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verb
Ebb  v. t.  To cause to flow back. (Obs.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Ebb" Quotes from Famous Books



... Georgian period, it is not too much to say that anything like real religion was scarcely ever at a lower ebb in England. This is not to say that there was an absolute dearth of religion. Law wrote his Serious Call during that period, and there are few books of its kind which have had a greater and more lasting effect. There were others of like but lesser character than ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... to-morrow. We shall sail on until the flood is spent, and then anchor and go on again as soon as the ebb has done." ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty

... a rock's cleft breast, A lonely, safely-sheltered nest. There as successive seasons go, And tides alternate ebb and flow, Full many a wing is trained for flight In heaven's blue field—in heaven's ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner

... thought appeared! The letter lifted her above her own suffering. Her mind was held by the great vital experience of a soul, a soul faring forth on its supreme adventure. He did not say what had happened in words, but she saw his descent in the flesh and his upward flight of spirit—the low ebb and the flashing heights.... How well she knew the cool brightness of his eyes, as he wrote! The god she had liberated that sunlit day was dead—not dead to her alone, but to any woman of Shore or Mountain or Isle.... With ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... Roman consul was possessed of the power of rejecting or admitting motions in the senate, the speaker might either admit or reject bills in the house. D'Ewes, p. 677. The house declared themselves against this opinion; but the very proposal of it is a proof at what a low ebb liberty was at that time ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... for the party in a village near the camp; for the force was badly provided with tents, the king's resources being at a very low ebb; he maintained the war, indeed, chiefly by the loans he received from England and Germany. The next day several bodies of troops were seen approaching the camp. A quarter of an hour later the trumpets blew; officers rode about, ordering the tents to be levelled and the troops to prepare to march. ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... approaching was a mud-flat, and, from its appearance, the tide was certainly at the ebb. We observed some cradles, or wicker frames, placed far below high water-mark, that were each guarded by two natives, who threatened us violently as we approached. In running along the land, the stench from them plainly indicated ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... tellin' the truth, anyway. You see," she continued, "most people think piety's at a low ebb unless we're gettin' up some kind of a holy show all the time, to bring people together that wouldn't meet anywhere else if they saw each other first. Then when they've bought a chance on a pieced bed-quilt, ...
— Hepsey Burke • Frank Noyes Westcott

... its floodmark gain, And girdled in the saint's domain: For, with the flow and ebb, its style Varies from continent to isle; Dry-shod, o'er sands, twice every day, The pilgrims to the shrine find way; Twice every day, the waves efface Of staves and sandalled feet the trace. As to the port the ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott

... himself felt that it was the silence before the storm. The courage which he had summoned up to meet a storm of disapproval, began to ebb slowly away in the face of this unnatural silence. It was clear that the onus of further speech was to rest ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... refrain. In this determination his nurse supported him, for she could not bring herself to the conviction that amputation was absolutely necessary, and, besides, of all the melancholy and useless driftwood that drives hither and thither with the ebb and flow of human life, she could imagine none more melancholy and more useless than an Indian crippled of a foot. Hence she supported the boy in his ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor

... support of life to the individual exertions of his strength, his talents, or his ingenuity. Various and singular are the expedients practised by numbers in the British capital. Among these the class of Mud-larks is not the least extraordinary, that is people, who, on the ebb of the tide re-pair to the river-side, in quest of any article that the water may have left behind in the mud. To this description of people belonged Peggy Jones, the well known Mud-lark at Black Friars. She was a woman, apparently ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... appointed him Abbot. He wrote a Register of things done in his time, compiled a book of Decretals and Constitutions of Provincial Chapters, and sundry works on geometry and astronomy. He constructed a clock showing the courses of the sun and moon, the ebb and flow of the tides, etc., which Leland, Librarian to Henry VIII., speaks of as still going in his day. He also made an astronomical instrument to which he gave the name "Albion," and wrote a book describing the manner of using it. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins

... night as a relation of his own. He added, that I was the more likely to succeed in my new profession, from wanting the favours of fortune. However, to show them that I was not quite reduced to the lowest ebb, he said it was my intention to treat them with a supper. The offer was accepted, and I entertained them en prince. They talked a good deal about my fashionable appearance and the apparent amiability of my disposition; they said that the best hopes ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost

... town faces eastward to the blue Pacific, whose billows, when the wind blows from any point between north and east, come tumbling in across the shallow bar in ceaseless lines of foaming white, to meet, when the tide is on the ebb, the swift current of a tidal river as broad as the Thames at Westminster Bridge. On the south side of the bar, from the sleepy town itself to the pilot station on the Signal Hill, there rises a series of smooth grassy bluffs, whose seaward bases touch the fringe of many small beaches, ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke

... reached its highest point in Isaiah. Now and then in his latest diaries—the diaries written in his deep affliction—he comes near the edge of it. Once, for instance, he says, "What a strange scene if the surge of conversation could suddenly ebb like the tide, and show us the ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... advancing." He gathered twelve thousand men for the recapture of Louisburg, but exaggerated reports of the French strength frightened him from the attempt. Similar inaction lost him Fort William Henry on Lake George. The end of the year 1757 saw the English cause on this side at low ebb, Montcalm, the tried and brilliant French commander, having outwitted or frightened the English officers ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... had intended to write you a nice letter, but it won't come, and the letter must go as it is. Please read into the remaining blank sheet all the feelings and good wishes I should express and do feel, and next time I write you, may it not be in the ebb tide, at the end of ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour

... most flourishing stage during the first few years of Hideyoshi's administration. We can discern the existence at this date of a strong Christian party in the country, though the turning-point had been reached, and the tide of progress was on the ebb. It is to this influence probably, coupled with the fact that his many warlike expeditions left him little leisure to devote to religious questions, that we must attribute the slight relaxation observable in his policy toward Christianity ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage. So was it now with Tom. The atheistic taunts of his cruel master sunk his before dejected soul to the lowest ebb; and, though the hand of faith still held to the eternal rock, it was a numb, despairing grasp. Tom sat, like one stunned, at the fire. Suddenly everything around him seemed to fade, and a vision rose before him of ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... a religious people, if one may be allowed to use the term in connection with a tribe whose morals were at such a low ebb. They worshipped Ti-ra-wa, who is in and of everything. Differing from many tribes, who adore material things, the Pawnees simply regarded certain localities as sacred—they became so only because they were blessed by the Divine presence. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... free competition, as a rule, it inures enormously to the benefit of the body-whole. Exceptionally, however, it fails to do so, and behold disease. This struggle and turmoil is not only necessary to life—it is life. Out of the varying chances of its warfare is born that incessant ebb and flow of chemical change, that inability to reach an equilibrium, which we term "vitality." The course of life, like that of a flying express train, is not a perfectly straight line, but an oscillating series of concentric curves. Without these oscillations movement could not be. Exaggerate ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... with Mrs. Peake you deserve considerable praise, lad. Not but what she is a good enough woman, and with a kindly heart; but ever since little Joe went out on the ebb tide and never came back again she seems to have become what I might say, soured on humanity. Abner is meek enough to stand it, but she has had quarrels with many people in the village. Still, who knows but what you may be the ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster

... and guidance is never in vain. The spirit breathes a serener air, and is calmed, strengthened, and comforted by the subsequent reaction. It is harmonized thereby, and thus becomes accordant to the psychic forces which, like the ocean's tides, ebb and flow throughout the universe, and bathe every soul that lies open to their vivifying and quickening influence. Still more, there are those who dwell in the Light, whose thoughts and love go out to all such as truly call upon God; and these, the ministering ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... will smooth it out," said De Aquila. He nodded to me, and Jehan and I heaved up Fulke—he was a heavy man—and lowered him into the shaft by a rope, not so as to stand on our gold, but dangling by his shoulders a little above. It was turn of ebb, and the water came to his knees. He said nothing, ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling

... works, it occurred to Yarranton that it would be of great national advantage if the manufacture of tin-plate could be introduced into England. Although the richest tin mines then known existed in this country, the mechanical arts were at so low an ebb that we were almost entirely dependent upon foreigners for the supply of the articles manufactured from the metal. The Saxons were the principal consumers of English tin, and we obtained from them in return nearly the whole of our tin-plates. ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... have been at least a week before there was any noticeable ebb in the flood of questions and answers. That week went by quickly; perhaps more quickly than we really cared for, since it proved that the Fram was not really able to keep pace with time. The weather remained quite ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen

... and nights, but I invented a formula instead, which I repeated to myself continually. Especially, I remember, it came in useful when at the end of the march with my feet frost-bitten, my heart beating slowly, my vitality at its lowest ebb, my body solid with cold, I used to seize the shovel and go on digging snow on to the tent skirting while the cook inside was trying to light the primus. "You've got it in the neck—stick it—stick it—you've got it in the neck," was the refrain, and I wanted every ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... bountiful, imperious Pan— Not dead, not dead, as dreamers feigned, But the lush genius of a million Mays Renewing his beneficent endeavour!— Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed and reigned Since in the dim blue dawn of time The universal ebb-and-flow began, To sound his ancient music, and prevails By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme Here in this radiant and immortal street Lavishly and omnipotently as ever In the open hills, the undissembling dales, The laughing-places of the ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley

... humorously pictured their arduous life: how they had to dig clams all winter that they would have strength enough to plant corn, and how they had to hoe corn all summer that they would have strength enough to dig clams. That low ebb of fortune worked against the full satisfaction of their zeal in two distinct ways. On the one hand, it kept them but ill-prepared for the cost of offensive enterprise: even their occasional missionarying raids upon the Indians took too much productive energy from their business with the corn ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... with the fall of Arthur and his knights, despite the attempts in the Middle Ages to revive the past. The movement as a whole is physically exhausting, except to the very strong. The great climax arrives some way before the end of the work, the music seeming gradually to ebb away after it as though it were but recounting the last scenes of Arthur's death. The two final pages sadly recall the opening theme of the first movement, typifying the coming of Arthur. The coda is of moving tenderness, indicating the tragedy of Guinevere. A final and elevated ...
— Edward MacDowell • John F. Porte

... which he could keep the men at work, in case they were obliged to remain in the cove after the cargo had been landed. Happily, however, none of these schemes was necessary, and the next day, with a western wind, and at the beginning of the ebb-tide, the schooner sailed away for another island where Captain Horn had purchased guano, leaving him alone upon the sandy beach, apparently as calm and cool as usual, but actually filled with turbulent delight at seeing ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton

... Joshua, firmly, but good-humouredly at the same time; 'thou canst not expect that our own hands should pull down what our purses established. Thou killest the fish with spear, line, and coble-net; and we, with snares and with nets, which work by the ebb and the flow of the tide. Each doth what seems best in his eyes to secure a share of the blessing which Providence hath bestowed on the river, and that within his own bounds. I prithee seek no quarrel against us, for thou shalt have ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... understand how it must have been with our Lord when he was trying to teach the men and women of Palestine to have faith in God. Depend upon it, we get our best use of life in learning by the facts of its ebb and flow to understand the Son of Man. And again, when we understand Him, then only do we understand our life and ourselves. Never can we know the majesty of the will of God concerning us except by understanding Jesus and the work the Father gave Him to do. Now, nothing ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... February, Cook left the bay, and set sail for the east, in the hope of discovering the entrance to the strait before the ebb of the tide. At seven in the evening, the vessel was driven by the violence of the current to the close neighbourhood of a small island, outside Cape Koamaroo. Sharply pointed rocks rose from the sea. The danger increased momentarily, one only hope of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... is no time. My breath is short. O Pearson, Rouse him from that cold torpor, ere I die. Life will not turn my hour-glass any more, Whose thin sands, sinking at their centre fast, Ebb hollowly away. I would but speak A few soft words of comfort, pray him to Repent; there is repentance,—for his heart Sinn'd not so deeply as ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards

... conceive of no object capable of rousing deeper sympathy than a defeated commander. Though the first movement of popular feeling may be one of wrathful injustice, yet, when the ebb of depression has once fairly run out, and confidence begins to set back, hiding again that muddy bed of human nature which such neap-tides are apt to lay bare, there is a kindly instinct which leads all generous minds to seek every possible ground of extenuation, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell

... its usual midnight throng; there was the hubbub of loud voices and the ebb and flow of laughter. From midway of the gambling-hall rose the noisy exhortations of some amateur gamester who was breathing upon his dice and pleading earnestly, feelingly, with "Little Joe"; from the theater issued the strains of a sentimental ballad. As Rouletta and her ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... bearing a scythe and sand-glass, is the old giant Time; the other, armed with an iron mace, is the grim angel of Destiny. Not a sound or motion escapes them. In that dim apartment nothing stirs save the sands in the glass, and the inflexible look of the stern mace-bearing sentinel marks how they ebb. The last grains are at length moving downwards—they sink, they disappear; and now, raising his ponderous mace, he dashes into fragments the marble wall: a scene of savage warfare gleams livid through the opening, and the wide vault re-echoes to the hollow ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... monks and of monasteries; perhaps one should say the end of the age of monastic influence. Pope Eugenius III., the great Suger and St. Bernard, all died when Hugh was a young man. The great enthusiasm for founding monasteries was just beginning to ebb. Yet a hundred and fifteen English houses were founded in Stephen's reign, and a hundred and thirteen in the reign of Henry II., and the power of the monastic bodies was still almost paramount in the church. It was to the monasteries that ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson

... in disgust. Their employers occasionally admitted them to their tables, and even to some degree of social intimacy. More frequently they presented them with their cast-off clothing, with new gowns for their wives at Christmas, or—when things were at a remarkably low ebb—with a hundredweight of flour or half a barrel of mess pork. Yet the recipients of these favours piqued themselves upon their good birth and high connexions, and would have felt themselves insulted if anyone had ventured to hint that they should ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... blessings that were his; it is because thou knowest not the end of existence that thou deemest abominable and wicked men to be happy and powerful; while, because thou hast forgotten by what means the earth is governed, thou deemest that fortune's changes ebb and flow without the restraint of a guiding hand. These are serious enough to cause not sickness only, but even death; but, thanks be to the Author of our health, the light of nature hath not yet left thee utterly. In thy true judgment concerning the world's government, in that thou ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius

... my people as far as Lewes, and on account of weather had much ado to get ashore. The voyage down the Delaware was slow, for from want of proper lights we must needs lay by at night, and if winds were contrary were forced to wait for the ebb. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... gone so far I approached a little nearer and declared the purpose of my visit. He would have to come at once with me, sleep on board my ship, and to-morrow, with the first of the ebb, he would give me his assistance in getting my ship down to the sea, without steam. A six-hundred-ton barque, drawing nine feet aft. I proposed to give him eighteen dollars for his local knowledge; and all the time I was speaking he kept on considering attentively the ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad

... his men to march on till they all stood on the bank of the river. The flood flowed in after the ebb, and the hostile armies could not reach each other, and it seemed too long to wait for the water to let them meet. Wulfstan, by race a warrior bold, held the bridge for his chief, and AElfhere and Maccus with him, the undaunted mighty twain. ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey

... at the last general election. When the Houses met, the Ministers had indeed a majority, but a much lessened majority. The old Liberal constituencies had returned to an expression of their real feeling. This reassertion of the progress of the tide, this recovery from the partial ebb which checks the violence of every flow, is common enough in politics; but at the present moment there were many who said that all this had been accelerated by a feeling in the country that Sir Timothy was hardly all that the country required as the ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope

... live water it is, and safe, except, as one of my fellow-passengers informed me, for a rock off the Punta del Carnero, or Mutton Point. The rock is covered when the tide is high (for there is a tide here), but rears its tortoise-like back over the surface for some hours at the ebb. The Channel squadron was coming out of Gib some years before when an ironclad grounded on this rock, but was got off without more damage than a scraping. As the danger to the navigation was outside ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea

... commercial country, and particularly cited the examples of Great Britain and Holland to show the advantages of paper. He used many sound arguments on the subject of credit, and proposed, as a means of restoring that of France, then at so low an ebb among the nations, that he should be allowed to set up a bank, which should have the management of the royal revenues, and issue notes, both on that and on landed security. He further proposed that this bank should be administered in the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... for a dress, or a new receipt for cake. Or they walked down to the shore and dug clams, some fine afternoon; or Mrs. Dashiell lent them a new book; or Mr. Dashiell preached an extraordinary sermon. It was a very slight ebb and flow of the tide of time; however, it served to keep everything from stagnation. Then suddenly, at the end of July, came Mrs. Wishart's summons to Lois to join her on her way to the Isles of Shoals. "I shall go in about a week," the letter ran; "and I want you to meet me at the Shampuashuh station; ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner

... goin' out on this ebb to Goat Island for rockcod, an' I'll come in on the flood this evening. I got plenty of lines an' bait. Want to come along? We can both fish. And what you ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... God made the world and only man or the devil built the cities afterward. I believe the reason why the spirit grows savage and we forget that we are human here so often is that we never see the sun or moon. We never hear the stir of wings in the sky, feel the throb of Nature's heart in the ebb and flow of tides, or walk with our heads ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... reference from the translation. He may have taken it directly from the French. 6. Show the bearing of Sebastian's phrase, 'I am standing water,' with its context. (That is, at the turn of the tide between ebb and full.) 7. 'The man i' the moon,' and the folk-lore about it. 8. Natural history on the island. (Poet-Lore, April, 1894. Notes ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke

... of many news-sheets of the day proves that morality under the Republic was at a low ebb. Anarchy in a kingdom invariably favours dissoluteness in a people, inasmuch as the disturbance of civil order tends to unsettle moral law. Homes being divided amongst themselves by political strife, paternal care was suspended, and filial respect ignored. ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... was forced to double with my boat, I was amazed to see the sea so smooth and quiet, there being no ripling motion, nor current, any more than in other places. This made me ponder some time to guess the reason of it, when at last I was convinced that the ebb setting from the west, and joining with the current of water from some great river on shore, must be the occasion of these rapid streams; & that, consequently, as the winds blew more westwardly, or more southwardly, so the current came he ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe

... hour, the boat reaches a sort of cove, where the beach is entirely corn posed of small round boulders. They form a long ridge, the outer verge of which is always in motion, rolling to and fro with a crash like a volley of musketry at the rush and ebb of every wave. To climb over this ridge of moving stone balls is quite disagreeable; but after that one has only about twenty yards to walk, and the Sai-no-ike appears, surrounded on sides by wooded hills. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... powerful than his suzerain, the King of France, a weak man of vicious habits, who lay for many years of his life under sentence of excommunication for an adulterous marriage with Bertrade de Montfort, Countess of Anjou. The power of the king and of the law was probably at the very lowest ebb during the time of Philip I., though minds and manners were less debased ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge

... stands still for a thousand years, else rolls slowly back toward brutishness, there being none of sufficient strength to advance the standards further up the rugged mountainside—nearer the Celestial City. Thus, ever in ebb and flow, gaining and losing, only to regain; nations rising and falling but to serve as stepping-stones whereon mount a nobler race, a grander people, the irrepressible conflict of the Godlike with the Beastlike in man goes ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... But I should say that if he turns up anywhere, he'll come ashore somewhere about Grinidge to-morrow, at ebb ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... James I. was by no means as distinguished for Hebrew scholarship as were the immediate previous reigns. Indeed it would appear that the knowledge of the sacred languages was at a very low ebb in this country during the agitating period of the Reformation, so much so that even the unaccountable Henry VIII. was forced to exclaim, "Vehementer dolere nostratium Theologorum sortem sanctissime linguae scientia carentium, et linguarum doctrinam ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various

... glorious summer's evening in July. The sun, robed in a thousand hues of gorgeous brilliancy, was setting behind the noble hill which towers over the little hamlet of Shaldon; light pleasure-skiffs, with tiny sail, were dotted over the bay;[A] the ebb tide was gently laving the hissing strand; and at intervals, wafted by the breeze, came from some merry party afloat, a ringing, joyous laugh, or some slight snatch of song. It was an evening which breathed ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... readiness and should be executed the moment Mr. Blake arrived. Induced by this promise, Mr. Blake set out for Plymouth; upon his arrival a trial was made in Cat-water, where Mr. Day lay, during the flow of tide, six hours, and six more during the tide of ebb; confined all the time in the room appropriated for his use. A day for the final determination was fixed; the vessel was towed to the place agreed upon; Mr. Day provided himself with whatever he thought necessary; ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... kicking, bludgeoning, stamping the life out. He would do it, by Heaven, he would do it! The memory of what had happened came fierily back, and made the pressing darkness burn. His wrath was brimming on the edge, ready to burst, and he felt proudly that it would no longer ebb in fear. Whisky had killed fear, and left a hysterical madman, all the more dangerous because he was so weak. Let his father try it on now; he was ready ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... bold design; it runs 1743 feet in a right line into the bay, where there is, at the lowest ebb, 17 feet of water. On this wharf are upwards of eighty large stores, containing merchandize to a great amount. I could never view these buildings without astonishment at the infatuation of the proprietors: they are, without a single exception, of wood, and the roofs covered with cedar shingles; ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest

... we sit by the River of Time And gaze at the waves below, But its brink is covered by frost and rime, And we hear on the wind a muffled chime Proclaiming the end of a brief sojourn: Yet the floods of life still whirl and churn As the currents ebb and flow:— By the rolling wheel we wait our turn Calm, but ready to go! The hopper is drained, but unmoved still, The Miller who grinds in ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe

... musket was fired. They heard the guard turned out; lights passing on the batteries close to them, and row-boats manning. They double-banked their oars, and, with the assistance of the ebb-tide and obscurity, they were soon out of gun-shot. They then laid in their oars, shipped their mast, and sailed away ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... reason why ye should be thus: Not in the legends of the first of days, Studied from that old spirit-leaved book Which starry Uranus with finger bright Sav'd from the shores of darkness, when the waves Low-ebb'd still hid it up in shallow gloom;— And the which book ye know I ever kept For my firm-based footstool:—Ah, infirm! Not there, nor in sign, symbol, or portent Of element, earth, water, air, and fire,— 140 At war, at peace, or inter-quarreling One against one, or two, or three, or all ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats

... rather wider than the lockers below. If the wind is fair you won't have much of our company, because we shall hold on till we moor alongside the wharves of London; but if it's foul, or there is not enough of it to take us against tide, we have to anchor on the ebb, and then of course we ...
— By England's Aid • G. A. Henty

... the field batteries whose fire was galling their offensive, had begun to bombard the village. Shells fled shrieking overhead, to break in thunderous bellows. Walls toppled with appalling crashes, now near at hand, now far. The ebb and flow of rifle-fire at the front contributed a background of sound not unlike the roaring of an angry surf. Machine-guns gibbered like maniacs. Heavier artillery was brought into play behind the British lines, apparently at no great distance from the village; ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... ebbed out shorter from the stern (than here)." Olaf said no harm would happen, "But I have seen that to-day there is a gathering of men up inland; so the Irish think, no doubt, the arrival of this ship a great thing. During the ebb-tide to-day I noticed that there was a dip, and that out of the dip the sea fell without emptying it out; and if our ship has not been damaged, we can put out our boat and tow the ship into it." There was a bottom of loam ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... educating their children? I affirm the fact to be exactly the contrary. Those communities in which there are no common schools, and in which the people generally are in a state of deplorable ignorance, are precisely those in which the sense of parental obligation on this point is at the lowest ebb. Go to a region of country in which not one man in ten can read and write, and you will find that not one man in ten will care whether his children are taught to read and write. Those communities on the contrary which have the best and most complete system of common schools, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... wrong. Whoever handled the Hakka boat was no fool, but by working upstream on the opposite shore, crossing above, and dropping down with the ebb, had craftily brought her along the shallow, so close beneath the river-wall, that not till now did even the little captain spy her. The high prow, the mast, now bare, and her round midships roof, bright golden-thatched with ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout

... of immortality, like the great sea, has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, beating with its countless waves against the rocks and sands of fate and time. It was not born of the bible. It was born of the human heart, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. We do not know. We do not prophesy a life of pain. We leave the dead with nature, the mother of us all, under a seven-hued bow of hope. Under the seven-hued ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... scenes! with other eyes, than once, I gaze, The ever-varying charm your round displays, Than when, ere-while, I taught, "a happy child," The echoes of your rocks my carols wild: Then did no ebb of chearfulness demand Sad tides of joy from ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight

... mouth of the first Brass River, which the Landers understood to be the "Nun" River of the Europeans, and at the distance of sixty or seventy miles from hence. This town acknowledges the authority of both kings, having been originally peopled by settlers from each of their towns. At the ebb of the tide, the basin is left perfectly dry, with the exception of small gutters, and presents a smooth and almost unvaried surface of black mud, which emits an intolerable odour, owing to the decomposition of vegetable substances, and the quantity of filth and nastiness which is thrown into ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... dress for dinner, but Cleggett's character was an unusual blend of delicacy and strength; he perceived subtly that Lady Agatha was of the nature to appreciate this compliment. At a moment when her fortunes were at a low ebb what could more cheer a woman and hearten her than such a mark of consideration? Already Cleggett found himself asking what ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... But—was it a man? For the figure suddenly began running over the beach on all fours like a beetle, waving its limbs like feelers. Before I could throw open the window again it darted into the surf, and, when I leaned out into the chilling drizzle, I saw nothing save the flat ebb crawling on the coast—I heard nothing save the purring of ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers

... income inequality is increasing, the government budget deficit is growing, and international accounts are weakening. For the long run, Syria's economy is saddled with a large number of poorly performing public sector firms and low industrial productivity. Oil production is likely to ebb by the end of the decade. Unemployment will likely rise as the more than 60% of the population under age 20 moves into the labor force. The economic benefits of any peace treaty with Israel will depend in large part on the pace of ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... distinct as upon any modern beach. The regular rise and fall of the water is registered there in waving, undulating lines as clearly as on the sand-beaches of Newport or Nahant; and we can see on any one of those ancient shores the track left by the waves as they rippled back at ebb of the tide thousands of centuries ago. One can often see where some obstacle interrupted the course of the water, causing it to break around it; and such an indentation even retains the soft, muddy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... insight into the character of Deacon Pratt, from the passing remarks of the Widow White, who was induced to allude to the uncle, in consequence of the charitable visits of the niece. One day, when matters appeared to be at a very low ebb with him, and shortly after he had been put ashore, the sick mariner requested an interview with the deacon himself. The request had been reluctantly granted; but, during the visit, Daggett had managed so well to whet ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... stood there, motionless. Knee-high the flat ebb boiled and hissed, dragging at her stockinged feet as though to draw her seaward with the others. Yesterday she would have gone, without a thought, to join the others; but yesterday is yesterday. It seemed to her, as she stood there, ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... All motors give off waste heat as they run. Similarly, no plant or animal is capable of using every bit of energy released from their food, and consequently radiate heat. When working hard, living things give off more heat; when resting, less. The ebb and flow of heat production matches their oxygen consumption, and matches their physical and metabolic activities, and growth rates. Even single-celled animals like bacteria and fungi breathe oxygen and give ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon

... wonted season, with a torrent So unexpected, and so wondrous fierce, That the wild deluge overtook the haste Even of the hinds that watched it: Men and beasts Were borne above the tops of trees, that grew On the utmost margin of the water-mark. Then, with so swift an ebb the flood drove backward, It slipt from underneath the scaly herd: Here monstrous phocae panted on the shore; Forsaken dolphins there with their broad tails, Lay lashing the departing waves: hard by them, Sea horses floundering in the slimy ...
— All for Love • John Dryden

... Anthony crept to the door, and opened it; locked it again, and made his way in the dark very feebly to his bed-chamber; he had just the strength to get into his bed, and then all his life seemed to ebb from him, and he lay, and thought that he was dying. Presently from without there came the crying of cocks, and a bell beat the hour of four; and after that, in his vigil of weakness, it was strange to see the light glimmer in the crevices, and ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... to suggest directions in which discoveries might be made. The most marked contrast between him and earlier critics is his caution about altering the received text. He first stemmed the tide of rash emendation, and the ebb which began with him has continued ever since. The case for moderation in this respect has never been better stated than in his words: "It has been my settled principle that the reading of {216} the ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey

... in the interior of Asia is the turning-point in the history of antiquity. The tide of national movement, which had hitherto poured from the west to the east and had found in Alexander the Great its last and highest expression, was followed by the ebb. On the establishment of the Parthian state not only were such Hellenic elements, as may still perhaps have been preserved in Bactria and on the Indus, lost, but western Iran also relapsed into the track which had been abandoned for centuries but was not yet obliterated. The ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... common occurrence in young girls, especially after dances. Without heeding this, I was riveted to the spot for a long time by the spectacle, with the horrible symptoms it presented. Several times I saw what resembled a childish fit of merriment pass, like the ebb and flow of the tide, through all the different stages, up to the most impudent laughter, and then to what seemed like the screams of the damned in torture. When the disturbance had somewhat subsided, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... "He seems quite himself," she said gravely. But she turned to cover the mirth in her eyes; it suffused her face, her whole charming personality. Then suddenly, at the moment the flow was highest, came the ebb. Her glance met Tisdale's clear, appraising look, and ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... more wary fellows, taught perhaps by sad experience, used always to dip their tails in, before starting on a swim, so as to ascertain which way the tide was flowing. If it was the flow of the tide they would boldly venture in, but if it was ebb tide, and there was the slightest chance of their being carried out to sea, they would patiently lie down, meditate on the fleeting vanity of life, and like the hero ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... dared not offend the Catholics, who saw then, as they see now, a champion in Austria. He was the victim of circumstances, and he had to bow before them, in order that he might finally become their master. Then he had no occasion for a quarrel with Austria. She was at the lowest ebb her fortunes had known since the day that the Turks appeared for the second time before Vienna. She could not have maintained herself in Italy, even after the successes of Radetzky, had not Nicholas sent one hundred ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... did not think them safe. We continued to ply to windward, between the two tides, without either gaining or losing an inch, till near high water, when, by a favourable slant, we got into the eastern tide's influence. We expected, there, to find the ebb to run strong to the eastward in our favour, but it proved so inconsiderable, that, at any other time, it would not have been noticed. This informed us, that most of the water which flows into the lagoon, comes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr

... that the categories of matter become adapted to them. In its true nature, reality appears as an uninterrupted flow, an impalpable shiver of fluid changing tones, a perpetual flux of waves which ebb and break and dissolve into one another without shock or jar. Everything is ceaseless change; and the state which appears the most stable is already change, since it continues and grows old. Constant quantities are represented only by the materialisation of habit or by means ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... the coast in the dismal rainy season, when all the life of the region was at the lowest ebb of the year, and when comfort was hardly to be found. The extreme bitterness of Eastern winters was wanting; but the bracing tonic effect of honest cold was also denied them. Through many months they were to suffer from an uninterrupted downpour of rain, driven before ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton

... other commodities of the far south. Presently the old woman went downward to the beach, and there held speech with the shipmaster, who, as it chanced, being a man of Wales, could make shift to understand the Gaelic tongue, and from him she learned that the ship was to leave at the ebb tide for England. ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton

... from defeat; not from military strength but from naval weakness; not from a new, adventurous spirit of attack, but from a half-despairing hope of keeping one last foothold by the sea. It was not begun till after the fortunes of Louis XIV had reached their lowest ebb at the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. It lived a precarious life of only forty years, from 1720 to 1760. And nothing but bare ruins were left to mark its grave when it finally passed, unheeded and unnamed, into the ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... being now well on the ebb, the fish stopped biting, perhaps driven away by the sharks, and we sailed down to the inlet, where there is a long sandy beach fringed with mangroves: behind these, low hillocks of sand covered with saw-palmetto extend across to the ocean, perhaps half a mile; and here ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... "Have you any fish to-day?" To which, if replying affirmatively, he would answer: "Missis, de gate open"; meaning, "The door (of the 'car,' or fish-box) is open to you." If he had no fish he would reply: "Missis, ebb-tide done tack (take) crick"; signifying: "The tide has turned and it is too late to go to catch fish." This old man called whisky "muhgundy smash," the term evidently derived from some idea of the word "burgundy" ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... sea ready to wash it out of existence. But sand-banks grow when the conditions favor; and weak as reason is, it has this unique advantage over its antagonists that its activity never lets up and that it presses always in one direction, while men's prejudices vary, their passions ebb and flow, and their excitements are intermittent. Our sand-bank, I absolutely believe, is bound to grow. Bit by bit it will get dyked and breakwatered. But sitting as we do in this warm room, with music and lights and smiling faces, it is easy to get too sanguine about our task; and since ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... philosophical apparatus dating back two or three generations—ill-fated ventures on the treacherous main of science. Here a fat-bellied alembic lolled lazily over in a gleamy sand-bath, like a beach-lost galleon at ebb-tide; and there a heap of broken porcelain-tubing and shreds of crucibles lay like bleaching ship-ribs on a sullen shore. Beyond, by the middle window, stood a furnace, fireless, and clogged with gray ashes. Two or three solid old-time tables, built ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... Ireland. But they begin to see that the required conditions do not exist. They begin to see that they have been used by such men as O'Brien and Healy, they see the incompetency which has reduced the party paper to so low an ebb, they see the misery and degradation which the Land League inflicted on the once thriving districts of Tipperary; they saw their neighbours, poor, unlettered men, dupes of unscrupulous lying eloquence, men whom it was murder to deceive—they saw these men sentenced to long terms of penal servitude, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... thee requital to pay thy savage inhumanity." The Cyclop heard, and came forth enraged, and in his anger he plucked a fragment of a rock, and threw it with blind fury at the ships. It narrowly escaped lighting upon the bark in which Ulysses sat, but with the fall it raised so fierce an ebb, as bore back the ship till it almost touched the shore. "Cyclop," said Ulysses, "if any ask thee who imposed on thee that unsightly blemish in thine eye, say it was Ulysses, son of Laertes: the king of Ithaca am I called, the waster of cities." Then ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... Ferme. I resolved therefore to wait there until I received fresh particulars. I despatched a courier to Madame de Saint-Simon, requesting her to send me another the next day, and I passed the rest of this day, in an ebb and flow of feelings; the man and the Christian struggling against the man and the courtier, and in the midst of a crowd of vague fancies catching glimpses of the future, painted in the most ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... as well as that of individuals—is largely governed by the laws of ebb and flow. It is immediately after a national mourning for the loss of a great man that a wave of reaction generally sets in. But the eagerness with which these volumes {132} have been awaited shows that Tennyson’s hold upon the British public ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton

... out, and had, perhaps, two hours to ebb. The boys hugged the channel bank on the right, passed under the bridge unnoticed, and kept on their silent and anxious way, mile after mile. Finally, Sandy steered into a creek and glided softly against the mud bank, holding his skiff firmly by driving a paddle ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... and Dagmar's courage was at lowest ebb. The motherly woman took the ever-present "telescope," and setting it down in a corner of the pleasant room, directed Dagmar to a chair near the little stove, in which a small light glowed, quite suitably opposed to ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... Torrington, where he met with his wife, and then proceeded to Biddeford: and on the next day, being Sunday, he strolled down to one Holmes, who kept a public-house between Biddeford and Appledore, where he passed great part of the day drinking pretty freely; and money being at a low ebb with him, he desired landlord Holmes to lend him a good suit of clothes, which he accordingly did. Being thus gallantly equipped, he went and planted himself at the church-door in Biddeford, and pretending to be the supercargo of a vessel which had been a few days before ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown

... Sundays he hears two of these discourses in the morning and afternoon, and a third sermon in the evening, for though he became the most copious of all speakers, Mr. Gladstone was ever the most generous of listeners. It was at St. Ebb's that he found really congenial ministrations—an ecclesiastical centre described by him fifty years later—under Mr. Bulteel, a man of some note in his day; here the flame was at white heat, and a score or two of young men felt its attractions.[44] He always remembered among the wonderful ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... was not to be, for just when his courage was at its lowest ebb he started and nearly dropped the tin, for from out of the darkness close by there was a piteous moan, and as he sought cautiously for the place from whence it came, he was helped by a low muttering as of someone ...
— Our Soldier Boy • George Manville Fenn

... smile (thinking of Marcia's red lips). And whatever he may have thought of her personal pulchritude or the quiet magnetism of her friendliness, there was no room in his mind just now for the merely spiritual. If Una had a place in his heart, it was where the ebb and flow were quiet, not in the mid-stream of hot blood. But Jerry kept his word. His check for Una's day nursery went forward on the day following their meeting and Jerry found time in the intervals between Marcia, business and the gymnasium to call ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs

... ships got under way with the weather, or ebb, tide, a little before noon: latitude 8 deg. 52'. At four o'clock, the wind blew strong at south-east, with thick weather, and they anchored in 9 fathoms, blue mud; having made a course of E. N. E. nearly parallel to the coast. They remained here till ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders

... go on writing in her mother tongue. If she failed when she quitted her own province, and attempted to occupy one in which she had neither part nor lot, this reproach is common to her with a crowd of distinguished men. Newton failed when he turned from the courses of the stars, and the ebb and flow of the ocean, to apocalyptic seals and vials. Bentley failed when he turned from Homer and Aristophanes, to edit the Paradise Lost. Inigo failed when he attempted to rival the Gothic churches of the fourteenth century. Wilkie failed when he took it into his ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... not see it then. I see it now. So I betook myself to another church, and this other church got a credit which it did not deserve, for they had no family life to touch. It was a church at Chatham Square, and its usefulness consisted in the fact that it was situated where it could catch the ebb and flow ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine

... dunes. The sea, set in violent commotion by the storm in the night, was white with foam to the very horizon, and the sharp crests of the long billows rolled one after another and broke on the flat shore. I went nearer to it, and walked along the line left by the ebb and flow of the tides on the yellow furrowed sand, strewn with fragments of trailing seaweed, broken shells, and snakelike ribbons of sea-grass. Gulls, with pointed wings, flying with a plaintive cry on the wind out of the remote depths of the air, soared up, white as snow against the grey ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... off the Foreland—the first ebb making Lumpy and strong in the bight. Boom after boom, and the golf-hut shaking And the jackdaws wild with fright! "Mines located in the fairway, "Boats now working up the chain, "Sweepers—Unity, Claribel, ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling

... went out, dragged herself to the Louvre, to the feet of the Venus, "the goddess without arms, who could not help." Only her indomitable will and intense desire to live seemed to keep her alive. She sunk to a very low ebb, but, as she herself expressed it, she "seemed to have always one little window looking out into life," and in the spring she rallied sufficiently to take a few drives and to sit on the balcony of her apartment. She came back to life with a feverish ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... headland, examined the Church Cave and the Dovecote likewise, and with a like result. Then heartily tired, and well content with having done all that man could do, they set sail again in the dusk of the night, and forged their way against a strong ebb-tide toward the softer waters of Bridlington, and the warmer ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore

... where he got a fresh cheroot, and lighted it with slightly trembling fingers. He grumbled inarticulately, remembering his own exploits in the carrying of sail and record runs under the bluff bows of the Honorable John Company itself. The ebb tide, he thought, returning to William's figure and its amplification by himself. So much that had been good sweeping out to sea ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... to see him waiting for us when we landed in England. The day passed quietly. No one was allowed ashore. The ship's gig went down to see some of the other ships of the White Star fleet and we got some of our belated mail. On Saturday we were to sail with the ebb tide. All the transports had come in and there was assembled in Gaspe Basin the greatest Armada that ever set sail for British shores. We were going in this great Armada to assist the Mother Country to maintain the Pax Britannicum. There were over ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... obeyed with safety. Every thing, therefore, remained quiet till the evening of the 2nd of June, when the gale moderating a little, the anchors were raised and the sails hoisted. The tide was beginning to ebb when this was done, favoured by which the ships drifted gradually on their course; but before long, the breeze shifting, blew directly in their sterns, when they stood gallantly to sea, clearing the river before dark; ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig

... The swift ebb-tide swept the hats of the perishing wretches in such numbers down the stream, that the people at Embden knew the result of the battle in an incredibly short period of time. The skirmishing had lasted from ten o'clock till one, but the butchery continued much longer. It took time ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... now? Where had they slept last night? Where breakfasted this morning? Had there even been any breakfast this morning? Had there even been any bed last night? Lost, and forgotten in the plexus of the city's life, what had befallen them? Towards what fate was the ebb tide of the streets ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... master-piece, to reduce that Leipzig, which had once patiently sustained, without being entirely exhausted, the burdens of a war that lasted seven years—to reduce it, I say, in six months, to so low an ebb, that even the opulent were in danger of perishing with hunger; that reputable citizens could no longer procure the coarsest fare; and that, though their hearts overflowed with pity and compassion, they ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)

... thee These Song-Waves from life's voiceful sea. They ebb and flow with swift occasion, Bearing rich freight, ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand

... and made her all light, color, canals, and palaces. One's conscience, more or less uncomfortably vigilant elsewhere, drowses here, and it is difficult to remember that fact is more virtuous than fiction. In other years, when there was life in the city, and this sad ebb of prosperity was full tide in her canals, there might have been some incentive to keep one's thoughts and words from lapsing into habits of luxurious dishonesty, some reason for telling the whole hard truth of things, some ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... psychology, and to feel the heat of the pentecostal conflagration that scorched his audience. He called for a rousing revival hymn from his singers, and stepped down to wade among the hallelujah-shouting negro soldiers to Alice Akana. And, ere the excitement began to ebb, nine-tenths of his congregation and all his converts were down on knees and praying and shouting aloud an ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... it a heinous sin in myself to act contrary to such a vote: And, if the same power should declare the same censure against those who wore Indian stuffs and calicoes, or woollen manufactures imported from abroad, whereby this nation is reduced to the lowest ebb of misery; I should readily, heartily, and cheerfully pay obedience; and to my utmost power persuade others to do the like: Because, there is no law of this land obliging us either to receive such coin, or to wear such ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift

... lonely quay in a black sea-fog, with the furrow traced under its tawny keel far in the harbour slime. The noble misery that there is in it, the might of its rent and strained unseemliness, its wave-worn melancholy, resting there for a little while in the comfortless ebb, unpitied, and claiming no pity; still less honoured, least of all conscious of any claim to honour; casting and craning by due balance whatever is in its hold up to the pier, in quiet truth of time; spinning of wheel, and {167} slackening of rope, and swinging of spade, in as ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... roared in the many passages and apartments down below. Their glowing log fire was so acceptable to them, that they were loath to leave it, and so they sat talking together until midnight. They had gained a very good idea of time by observing the sun and moon, and were also greatly aided by the ebb and flow of the tide. They knew exactly the high-water mark, by certain rocks; they knew that it took so many hours to ebb and so many to flow, and they had become so familiar with the sound of the outgoing and incoming tide, that even in the ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul

... died on March 9th. He had taken cold on March 3rd, and on the 7th a chronic ailment of the kidneys from which he suffered became worse, he could not sleep, his strength began to ebb, and it was clear the end was near. On the 6th, however, he was able to speak for a few minutes with Prince William, with Bismarck, and with his only daughter, the Grand Duchess of Baden, who had arrived post-haste the night before to be present at the death-bed. The Grand Duchess, as the ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... of the ebb, in Newton Bay, Quickens the spring, as the tide grows less; Even as true love flows alway Counter the flood of the ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore

... his health was very bad—and it must be borne in mind that, throughout all this experience, his physical condition was one of ebb—and he was in considerable distress by reason of the negligence, the positive ill-treatment even, he received from his wife and step-children. His wife was vain, extravagant, unfeeling, and had a growing taste for private drinking; his step-daughter was mean and over-reaching; and his step-son ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... of prosperity was to have its ebb. The jovial placeman was to feel the uncertainties of office; and on Lord North's resignation in 1782, and the celebrated Edmund Burke's appointment to the paymastership, Rigby found himself suddenly called on for a considerable arrear. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various

... American army were now at the lowest ebb, so that had Howe been an efficient general it must have been either captured or entirely destroyed. Through the treason of Adjutant Demont, who had deserted to Lord Percy with complete information of their weakness, Forts Washington and Lee were captured, November ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews



Words linked to "Ebb" :   tide, hem in, ebbing, decline, beleaguer, circumvent, wane, reflux, recede, ebb away, surround



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