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Conflagration   Listen
noun
Conflagration  n.  A fire extending to many objects, or over a large space; a general burning. "Till one wide conflagration swallows all."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Conflagration" Quotes from Famous Books



... humanity, but nevertheless remarked (32. 9) that our thoughts are darkness when measured by the clearness of God. Finally, and this is the most essential point, after appealing to various philosophers when expounding his doctrine of the final conflagration of the world, he suddenly repudiated this tribunal, declaring that the Christians follow the prophets, and that philosophers "have formed this shadowy picture of distorted truth in imitation of the divine ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... fervid faith of the disciples of Perfectibility. But this was not so clear fifty years since, when the crash and dust of demolition had not so subsided as to let men see how much had risen up behind. The fire of the new school had been taken from the very conflagration which they execrated, but they were not held back from denouncing the eighteenth century by the reflection that, at any rate, its thought and action had made ready the way for much of what is ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley

... winged volume flies: All sudden, gorgons hiss, and dragons glare, And ten-horn'd fiends and giants rush to war. Hell rises, Heaven descends, and dance on earth: Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and mirth, A fire, a jig, a battle, and a ball, Till one wide conflagration swallows all. Thence a new world, to nature's laws unknown, Breaks out refulgent, with a heaven its own: Another Cynthia her new journey runs, And other planets circle other suns. The forests dance, the rivers upward rise, Whales sport in woods, ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson

... tawdry argument? Forbidding Richard the door might of itself appear a meager matter, but who was to say what results might not spring from it? Senator Hanway had seen the gravest catastrophies grow from reasons small as mustard seed! A city is burned, and the conflagration has its start in a cow and a candle! Mrs. Hanway-Harley shall not put his hopes to jeopardy in squabbles over Dorothy and her truant love. Senator Hanway felt the hot anxiety of one who, bearing ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... unconcerned. If in his own street the conflagration might be in the very house he inhabited, and in that case—— He set off at a run. Ahead of him was a thickening throng, its position indicating the entrance to Clipstone Street. Soon he found his progress retarded; he had to dodge this way and that, to force progress, to ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... been discarded, egotism could not but prevail. Therefore does he complain, being blind to the true cause of the disorder, that "democratic ideas, transported from America to Europe, were spread and cherished in the midst of the monarchical system—ready materials for a conflagration far more formidable than their authors had anticipated, should a burning spark unhappily light upon them. Others had already taken care to profane the religion of the people; and what remains sacred to the people when ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... George, being considerably the taller and stronger, used frequently to hold him down by main force, laughing when John was in "one of his moods," and was endeavoring to beat him. It was all, however, a wisp-of-straw conflagration, for he had an intensely tender affection for his brothers and proved it upon the most trying occasions. He was not merely the "favorite of all," like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier courage; but his high-mindedness, his utter unconsciousness of a mean motive, his placability, his generosity, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... set fire to the Fleet, and to the King's-Bench, and I know not how many other places; and one might see the glare of conflagration fill the sky from many parts. The sight was dreadful. Some people were threatened: Mr. Strahan advised me to take care of myself. Such a time of terrour you have ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... conflagration blazing round; The bubbled waters yield a hissing sound. As when the flames beneath a cauldron rise, To melt the fat of some rich sacrifice, Amid the fierce embrace of circling fires The waters foam, the heavy smoke aspires: So boils the imprison'd flood, forbid to ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... beauteous women on pasteboard, the undergraduate is the easiest victim of living loveliness—is as a fire ever well and truly laid, amenable to a spark. And if the spark be such a flaring torch as Zuleika?—marvel not, reader, at the conflagration. ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... a tremendous metaphor here, which is masked in our Authorised Version, but is restored in the Revised. 'He shall be saved, yet so as' (not 'by' but) 'through fire'; the picture being that of a man surrounded by a conflagration, and making a rush through the flames to get to a place of safety. Paul says that he will get through, because down below all inconsistency and worldliness, there was a little of that which ought ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren

... tossed the barque Since first it had its maiden trip, Full many a conflagration's spark Has scorched and seared the laboring ship; And yet it ploughs a straightway course, Through wrack of billows; wind-tossed, spent, On sails the troubled Ship of State, Steered forward ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... by a cry of fire in theatres, churches, and other public buildings, may be said to cause a considerably greater number of deaths than the flames themselves. Few persons, indeed, are burnt to death, means of escape from conflagration being usually found; whereas, the number suffocated and bruised to death by mere panic, is lamentably large. The following is the account of a most disastrous fire-panic, which we gather from a paper in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various

... presence of the bird as a kind of safeguard against fire. And as an illustration of their love for their young, a story is told of a stork which, rather than desert its helpless offspring during a conflagration in Delft, in Holland, remained heroically by their side and perished with them ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... back out of the inmost heart of the whole demesne gives genuineness of sentiment to the entire scheme. To plant a conflagration of color against the back fence and stop there would be worse than melodramatic. It would be to close the play with a bang, and even a worthy one-act play does not close with a bang. The back of the lot is not the absolute end of the garden-play. Like the stage-play, the garden-play brings its beholder ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable

... learned to expand and contract and to beat under this discipline; when the brain has capitulated—then, perhaps, passion may enter among the steel springs of this machinery that turns out tears and affectations and languors and melting phrases; then you shall see a most magnificent conflagration (always supposing that the chimney takes fire). The steel feminine system will glow red-hot like iron in the forge; that kind of heat lasts longer than any other, and the glow of it may ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... not been given, or if it had been disregarded, let them hope, at least, that the example of their suffering might be a warning to others, and that another lesson to the folly and rashness of mankind might be read by the light of their conflagration." ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... 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 he ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

... 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 in search of booty and victory.—FR. ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... the most opaque of bodies. Metals would be more or less transparent, and a telegraph wire through the air would look like a long narrow hole drilled through an impervious solid body. A dynamo in active work would resemble a conflagration, whilst a permanent magnet would realise the dream of mediaeval mystics, and become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or consumption ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant

... "a large Irish society with divisions throughout the city," by which, "in case a single church was attacked, buildings should be fired in all quarters and the great city should be involved in a general conflagration."[321:1] ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... 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 down to the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... retort; and she had widened the breach by a bitter reply. This little squall was succeeded by a cool calm, and that by a sullen silence, until some sudden friction kindled a new flame, and finally, after successive storms and lulls, there burst forth a furious conflagration, and in the violent collision of their anger, the seven-months' married pair vowed to separate, and with that resolve had visited M. Perron. Reconciliation they declared was beyond possibility, and they requested the notary at once to draw up the documents that should ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various

... caused by some people shooting in the woods. It must have been a grand sight to the passengers by the train from which we had separated, and which went on during the night through the scene of the conflagration, for the fire was much more extensive than those which are constantly taking place, and which are passed by unheeded,—unhonoured with a telegraphic notice. When we passed by the place next morning it was still burning vigorously, but the daylight rendered ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... his house down, you bring him the price of the house and furniture, together with further payment for the fright and for the inconvenience of being, for the present, houseless. You may do all that, and yet the moral guilt of the conflagration may remain upon your soul. But that is no affair of his: he is not the custodian of the moral law: he is not offended by your sin, formally viewed as sin: nor has he any function of punishing you, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... his house of business were on fire. "The removal of my books and papers," said he, in telling the story, "of course claimed my attention; yet, notwithstanding this, and the bustle which prevailed, my eye every now and then rested on a dog, which, during the hottest progress of the conflagration, I could not help noticing running about, and apparently taking a deep interest in what was going on; contriving to keep himself out of everybody's way, and yet always present amidst the thickest of the stir. When the fire was got under, and I had leisure to look about me, I ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... of the firemen, a most degrading and contemptible subservience to them by politicians of all kinds, a terrible and general growth and spread of turbulence and coarse vulgarity among youth, and finally, such a prevalence of conflagration that no one who owned a house could hear the awful tones of the bell of Independence Hall without terror. Fires were literally of nightly occurrence, and that they were invariably by night was due to the incendiary "runner." A slight examination of the newspapers and cheap ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... five o'clock, when the festivity was at its wildest, the alarm of fire rang out. Every circumstance was favorable for a conflagration,—the people scattered, the city dry and heated by a July sun, and a high southwesterly wind blowing. It needed only the exciting cause in the shape of a fire-cracker, and lo! half the city ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... at this defiance of their power, a Chinaman stabbed it in the face, and, curiously, the wound remains to this day in protest against the savagery that incited it. When for a second time the Virgin passed unscathed through a conflagration the Spanish infantry bore her on their shoulders about the streets, shouting in the joy of her protection. A galleon having been endangered by rocks and bars in Manila Bay, the captain borrowed this statue, prayed that it would secure the safety of his ship, and, to the wonder ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... it are spread the blankets. The sleepers, of all sexes and ages, are to lie there in a row, their feet to the fire, and their heads under the edge of the sloping roof. Nothing could be better contrived. The fire is in front: it is not a fire, but a conflagration—a vast heap of green logs set on fire—of pitch, and split dead-wood, and crackling balsams, raging and roaring. By the time, twilight falls, the cook has prepared supper. Everything has been cooked in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... into competition with any other nation for supremacy on the ocean; but it is due not only to the honor but to the security of the people of the United States that no nation should be permitted to invade our waters at pleasure and subject our towns and villages to conflagration or pillage. Economy in all branches of the public service is due from all the public agents to the people, but parsimony alone would suggest the withholding of the necessary means for the protection of our domestic firesides from invasion and our national honor from disgrace. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler

... his captors, and with a loud laugh started on his fiery race,—over house-tops and hay-ricks, through close bazaars and dry rice-fields, through the porticoes of palaces and the porches of pagodas,—kindling a roaring conflagration as he went. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... often completely destroying whole cities, and in battle cutting to pieces many ten thousands of cavalry and infantry, themselves too at last departed from life. Heraclitus, after so many speculations on the conflagration of the universe, was filled with water internally and died smeared all over with mud. And lice destroyed Democritus; and other lice killed Socrates. What means all this? Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou art come to shore; get ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

... made its appearance; the immense light of the Orient burst forth, and one would have said that it had set fire to all those ferocious heads. Their tongues were unloosed; a conflagration of grins, oaths, and songs exploded. The broad horizontal sheet of light severed the file in two parts, illuminating heads and bodies, leaving feet and wheels in the obscurity. Thoughts made their appearance on these faces; it was a terrible moment; visible demons with their masks removed, fierce ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... like a sudden and violent conflagration lighted up from the Pont Neuf over the whole city," says De Retz. "Everybody without exception took up arms. Children of five and six years of age were seen dagger in hand, and the mothers themselves carried them. In less than ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... uncompromising hatred of its enemies. In this frame of mind there is nothing that is new, except the degree of excitement. The animus, it will be recalled, was all there and on the alert when the call came, so that the excitement came on with the sweep of a conflagration on the first touch of a suitable stimulus. The German people at large was evidently in a highly unstable equilibrium, so that an unexampled enthusiasm of patriotic self-sacrifice followed immediately on the ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... ascertained that the dreadful conflagration had taken place at an extensive Timber-yard, within a very short distance of the Theatres, situated as it were nearly in the centre, between Covent Garden and Drury Lane. Men, women, and children, were seen running in ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... rising tide of anger and wrath. She felt the long repressed, half-forgotten tomboy, hoyden Brinnaria surging up in her and gaining mastery. She fairly boiled with rage, she blazed and flamed inwardly with a conflagration of resentment. It was all she could do not to tear down the curtain, spring on Bambilio, wrench his scourge from his hand and lay it on him. She kept still and silent, but she felt her inward tornado ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... South Molton in Devonshire, "on Wednesday about ten at night," and there, in a few minutes, put an end to it. We took Penruddock, Grove, and long lists of others; Wagstaff unluckily escaped ... and this Royalist conflagration, which should have blazed all over England, is entirely damped out. Indeed so prompt and complete is the extinction, thankless people begin to say there had never been anything considerable to extinguish. Had they stood in the middle of it,—had ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various

... angels could for an instant check its progress. On and onward it would sweep, with the steady gait of destiny, until the continents would melt with fervent heat, the atmosphere glare with the ominous conflagration, and all living creatures, in land and sea and air, perish ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes

... Fulvia the year had been a year of victory, a glorious affirmation of her political creed. Step by step she had seen, as in some old allegorical painting, error fly before the shafts of truth. Where Odo beheld a conflagration she saw a sunrise; and all that was bare and cold in her own life was warmed and transfigured by that ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... alarm of his aged mother Zeisuke at once bolted towards home. When all were running toward the fire this at once attracted attention. By the law it was the strict duty of the citizen to betake himself to his ward, and to be ready for service in preventing spread of the often disastrous conflagration. His action was noted by the ever present myrmidons of Shu[u]zen. In a moment they were after him. Surrounded he was quickly caught. His explanation was not heard. "Say your say at the white sand, under the strokes of the madake," was the rough answer. Thus ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville

... all visitors. Bicycles are allowed on the road running through the woods, but no motor cars or dogs, and smoking is rightly forbidden, as a lighted match carelessly thrown among the dry bracken with which the woods are carpeted would cause a conflagration appalling to contemplate. ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath

... next line but one; and, as it now stands, the conclusion of the paragraph, "worthy him (Shakspeare) and you," appears to apply the "you" to those only who were out of bed and in Covent Garden market on the night of conflagration, instead of the audience or the discerning public at large, all of whom are intended to be comprised in that comprehensive and, I ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... entered in the Stationers' books, "A doleful ballad of the General Conflagration of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 540, Saturday, March 31, 1832 • Various

... Clintons, and Burgoynes, were at least always ready to fight. As soon as the Americans could believe that the English were really abandoning their enterprize at the moment that it was all but completed, they rushed back to stop the conflagration: they were too late to save the stores which had been brought from York, the navy barracks, or the brig, but the frigate on the stocks, being built of green wood, would not easily burn, and was found but little injured. If the destruction at Sackett's Harbour had ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... if, because we feel by no means sure on the subject, and should neither faint nor scream if she were to enter the apartment at this moment. It is about five years since General Jerningham set hurriedly off, in considerable dismay, for the scene of a direful conflagration in a northern county, wherein several unfortunate individuals had perished. The fire originated at a hotel, and the General had reasons for fearing that his sister might be among the number of the sufferers, for she was known ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various

... saw the fire-marks around the city, where wood houses and granaries for winter supplies now stand as of old; but there appears no marks of conflagration within the city." ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately

... manuscripts that he had written while at school. He had the temerity to publish one, which was so brutally ridiculed by the critics, that the young genius, in despair, burned all the unsold copies—an unwitting prophecy of a later and more lamentable conflagration. Then he vainly tried various means of subsistence. Suddenly he decided to seek his fortune in America, but he was both homesick and seasick before the ship emerged from the Baltic, and from Lubeck he fled incontinently back to Petersburg. ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... conducted in the eastern section of Awatobi, we could not penetrate far below the surface without encountering unmistakable evidences of a great conflagration. The effect of the fire was particularly disastrous in the rooms of the eastern section, or that part of the pueblo contiguous to the mission. Hardly a single object was removed from this part of Awatobi ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... of the finding of the body. What most interested them, next only to the discovery of the presence of the dead man there in the same room with them, was a queer combination of shadows which played up and down against the wall beyond the bed, it being plainly visible in the glare of the small conflagration just outside. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... here, as at Paddi, were selected with great judgment; and had their guns been properly served, it would have been sharp work for boats. The same work of destruction was carried on; but the town was larger than at Paddi, and night setting in, the conflagration ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... him one of the most attractive subjects in sculpture. Caligula carried the Thespian Cupid to Rome; Claudius restored it to its original place, but Nero again bore it to Rome, where it was burned in a conflagration in ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... thousand men, the dominion of Spain in that country would have been at an end. They only wanted a point of union, which this body would have constituted. Not having this, they acted without concert, and were at length subdued separately. This conflagration was quenched in blood; two hundred thousand souls, on both sides, having perished; but the remaining matter is very capable of combustion. I have this information from a person who was on the spot at the time, and whose ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... darkly-rolling waves flashed fire, and streaks of flame shot upwards. The wind increased in violence, and the arch of light was fringed with rain. A dull, red glow hung around, like the reflection of a conflagration. Suddenly, a tremendous peal of thunder, accompanied by a terrific downfall of rain, rattled along the sky. The arch of light disappeared, as though some invisible hand had shut the slide of a giant ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... what are cuts, bruises, fatigue, and singed eyelashes, in comparison with the awful sublimities I have witnessed to-day? The activity of Kilauea on Jan. 31 was as child's play to its activity to-day: as a display of fireworks compared to the conflagration of a metropolis. THEN, the sense of awe gave way speedily to that of admiration of the dancing fire fountains of a fiery lake; NOW, it was all terror, horror, and sublimity, blackness, suffocating gases, scorching heat, crashings, surgings, detonations; half seen fires, hideous, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... constantly receiving from thirty to forty daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals, besides one or more ponderous volumes, every week, I cannot but think that, with all your ambition and thirst for knowledge, you would wish rather for an Alexandrian conflagration than ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... coming of the dark the size of the conflagration was apparent. Night withdrew to the eastern edges of the heavens; the sky to the zenith was a glistening orange, blurred with shadowy up-rollings of smoke, along the city's crest the torn flame ribbons playing like northern lights. Figures that faced ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... in its physical features and its men. Lord Coleridge bore it all in good part; finally the interviewer said, "I am told, my lord, you think a great deal of your great fire of London. Well, I guess, that the conflagration we had in the little village of Chicago made your great fire look very small." To which his lordship blandly responded: "Sir, I have every reason to believe that the great fire of London was quite as great as the people ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton

... seeing all their camp drowned, carried away their king Anarchus upon their backs as well as they could out of the fort, as Aeneas did to his father Anchises, in the time of the conflagration of Troy. When Panurge perceived them, he said to Pantagruel, Sir, yonder are the giants coming forth against you; lay on them with your mast gallantly, like an old fencer; for now is the time that you must show yourself a brave man and an honest. ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... a flame, A conflagration turned to bloom; It even put the rose to shame, Both in its ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... spent in the chapels, there was a reaction; the flesh extinguished under the cinders of prayers took fire, and the conflagration, springing up from below, ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... the whole firmament; the sun was obscured, and all was one deep and unnatural gloom; the wind subsided, and the ocean was hushed. It was not exactly dark, but the heavens were covered with one red haze, which gave an appearance as if the world was in a state of conflagration. ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat

... brought Alaric once more to Rome. He burst in by the Salarian gate, and sacked the city, which was only saved from irretrievable destruction by the respect of the Goths for the churches, which they regarded as inviolable asylums. The pillage and conflagration of Rome, and the resultant ruin and misery, came on the world like a shock of earthquake; but the Pagans saw that the catastrophe would have been yet more awful if the conquerors had not been Christians ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... 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 ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... my father with seven children, of whom I was the sixth, being also the fourth son. I was born on November 29, 1853, at a house called Chalfont Lodge in Campden House Road, Kensington, and well do I remember the great conflagration which destroyed the fine old historical mansion built by Baptist Hicks, sometime a mercer in Cheapside and ultimately Viscount Campden. But another scene which has more particularly haunted me all through my life was that of my mother's sudden death in a saloon carriage of an ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... local patriotism, came the news from Madrid of how the invaders were trampling not merely upon Spanish rights, but upon every consideration of humanity and good faith. The national will was stirred as never before or since; its expression grew louder every day, until at last the conflagration of devotion to a national cause was kindled far and near. Every community formed its committees, and these organized such neighborhood resistance as was possible, while communicating with other juntas of the same sort to unite their little wars, or guerrillas, into a great combined and vigorous ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... the casualties in such buildings near the center of explosion were almost 100%. In Hiroshima fires sprang up simultaneously all over the wide flat central area of the city; these fires soon combined in an immense "fire storm" (high winds blowing inwards toward the center of a large conflagration) similar to those caused by ordinary mass incendiary raids; the resulting terrific conflagration burned out almost everything which had not already been destroyed by the blast in a roughly circular area of 4.4 square miles around the point directly under the explosion (this point ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States

... profitable bone to pick, Bestow'd by some partiality, Broke up the smooth equality. The side neglected were indignant At such a slight malignant. Some writers make the whole dispute begin With favours to a bitch while lying in. Whate'er the cause, the altercation Soon grew a perfect conflagration. In hall and kitchen, dog and cat Took sides with zeal for this or that. New rules upon the cat side falling Produced tremendous caterwauling. Their advocate, against such rules as these, Advised recurrence to the old decrees. They search'd ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... and old Mr Neeld sat in the middle of the conflagration. How his record of evasion, nay, of downright falsehood, mounted up! False facts and fictitious reasons flowed from his lips. There was pathos in the valor with which he maintained his position; he was hard pressed, but he did not fall. There ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... board the Catamaran that could be used as a substitute. Indeed, to have kindled such a fire as they wanted on the raft,—without a proper material for their hearth,—would have seriously endangered the existence of the craft; and might have terminated in a conflagration. ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid

... well thou hast asked me: for else I had never told thee." He then related in full how he had been arrested, and by what a providential circumstance he had escaped long imprisonment or speedy conflagration. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... for me. I had become a galley-slave of pleasure, and must accomplish my destiny of suicide. During the last days of my prosperity, I spent every night in the most incredible excesses; but every morning death cast me back upon life again. I would have taken a conflagration with as little concern as any man with a life annuity. However, I at last found myself alone with a twenty-franc piece; I bethought me then ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... his mental eye the Four Last Things will have the true earnestness, the horror or the rapture, of one who witnesses a conflagration, or discerns some rich and sublime prospect of natural scenery. His countenance, his manner, his voice, speak for him, in proportion as his view has been vivid and minute. The great English poet has described this sort of eloquence ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... with war on Servia (28th of July), and the next day Russia declared a considerable though not complete mobilization. From that moment a general conflagration was practically inevitable. The news of Russia's warlike movement caused a perfect panic in Berlin. The tension of feeling swung round completely for the time being from enmity against England and France to fear of Russia. The final mobilization of the ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... kept by the pontiffs, &c.; [23] laws, lists of magistrates, [24] Libri Lintei kept in the temple of Juno Moneta; all under the reservation noticed before, that the majority perished in the Gallic conflagration. [25] These Professor Seeley classes as pure sources. The rest, which he calls corrupt, are the funeral orations, inscriptions in private houses placed under the Imagines, [26] poems of various kinds, both gentile and ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell

... blown into the air by the force of an explosion seldom equalled in its terrible violence. That explosion not only carried the burning materials across the river to Newcastle, where they quickly produced another conflagration as serious in its character as that which was raging in Gateshead, but inflicted terrible injury both to life and property. The persons in the neighbourhood of the burning building, including soldiers, firemen, police, and Mr. Bertram, the owner of the warehouse, were instantly killed; and in many ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... inquisitional deliberations and audacious decrees, instilled their venom into the innermost recesses of society; and the spirits of a great majority of the citizen being in that combustible state in which a feeble spark will suffice to kindle a formidable conflagration, the whole Colony was inflamed and distracted by the incontinence ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... edifice which had been erected for the devotions of James and had been embellished by the pencil of Verrio and the chisel of Gibbons. Meanwhile a great extent of building had been blown up; and it was hoped that by this expedient a stop had been put to the conflagration. But early in the morning a new fire broke out of the heaps of combustible matter which the gunpowder had scattered to right and left. The guard room was consumed. No trace was left of that celebrated gallery which had witnessed so many balls and pageants, in which so many maids ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... down, side by side, with this mighty conflagration for an hour or more, through water made bright by the fiery reflection: at last, we outstripped its speed, but, for three hours after, I never withdrew my eyes from this the grandest sight it ever was given to me to contemplate; nor was the effect at ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... and breaking in, massacred the people and the guards; then ensued a general pillage, and a conflagration. Every house was fired after it had been ransacked, and the English Ribauds running along the platform with torches in their hands, applied the flame to everything combustible—doors, galleries, partitions, rafters —all ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... persist in this kind of thing, a widespread conflagration of the populace will be so imminent that it will require only a spark to let loose the dogs of war in our midst. Will you persist in hurling the corner stone of our personal liberty to your wolfish hounds of collectors, thirsting for its ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... their eyes: it was the lantern of a butcher's cart that shone upon slaughtered cattle and huge pieces of bleeding meat thrown upon the back of a white horse; the light upon the flesh, amid the darkness, resembled a purple conflagration, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... be seriously anxious for their fate. There was no stir in the house; it seemed as if the jailor had deserted his charge, and left the prison with its wretched inhabitants to the mercy of the conflagration which was spreading towards them. In the meantime a new and fierce attack was heard upon the outer gate of the Correction-house, which, battered with sledge-hammers and crows, was soon forced. The keeper, as great ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... shore, or some plaintive Genoese ditty, which arose from a neighbouring bark. The town seemed buried in silence and gloom, no light, not even that of a taper, could be descried. Turning our eyes in the direction of Spain, however, we perceived a magnificent conflagration seemingly enveloping the side and head of one of the lofty mountains northward of Tarifa; the blaze was redly reflected in the waters of the strait; either the brushwood was burning or the Carboneros were plying their dusky toil. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... applied the spark bravely to the match. The spark—a feeble spark, first principle of conflagration—shone in the darkness like a glow-worm, then was deadened against the match which it set fire to, Porthos enlivening the flame with his breath. The smoke was a little dispersed, and by the light of the sparkling match objects might, for two seconds, be distinguished. It ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... open an entirely new scene to the reader's view, not unworthy his curiosity and attention. We have seen two states of no great consideration, Media and Persia, extend themselves far and wide, under the conduct of Cyrus, like a torrent or a conflagration; and, with amazing rapidity, conquer and subdue many provinces and kingdoms. We shall see now that vast empire setting the nations under its dominion in motion, the Persians, Medes, Phoenicians, Egyptians, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... their full midsummer intensity, the Scorpion trailing hotly on the southern horizon, with Antares throwing out a fire like the red rays in a diamond. Beneath it the city flung up a yellow glow that might have been the smoke of a distant conflagration, while from the hilltop the suburbs were a-sparkle. As, standing in the road, Claude looked through the open gateway down over the slope of land, the hothouse roofs and the distant levels of the pond gleamed with a faint, ghostly ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... black clouds obscure the bright colors beneath, and then darken the fierce glow of color, just as is often witnessed in the case of a physical conflagration. Again, we find great flashes of bright yellow, or red, flaring across the field of the aura, showing agitation or the conflict of intellect ...
— The Human Aura - Astral Colors and Thought Forms • Swami Panchadasi

... and flame, and strange and sickening odors were blown northward of the city, and for some time it seemed probable that a great conflagration would follow the battle. How they longed for some one to come! The utmost of their calamity would be better than the intolerable suspense. But hour after hour went past, and not even Ortiz arrived. They began to fear that both he and Navarro had been discovered in some disloyalty ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... It is a prosperous modern French town with two almost perfect Roman monuments—Les Arenes and the Maison Carree. The amphitheatre is a complete oval, visible at one glance. Its smooth white stone, even where it has not been restored, seems unimpaired by age; and Charles Martel's conflagration, when he burned the Saracen hornet's nest inside it, has only blackened the outer walls and arches venerably. Utility and perfect adaptation of means to ends form the beauty of Roman buildings. The science of construction and large intelligence displayed in them, their strength, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... back in his chair and see in the smoke of his cigar a vision of the Windsor Theater blazing merrily, while distracted firemen galloped madly all over London, vainly endeavoring to get some one to direct them to the scene of the conflagration. So Mr. Montague bought the theater for a mere song, and ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... had snatched from a cask near by. Heated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for all his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt could but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow still smothering the conflagration within him, without speaking he remained doggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the hammer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding him to do his bidding. Steelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windlass, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... was still running fiercely in his veins, and that momentary twinge did not cool him. Child she might be, but she had played with fire, and she alone was responsible for the conflagration that she had started. ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... It may be that the man was never sane; it is certain that the mainspring of his least action was an inordinate pride. Now hatred quickened, spreading from a flicker of distaste; and his faculties were stupefied, as though he faced a girdling conflagration. It was not possible to hate adequately this Perion who had struck Demetrios of Anatolia and perhaps was not yet dead; nor could Demetrios think of any sufficing requital for this Perion who dared to be so tall and handsome and young-looking when Demetrios was none of these things, for this ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al

... well. The straw of the republic has caught fire—the flames have seized already on palaces and towers. Let it go on! May the blaze be general! Let the tempestuous wind spread wide the conflagration! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... escapes together with his friends. The Castle is carefully taken to pieces in sections by the stage carpenters, while torches are flashed at intervals. Finally a Roman candle is set off, and the O'Malley Castle falls a prey to a carefully managed conflagration.—Curtain.] ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various

... there will be no further prospect of the conclusion of peace, as there will be no one available to set the ball rolling. It is therefore essential that the foundations of peace should be laid before the world conflagration spreads any further and finally destroys the prosperity of every nation. This view may sound like pure theory, but it gains substance from the fact that it can very well be made to harmonize with Mr. ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... distrust, and the fallacious assumption of conflicting interests has turned suspicion into hatred. Only a year ago England and Germany stood on the brink of war. If, after the coup of Agadir, Germany had persisted in her policy, the conflagration would have ensued, the storm would have burst out. The war-cloud has temporarily lifted, but it has not passed away. The danger is as acute as it was, because the causes which produced the recent outburst are still with us, and ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... places would seem less to suggest the word "haunted" than that restaurant, as one comes upon it, in one of the busiest of London thoroughfares, spreading as it does for blocks around, like a conflagration, the festive glare of its electrically emblazoned facade. Yet no ruined mansion, with the moon shining in through its shattered roof, the owl nesting in its banqueting hall, and the snake gliding through its bed chambers, was ever more peopled with ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... were hurrying out of the school dormitory. Some of the monitors began a remonstrance, but when a Senior or two pointed out to Doctor Meredith, who had been hastily aroused, that it was the duty of the students to help prevent the spread of the conflagration, so near the Hall, the head of the school allowed as many as cared to go to ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman

... voracity, and an intolerable thirst for more. But as long as he remained still a child, the fire, remaining as it were without its proper aliment, lay hidden: till he grew into a man. And then, all at once, it blazed out furiously like a very conflagration, striking terror into all the subjects of the kingdom, and threatening to consume them all, ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown

... at the time of the conflagration; he ran no danger; but that accident may be the source of other dangers to him, of which at ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... heaven, and that, propitious to the arms Of Troy, the Thunderer had ordain'd to mar 145 And frustrate all the counsels of the Greeks. He left his stand; they fired the gallant bark; Through all her length the conflagration ran Incontinent, and wrapp'd her stern in flames. Achilles saw them, smote his thighs, and said, 150 Patroclus, noble charioteer, arise! I see the rapid run of hostile fires Already in the fleet—lest all be lost, And our return ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... left town when the old spire of the 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 ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... snow," it is spoken of as doing God's service, because they were nominally heathen. "Before the fight was finished, the wigwams were set on fire, and into those, hundreds of innocent women and children had crowded themselves, and perished in the general conflagration." And for those thanksgivings were sent up to heaven, the head of Philip is strung upon a pole, and exposed to the public. But this was not done by savage warriors, and the crowd that huzzaed at the revolting spectacle, assembled on the Sabbath ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson

... Pole, seating himself on the edge of the table, while the Italian leaned against the mantelpiece, and glanced round the room with furtive eye, as if to detect its innermost secrets, or decide where safest to drop a Lucifer-match for its conflagration,—"confrere," said the Pole, "your ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 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. Their course in this debate has ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... paper-lanterns render them extremely dangerous, as they are fixed by a socket inside the lower end of the candle, which fits on a peg in the lantern—generally very loosely; and as they flare a great deal, very little wind or motion will cause a conflagration. Fires are, mostly attributed, however, to the 'chebache,' or small charcoal fire-box, which is used for smoking purposes. It is placed on a small stand in the middle of the thickly-matted rooms, the smokers ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver

... a sudden dreadful smell of burning feathers. They dashed into the observation end of the car and found the ex-convict smothering an incipient conflagration of the Christmas tree, which was made of ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris

... disturbances and angry disputes assumed another aspect: they took in a larger area and were not so readily appeased. It was no longer an isolated band of insurgents which roused a city, but rather a conflagration which spread over the whole South, and a general uprising which was ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... will then conceive and bring forth the second Zoroaster as a Messiah, who will cause the resurrection of the dead. The good will be separated from the bad, but the punishment of the latter will not be eternal; and after the purification of the world by a general conflagration all humanity will unite in the adoration of Ahura Mazda. [358] Meanwhile after death the souls of all men are weighed and have to pass over a narrow bridge called Chinvad. The good souls, lightened by the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... aware of Mr. Polly awkwardly negotiating the top rungs of the fire escape. "'Ere 'e comes!" cried a voice, and Mr. Polly descended into the world again out of the conflagration he had lit to be his funeral pyre, moist, excited, and tremendously alive, amidst a tempest of applause. As he got lower and lower the crowd howled like a pack of dogs at him. Impatient men unable to wait for him seized and shook his descending boots, and so brought ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... brought misfortunes upon our people. There arrived this year two of the ships of those which went to Nueva Espana. The cloth sent in one of them came back badly wet, and ruined. On this day, the first of May, occurred in this city a conflagration—a most grievous loss, for, according to the account of those who were present, it was no ordinary fire, but burned the richest quarter of the city, and the convent of St. Dominic (which was the largest here), and the royal hospital ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XII, 1601-1604 • Edited by Blair and Robertson

... break out. The extinguisher, was not to be charged with water or any sort of liquid, but with Greek fire, on the principle that like cures like; in other words, the building was to be inoculated with Greek fire against the ordinary conflagration. Of course the whole thing was as absurd as possible, and, reading the old manuscript to-day, one is impressed with the roaring humor of some of the scenes, and with the wild extravagance of the farce motive, not wholly warranted by the previous character of Sellers, unless, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... the hospital, for we had to go and take lodgings in the hall of the poor, until monsieur, our governor, loaned us a house, and after being lodged therein, the hall of the sick had to be changed into a church." This conflagration was a great loss. The registers were burnt, and the Jesuits had to reproduce them from memory. The chief buildings of Quebec had disappeared, and it was seventeen years before a new ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... were quite expressionless, but his thick lips parted, and his strong yellow teeth showed in his thick brake of beard. With the caution of one who knows that a single glowing match-end dropped among dry vegetation may cause a devastating conflagration, he blew out the lingering flame, and rolled the little charred stick between his tough-skinned fingers before he threw it down. Then he raised himself up, and stepped over the dying creature, and went upon his way, humming a dance-tune he liked. He was not changed. It was still a joy to him ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... rulers.[**] These doctrines, so agreeable to the populace, and so conformable to the ideas of primitive equality which are engraven in the hearts of all men, were greedily received by the multitude, and scattered the sparks of that sedition which the present tax raised into a conflagration.[***] ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... knowledge of meteoric phenomena which affords promise of further results. Certain members of the same society are still at work on what has been a tedious task—the restoration of the standard yard, rendered necessary, as you will remember, by the destruction of the original in the Parliament-House conflagration, more than ten years ago. The work proceeds slowly but surely, as the extremest pains are taken to insure accuracy, the measurements, bisections, and graduations being read off with a microscope. When finished, it will be centuplicated or more, if ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various

... Water says, referring to some remarks of ours about the policy of transferring the fire-extinguishing apparatus of small towns to any neighboring large one in which a serious conflagration happens to break out, that we were mistaken in "supposing" that the insurance companies might refuse to pay losses in suburban towns occurring during the temporary absence of the regular protective apparatus, and that as the contract of insurance does not mention anything ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various

... have now got into the town, the conflagration being out, and it seems quite strange to hear no firing. It has been a splendid city, and the harbour is magnificent. We have taken more than 4000 guns, destroyed their fleet, immense stores of provisions, ammunition, ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... heights by the rising flames, was not really the mere nose and chin that it appeared to be, but an appreciable quantity of human countenance. He stood complacently sunning himself in the heat. With a speaker, or stake, he tossed the outlying scraps of fuel into the conflagration, looking at the midst of the pile, occasionally lifting his eyes to measure the height of the flame, or to follow the great sparks which rose with it and sailed away into darkness. The beaming sight, and the penetrating warmth, seemed to breed in him a cumulative ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy

... attend to the dogs and clear the chimney and, upon our return, found the others just recovering from rather an exciting accident. Jones had been charging the acetylene generators and by some means one of them caught fire. For a while there was the danger of a general conflagration and explosion, as the gas-tank was floating in kerosene. Throwing water over everything would have made matters worse, so blankets were used to smother the flames. As this failed to extinguish them, the whole plant was pulled down and carried ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... 1849. It was customary in the saloons to give negroes a free drink and tell them not to come again. One did come again to Dennison's; he was flogged, and knocked over a lamp. Thus there started a conflagration that consumed over a million dollars' worth of property. The valuable part of the property, it must be confessed, was in the form of goods, is the light canvas and wooden shacks were of little worth. Possibly the fire consumed ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White

... well-aired sheets, setting fire so incessantly to public premises as to raise the rate of insurance to a ruinous height, and thus bring bankruptcy on all the principal establishments in Great Britain. But shutting our eyes, for a moment, to such general conflagration and bankruptcy, and indulging ourselves in the violent supposition that some inns might still continue to exist, think, O think, worthy Doctor, to what other fatal results this system, if universally ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... bewildered by the complexity of the problems by which it is faced. To this in part we owe the dimness of vision which overtook us as we went whirling together towards the great catastrophe. It is only in the glare of a world-conflagration that we begin to perceive, in something like their true proportions, the great forces and events which have been shaping our destinies. In the future, if the huge soulless mechanism which man has created is not to get out of hand and destroy him, we must abandon that ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... each man, and themselves a pound. This distinction the half-pounders complain of, and that twenty are selected to be starved. While we were at Port Desire, one day dressing our victuals, we set fire to the grass; instantly the flames spread, and immediately we saw the whole country in a conflagration, and the next day, from the watering-place, we saw the smoke at a distance, so that then ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... for Abdallah Ibn Aboo Kelaba passed a night in its palace in the reign of Moowiych, the prince of the Faithful. Lucky the man who shall next find it, but unlucky the world when he does; for then the day of the general conflagration will be at hand. In the mean time, it remains, like the top of Mount Meru, covered with clouds, or, like the inside of a Chinese puzzle, a work of unrivaled art, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... the group, Robert saw a young man with dark eyes and hair, a face that was ruddy, yet denoting nervous temperament. He was tall and graceful, and his bold, vehement spirit seemed at once to take fire, and his enthusiasm kindled a conflagration in the breasts of his hearers. He spoke of their wrongs, of their governor's avarice, who would for the sake of his traffic with the Indians sacrifice their lives. They were not assembled for vengeance, but for defence against a ruthless foe. There was no ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... The conflagration I found was caused by a quantity of "kastions" and ammunition-waggons which had been set afire on the previous day, while the explosions emanated from the shells which had been left among ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen

... with joy at the destruction of the towers which had menaced it, and the conflagration of nigh half the Danish fleet, laden with the spoil of northern France. Edmund and his Saxons were conducted in triumph by a shouting crowd to the palace of the archbishop, where Goslin, in the name of the city, returned them the heartiest thanks for the services which they had rendered. The ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... the burning temple presently dropped upon neighbouring roofs; and the whole street was soon ablaze. Then a sea-wind, rising, blew destruction into further streets; and the conflagration spread from street to street, and from district into district, till nearly the whole of the city was consumed. And this calamity, which occurred upon the eighteenth day of the first month of the first year of Meireki (1655), is still remembered ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... of the conflagration and understood its significance. He hastened forward and joined Carson. But it was thought that the Indians had not yet received the punishment which their crime deserved. The whole party then moved on together for several ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... telephoned to Utica for trained nurses, and to Pride's Fall for a doctor. Meanwhile, Hamil, in bed, was fast becoming mentally irresponsible as the infection spread, involving both lungs, and the fever in his veins blazed into a conflagration. That is one way that pneumonia begins; but it ought not to have made such brutally quick work of a young, healthy, and care-free man. There was not much chance for him by the next morning, and less the following night when the oxygen ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... to that act of consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what appears to have been one of the best arranged and most successful impostures ever attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body of St. Mark had, without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976; but the revenues of the church depended too much upon the devotion excited by these relics to permit the confession of their loss. The following is the account given by Corner, and believed to this day by the Venetians, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... 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

... was profound. Eyes that were prepared for well-nigh anything monstrous gazed out spellbound. Tongues had no words, and hearts were stirred to their depths. The whole world ahead was afire. It was a conflagration of incalculable immensity. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... you," Jimmie stated aggressively, his face flushing until the freckles were scarcely distinguishable. "You can burn the old uniform as fast as you like, but there is something in it that I want before you start the conflagration." ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson

... might have would indeed be no more than an echo. I—am not like other women; something in me is dead—it is the power to love as women love. I am like a person who emerges from a conflagration, blinded; the eyes are there, but the sight ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... lighted or not, they are always prominently in evidence. Of late years the people have grown wise in the matter of fires, and many parents refuse to light the Christmas candles on their children's tree because of the great danger of conflagration. ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard

... indicated.[8] But even that failure did not ruin the relations between the two Powers. In the Balkan crisis, as we have seen and as is admitted on both sides, England and Germany worked together for peace. And the fact that a European conflagration was then avoided, in spite of the tension between Russia and Austria, is a strong proof that the efforts of Sir Edward Grey were sincerely and effectively ...
— The European Anarchy • G. Lowes Dickinson

... escaped before execution, but the other was hanged.[51] In Pennsylvania as late as 1803 a negro plot at York was detected after nearly a dozen houses had been burnt and half as many attempts had been made to cause a general conflagration. Many negroes were arrested; others outside made preparations to release them by force; and for several days a reign of terror prevailed. Upon the restoration of quiet, twenty of the prisoners were ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... go over it in order to save the national existence. It is one of those cases in which necessity gives sovereign right. It is doubtless a very illegal thing to blow up people's houses, yet what civic magistrate, not a fool, would hesitate to do it when nothing else could arrest the conflagration of a city; and what court of law is there (outside of Liliput, where poor Gulliver was condemned to death for saving the royal palace by an illegal fire engine) so foolish as to sustain an action ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... private altar. While thus at her prayers she was suddenly aroused by a glare of light and wreaths of suffocating smoke. In an instant the whole tent was in a blaze; there was a high gusty wind, which whirled the light flames from tent to tent, and wrapped the whole in one conflagration. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... spot, are many and great. If I described one-half of the little things which I saw in the process of destruction I should be accused of sentimentalising; but the principle of the thing seems clear enough. If one could only hope that with the conflagration would die down those hotter fires that burn in the heart of this country, one might accept the manifest disadvantages. But good feeling will never spring from ashes like these; every charred spot is the grave of that which neither time nor laws ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... (on his side), will, without doubt annihilate us. O Lord of Yoga, look for that great bowman, that mighty car-warrior, who will give Bhishma his quietus like rain-charged clouds quenching a forest conflagration. (Then) through thy grace, O Govinda, the son of Pandu, their foes being slain, will, after recovery of their kingdom, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... foliage, followed by his friend Wilson. Paganel set to work to find dry moss, and had soon gathered sufficient. This he laid on a bed of damp leaves, just where the large branches began to fork out, forming a natural hearth, where there was little fear of conflagration. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne

... gifts to listen attentively to the confused clamour in the streets,—fires were common enough in a city built of wood; but when, half an hour after the first and second alarms, a third sounded, they concluded it must be a conflagration, and Rhoda, dropping her nuts and cornucopias, ran to the corner for news. She was back again almost ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... backed by sixty thousand men, was unsuccessful in his attempt to reduce them. For ten years, the war between Nobunaga and the Shin sectarians kept the country in disorder. It finally ended in the conflagration of the great religious fortress at Osaka, and the retreat of the monks to another part of the country. By their treachery and incendiarism, the shavelings prevented the soldiers ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... "You see the conflagration from a distance; it blisters me at my side. You can survive the integrity of the nation; we in Maryland would live on the side of a gulf, perpetually tending to plunge into its depths. It is for us life and ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell

... rooted 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

... the effect of conflagration, the enemy set fire to the Toll house and some other cabbins on the left near the Bridge, for the purpose of embarassing and confusing the garrison; during this operation, they were seen throwing their dead into the flames, for the purpose, it was ...
— An Impartial Narrative of the Most Important Engagements Which Took Place Between His Majesty's Forces and the Rebels, During the Irish Rebellion, 1798. • John Jones

... Teller, were still on sale at sixpence each, with instructions for making the dumb cake, and reading destinies in tea-cups, and with a picture of a young woman with a high waist lying on a sofa in an attitude so uncomfortable as almost to account for her dreaming at one and the same time of a conflagration, a shipwreck, an earthquake, a skeleton, a church- porch, lightning, funerals performed, and a young man in a bright blue coat and canary pantaloons. Here, were Little Warblers and Fairburn's Comic Songsters. Here, too, were ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... fire was blazing merrily. They built it under the outer end of a long tree limb, and from the limb suspended a pot full of water by a long iron chain they had brought along. As the ground was covered with snow, there was little danger of spreading a conflagration. Soon the water was boiling and the guide made a steaming pot of coffee, which was passed around in tin cups, with sugar and a little condensed milk. They had brought along bread, cheese, chipped beef, and boiled eggs, and also a mince pie which Mrs. Barrow had baked ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield

... crackling and promising life with every dancing flame. He started to untie his moccasins. They were coated with ice; the thick German socks were like sheaths of iron half-way to the knees; and the mocassin strings were like rods of steel all twisted and knotted as by some conflagration. For a moment he tugged with his numbed fingers, then, realizing the folly of it, he ...
— Lost Face • Jack London

... courage lies concealed Within this noble infant, like a spark Beneath the fuel, waiting but a breath To fan the flame and raise a conflagration. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... until fairly alongside of and entangled with the "Asia," when the fuses were lighted and the volcanic craft burst into roaring flames from stem to stern. So rapid was the progress of the flames that Talbot and his companions could scarcely escape with their lives from the conflagration they had themselves started, and he lay for days, badly burned and unable to see, in a little log hut on the Jersey shore. The British ships were not destroyed; but, convinced that the neighborhood was unsafe for them, they dropped down the bay; so the end sought for was attained. ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... among the causes of war, and a considerable fraction of the literature of the 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

... so standing, hands folded on her rake, when, on the other side of her conflagration, she perceived a man. He was steadily regarding her, and when her eyes fell upon him, he smiled and stepped forward—a tall, broad, very fair young man in a shooting coat, khaki riding-breeches, and puttees. He had a wide ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt

... He felt the gentle push of Houseen's hands. He found himself moving toward the door that stood open into the street. The light of an outer conflagration was in his eyes. The thin music of lute and tabouka in the court behind him grew thinner; the boom of drums and voices in the street grew big. He had crossed the threshold. A hundred candles, carried in horizontal banks on laths by little boys, came around him on three sides, like ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various

... flames spread to every part of the village, united and fused into one vast conflagration. The sight thrilled and awed even Henry, Paul, and the others who had seen similar things in the Iroquois country. But there were not many in that army of white men who felt pity. This was Chillicothe, the greatest of ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler

... disturbances of Guienne, and that if he continued to support M. d'Epernon, the Prince's faction would not let this opportunity slip; that if the Parliament of Bordeaux should engage in their party, it would not be long before that of Paris would do the same; that, after the late conflagration in this metropolis, he could not suppose but that there was still some fire hidden under the ashes; and that the factious party had reason to fear the heavy punishment to which the whole body of them ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz

... his "institutions," and neither would yield the right-o'-way. When such opposing trains of thought try to pass on a single track there's going to be trouble sure. The friction, evident even in the early day of the Republic, grew and gathered fire until the nation burst forth in that mighty conflagration whose pathetic ashes repose in a million sepulchers. It had to come. Let us thank God that the fierce baptism of fire is in the past and not yet to be; that the bitter cup can never be pressed to our children's lips; that never again while the ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... relates how Tiberius, after the assault of Mundus against Paulina,[53] condemned the priests to crucifixion, burned the shrine, and threw the statue of the goddess into the Tiber. Nero restored the sanctuary; it was, however, destroyed again in the great conflagration, A. D. 80. Domitian was the second restorer; Hadrian, Commodus, Caracalla, and Alexander Severus improved and beautified the group, from time to time. At the beginning of the fourth century of our era it contained the propylaia, or pyramidal towers with a gateway, at each ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... did a Brandenburg face suffer the like of this!" cried the poor Prince, driven to the edge of mad ignition and one knows not what: when the Buddenbrocks, at whatever peril interfered; got the Prince brought on board a different Yacht; and the conflagration moderated for the moment. The Yachts get under way towards Mainz and down the Rhine-stream. The Yachts glide swiftly on the favoring current, taking advantage of what wind there may be: were we once ashore at Wesel in our own country,—wait till ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... which he regarded as one of the most magnificent spectacles which nature can offer; not content with observing it through glass, he would open wide the windows at night the better to enjoy the phosphorescence of the atmosphere, the conflagration of the clouds, the bursts of thunder, and all the solemn pomp with which the ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... save all but my head from the conflagration, and extinguished that, even, before it was much charred," cried the grateful Ritualist, with marked emotion.—"But, JEREMY, why ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various

... steadily with its work, the more rapidly now that the opening of the front doors had admitted air to the interior. The construction of the house, with a wide central hall, and stairways leading up almost to the roof, made an admirable arrangement for a conflagration. No living being, even though armed with the best of fire fighting apparatus, could have survived in that blazing interior. All they could do, since even a bucket brigade was out of the question here, was to stand and watch for the end. Some called for ladders, but by accident ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough

... came a relaxation of his muscles, the giving way of his will. Something seemed to snap in his head, and that wish, that idea kept back during all those hours, darted into his brain with the heat and noise of a conflagration. He must see her! See her at once! Go now! To-night! He had the raging regret of the lost hour, of every passing moment. There was no thought of resistance now. Yet with the instinctive fear of the irrevocable, with the innate falseness of the human heart, ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad



Words linked to "Conflagration" :   fire



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