. The first my being to me gave by kind From mothers womb deriv'd by dew descent. ...
— A Biography of Edmund Spenser • John W. Hales |
