"Debris" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that the Government might make a claim upon it, there was no particular necessity for secrecy, so we had up a man from the mines near by with drills and dynamite, who speedily shattered the block into a million pieces, more or less. Alas! there was no trace in its debris of 'pay dirt,' as the western miner puts it. While the dynamite expert was on the spot, we induced him to shatter the anvil as well as the block of cement, and then the workman, doubtless thinking the new earl was as insane as the old one had ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... instance, we may suppose that the stream, after flowing for a long period at one level, cut its way down to an inferior suite of caverns, and, flowing through them for centuries, choked them up with debris; after which it rose once more to its original higher level: just as in the Mountain Limestone district of Yorkshire some rivers, habitually absorbed by a "swallow hole," are occasionally unable to discharge all their water through it; in which case they rise and rush through ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... good feeding ground, become the food of these shells. We do not find that the sand mixed with seaweed has been petrified, because the weed which was mingled with it has shrunk away, and this the Po shows us every day in the debris of its banks. ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... men of leisure began to collect these treasures. Some made their way into Egypt and Palestine, and there uncovered temples long buried in sands and ruins and all covered with debris. From time to time old missals were found in deserted monasteries, marbles were digged up in buried palaces. Men came back from their journeys with some lovely terra cotta, some ivory or bronze, some painting by an old master, whose beauty had been hidden for centuries ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... in a tornado. The debris of past resolutions was flung high, and swirled and dashed in a wild tumult. There was nothing tangible in his reasoning, nothing plain in his sight. A mist was before his eyes, a fog was over his reason. Only there was mother, with those ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... were cropping the scanty growth. Behind them the sharp elbow of the mountain ascended, scarred and furrowed and littered with rocky debris. Before them the hill sloped for a few rods and levelled into a narrow plateau, across which, eastward and westward, the railway, tired from its long twisting climb up the mountain, seemed to pause for a moment and gasp for breath before beginning its descent. Beyond ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... building fished chairs, dry goods boxes and a quantity of other floating property from the flood. The debris swept down the main business street with such force that every plate glass ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... the man said. House, trees, shrubs, even the grass had been swept away by the fierce flames. Within the walls which had secluded the place from the world was a blackened space covered with debris. Where the house had stood was a mound of twisted iron girders, charred beams and broken slates. And everywhere the wind was lifting the fine gray ashes and scattering them abroad, as though in sorrow for the destruction of the previous night. Jennings took all this ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... hundred feet high. Its peaks and precipices fell, here by rough, giant steps, here stark and sheer over broad faces of granite, where only weeds and saplings of mountain ash and thorn could find a foothold. The bottom was one vast litter of stone and fern, where foxgloves nodded above the masses of debris and wild things made their homes. Water fell over many a granite shelf and in the desolation lay great and ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... reached down like long white paws. Nay, even a monstrous black boulder as large as a house lay stranded among the blocks of ice and stood on end so that no snow could stick to its sides. And even larger ones which one saw only later were fast in the ice and skirted the glacier like a wall of debris. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... cathedral and municipal authorities were far from friendly to each other. Dr. Oliver writes of the ruins in his day that they "have disappeared with the exception of part of a fluted column at the west corner of the carpenter's shop." With the debris small and mean houses were built. On the 30th of October, 1657, we are given a hint as to what may have been the meaning of this wanton destruction. Apparently the ground set apart for "the convenience of the studious ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Exeter - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Percy Addleshaw
... of bushes or overhanging branches at heights of from four to twenty feet, the nests being made of rootlets, fibres, fine grasses, etc., and partially suspended from the branch; they are quite shallow and loosely constructed and often appear more like a bunch of debris deposited in the fork by the wind than like the creation of a bird. Their three or four eggs are buffy, spotted or specked with brown; size .75 ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... mountain sides, bringing with it first good soil and then subsoil, stones and rock. The hills eventually become those peaked deserts the queer look of which must have puzzled many students of Japanese pictures. The debris washed away is carried into the rivers, along with trees from the lower slopes, and the level of the river beds is raised. Because there is less space in the river beds for water the rivers overflow their banks, and disastrous floods take place. The farmers, the local authorities and the State raise ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... on every side floes heaped up their debris on each other, and pinnacles forced into collision were ground into common ruin. Now shut out from view in darkness and storm, and now close at hand in the multitudinous shiftings of the ice, the immovable and gigantic buttresses ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... overlooking the beach was honeycombed with untidy dug-outs; the beach itself rough and dirty, the water still dirtier, clay-coloured and coated with a thick scum of straw, grain, and other light debris from the barges that were unloading—all that could honestly be said in its favour was that it was wet. After a time the officers discovered that it was worth the forty-minutes walk to bathe at a cleaner and more attractive beach, ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... or deposit consisting of the great majority of the contained bacteria and leucocytes, together with adventitious matter, such as dirt, hair, epithelial cells, faecal debris, etc. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... however, it was found that after passing a certain point the footpath was almost unencumbered by volcanic debris. This was owing to the protection afforded to it by the cone of Rakata, and the almost overhanging nature of some of the cliffs on that side of the mountain; still the track was bad enough, and in places so rugged, that Winnie, vigorous ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... wormed his way through the bushes until he was within reach of the ruined plot. He stretched out his hand and pulled in a handful of the debris, examined it carefully and stuffed it ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... companion sorrowfully, but the lump in my throat prevented me from making any reply. I could only stand and stare at the burning debris which formed the funeral pile of my ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... reading, I walked slowly round the room, examining the pictures of celebrated criminals with which every wall was adorned. Finally, in my aimless perambulation, I came to the mantelpiece. A litter of pipes, tobacco-pouches, syringes, penknives, revolver-cartridges, and other debris was scattered over it. In the midst of these was a small black and white ivory box with a sliding lid. It was a neat little thing, and I had stretched out my hand to examine it more ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mine, and was rushing from the room when I called out: "Come back! Come back and dress. We've had an earthquake and an awful one, but somehow I feel the worst of it is over." Never did we more quickly get into our clothing and step outside. The hallway and rooms were piled with debris. Plaster, laths, broken pictures, and furniture lay in shapeless confusion on every hand. We came to the staircase. Part was gone; every step was likewise covered with the ruins of broken ceiling ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... look at his dwarfed attenuated form to see this. He gets joined by a few more bold spirits and they struggle on together, their network of roots stopping abundance of mud, and by good chance now and then a consignment of miscellaneous debris of palm leaves, or a floating tree-trunk, but they always die before they attain any considerable height. Still even in death they collect. Their bare white stems remaining like a net gripped in the mud, so that these pioneer mangrove heroes may be said to have laid down ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... so quickly this afternoon that I had no chance to thank you, but the echoes of that discharge penetrated as far as my library. Also, I have viewed the debris. What on earth did you do to poor Sterry? Watching the purposeful set of your shoulders as you strode toward the carriage house, I was filled with sudden compunction. I did not want the man murdered, merely reasoned with. I am afraid ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... cut the key log almost through and the force of the water and debris behind the boom had broken it. The man barely escaped disaster by reason of agile legs and sharp caulks on ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... sharp to the right, and as the "hog back" dropped behind us, we found ourselves out on the steep side of a mountain, the perpendicular cliff over us to the right, the river roaring savagely far down below our left, and sheets of water glazing the footing we could find among the boulders and debris. Hardly could the ponies keep from slipping sideways on the slope, as we proceeded farther and farther from the solidity of the ridge behind us, we experienced the illusion of venturing out on a tight rope over abysses of space. Even the feeling ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... informed that a shell had gone through the roof outside of the room I had vacated, and the ceiling and floor of the bedroom of one of the officers who lived below. He was covered with dust and debris, his lights went out, but he calmly stepped through the window. "You'd best have your dinner early, sir," I was told by the waiter on my return. "Last night a lady had her soup up-stairs, her chicken in the office, and her coffee in the cellar." It is worth while noting that ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of Garcide & Castle went to pieces, Peter Castle stood by the wreck to the end, patching it with his last dollar. But the wreck broke up, and he drifted piteously with the debris until a kindly current carried him into the last harbor of all—the port of ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... up from the floor. And now she could see him all around her—on top the hill of rags, on top the mountain of iron, amid the bursting bags of waste paper—blinking down as he sat enthroned upon the debris—the twisted, broken, discarded things of the city that people call the Devil's Own. "These are mine!" he called. "And you belong to the debris. You are one of the broken, useless things." From all points he moved toward her. She could ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the perpendicular face of the horizontal strata of the sandstone rock. The glacis is formed of a bed of basalt in all stages of decomposition, with which this, like the other sandstone hills of Central India, was once covered, and of the debris and chippings of the rocks above. The walls are raised a certain uniform height all round upon the verge of the precipice, and being thus made to correspond with the edge of the rock, the line is ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... kitchen he found signs of this period of habitation. On a shelf in a cupboard, hidden by a debris of paper and empty boxes, he came upon two cans evidently overlooked. He took them to the window, threw back the shutter, and saw they contained tomatoes and cherries. This heartened him to new efforts ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... the debris-cluttered street. Cable cars stood here and there, half twisted from the tracks, pavements were littered with bricks from fallen chimneys, bits of window glass. Men and women in various degrees of dishabille, were issuing from doorways. As he mounted higher, Frank saw smoke ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... obscurity and dimness of the hanging precipice and the shattering fall. Again, see how the same fractures just upon the edge take place with the central cliff above the right-hand fall, and how the force of the water is told us by the confusion of debris accumulated in its channel. In fact, the great quality about Turner's drawings which more especially proves their transcendent truth, is the capability they afford us of reasoning on past and future phenomena, just as if we had the actual rocks before us; for this indicates not that ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... they know what they were building! For they and their kind all over America working in the darkness of their own selfish desires, were laying footing stones—quite substantial yet necessary—for the structure of a growing civilization which in its time, stripped of its scaffolding and extraneous debris, was to stand among the nations of the earth as a tower of righteousness in a ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... The train still ruthlessly clattered and shook and swayed and thundered; and weary lords, ladies and financiers had read all the illustrated magazines and six-penny novels in existence, and they lolled exhausted and bored amid the debris of literature and light refreshments. Then the speed of the convoy slackened, and Audrey, looking forth, saw a pale cathedral dome resting aloft amid dark clouds. It was a magical glimpse, and it was the first glimpse ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... had been conscious in my life, and I do not scruple to say that it set me trembling and shaking and left me with a curious sense of emptiness and nausea. But the old doggy just cocked his eye towards the invisible roof and looked down at the heap of debris, and saying, "That stuck up till it couldn't stuck up no longer," went on quite ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... Sergeant Whitehead went with them, too; at least he was near there a short time before, and I never saw him or any of the gun crew again. The only living soul near that spot was Royston, dragging himself out from under a pile of debris and covered with mud and blood, his face horribly swollen to twice its normal size, blinded ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... victory for the French. The king had been with the duke and was borne back by the flying host, the two bodies of fugitives finally coalescing. In that one fatal day Frederick William had lost his army and placed his kingdom in jeopardy. "They can do nothing but gather up the debris," said Napoleon. ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... these marvels of brush and pencil, scrutinizing each one in turn, his sense of repulsion for the debris on the floor gave way to a feeling of enthusiasm. Not only were the sketches far superior to any he had ever seen, but the way in which they were done and the uses of the several mediums were a revelation to him. It was only when Fog-horn Cranch's big voice roused ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... and then goes plunging downwards, sticking out the weak counterpoise of its wheeled tail. If it comes to a house or a tree or a wall or such-like obstruction it rams against it so as to bring all its weight to bear upon it—it weighs some tons—and then climbs over the debris. I saw it, and incredulous soldiers of experience watched it at the same time, cross trenches and wallow amazingly through muddy exaggerations of small holes. Then ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... But perhaps the most terrifying thing about her aspect was her complete indifference to it. A recollection suddenly came to Mr. Lanley of a railway accident that he and Adelaide had been in. He had seen her stepping toward him through the debris, buttoning her gloves. She was far beyond such ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... stove, her hands upon her knees. Dubos had been in the house when it had fallen. Madame Lelanne had discovered him pinned against a wall underneath a great oak beam that had withstood the falling debris. His beard had been burnt off, but otherwise he had ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... yolking oxen, dragged the debris into a great heap. Then the men set to work with their spades, and roughly levelled the ground. I was getting back to my old self, and Jobson's spirit was ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... left, was the janitor's box with bird-cages at the windows. On that side rose, under a green trellis, the mansard of the neighboring house. A sculptor's studio backed on it its glass-covered roof, which showed plaster figures asleep in the dust. At the right, the wall that closed the yard bore debris of monuments, broken bases of columnettes. In the rear, the house, not very large, showed the six windows of its facade, half hidden by vines ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... from Ghizr post there was a steep ascent where the road twisted and curled among a mass of debris fallen from the cliffs above, and in one place the ponies had to be helped through a narrow passage between two fallen boulders. About midday I caught up the tail of the troops, who were already past ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... the last straw! She put the cat out, yowling but unharmed, and silently cleared away the debris. Then, when the bombardment was over, she put on her bonnet and went out. She came back an hour later, to find the Twins sitting, one on each side of their Father, holding his hands, and all three the picture of despair. Mother Meraut stood before them, her ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... harbingers. It was near enough spring for them to go penny-hunting when the skating ball dropped at the park. In the milliners' windows Easter hats, grave, gay and jubilant, blossomed. There were green patches among the sidewalk debris of the grocers. On a third-story window-sill the first elbow cushion of the season—old gold stripes on a crimson ground—supported the kimonoed arms of a pensive brunette. The wind blew cold from the East River, but the sparrows were flying to the eaves with straws. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... as she went to work, but just before she reached the village she saw a heap of rubbish by the side of the road and amongst the debris she noticed some tin cans which had been used for potted meat, fish and vegetables. There were different shapes, some large, some ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... drift in the Arctic seas was occupying the attention of explorers at this time. A ship, the Jeannette, had been wrecked in 1881 off the coast of Siberia, and three years later the debris from the wreck had been washed up on the south-west coast of Greenland. So it occurred to Nansen that a current must flow across the North Pole from Behring Sea on one side to the Atlantic Ocean on the other. His idea was therefore to build a ship as strong as possible ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... he came upon scattered bones where the wolves had made a kill. The debris had been a caribou calf an hour before, squawking and running and very much alive. He contemplated the bones, clean-picked and polished, pink with the cell-life in them which had not yet died. Could it possibly be that he might be that ere ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... down some steps in front of the cathedral, which was the basilica, to the Piazza Garibaldi, and it has been supposed that this open space belonged to a terrace below the Corso. But there was no lower terrace there. The upper part of the forum simply has been more deeply buried in debris than the lower part. ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... lava, is about sixty feet; and its thickness, although varying much from the inequalities of the underlying formation, may be estimated at about twenty feet. It consists of quite white calcareous matter, partly composed of organic debris, and partly of a substance which may be aptly compared in appearance with mortar. Fragments of rock and pebbles are scattered throughout this bed, often forming, especially in the lower part, a conglomerate. Many of the fragments ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... an hour in the two lower stories, I climbed a crooked flight of stone steps, half blocked up with debris from a shattered parapet above, and came out on the flat roof of the highest and largest of the three cubes that together make up the fortress. It was a spacious battlemented floor, of rectangular but irregular outline, having an extreme length of perhaps one hundred and fifty feet, ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... ones from which the fine specimens are to be and have been obtained are exposed by the railroad cutting about a thousand feet north of the station at West Paterson, and on the west side of the rails. Near or below the beds is a small pile of debris, prominent by being the only one in the vicinity near the rails. In this loose rock and the veins which are by this description readily found and identified, they are about three inches in thickness, and in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 363, December 16, 1882 • Various
... the debris of belated fugitives, carts, and dead bodies of horses and men; and where houses had had water-supplies there were pools of water and running springs from the ruptured pipes. In unscorched fields horses and cattle still fed peacefully. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... the mediaeval, monkish mind. It was not until the tenth century that the representations of the Crucifixion showed Our Lord as dead; it was much later before the emphasis was laid on agony and despair. Once from among the debris of the convent in Voormezeele I rescued such a representation of the Body of Christ, limbs gone, broken arms outstretched, and it seemed a symbol. But that is not the final truth, defeat and despair. The cross-road shrines would not look down ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... barrier across the street, constructed of fencing torn from neighbouring gardens, an upturned delivery wagon, a very ugly and very savage-looking field harrow commandeered from a neighbouring market garden, with wicked-looking, protruding teeth and other debris of varied material, but all helping to produce a most effective barricade. Silently the Chief stood for a few moments, gazing at the obstruction. A curious, ominous growl of laughter ran through the mob. Then came a sharp ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... "telescope," and being thus adjustable, lent its proportions to any sized burden imposed upon it. Into this the girl tossed a few articles selected from the rummage on the table, a pair of shoes gathered from more debris in a corner, and on top a sweater and skirt, taken from a peg on the door. All together this composed rather a ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... and roared as the dried and tinderlike debris was piled upon it. The little room was like the stoke-hole of a steamer and the sweat ran down the faces of the two men; but still the one stooped and worked, while the other sat watching him with a set face. A thick, fat smoke oozed ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Neolithic period. However, these animals may have still been nearly half wild. It is not until the period of the Lake Dwellings of Switzerland that we can discriminate between the wild animals and those that have been tamed. In the Lake Dwelling debris are found the bones of the wild bull, or urus, of Europe. Probably this large, long-horned animal was then in a wild state, and had been hunted for food. Alongside of these remains are those of a small, short-horned animal, supposed ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... hamlets, large irregular circles of heavy, unwrought stones were observed in open fields, or near to some mounds of grass grown earth, perhaps covering the remains of former shrines. These seemed of the same character and called to mind the ancient debris which still exists at Stonehenge, and undoubtedly marked the spot of ancient sacrifice. Large flocks of goats tended by herdsmen were distributed over the plains, and so level is the country that the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... extending from Cape San Lucas to the Bay of Todos Santos, in lat. 32 deg. N., on the Pacific, and to the mouth of the Colorado on the Gulf side, is a pile of volcanic debris and scoriae. Much of the surface is still heated by subterranean fires. No craters are in action; but hot springs of water and bitumen, and frequent earthquakes, and the scorched face of the whole region, demonstrate it to be a mere mass upheaved from the sea, and ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... against the sky, there was a single trail full of loose, shaly rocks that mounted up through a notch in the rim. They started up in silence, Rimrock leading the way and Hassayamp puffing along behind; but as they neared the heights, where the shattered base of the butte rose up from the mass of fallen debris, Rimrock forged ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... Austrum Libya deserta fuerunt; ultraque Troglodyta, nunc Berdoa desertum. Hos tegit ab Austro Ater mons, et trans eum Garamantes populi clari, nunc Borno regnum. Caput gentis fuit Garama, quam hodieque eodem nomine exstare tradunt. Debris inclyta affuso fonte, cujus aqua ex coelesti quidem vertigine mutant qualitatem, at controversa siderum disciplina; quidpe qui friget calore, calet frigore; a medio scilicet die ad noctem mediam aquis ferventibus, totidemque horis ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... aside and in its place put one of the desired color, moved the new figure up to the old and there superposed it. With G. the new colors seemed of new material and there was felt to be an accumulation about the center, of old color-material. Then he located the square outside of this imaginary debris and began again. H. found that the colors of his own experiments, in which he used color squares framed in black, came to his mind at the names of the desired colors, and the association soon gave him the figure also. I. located the new colors around the presented ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... is true that a glad, golden sunshine floods the earth at times, but what of that, when sullied, muddy streams are rushing and bubbling on with a roaring speed, plunging into hollow drains at every street-corner; when sulky foot-passengers pick their uncomfortable way through all the debris of what had been the beauty of the dead season. Fashionable young men, with the extremities of their expensive tweeds turned carefully up, choose their steps over the treacherous crossways, leaning upon their silk umbrellas with an unfeigned ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... current in every Aryan household have a common origin with the classic legends of gods and heroes, which formerly were alone thought worthy of the student's serious attention. These stories—some of them familiar to us in infancy, others the delight of our maturer years—constitute the debris, or alluvium, brought down by the stream of tradition from the distant highlands of ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... torture. Men, women and children were struggling helplessly in the water and trying in vain to reach the higher benches. At the next moment the water receded and carried many back struggling into the channel of the river. Hias Peter found himself, with others, struggling among logs, timbers and debris of every description. Just before the water receded he saw his wife and heard her yell for help. He seized her skirt and dragged her to safety, clinging to a friendly sage brush. For a moment Peter thought that, so far as he was ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... mechanically and hopelessly into whatever receptacle came first to hand. I do not wish to renew the moments of vehemence and exasperation when our Precious Ones, who really seemed to enjoy it all, clattered about among the debris, or the vague appreciation of suicide that was born within me when, in the midst of my despair, the Little Woman suggested that after all she was afraid we were making a mistake in leaving our little home where we had ...
— The Van Dwellers - A Strenuous Quest for a Home • Albert Bigelow Paine
... for you," promised the warden as his deputy went off to look for a rat. A keeper was summoned with a broom, and brushed out the cell. It did not take long, for it was very clean. Most of the debris was cigarette ash and scraps of paper and tobacco. And it was in this debris, carefully poked over with a lead pencil, that a needle ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... as fast as the sea rose. But the growth would take place almost exclusively around the circumference of the reef, this being the only region in which the coral polypes would find the conditions favourable for their existence. The bottom of the lagoon would be raised, in the main, only by the coral debris and coral mud, formed in the manner already described; consequently, the margins of the reef would rise faster than the bottom, or, in other words, the lagoon would constantly become deeper. And, at the same time, it would gradually increase ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the lamp-shade and made a close examination of the scraps of paper, matches, and other debris that lay in the grate and on the hearth. I took up a copper vase from the mantelpiece, and was examining it curiously, when he turned, a strange expression upon ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... length of life of man prevents his appreciation of this fact, it is certain that the soil of a plain unceasingly acquires a real increase in its elevation in proportion as it is covered with different plants and animals. Indeed the debris successively heaped up for numerous generations of all these beings which have by turns perished, and which, as the result of the action of their organs, have, during the course of this life, given rise to combinations which would never have existed without this means, most of the principles ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... the author lays stress on the absence of certain elements in the ash of coals, which ought to be present, on the assumption that the carbon has been derived from plant tissues. If coal consists of altered vegetable debris, we ought to find a certain amount of alkalies and phosphoric acid in its ash. Had such substances ever been present, it is difficult to understand how they could all have been removed by the solvent action of water. (Rigaud's views are given ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... sequestrated his estate, and as soon as practicable was going through the courts as an insolvent. The personal estate allowed him from the debris of his wealth he intended to settle on his aunts, and he hoped it might be sufficient to support them. Himself, he had the same prospects as the ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Chimpurazu—the mountain of snow—is very appropriate.[70] It is a stirring thought that this mountain, now mantled with snow, once gleamed with volcanic fires. There is a hot spring on the north side, and an immense amount of debris covers the slope below the snow-limit, consisting chiefly of fine-grained, iron-stained trachyte and coarse porphyroid gray trachyte; very rarely a dark vitreous trachyte. Chimborazo is very likely not a solid mountain: trachytic volcanoes are supposed to be full of cavities. Bouguer found ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... The debris of all these papers he caused to be removed by the housemaid, and this was hardly done when his wife came in ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... forehead, but no other serious injury that could be seen. If he had struck sidewise, it would not have mattered much whether it was water or rock that he struck; but his leap had carried him beyond the debris at the cliff's foot, and, coming down perfectly straight as he did, ten feet deeper water would have let him off little the worse. As it was, he was unconscious for some time. When he came to himself he was extremely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... met their eyes. The explosion had wrecked the roof and sides of the narrow space. Heaps of broken rock and other debris choked the passage. Beneath one of the lumps projected the feet of a man. Beyond that the boys could dimly see the forms of one or two others. It seemed that several men had been ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... a canter down the long declining trail which ran straight into the valley above which Devil's Hill reared its ugly head. And as they went the signs of the storm lay everywhere about them. Their path was strewn with debris. The havoc was stupendous. Tree trunks were lying about like scattered nine-pins. Riven trunks, split like match-wood by the lightning, stood beside the trail, gaunt and hopeless. Partially-severed limbs hung drooping, their weeping foliage appealing ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Lane, extending some distance, was a broad unbroken expanse of water leading to the dam. A tremendous roar issued from that fall. The muddy spray and mist rose high. To drift over there would be fatal. Logs and pieces of debris were kept rolling there for hours before some vagary of current caught ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... these impetuous and contrary winds, during which I had felt a great degree of cold, I mounted perpendicularly. The cold became excessive. Being hungry I ate a morsel of cake. I wished to drink, but in searching the car nothing was to be seen but the debris of bottles and glasses, which my assailant had left behind him when we were about to depart. Afterwards all was so calm that nothing could be seen or heard. The silence became appalling, and to add to my ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... fire to a great quantity of stores and arms, which they had been unable to carry away with them, and which were still burning, and were partially destroyed. I observed also great numbers of pikes and pikeheads amongst the debris. ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... in wounds of different parts of the hairy scalp, so little variation exists in the relative density and structure of the skin, that, in spite of the want of external support at the aperture of exit, it is often difficult to discriminate offhand the two apertures, if neither bone nor brain debris ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... at once and said, "No, the plans were changed. We had to fit in some kind of new meteor-repelling gear for operating in the planetary debris belt." ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... There is a smell of green wood, of fresh paint, of glistening varnish, and in the dust of the garrets, on the rickety stairways where the common people deposit all the mud through which they have tramped, chips of rosewood are strewn about, clippings of satin and velvet, bits of tinsel, all the debris of the treasures employed to dazzle childish eyes. Then the shop-windows array themselves. Behind the transparent glass the gilt binding of gift-books ascends like a gleaming wave under the gas-lights, rich stuffs of kaleidoscopic, tempting hues ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... streams, get safe away to sea. From Flamborough Head, in Yorkshire, all down the Lincolnshire coast, the land is falling, falling for ever into the waves; and swept southward by tide and current, the debris turns into the Wash between Lincolnshire and Norfolk, there to repose, as ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... after treaties had been made with the Indians and reserves allotted to them, Fort Walsh was abandoned and dismantled, as it had served its purpose. A peaceful ranch now occupies the site, but though the debris of the old fort is strewed on the plain, the record of the men who made their headquarters there and in similar places is an imperishable bulwark and citadel in the life of our Dominion. Other posts were established about this period, such as Fort Calgary, Fort Saskatchewan, ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... the multiplication of human wants and the study of antiquity, sought to restore the buried statues with the long-neglected literature and laws. It was in sculptured marbles that enthusiasm was most marked. These were found in abundance in various parts of Italy whenever the vast debris of the ancient magnificence was removed, and were universally admired and prized by popes, cardinals, and princes, and formed the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... the wrecks. But over their debris, Mercury and Venus—the busy season and the gay season—ran lightly, hand in hand. Men getting money and women squandering it. Whole nights in the ball-room. Gold pouring in at the hopper and out at the spout,—Carondelet street emptying like a yellow river ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... the result of discouragement, of cowardice, I may say, of the tearing-down process of the theological structure—built of debris from many ruins on which my conception of Christianity rested, I lost all faith. For many weeks I did not enter the church, as you yourself must know. Then, when I had given up all hope, through certain incidents and certain persona, a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... strong party of the enemy, the stones came crashing and thundering down, in spite of the firing kept up by the covering sections, whose rifle-bullets spattered and splashed upon the rocks, and often started tiny avalanches of weathered debris. ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... been coloured red. AMIRANTES Islands: The small islands of this neighbouring group, according to the MS. account of them by Captain F. Moresby, are situated on an extensive bank; they consist of the debris of corals and shells; are only about twenty feet in height, and are environed by reefs, some attached to the shore, and some rather distant from it.—I have taken great pains to procure plans and information regarding the several islands lying between S.E. and S.W. of ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... how bad you are for dainties! There; do you hear that? That's the old gentleman;" and then, as the voice of Mr. Mollett senior was heard abusing the car-driver, Miss O'Dwyer smoothed her apron, put her hands to her side hair, and removed the debris ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... to do. Ashamed of herself, she threw the poker aside, and taking advantage of Mr. Stubbins's crouching position, she thrust him suddenly backward into the closet. The manoeuver was a brilliant one, for while Mr. Stubbins was unsteadily separating himself from the debris into which he had been cast, Lovey Mary slammed the door and locked it. Then she picked up Tommy and fled out of the ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... have thought not the best part of it. There is the south of France, with Avignon, the heart of Provence, seat of the French papacy six hundred years ago, the metropolis of Christendom before the Midi was a region—Paris yet a village, and Rome struggling out of the debris of the ages—with Arles and Nimes, and, above all, Tarascon, the home of the immortal Tartarin, for next-door neighbors. They are all hard by Marseilles. But Avignon ever most caught my fancy, for there the ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... jester; the soldier was midway on the bridge, when it sank suddenly to one side. A moment it acted as a dam, then bridge, horse and rider were swept away with a crash and carried downward with the driving flood. Vainly the trooper sought to turn his steed toward the shore; the debris from the structure soon swept him from his saddle. Striking out strongly, he succeeded in catching a trailing branch from a tree on the bank, but the torrent gripped his body fiercely, and, after a desperate struggle, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... our reviews of Chestertonian romance. There remains yet The Flying Inn, which shall be duly considered along with the other debris of its author. In summing up, it may be said of Chesterton that at his best he invented new possibilities of romance and a new and hearty laugh. It may be said of the decadents of the eighteen nineties, that if their motto wasn't "Let's all go bad," it ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... embroidered at the ends with gold thread. A dish of fried fish was placed on the table for the first course: each helped herself to one, laying it on the table before her (we had no plates, knives or forks), picking it to pieces and eating it with her fingers. When this was ended the debris was thrown on the platter and removed, the table wiped off, and a dish of rice and mutton brought: for this we had spoons, but all ate from the dish. Then came an immense cauliflower covered thick ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... the spring, the land, amid cities, Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peeped from the ground, spotting the gray debris, Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass, Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields up-risen, Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards, Carrying a ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... the sea in the black open. We traversed a waste of shattered lava; spires, ravines, well-holes showing the entrance to vast subterranean vaults in whose profundities our horse-hooves doubtless echoed. The whole was clothed with stone fiorituri fantastically fashioned, like debris from the workshop of some brutal sculptor: dog's heads, devils, stone trees, and gargoyles broken in the making. From a distance, so intricate was the detail, the side of a hummock wore the appearance of some coarse and dingy sort of coral, or a scorched growth of heather. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... This group of cave-dwellings—and vestiges thereof are still visible at this day—lay in a re-entering angle formed by the cliffs, which overhang in such a manner as to form a sheltered nook open to the south. Ascent to their base is quite steep, and great heaps of debris cover the slope. The gorge is narrow, a dense thicket interspersed with pine-trees lines the course of the brook, and the declivity forming the southern border of the Rito approaches the bottom in rocky steps, traversed laterally by ledges overgrown ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... upper for twelve bodies.[667] It is thought that originally the cubic mass, which is all that now remains, was surmounted by a pyramidical roof, many stones from which were found by M. Renan among the debris that were scattered around. The height of the monument was thus increased by perhaps one-half, and did not fall much short of sixty-five feet.[668] The cornice, which is now seen on one side only, and which is there imperfect, originally, no doubt, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... I couldn't get them, I'd crumble the earth away—bury them. They're underneath the debris, Kay, a mile deep, buried, beneath the impalpable powder that represented the inorganic salts and minerals of the earth. They'll never get out of that. Protoplasm needs oxygen. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... for the moment to Italy north of the Apennines, we shall find that in the old province of Liguria the vicar of the prefect of the praetorium had fled from Milan to Genoa, and that about that city the debris of the old province was slowly re-assembling itself. In Venetia we shall find that the governor had departed to Grado, and about this town as a centre the eastern part of the old province was gathered. The western part of that province, ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... with still greater ease the erosion of their immediate surroundings. On the other hand, if the precipitation in the arid surroundings should increase, the wearing down of the side walls would for a time—till covered by debris and vegetation—go on more rapidly till, instead of Canyons of the Colorado River type, there would be deep, sharp valleys, or wide valleys, according to the amount of difference between the precipitation of the low lands and the high. Where the two were nearly the same, that is, a balance of ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... the lips of my boys, however, I often gained knowledge of deeds of magnificent bravery which cannot be surpassed by any which adorn the pages of history. These jewels have lain undiscovered among the debris of the war. Would I could reclaim them all. Seen in the aggregate, they would even outshine the glory already known and visible. Finding memory a treacherous guide while searching for these hidden treasures, I have called upon my comrades to aid me in clearing away the dust and ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... door is flanked and roofed by three large oblong sheets of gray rock, whose form seems not to be considered of the slightest consequence. Those which form the cheeks of the windows are generally selected with more care from the debris of some rock, which is naturally smooth and polished, after being subjected to the weather, such as granite or syenite. The window itself is narrow and deep set; in the better sort of cottages, latticed, but with no affectation of sweetbrier or eglantine about it. It may be observed of ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... from a heavy hand hurled him against a side wall like a battering-ram. The breath was driven out of his lungs. Dizzily he plunged forward to his hands and knees among the debris on the floor. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... directing its construction in a business way. Now and then some one would ascend its airy stair to test its firmness; others crawled beneath to wedge its slim supports, or carry away the falling debris. ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... frappent, mais encore les evenemens les plus simples, dont les causes sont les plus faciles a connaitre pour quiconque a pu les mediter. En un mot, l'homme a toujours respecte les causes inconnues des effets surprenans, que son ignorance l'empechait de demeler. Ce fut sur les debris de la nature que les hommes eleverent le colosse ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... were many of them beaten in as with an axe. The furniture was mostly destroyed, bureaus, desks, closets, receptacles of all kinds had been broken open, and their contents stolen or rendered worthless; the carpets, soaked with a trampled conglomerate of mud and water, oil and filth, the debris left by the feet of the maddened, howling crowd, were entirely ruined; beds and bedding, mirrors, and smaller articles had been carried away, the grand piano had had a fire kindled on the key-board, as had the sofas and chairs upon ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... also concluded, and the men returned to their labours on the rock; some to continue their work with the picks at the hard stone of the foundation-pit, others to perform miscellaneous jobs about the rock, such as mixing the mortar and removing debris, while James Dove and his fast friend Ruby Brand mounted to their airy "cot" on the beacon, from which in a short time began to proceed the volumes of smoke and the clanging sounds that had formerly arisen ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... of such little groups, it is breakfast time, and we want our breakfast badly. So we press through the crowd, diving under mat sheds and among unspeakable messes, heaps of skins on either side, and one hardly knows what under every foot of innocent-looking sand; for the people bury the debris lightly, throwing a handful of sand on the worst, and the sun does the rest of the sanitation. ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... overcame him again, and he rushed from the chamber, while Cadet, glad of his absence for a few moments, hastily filled up the grave and, replacing with much care the stone slabs over it, swept the debris into the passage and spread the carpet again smoothly over the floor. Every trace of the dreadful deed was obliterated in ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... and roasted beams where three wounded horses had been burnt alive in a barn, here the row of houses, some smashed, some almost intact, where a mutilated child had screamed for two hours before she could be rescued from the debris that had pinned her down, and taken to the hospital. Everywhere by the dim light of the shaded street lamps he could see the black holes and gaps of broken windows; sometimes abundant, sometimes rare and exceptional, ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... terror that the boy had gone down in the wreck and ruin, and at that moment was floating among the great masses of ice and debris that were sweeping swiftly down the river toward ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... of him as a "stylist." Unfortunately this is not far from the truth; he was a "stylist," though not always with an individual style. The real Hearn had superimposed upon him the debris of many writers, usually Frenchmen. He began his literary life as a worshipper and translator of Theophile Gautier and died in the faith that Pierre Loti had said the last word of modern prose. Gautier ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... grinned crazily into the exploding debris, imagining nineteen other ships suddenly disintegrating under the rocket guns of nineteen different nations. He saw Earth, like a giant porcupine, flicking thousands of atom tipped missiles into space from hundreds of submarines and secret bases—the war power of the great nations, ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... he was entangled in the mass of weeds and debris which clung to its roots, and followed in its wake; an eddy set him free. The tree and its clinging weeds swept on. It was the ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... in turn took his stand against the redoubtable champion. But Malvoisin, contrary to history as Patricia knew it, proved the most stubborn adversary of the three. The heralds had not properly cleared away the debris from the tilting-field, so when the Disinherited Knight forced Malvoisin back, Bois-Guilbert supported him from behind. Patricia had found the other two so yielding that she was unprepared for this unexpected defence, and the result of her ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... steep gradients to Florina, where Greek gendarmes, in British sun-helmets and khaki, lounged at the street-crossings and patronizingly waved us past. Thence north by the ancient highway which leads to Monastir, the parched and yellow fields on either side still littered with the debris of war—broken camions and wagons, shattered cannon, pyramids of ammunition-cases, vast quantities of barbed wire—and sprinkled with white crosses, thousands and thousands of them, marking the places where sleep the youths from Britain, ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... Neuf of the time of Henri IV which is to-day known as the Palais de Saint Germain-en-Laye. Of the Vieux Chateau only some fragmentary walls and piles of debris, the Pavillon Henri IV, and, in part, the ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... Very early in the advance the bursting of a high explosive shell had buried him, buried the whole gun team with its officer, buried the gun. Wakeman and three other men and the officer had crawled out from the mud and debris. Somehow they had unearthed the gun. Driven on by a kind of frenzy, they had advanced again, halting, firing a drum of cartridges, advancing again. Once more a shell caught them and buried them. Once more ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... a shepherd could not eat a kid as well as any wolf, and keep a portion of its skin! The agent, no doubt, would hand it on to his lord, by way of confirmation and verification. Another time I saw the debris of a goat hanging from a tree; it was the wolf again; the boy had attached these remains to the tree in order that all who passed that way might be his witnesses, if necessary, that the animal had ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... caused by the presence of copper. The foot wall is very well marked by a strip of whitish yellow clay about an inch in thickness. The rock on both sides of the lode is gold-bearing, and is evidently, as well as the real lode, formed of the debris of old quartz and granites. Talcose flakes are frequent, and in some places it seems to be clearly gneiss. Although with a small plant it might not be profitable to treat this, still with large and suitable machinery ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... painful experiences in the forest. He continued to follow the stream, though there was now little possibility of his finding anything to eat. The water had become sluggish and dark. The channel was choked with charred debris that had fallen into it when the forest had burned, and its shores were soft and muddy. After a time, when Baree stopped and looked about him, he could no longer see the green timber he had left. He was alone in that ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... General and Mrs. Marston and Carr, who was staying on, came in after I did. Lady Mary and Aurelia were having breakfast in their own rooms. I think nothing is more dreary than a long breakfast-table, laid for large numbers, with half a dozen picnicking at it among the debris left by earlier ravages. Evelyn, behind the great silver urn, looked pale and preoccupied, and had very little to say for herself when I journeyed up to her end of the table and sat down by her. ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... freezing-point, accompanied with howling wind and large flakes, as though it would soon rain. What is duty! Compare Falstaff's expressions touching honor. At any rate, I shall write you straightway, even if I ruin myself in postage, and no sensible thoughts find their way through the debris of the fire that still has possession of my imagination. After reading your last remark I have just lit my cigar and stirred the ink. First, like a business-man, to answer your letter. I begin with a request smacking ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke |
