"Ebb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... universe. Beggars are few and there is none of the oppressive poverty of other Mexican cities. This, it is agreed, is due not merely to the extreme fertility of Jalisco, but to the kindness of nature in refusing to produce the maguey in the vicinity, so that drunkenness is at its lowest Mexican ebb and the sour stink of pulque shops nowhere assails the nostrils. For this curse of the peon will not endure long transportation. An abundance of cheap labor makes possible many little conveniences unknown in more industrial ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... I must describe the house to you, remarking, first of all, that architecture, so far as my observation extends, is at its lowest ebb in South Africa. I have not seen a single pretty building of any sort or kind since I arrived, although in these small houses it would be so easy to break by gable and porch the severe simplicity of the unvarying ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... South-east Island, about four miles north from the ship. We found the coast thereabouts fringed with mangroves, a gap in which, margined by forest trees, indicated the place which we were in search of. The ebb-tide was scarcely beginning to make, yet a narrow band of shingle off the entrance of the creek had barely water enough upon it to allow the boat to cross. Beyond the bar we got into deep water, and after pulling up for 300 yards found it only brackish. Our further progress, ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... paid were thus very greatly increased, thereby causing, from that time until the present, a heavy burden and debt on the royal estate. So heavy has been this burden that the royal estate has come to so low an ebb by reason of some salaries that are especially excessive, that it is obliged to demand loans quite ordinarily from the inhabitants of this said city; and, because of the heavy loans that have been made for many years, it has been impossible ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Various
... matter if in calm or strife, There ebb or flow for me the future's tide. I had but one great longing in my life, And that has ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... snap at the prey which they hoped to secure. He found them everywhere, and told himself with some shame that he was one of them, that the unit of his own personality served to increase the incredible number of cassocks that one encountered in the streets. Ah! that ebb and flow, that ceaseless tide of black gowns and frocks of every hue! With their processions of students ever walking abroad, the seminaries of the different nations would alone have sufficed to drape and decorate the streets, for there were the French and the English ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... and it was fortunate for him that he took the water on the turn of the tide, so that where the tail of the ebb set him down the first of the flood bore him back. The stimulus of the chill and the labor of swimming cleared the poison from his body and brain; he swam steadily, with eyes fixed on the lights beading the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... quiet. Hamel pushed his window wide open and looked out into the night. The air was absolutely still, there was no wind. The only sound was the falling of the low waves upon the stony beach and the faint scrunching of the pebbles drawn back by the ebb. He looked along the row of windows, all dark and silent now. A rush of pleasant fancies suddenly chased away the grim depression of the last few minutes. Out of all this sordidness and mystery there remained at least something in life for ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the necessities of our fellow creatures. — He affirmed, the nature of commerce was such, that it could not be fixed or perpetuated, but, having flowed to a certain height, would immediately begin to ebb, and so continue till the channels should be left almost dry; but there was no instance of the tide's rising a second time to any considerable influx in the same nation. Mean while the sudden affluence occasioned by trade, forced ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... arrival four steamers came with an aggregate of more than two thousand passengers. Many of these, however, did not leave the steamer; they took passage either to their port of departure—San Francisco or Victoria—or to points on the Sound. The ebb tide had set in, and although many steamers came later and landed passengers, their return lists soon became large and the population began ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... without a break. The unchecked gentleness of the flow captured the eye by a subtle spell, fastened insidiously upon the mind a disturbing sense of the irretrievable. The ebbing of the sea athwart the lonely sheen of flames resembled the eternal ebb-tide of time; and when at last Lingard looked up, the knowledge of that noiseless passage of the waters produced on his mind a bewildering effect. For a moment the speck of light lost in vast obscurity the brig, the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... elementary education. But all accounts of the days of the French regime go to show that, despite the zealous efforts of the religious bodies to improve the education of the colonists, secular instruction was at a very low ebb and hardly reached the seigniories. One writer tells us that "even the children of officers and gentlemen scarcely knew how to read and write; they were ignorant of the first elements of geography and history." Still, dull and devoid of intellectual life as was the life of the Canadian, he ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... lamp had flickered out, as it had threatened to do, and he groped his way in darkness, though at another moment he would have walked with the sure foot of custom blindfold about the house. Somehow, the whole tide of his purpose seemed suddenly to ebb. He became conscious of the night, and stood in the dark to listen to its wild voices. There were other voices in the air, for he could hear his father speaking in a deep, loud hum, and Jervoyce answering from time to time in a treble like that of an ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... and a rapid trot Soon brought them to the beach. The ebb had left A level stretch of sand, wide, smooth, and hard, With not a hoof-mark on the glistening plain. The horses tossed their heads with snorting pride, Feeling the ocean breeze, as curved and fell Up the long line the creeping fringe of foam, Then backward ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... rusted slowly in the slow monotony of his days. He had come to accept the rhythmical ebb and flow of life's river as all-sufficient for content. Breakfast and dinner were the chief events of his life—if it was well with these it ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... they were lying a little way off the mouth of a river not right great; so they put out their boats and towed the ship up into the said river, and when they had gone up it for a mile or thereabouts they found the sea water failed, for little was the ebb and flow of the tide on that coast. Then was the river deep and clear, running between smooth grassy land like to meadows. Also on their left board they saw presently three head of neat cattle going, as if in a meadow of ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... shore and tracked the boat into shelter for, the wind blowing fresh without and the ground being rocky, it was not safe to trust her at a grapnel lest she should be blown to sea: I was therefore obliged to let her ground in the course of the ebb. From appearances I expected that if we remained till night we should meet with turtle as we discovered recent tracks of them. Innumerable birds of a noddy kind made this island their resting-place; so that we had reason to flatter ourselves with hopes of getting supplies in greater ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... sleep, appetite, and flesh," proceeded Moore, "but your spirits are always at ebb. Besides, there is a nervous alarm in your eye, a nervous disquiet in your manner. These peculiarities ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... 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 ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... began to flow, and we fancied our dangers over; but the crisis was not yet come. The ebb-tide returned, rushing down with the current of the river with such overwhelming velocity, that we expected the vessel would be torn from her moorings. Two men were placed at the helm to keep her steady, but, in spite of their ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... distress existed "in some parts" of the country: he asked, in what part it did not exist? The kingdom, he asserted, was in a state of universal distress, embracing alike agriculture, manufactures, trade, and commerce. These great interests had never before at one time been at so low an ebb, nor in a condition which demanded more imperatively the prompt and energetic interference of parliament. The speech ascribed the distress existing, so far as it had admitted it, to unfavourable seasons. This of course operated upon grain; but was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hate death, to faint under loss, to throb and pant with heavy sighs, to lie sleepless in the long dark night, to shrink with unutterable sadness at the wan light of dawn, to follow duty with a laggard sense, to feel the slow ebb of vitality and not to care, to suffer with a ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... and wanted no reward. All he asked was that his tutor might be brought up and his head cut off. Then the scene changed to other situations, each very different, florid with details, but motivated by ending in the discomfiture of the tutor. In the ebb or ambivalent reaction of this passion he and ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... succors from time to time by sea. The Court is about to negotiate another loan, in which if it does not succeed, perhaps it must have recourse to another emission of paper. The treasury is at a low ebb. The Minister of Marine demanded lately ten millions of reals, and received but three. The credit of the paper has lately risen, it is not negotiated at one and a ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... to Rome the submission of the realm found a fresh Pope, Paul the Fourth, on the throne. His accession marked the opening of a new era in the history of the Papacy. Till now the fortunes of Catholicism had been steadily sinking to a lower ebb. With the Peace of Passau the Empire seemed lost to it. The new Protestant faith stood triumphant in the north of Germany, and it was already advancing to the conquest of the south. The nobles of Austria were forsaking the older religion. ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... life. Nothing is common in my destiny, Nor in the furrows of my hand. Who dares Interpret then my life for me as 'twere One of the undistinguishable many? True, in this present moment I appear Fallen low indeed; but I shall rise again. The high flood will soon follow on this ebb; The fountain of my fortune, which now stops, Repressed and bound by some malicious star, Will soon in joy play ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... with 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 ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... 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 ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... Though unable to read, he quotes the Bible as one very familiar with that sacred book. He inherited a good memory, that serves him well in public address, and he is always happy and ready when it comes his turn to "speak in meeting." His messages are always notes of joy and gladness, and the ebb and flow of his voice in prayer often seem like the chanting of a ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... little whether he slept or woke, for the events of the past days, coupled with the disappointment of not being set ashore as he had hoped, had brought even his determined courage to a low ebb. He was on the verge of a fever, and Bob's prescription of rest and sleep was what he most needed. Made snug at the back side of the berth, where little or no light came, he fell into a fitful slumber. Bob took a last look to see ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... time onwards all interest in astronomy seemed, in Europe at least, to sink to a low ebb. When the Caliph Omar, in the middle of the seventh century, burnt the library of Alexandria, which had been the centre of intellectual progress, that centre migrated to Baghdad, and the Arabs became the leaders of science and philosophy. ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... that his dwelling did not float with the flood- tide, and become stranded with the ebb, the young lord was nearly as comfortably accommodated as he was while on board the little trading brig from the long town of Kirkaldy, in Fife, by which he had come a passenger to London. He received, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... out of the doctor's house. Dr Rider went to his hard day's work vaguely expectant, feeling sure he must hear of them somehow, and more interested in hearing of them than was to be expected from his former low ebb of fraternal affection. When he returned and found still no letter, no message, the blank disappointment of the former night closed still more blankly upon him. When one is all by one's self, and has nothing at best but an easy-chair ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... dimly in the gloom of the summer evening. Shafts of brighter light swept across and across the water from occulting beacons set at long intervals among buoys. Above the steamer lay a large Norwegian barque waiting for her pilot to take her down on the ebb tide. Below The McMunn Brothers was an ocean-going tramp steamer. One of her crew sat on the forecastle playing the "Swanee River" ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... poured drop by drop upon her tongue from the side—the little ones pressing closer and closer. Even in the convulsive trembling that took her body from time to time there was an inflowing rather than the ebb of strength. ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... ages, or by telling them fables and the quaint stories of the "Seven Wise Masters." What beauty there was in a Meistergesang may be fairly seen from the poem of Michael Beheim; and the Easter play by no means shows the lowest ebb of good taste in the popular literature ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... the stream away from the dock, captain," ordered Handy, when they were ready to start. "The tide is nearly flood and we can drop down the river with the first of the ebb. We can get outside early and then determine where next we'll ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... 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 ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... point eighteen miles down the coast. The Oxford theologians, who, with Milman their professor, {38} believe that Jehovah conducted His chosen people without disturbing the order of nature, adopt the first view, and suppose that the Israelites passed during an ebb-tide, aided by a violent wind. One among many objections to this supposition is, that the time of a single ebb would not have been sufficient for the passage of that vast multitude of men and beasts, or even for ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... of the Congregational Church at Abbeville. It was then at a very low ebb. He was also made Principal of the public school of the city. He has labored untiringly and with rare devotion and his success ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 54, No. 4, October, 1900 • Various
... gently treasure obtain; Shall spear and sword sooner beseem us, 60 Grim battle-play, ere tribute we give." Then bade he shield bear, warriors advance, So that on the burn-stathe[9] they all were standing. Might not there for the water one war-band to th' other, When flowing flood came after the ebb, 65 Sea-streams interlocked; too long seemed it them Till they together their spears should bear. Then Panta's stream with pomp[10] [?] they beset, East-Saxons' chief and the host from the ships: No one of them might do harm to the other, 70 But ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... boat which belonged to the Pyms. One evening the two youths, both being very tipsy, embarked secretly, in cold October weather, and boldly set sail in a strong breeze from the south-west. The Ariel, aided by the ebb tide, had already lost sight of land when a violent storm arose. The imprudent young fellows were still intoxicated. No one was at the helm, not a reef was in the sail. The masts were carried away by the furious gusts, and the wreck was driven before ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... McPhearson objected instantly. "By the fourteenth century there were clocks that really began to be clocks. In 1326, for example, the Abbott of St. Albans made a marvelous clock which not only showed the course of the sun and moon but the ebb and flow of the tide. In the meantime more big clocks began to be put up on the church towers. But remember, none of these could boast any nice degree of accuracy; it was many, many years later before the secrets of correct time-keeping ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett
... the table. "Are you willing then, to accept a man at the very lowest ebb of his fortunes? I know that if I were of the mould that heroes are made of, I would hesitate to proffer you a blighted life. But I loved you the moment I saw you; and, remembering my fruitless search for you, I cannot ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... of the laws of nature, whether we can trace them in the alternate ebb and flow of the ocean, in the measured path of comets, or in the mutual attractions of multiple stars, alike increases our sense of the calm of nature, while the chimera so long cherished by the human mind in its early and intuitive contemplations, ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the German. He could feel the ribs against his toes through the leather of his boot. He kicked again and again with all his might. The German rolled over heavily. He had no face. Chrisfield felt the hatred suddenly ebb out of him. Where the face had been was a spongy mass of purple and yellow and red, half of which stuck to the russet leaves when the body rolled over. Large flies with bright shiny green bodies circled about it. In a brown clay-grimed ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... the dingy awaiting them, with two men in her. Hamish was very careful of Miss White's dress as she got into the stern of the boat; then he and Colin Laing got into the bow; and the men half paddled and half floated her along to the Umpire—the tide having begun to ebb. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... mademoiselle, and to make it at once, since it was impossible to say what harm might come of delay, were she in such hands as Fresnoy's; but I had so little hope of success that I regarded the enterprise as desperate. The certain loss of my mother, however, and the low ebb of my fortunes, with the ever-present sense of failure, contributed to render me indifferent to risks; and even when we were on our way, through by-streets known to Simon, to the farther end of the Ruelle d'Arcy, and the red and frosty ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... individual voice: it was the breathing of the giant that had been born; he was crying out too; he did not know what he said, but he could not be silent. His veins and nerves seemed alight with wine; and as he stared down the long street, hearing the huge cry ebb from him and move toward the palace, he knew why he had cried, and why ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... 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 ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... men in their ranks becomes greater, they are being petted and made much of by our class; an infallible sign that they are making no further progress in their duty of destroying us. The small capitalists are left stranded by the ebb; the big ones will follow the tide across the water, and rebuild their factories where steam power, water power, labor power, and transport are now cheaper than in England, where they used to be cheapest. The workers will emigrate in pursuit of the factory, but they will multiply ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... innumerable wandering flocks in the blue plains of the firmament. Another time the arch of heaven seemed changed into a shore on which one could discover horizontal rows, parallel lines such as are made by the regular ebb and flow of the sea; a gust of wind tore this veil again, and everywhere appeared in the sky great banks of dazzlingly white down, so soft to the eye that one seemed to feel their softness and elasticity. The ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... the mysterious ebb of the night Pass the men whose eyes are shut like anemones in a dark pool; Why don't they open with vision and speak to me, what have they in sight? Why do I wander aimless among them, ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... And as with her own cry her sense was slain, So with the other it was call'd again. She rose, and to her bed made forced way, And laid her down even where Leander lay; And all this while the red sea of her blood Ebb'd with Leander: but now turn'd the flood, And all her fleet of spirits came swelling in, With child of sail, and did hot fight begin With those severe conceits she too much mark'd: And here Leander's beauties were embark'd. He came in swimming, painted all with joys, ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... which could alone give them stability or real value. The forms of freedom, indeed, in most instances, had sunk under the usurpation of some aspiring chief. Everywhere patriotism was lost in the most intense selfishness. Moral principle was at as low an ebb in private, as in public life. The hands, which shed their liberal patronage over genius and learning, were too often red with blood. The courtly precincts, which seemed the favorite haunt of the Muses, were too often the Epicurean sty of ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... comfort and happiness, the pride of Peet's heart—full, as it was too, of Dick's strange and beautiful things, relics of his voyages—all had to go: sold to meet the bills of the doctors, and to buy things which were needed for the invalid. Brought to a very low ebb by this terrible affliction, and not knowing where all the money was to come from to pay the demands made upon him—too proud to ask help from even his own brother—Peet resolved to go back to work again. He applied to his old master, Lord Lynwood; there being no vacancies at Lynwood, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... from exhaustion, without suspicion from him or much cost to herself. The second time of doing it, it is true, she went tremblingly to work, and was like to bungle it. What one may do on the flood one may easily miss on the ebb; moreover, it was night-time, she was tired, and not sure of herself. Nevertheless, she was fed, and Prosper was fed. Next morning she was as cool as you choose, singled out her hind as she walked into the herd, went on all fours and sucked like a calf. She grew nice, ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... spiritual life, as well as into the things that only touch the natural. The seed-vessel has to go down into death as well as the leaf. Look at it as it begins to pass into the valley of that shadow and its strength begins to ebb away. It is only getting ready by its weakening, for the service to which it ...
— Parables of the Christ-life • I. Lilias Trotter
... all manner of subjects. He asks his scientific friends to explain to him the mystery of a spring whose waters ebb and flow, of a lake which contained floating islands, and in one letter he tells a fascinating ghost story of quite the conventional type, about a haunted house, which drove any unwary tenant crazy, and the ghost of a murdered man which walked with clanking chains. Pliny was ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... something to attract him. He might see sword-playing at Hockley, or cocking at Shoe Lane, or baiting at Southwark, or shooting at Tothill Fields. Again, he might walk in the physic gardens of St. James's, or go down the river with the ebb tide to the cherry orchards at Rotherhithe, or drive to Islington to drink the cream, or, above all, walk in the Park, which is most modish for a gentleman who dresses in the fashion. You see, Clarke, that we were active in our idleness, and that there was ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... has given the gorgeous privilege of rehearsing for ever upon earth his most mysterious perfection—Life, and the resurrections of Life—is it indeed true, that poor Kate must never see you more? Mutteringly she put that question to herself. But strange are the caprices of ebb and flow in the deep fountains of human sensibilities. At this very moment, when the utter incapacitation of despair was gathering fast at Kate's heart, a sudden lightening shot far into her spirit, a reflux almost supernatural, from ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... I—if you are best pleased with me. But it is possible for men to love and not to admire. It is a foolish thing to say that reverence must go with love. I know men who have lost their heads and their souls for women whom they knew infamous. But when one admires where one loves, then in the ebb and flow of passion the heart is safe, for admiration holds when ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... moon is the waterless crystal which seeks to complete itself by means of our sea, to quench the thirst of its arid rigidity, and therefore produces ebb ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... and then we meet with a case where hirelings can give no comfort. With the Blagroves, for example, there was nothing to be done but just to watch the child's feeble life ebb away. A miracle only could have saved her; but all the same it was impossible to go away and leave them. They were young people, and ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... recall an occurrence that happened when the schooner was anchored in Carquinez Straits, opposite the soldiers' camp on shore. We were waiting for daylight and a fair wind; the schooner lay anchored at an ebb-tide, and about daylight Ord and I had gone ashore for something. Just as we were pulling off from shore, we heard the loud shouts of the men, and saw them all running down toward the water. Our attention thus drawn, we saw something swimming in the water, and pulled ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... go into every detail. It is a known fact, however, that in 1933, when this administration came into office, the United States Navy had fallen in standing among the navies of the world, in power of ships and in efficiency, to a relatively low ebb. The relative fighting power on the Navy had been greatly diminished by failure to replace ships and equipment, ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... Great 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 ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... suspended, With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills It rests; and still as the divided frame 650 Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood, That ever beat in mystic sympathy With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still: And when two lessening points of light alone Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp 655 Of his faint respiration scarce did stir The stagnate night:—till the minutest ray Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... that—dropped down with the ebb, stepped over the rail, bidding Ulus go his ways with boat and news and trophies. As our shoes clattered on the grimy deck-planks, a close-cropped head bobbed up through the ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... half-east for the long stretch. But for most of us the way to the war lay through a stranger region than that. Years ago (as it seems) on a rainy winter evening, we watched the buoys of the Solent Channel streaming past us all aslope on the strong ebb-tide, and as the Trinity Brothers began to open their eyes for an all-night watch on the south coast, we closed ours ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... disappointed to find that strangers were forbidden by law to hold public meetings, or preach in the assemblies of the Protestants; and although they met with many pious individuals, they thought the life of religion on the whole at a low ebb, and deplored the prevalence of the forms and ceremonies used by the Church, of England. The schools, too, they found to be in a very poor state; the masters deficient in education and badly paid, and the ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... bread, And Fancy must be fed! Now so it chanced—from wet or dry, It boots not how—I know not why— She missed her wonted food; and quickly 15 Poor Fancy stagger'd and grew sickly. Then came a restless state, 'twixt yea and nay, His faith was fix'd, his heart all ebb and flow; Or like a bark, in some half-shelter'd bay, Above its anchor ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of the old Earl of Marlborough as one of the best-liked ministers of James's reign and of the first years of Charles's. "He was a person of great gravity, ability, and integrity; and, as the Caspian Sea is observed neither to ebb nor flow, so his mind did not rise or fall, but continued the same constancy in all conditions." The words are Fuller's, and they probably express the character of the Earl that had come down among his countrymen. [Footnote: ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... his situation was painfully accurate: he was marooned upon what a flood tide made a desert island but which at the ebb was a peninsula—a long and narrow strip of sand, bounded on the west by the broad, shallow channel to the ocean, on the east connected with the mainland by a sandbar which ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... The ebb of the company's prosperity dated from Kate's marriage. Somehow things did not seem to go well after. In the first place the production of Olivette was not a success. Mortimer was drunk, did not know his words, and went 'fluffing all over the shop.' Kate, excited with champagne ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... me of what King Bomba said of his valiant soldiers; dress them in red or in green as you choose, they will take to their heels just the same. One says peace and the other war, but neither means anything, there is only universal servitude, multitudes swept along like the ebb and flow of tides; and this will continue as long as no strong souls raise themselves above the human ocean, as long as no one dares to fight against the fate that sways these ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... insects sang, and delicate, gauzy creatures chirked and throbbed and strummed in cadence, while the star's light faintly silvered the still trees, and distant monotones of the forest made a sustained and steady rushing sound like the settling ebb of shallow seas. That to my conscience I stood committed, I could not doubt. I must draw sword, and draw it soon, too—not for Tory or rebel, not for King or Congress, not for my estates nor for my kin, but for the ancient liberties ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... hive of memory. And no hoard is like any other hoard that ever was or ever will be. The cuckoo calling over the valley, the blackbird fluting in the low boughs in the evening, the solemn majesty of the Abbey, the life of the streets, the ebb and flow of Father Thames—everything whispers to us some secret that it has for no other ear, and touches a chord of memory that echoes in no other brain. Those deeps within us find only a crude expression in the vehicle of words and actions, and our intercourse with men touches but ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... its moments of misery—its periods of reaction—but it has its moments of high delight. When we are invited to contemplate the "evil destinies of men of letters," we ought to be shown the flood-tides as well as the ebb-tides. The tavern gaiety; the brand new coat and lace and sword; the midnight frolics, with jolly companions every one—these, however brief and intermittent, should not be wholly left out of the picture. Of course ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... of others also, the law of wise life is, that the maker of the money shall also be the spender of it, and spend it, approximately, all, before he dies; so that his true ambition as an economist should be, to die, not as rich, but as poor, as possible,[88] calculating the ebb tide of possession in true and calm proportion to the ebb tide of life. Which law, checking the wing of accumulative desire in the mid-volley,[89] and leading to peace of possession and fulness of fruition in ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... looks, lest the soundness of the soul should be infected by the licence of the eyes; and women desired to avouch the purity of their hearts by the modesty of their faces. Then one Ottar, the son of Ebb, kindled with confidence in the greatness either of his own achievements, or of his courtesy and eloquent address, stubbornly and ardently desired to woo the maiden. And though he strove with all the force of his wit to ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... presently, and going to the window looked out on the winter morning; the river was before me broad between outer bank and bank, but it was nearly dead ebb, and there was a wide space of mud on each side of the hurrying stream, driven on the faster as it seemed by the push of the south-west wind. On the other side of the water the few willow-trees left us by the Thames Conservancy looked doubtfully alive against the bleak sky and the row ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... continued playing with a heap of gold before me, and on my putting a fistfull of sequins on a card it came out, and I went paroli and pair de paroli. I won again, and seeing that the bank was at a low ebb I stopped playing. Canano paid me, and told his cashier to get a thousand sequins, and as he was shuffling the cards I heard a cry of, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... The ebb-tide favoured our navigation, and soon brought us within sight of an arm of the sea, stretching eastward, at the extremity of which the mission of St. Jose was built in the year 1797, on a very fertile spot. It is already one of the richest in California, ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... have very unexpected orders to leave Portsmouth. I must save the next tide, if possible. The ships will be ready, for you know what our navy can do when required: but as you know, I have not one atom of stock on board. The flood-tide has made almost an hour, and we must sail at the first of the ebb, as twelve hours' delay may be most serious. Now, tell me—here is the list of what is required; boats will be ready and men in plenty to get it on board;—can you get it ready by ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... done with his existence? In the plenitude of youthful health and strength, was his life to ebb away, like an unreplenished stream, flowing into nothingness? His days became more and more wearisome; the hours hung more and more heavily upon his hands; the feet of time sounded with iron tramp in his ears, yet never appeared ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... when compared with wading laboriously through snow-drifts, in frozen clothes, without anything to eat, and I gladly agreed to it, and credited our guide with more sense and spirit than I had ever before seen exhibited by a Kamchadal. The tide was now only beginning to ebb, and we had three or four hours to spare before it would be low enough to start. This time the Kamchadals improved by catching one of the dogs which had accompanied us from Lesnoi, killing him in a cold-blooded way with their long knives, and offering his lean ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... folk may do without my syle, And do without the shoals of fish it draws To follow and feed on it." This said, we made Our peace with him by means of two small coins, And down we ran and lay upon the reef, And saw the swimming infants, emerald green, In separate shoals, the scarcely turning ebb Bringing them in; while sleek, and not intent On chase, but taking that which came to hand, The full-fed mackerel and the gurnet swam Between; and settling on the polished sea, A thousand snow-white gulls sat ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... so. It's an important picture. Really, Kelly, it's great stuff—a still, turquoise-tinted pool among wet rocks; ebb tide; a corking little mermaid caught in a pool left by the receding waves—all tones and subtle values," he declared, waving ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... of the river is seventeen and a half feet above low water mark. When the tide has flowed twelve feet, the falls are smooth and passable from fifteen to twenty minutes. They are level three and a half hours on the flood, and two and a half on the ebb, and passable four times in twenty-four hours. Above the falls the tides rise four feet. At Maugerville, seventy miles up the river, they rise from one to two feet; at Fredericton from six to ten inches, and are perceivable nine miles above that place, varying ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... the country seemed to have reached their lowest ebb. An attempt was made to float a new issue of continental money at one dollar for forty of the old bills The new obligations speedily sank to the level of the old, and the country was practically bankrupt. The aid of the ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... looking for that. We hope to make a few steady friends, but we're depending on the ebb and flow." Her colour was mounting, and had not Joe been so uncomfortable he would have seen how pretty she was. But he sank deeper and deeper into a sullen and unreasoning discomfort. The two had evidently had considerable ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... high tide, the sea reappears triumphantly, dashing and leaping, in clouds of spray, through the channel in the sand—making the waters of the Pool brackish—now, threatening to swell them anew to overflowing—and now, at the ebb, leaving them to empty themselves again, in the manner of a great tidal river. No new change takes place, until a storm from the south-west comes on; and then, fresh masses of sand and shingle are forced ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... ebb and flow of men in the office, presumably professional cleaners. They came and went, or sat along the walls, waiting. A large percentage were foreigners but the clerks proved to be accomplished linguists. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... boom in Nevada began to ebb, and there was an exodus of men and women, mostly discouraged and "broke," to San Francisco. As Mrs. Osbourne had arranged to meet her husband in that city, she decided to join some of her friends in their removal ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... himself. This epigram remained at the time a profound secret to Lord Oldborough. Whilst Cunningham was going with a prosperous gale, it was not heard of; but it worked round, according to the manoeuvres of courts, just by the time the tide of favour began to ebb. Lord Oldborough, dissatisfied with one of Cunningham's despatches, was heard to say, as he folded ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... uneasiness possessed me, and I found it difficult to concentrate on the affairs I had in hand. I felt premonitions, which I tried in vain to suppress, that the tide of the philosophy of power and might were starting to ebb: I scented vague calamities ahead, calamities I associated with Krebs; and when I went out to the Club for lunch this sense of uneasiness, instead of being dissipated, was increased. Dickinson ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... form an even surface upon it for the foundation of the west main pier. It used to be at this point, where the Strait was narrowest, that horned cattle were driven down, preparatory to swimming them across the channel to the Caernarvon side, when the tide was weak and at its lowest ebb. The cattle were, nevertheless, often carried away, the current being too strong for the animals to ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... happened to have more than Grant's men, and every man must have alike. The ringleader, unfortunately for himself, had lately fired at a dead lion, to astonish the Unyoro, and his chum had fired a salute, which was contrary to orders; for ammunition was at a low ebb, and I had done everything in my power to nurse it. Therefore, as a warning to the others, the guns of these two were confiscated, and a caution given that any gun in future let off, either by design or accident, would ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... surplus labor army being established, there remains to be established the economic necessity for the surplus labor army. The simplest and most obvious need is that brought about by the fluctuation of production. If, when production is at low ebb, all men are at work, it necessarily follows that when production increases there will be no men to do the increased work. This may seem almost childish, and, if not childish, at least easily remedied. At low ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London
... afternoon the wind fell, and we lay becalmed, floating down Channel with the ebb. The smugglers swore terribly at the delay, as they were in a hurry to get over ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... was spent in London, near Westminster, where the brilliant court of Edward was visible to the favored ones; and near the Thames, where the world's commerce, then beginning to ebb and flow with the tides, might be seen of every man. His father was a vintner, or wine merchant, who had enough influence at court to obtain for his son a place in the house of the Princess Elizabeth. Behold ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... were lusterless, his two rough hands clenched nervously. Just for one weak moment he longed for forgetfulness. He longed to shut out those hideous visions with which he was pursued. He longed for peace, for rest from the dull aching of his poor torn heart. His courage was at a low ebb. Something of the nature of the hour had got hold of him. It was sundown. There was the long black night between him and the morrow. He felt so ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... baggage from the tide, and the water of the river was too salty to be used; but the waves increasing so much that we could not move from the spot with safety, we fixed ourselves on the beach left by the ebb-tide, and, raising the baggage on poles, passed a disagreeable night, the rain during the day having wet us completely, as, indeed, we had been for ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... Indies, rose on the ruins of a house of Our Lady in that beautiful valley through which the Thames, not yet defiled by the precincts of a great capital, nor rising and falling with the flow and ebb of the sea, rolls under woods of beech round the gentle hills of Berkshire. Beneath the stately saloon, adorned by Italian pencils, was a subterraneous vault, in which the bones of ancient monks had sometimes been found. In this dark chamber ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... are situated from which ships obtain water. At first sight it appears not a little remarkable that the fresh water should regularly ebb and flow with the tides; and it has even been imagined that sand has the power of filtering the salt from the sea-water. These ebbing wells are common on some of the low islands in the West Indies. The compressed sand, ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin |
