"Descending" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but provided with large wings. Standing in an iron frame he worked these wings with both arms, with the intention of directing the parachute in its fall, thus, to a certain extent, turning it into a flying machine. But when he was descending near Tottenham, on June 27th, 1854, an unfortunate accident resulted in ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... from the Temple, and the regular line of the monarchy restored in him. The project seemed the more practicable, because the Prussians were preparing to invade France from the Moselle; the Spaniards, against whom the convention had declared war, were descending through the passes of the Pyrenees; an English army was collected in Holland to co-operate with the Duke of Saxe-Cobourg; and the royalists in the Vendee had gained several victories over the troops of the republican government. Dumouriez evacuated all the places he held in the Netherlands, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... father was in possession of our rightful home and property. I was not so small as that; and if he truly did suppose it, there must have been some fault on my part, for his nature was good to everybody, and perhaps al! the better for not descending through too many ...
— Slain By The Doones • R. D. Blackmore
... Theocritus, were less cold, cruel, and sensual than the remnant of their tribe. But corruption must utterly have destroyed the fabric of human society before poetry can ever cease. The sacred links of that chain have never been entirely disjoined, which descending through the minds of many men is attached to those great minds, whence as from a magnet the invisible effluence is sent forth, which at once connects, animates, and sustains the life of all. It is the faculty which contains within itself the seeds at once of ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Twilight was descending on the camp in the arroyo when Jimsy, who had been stationed with a rifle on a butte overlooking the desert maze, gave a sudden shout. The next instant his rifle was at his shoulder and he began shooting into ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... Newport—the long winding path that follows it from the great beach to the point of the island, always just above the sea, hardly once descending to it, as the evenly-gravelled path, too narrow for three, though far too broad for two, winds by easy curves through the grounds, and skirts the lawns of the million-getters who have their tents and their houses therein—it is a pretty ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... the soldiers when they saw us descending again, and their abject desperation when they perceived that we should land in front of them and cut off their entrance to the city, ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... endued with life like them, but standing in marble coldness and rigidity upon a black pedestal in the extreme left corner—my lady of the cave; the marble beauty who sprang from her tomb or her cradle at the call of my songs. While I gazed in speechless astonishment and admiration, a dark shadow, descending from above like the curtain of a stage, gradually hid her entirely from my view. I felt with a shudder that this shadow was perchance my missing demon, whom I had not seen for days. I awoke ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... in conformity with the shape of the occipital foramen, than in G. bankiva. In several skeletons a difference, but not of much importance, may be observed, which commences at the fourth cervical vertebra, and is greatest at about the sixth, seventh, or eighth vertebra; this consists in the haemal descending processes being united to the body of the vertebra by a sort of buttress. This structure may be observed in Cochins, Polish, some Hamburghs, and probably other breeds; but is absent, or barely developed, in Game, Dorking, Spanish, Bantam, and several other breeds examined ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... bread and flour, honey and fruits, clarified butter,[FN264] leather bottles containing liquors and many household stuffs; also furniture, table service and mirrors rugs, carpets and in fact all needed to furnish a dwelling; and they kept going to and fro, and descending by the trap door, till they had transported into the dwelling all that was in the ship. After this the slaves again went on board and brought back with them garments as rich as may be, and in the midst of them came an old, old man, of whom very little was left, for Time ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... descending the stairs. Austin drained his glass, and Dr. Ravenshaw adjusted his spectacles as Robert Turold entered ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... composed of only a few parts, it is a highly-ingenious combination of mechanical parts; these parts convert the straight running group of 300 threads into a linked chain, and the latter is shown distinctly descending from the chute on to the floor in the figure. Precisely the same kind of link is made by the hand wrappers when the warps indicated in Fig. 27 are being withdrawn from the mills. Two completed chains are shown tied ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... that he could tell nothing of the objects he passed nor how long he was in descending, the only thing that was definite being the fact that the creek lay below and he might or might not be ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... silence for a moment. Maud was thinking: "At any rate it will be better than to sit here alone and cry all the evening." So she said: "I'll come down in a minute." She heard Sam's heavy step descending the stairs, and thought what a different tread another person had; and she wondered whether she would ever "do better" than take Sam Sleeny; but she at once dismissed the thought. "I can't do that; I can't put my hand in a hand that smells so strong of sawdust as Sam's. But he is a good soul, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... to have had three great purposes in descending from his glory, and dwelling amongst men. The first, to teach them true virtue, both by his example and precepts: the second, to give them the most forcible motives to the practice of it, by "bringing life and immortality to light;" by shewing them the certainty of a resurrection and judgment, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... immense multitude, who, uncovered, and in breathless silence, gazed on the operations of the executioners. I retreated just as the third halter had been adjusted. The finisher of the law was in the act of descending, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 271, Saturday, September 1, 1827. • Various
... the power and soon they were approaching another planet, which was surrounded by a dense fog. Descending slowly, they found it to be a mass of boiling-hot steam and rank vapors, under ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... entered her uncle's vestibule just as Sue was descending the stairs, in a cloud of lace and pink silk. She felt a little choking in her throat, but said, quietly, "Sue, you look lovely; but to-morrow's French ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... blade in the air, and for a moment the lightning seemed to play around his head. The muscles on his short, brawny arms, stood out like great ropes; and then Balmung, descending, cleft the air from right to left. The waiting lookers-on in the plain below thought to hear the noise of clashing steel; but they listened in vain, for no sound came to their ears, save a sharp hiss like that which red-hot iron gives when plunged ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... boys clung to their perches in safety, but in perplexity. Hours passed, but the mother rhinoceros showed no inclination to depart. It was three o'clock in the afternoon when she went away to the wallow, returning once or twice to her young before descending the bank, and, even when she had reached the marsh, snorting querulously for some time before settling ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... tam-o'-shanter. Further observation was impossible, for it dropped without hesitation and the moment it struck ground pounced on the two combatants. Bobby saw those gentlemen seized, shaken and slapped with hurricane vigour. The next he knew, three flushed visitors were descending on ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... "When thou beholdest the curtains drawn up, then imagine that the heavens are let down from above, and that the Angels are descending." ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... laughing to see where we had been so lucky as to place ourselves. It was a huge dark cavern, where coals and other fuel were heaped in all directions; long aisles seemed to diverge from it with low arches leading further into the building, and apparently descending. A small, pointed window at the back just gave light enough to show its retreats, and we became convinced that this was one of the very places where of old our Protestant brethren were accustomed to meet to exercise their religion. It answered precisely ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... almost as soon as we entered, into a narrow trap-door, descending a flight of stone steps. We could hear a clicking of bottles and a rustling of straw; and then, behold, a veritable fairy issuing from the bowels of the earth, with flushes of red suffusing the ribbed, bewrinkled face, as the old figure straightens its crookedness ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... arms into which the Yenisej is divided south of Yenisejsk are too rapid for the present Yenisej steamers to ascend them, while, as has been already stated, there is no difficulty in descending these rivers from the Selenga and the Baikal Lake on the one hand, and from the Minusinsk region abounding in grain on the other. The banks here consist, in many places, of high rocky ridges covered with fine forests, with wonderfully beautiful ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... discharge of the last gun, the battery on the Island had been quitted by the officer in command, who, descending to the beach, preceded by two of his men, stepped into a light skiff that lay chained to the gnarled root of a tree overhanging the current, and close under the battery. A few sturdy strokes of the oars soon brought the boat into the centre of the stream, when ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... slight noise from the direction of the dim corner where the ladder was. It was the king descending. I could see that he was bearing something in one arm, and assisting himself with the other. He came forward into the light; upon his breast lay a slender girl of fifteen. She was but half conscious; she was dying of smallpox. Here ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the earth, with the things thereon, the inferior people; and the lowest parts of the earth, called Hades or Hell, the lowest or most miserable part of them. Whence ascending towards heaven, and descending to the earth, are put for rising and falling in power and honour: rising out of the earth, or waters, and falling into them, for the rising up to any dignity or dominion, out of the inferior state of the people, or falling down from the same into that inferior state; descending into ...
— Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John • Isaac Newton
... house, and was descending the terrace steps, when he was overtaken by the footman, ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... valley. We were now enveloped in a dense fog, which added materially to the dangers of the journey. I had had so many thrills in the last few moments that my nerves were becoming dull and failed to vibrate on this occasion, so that descending the cliff in a fog by a diagonal fracture in the rock became only an incident of our journey; this trail, however, was wider than the one ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... plastic inflection of his voice, like the poise of wings descending, he dropped from that almost inspired height of emotion, and became shrewd and practical, thoroughly informed and competent, a physician with a flair for the secret of disease, a surgeon of the Soul, relentless in his handling of the knife, a man of the world who spoke to them of what he knew, ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... sorrow of the parting so close at hand, colored their mood more and more, so that the golden glamour first dimmed and then changed into a sinister pall which overhung all the loveliness of the morning. At a turn in the path, where it topped a rise, before descending a long slope to the highway, Zeke came to a standstill. The girl paused obediently beside him. He fumbled in a pocket awkwardly, and drew forth a tiny square of coffee-colored stone, roughly lined, which he held out toward his companion. The tracery of the crystal formed ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... like a great cat at the edge, he slid his forelegs over until his hoofs sank deep into the side of the cut. Then with a gentle lurch he drew his hind legs after him, and an instant later was gingerly descending, his rider leaning far back in the saddle, the reins held loosely in ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of restraint was most evident in little things. A German who came from Weimar to see him was unfortunately admitted during a period of stress in writing. A minute later the German was seen rapidly descending the stairs and leaving the house. Carlyle immediately hurried to the room where his wife was receiving a visitor, and tragically asked what he had done to cause the Almighty to send a German all the way from Weimar ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... begged to see Mr. Le Moyne for a few minutes. Descending to the sitting-room, Hesden found there Mr. Jordan Jackson, who was the white candidate for the Legislature upon the same ticket with a colored man who had left the county in fright immediately after the raid upon Red Wing. Hesden was somewhat surprised ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... etc.; and that by water in ships, barges, and boats, of various sizes and denominations. But, as all these methods of conveyance are formed on the same principles, they agree so well together, that it is fully sufficient to comprehend them all in the general view, without descending to such minute particulars as would distinguish one ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... Son, Into our place descending, Away with all our sins hath done, And therewith from Death rending Right and might, made him a jape, Left him nothing but Death's shape: His ancient sting—he has ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald
... greater than that by which the stone ascends, as the weight of the stone is greater than his weight. In other words, so far as the balance of the forces is concerned, the whole amount of the downward motion consists of the smaller weight descending through a greater distance, which will be equal to the whole amount of that of the larger one ascending through a smaller distance; and, to produce a preponderance, the whole amount of the downward force must be somewhat greater. Thus the lever only ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... Looking down as well as he could between the bars he could see the top of a wall some twenty yards away, and decided that a courtyard surrounded the building, so that even could he find any means of descending from his window it would be necessary afterwards for him to climb this wall. At present, however, he had no idea of trying to escape. To do so would, were he caught, greatly prejudice his case, and might be used as an excuse for his instant execution. However, he concluded that if he could loosen ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... little rest, however, Falstaff revived, though not before he had imbibed about a pint of applejack, an occupation in which he could not persuade either of us, this time, to join him. Descending from our elevated perch, we now got into a deep glen, with a small brooklet winding along the bottom, bordered on either hand by a stripe of marshy bog earth, bearing a low growth of alder bushes, mixed with stunted willows. On the side opposite to that by ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... down the snow as before; but ere we quite got through the pass, night fell. Though the wind had fallen, the cold was dreadful, and several lost fingers, toes, even hands and feet from frostbite, as we waited for dawn in the open. As early as we could we moved down the glen, descending, without road, over difficult and precipitous places, the extreme depth of the snow enabling us to pass over countless dangers. Thus ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... cleft, and new-descending rills Furrow the brows of all th' impending hills. The water-gods to floods their rivulets turn, And each, with streaming eyes, supplies his wanting urn. The fauns forsake the woods, the nymphs the grove, And round the plain in sad distractions rove: In prickly ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... will admit who have seen the strong roots of the pines penetrating the crannies of the rocks. Nor does the river which flows in the bed of the valley act as a carrier only. Listening carefully we may detect beneath the roar of the alpine torrent the crunching and knocking of descending boulders. And in the potholes scooped by its whirling waters we recognise the abrasive action of the suspended sand upon the ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... Descending to his hyena den—as Charron always called it—he caught up his packet, and took a lantern, and a coil of tow which had been prepared, and strode forth for the last time into the sloping court behind the walls. Passing towards the eastern vaults, he saw the form of some one by the broken ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... down it a number of men were engaged in conflict; two of these, hearing the footsteps, turned round, and with a savage oath, seeing that the new-comers were but lads, fell upon them, thinking to cut them down without difficulty. Their over- confidence proved their ruin. Edgar caught the descending blow on his sword, close up to the hilt, and as his opponent raised his arm to repeat the stroke, ran ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... up the stone on which he had slept in his journey to Padan-aram, and where he was blessed with the vision of ascending and descending angels, he anointed it with oil, and thus consecrated it as an altar to God. Such an inunction was, in ancient times, as it still continues to be in many modern countries and contemporary religions, a symbol of the setting apart ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... blind is quick," he replied; "and as I sat waiting in the stage this morning I heard myself denounced as a 'blind old Hunks,' a selfish dog, who had won the handsomest girl in the country. Then, as we were descending to this ravine you remember we stopped at the foot of some stairs while you removed a brier from your dress, and from a group near by I heard the whispered words, 'There they come—the old blind ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... and de Poincilit the chorus made quite a respectable din. Few noticed that the saloon main companion had been opened again, until the sharp bark of a dog joining in the hand-clapping turned every eye towards the stairway. Captain Courtenay was descending. In front ran Joey, who, of course, imagined that the plaudits of the audience demanded recognition. Courtenay had removed his oilskins before leaving the bridge. His dark blue uniform was flecked with white foam, and a sou'wester was tied under his chin, otherwise ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... message must convey more than the promise of a deliverance from the consequences of sin. It must proclaim new possibilities for the individual. It must point to higher altitudes for the race. The preacher announces a New Jerusalem descending out of heaven. His ministry is not to lead to the better ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... in descending the stretch of the Ohio near the mouth of Little Beaver Creek and above the Mingo Town, they saw many wild geese and several kinds of duck and "killed five wild turkeys." Three days later they "saw innumerable quantities of turkeys, ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... slowly descending the steep, stony road which leads to Wytham Village, but as he spoke they were turning off into a large field to the right, across which a turfy track led gradually up to the woods from which they had come. The track lay smooth before them, and the horses began ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... descending the stairs, he entered the parlour. On a stand beneath the powerful picture of the lion behind real bars was a frosted cake of rare beauty. Three pieces were gone and two more were cut. On top of each piece was ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... wife again. By these repeated scenes of sunshine and storm, he learned to rejoice in the one, and to remain undisturbed in the other; against the exuberance of one to present the parasol of calmness, and the umbrella of patience to ward off descending floods. ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... last stage of decay, but originally a piece of some pretensions. Regretful of its fallen estate, I looked it over with some interest and had just observed on its lower corner a little label bearing the printed inscription "Lot 201" when I heard footsteps descending the stairs. A moment later the door opened and a shadowy figure appeared standing close ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... This paper will have, of course, many pages of business advertisements, and these will usually be well worth looking through, for the more intelligent editors of the days to come will edit this department just like any other, and classify their advertisements in a descending scale of freshness and interest that will also be an ascending scale of price. The advertiser who wants to be an indecent bore, and vociferate for the ten millionth time some flatulent falsehood about a pill, for instance, will pay at nuisance ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... commencing right. It is not so difficult a thing always to purchase with ready money, as many people imagine. The great difficulty is to moderate our desires and diminish our wants within bounds proportioned to our income. We can expend much, or live on little; and this, too, without descending to absolute penury. It is truly surprising to observe how people in similar rank, condition, and circumstances, contrive to expend so very differently. I have known instances of young men who would thrive on an income which would not ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... me for a ghost, papa?" cried Violet, descending the last five stairs with a flying leap, and then, bounding across the hall to perch, light as a bird, upon her father's knee. "Did I really frighten you? Did you think the good old Abbey House was going to set up a family ghost; a white lady, with a dismal history of a broken heart? ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... fragrance of the mayflower on its dark, bearded stalk. When June became perfect, and afterwards till nuts were ripe, my father loved to lie at full length upon the mossy and leaf-strewn floor, looking up at the green roof, the lofty whispering-gallery of vaulted boughs, with its azure lattices and descending sunlight-shafts; wrapped in imaginings some of which were afterwards to delight the world; but many more of them, no doubt, were fated to join the glorious company of untold tales. Beside him sat our mother, on a throne which we had fashioned for her from the upright stump ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... eye-witnesses to any strange event always are contradictory. Some said this band of ghostly men marched on the street level; others said they were below it, walking with only their heads above the road surface and gradually descending. In any event the frightened group of onlookers scattered and shouted until the whole little street was aroused. But by then the ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... front with the Gladstone bag and a pistol; then came Mr. Ledbetter like Atlas; Mr. Bingham followed with the hat-box, coat, and revolver as before. The house was one of those that have their gardens right up to the cliff. At the cliff was a steep wooden stairway, descending to a bathing tent dimly visible on the beach. Below was a boat pulled up, and a silent little man with a black face stood beside it. "A few moments' explanation," said Mr. Ledbetter; "I can assure you—" Somebody kicked him, and he ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... nearly dark when the 106th passed through Angecourt. The wooded hills continued on the right, but to the left the country was more level, and a valley was visible in the distance, veiled in bluish mists. At last, just as the shades of night were descending, they stood on the heights of Remilly and beheld a ribbon of pale silver unrolling its length upon a broad expanse of verdant plain. It was the Meuse, that Meuse they had so longed to see, and where it seemed as if ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... face of the enemy: the ships galled them from the flank: the artillery, planted on a height, infested them from the front: the English archers poured in a shower of arrows upon them: and the vanguard, descending from the hill, advanced leisurely and in good order towards them. Dismayed with all these circumstances, the Scottish van began to retreat: the retreat soon changed into a flight, which was begun by the Irish archers. The panic of the van communicated itself to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... that, earthly strains though they be, seen not unmeet to mingle with those exalted ones that have gone before—rousing the heart from its more celestial contemplations, and by gentle transition—like a descending dove—bringing it down from its heavenward flight to that earth with which its present daily and active duties are concerned, the more fitly and cheerfully performed when thus hallowed; for, be it remembered, the preparation for that unseen world to which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... himself with the more exciting pursuits of the chase. From the tops of the dead trees along the border of the lake, he would sally out in all directions, sweeping through long curves, alternately mounting and descending, now reaching up for a fly high in the air, now sinking low for one near the surface, and returning to his perch in a few moments for a ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... a prince or princess is something between kneeling and that queer genuflection one meets in the English agricultural districts: the props of the boys and girls seem momentarily to be knocked away, and they suddenly catch themselves in descending. It astonished me, I remember, at a court party, to see one patrician young woman—"divinely tall" I should describe her if her decided chin and the evidently Roman turn of her nose and of her character had not put divinity out of the question—shake hands with a not very imposing young prince, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... woods, like banners bending, Drooped in starlight and in gloom, There, when that sad night was ending, And the faint, far dawn was blending With the stars now fast descending; There they mute and mournful bore him, With the stars and shadows o'er him, And they laid him down — so tender — And the next day's sun, in splendor, ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... the first stages of the war there was little that did credit to Russia's military capacity, the energy that marked its close made amends for what had gone before. Winter was descending in extreme severity: the Balkans were a mass of snow and ice; but no obstacle could now bar the invader's march. Gourko, in command of an army that had gathered to the south-west of Plevna, made his way through the mountains above Etropol ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... in a very discomposed mood, when a thought struck me. I had been behaving like a fool. The parchment said 'at a right angle to the left-hand edge of the track.' I had started from my left hand, but I was descending the mountain, whereas the directions of course supposed the explorer to be ascending. Almost ready to laugh at my stupidity, I ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... down on a rock and looked around. There seemed to be nothing in sight but rocks and scrubby bushes, and already twilight was descending over the land. ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... window disappeared, and glancing from loophole to loophole in slow succession, gave intimation that the bearer was in the act of descending, with great deliberation, a winding staircase occupying one of the turrets which graced the angles of the old tower. The tardiness of his descent extracted some exclamations of impatience from Ravenswood, and several oaths from his less patient and more mecurial companion. Caleb again paused ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... gives it a name; perhaps the careless traveler would pass without a suspicion that he was treading on the street, or forum, or temple of a once thriving town. Striking soon into the carriage-road from Napoli to Tripolitza, and descending into a charming little valley with the euphonious name of Achladhokamvo, we were not sorry to find a khan, and take up our quarters for the night. We found the family sitting on the floor around a fire blazing on a hearth in the middle of a room, and here we placed ourselves, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Briey, Brimont, and Vailly on March 22, 1915. At Briey, the station was damaged and the railway line cut, two of the birdmen descending to within a few hundred yards of the track. Enemy batteries at Brimont suffered damage. The next day a German machine was shot down near Colmar, in Alsace, and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... dashes in at once. He does not calculate the dangers of his enterprise. He does not study the map of the country he has to traverse. He does not measure the bias of the ground, the rising knolls and the descending slopes that are before him. He obeys a blind ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... Charley promptly annexed the slight overhang of the cliff whence the deer had jumped. It was dry at the moment, but we uttered pessimistic predictions if the wind should change. Tom Rich and Jim Lester had a little tent, and insisted on descending to the canon-bed. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... he reached it a neighing challenge came afresh from the shore, sending a quiver through the charger, which snorted loudly, and then, in obedience to the rider's voice and the pressure of his heel, rose and bounded bravely forward from the vessel's side, out into the water, descending with a heavy splash, and then submerged all but the extended neck, and with the lad with the water rising above his hips, but firmly in his seat, bending forward and giving as if part of the brave animal that had begun swimming steadily ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... Holy Spirit is not spoken of in Scripture as brooding as a gentle dove; but very differently, as it seems to me. St Matthew and St John say, that at our Lord's baptism the Holy Spirit was seen, not brooding, but descending from heaven as a dove. To any one who knows anything of doves, who will merely go out into the field or the farm-yard and look at them, and who will use his own eyes, that figure is striking enough, and grand enough. It is the ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... adjourn this summer. They were too thin, however, to undertake important business. They had begun arrangements for the establishment of a mint. The Dollar was decided on as the money unit of America. I believe, they proposed to have gold, silver, and copper coins, descending and ascending decimally; viz. a gold coin of ten dollars, a silver coin of one tenth of a dollar (equal to a Spanish bit), and a copper, of one hundredth of a dollar. These parts of the plan, however, were not ultimately decided on. They have ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... a view of the upper part of this venerable building, I retreated towards the town—resolved to leave no church and no street unexplored. On descending, and quitting the gate by which I had entered, a fine, robust, and respectable figure, habited as an Ecclesiastic, met and accosted me. I was most prompt to return the salutation. "We are proud, Sir, of our castle, and I observe you have been visiting it. ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... conflict of the giants, the issue of which was to decide whether the Anglo-Saxon race was still to remain in the forefront of civilisation and progress, or whether it was to fall, crushed and broken, beneath the assaults of enemies descending upon the motherland of the Anglo-Saxon nations; whether the valour and personal devotion, which for a thousand years had scarcely known a defeat by flood or field, was still to pursue its course of victory, or ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... the pathway looped, crossing minute little boggy meadows, on whose bottomless ooze the grass shook like a blanket, descending steep ravines and climbing back to dark and muddy slopes. The forest was dripping, green, and silent now, a mysterious menacing jungle. All the warmth and magic of the golden forest below was lost as though it belonged to another and sunnier world. Nothing ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... itself indicate what kind of Doing and practical Governing went on under it! For Speech is the gaseous element out of which most kinds of Practice and Performance, especially all kinds of moral Performance, condense themselves, and take shape; as the one is, so will the other be. Descending, accordingly, into the Dumb Class in its Stockport Cellars and Poor-Law Bastilles, have we not to announce that they also are hitherto unexampled in the History of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... becomes steeper, the path merges into long flights of solid stone steps. Near the summit, these steps become so precipitous that the traveller is apt to feel a little dizzy, especially in descending, for the chair coolies race down the steep stairway in a way that suggests alarming possibilities in the event of a misstep or a broken rope. But the men are sure-footed and mishaps seldom occur. The path is bordered by a low wall and lined with ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... goods-shed with an engine attached. In order to reach it he had the choice of two routes. One of these was through a little wicket-gate, near to which a night-watchman was stationed—for the shades of evening were by that time descending on the scene, the other was through a back yard, round by a narrow lane and over a paling, which it required more than an average measure of strength and agility to leap. Mr Sharp chose the latter route. What were palings and narrow lanes ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... the dense snowy veil descending, the orange-tinted rifle-flames flashed and sparkled and flickered; all around us a shower of twigs and branches descended in a steady rain. Then our brown rifles blazed their deadly answer. Splash! spatter! splash! their dead dropped into the stream; and, following, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... weight as to the age of the poet, but which do have great significance from their correspondence in tone and effect with what has been already quoted. The poet repeatedly falls into meditations or fancies which seem more natural to a person on the descending than on the ascending side ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... stood there laughing. Reginald and Phyllis had been climbing to the top of a great wardrobe, by means of a ladder of chairs and tables. While Phyllis was descending her brother had made some demonstration that startled her, and she fell with all the chairs over her, but ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the more easily effected that the young man, as it happened, even before he was down, turned up at his hotel. Strether took his coffee, by habit, in the public room; but on his descending for this purpose Chad instantly proposed an adjournment to what he called greater privacy. He had himself as yet had nothing—they would sit down somewhere together; and when after a few steps and a turn into the ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... sun descending in the west, The evening star does shine; The birds are silent in their nest, And I must seek for mine. The moon, like a flower In heaven's high bower, With silent delight Sits ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... garrison and a military colony numbering about twenty thousand persons. This interesting area is walled round, and contains the residence of the Tartar General, and the consulates of the great European Powers. It is well wooded and less closely built than the rest of Canton. Descending from any elevation one finds oneself at once involved at any and every point in a maze of narrow, crowded streets of high brick and stone houses, mostly from five to eight feet wide. These streets are covered in at the height ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... allowed to own and farm what land they like without paying premium or rent. The more civilized tribes, especially on the West coast, recognize private property in land, the boundaries of their gardens and fields being carefully marked and defined, and the property descending from fathers to children. The rate of the Poll Tax is usually $2 for married couples and $1 for adult bachelors per annum, and I believe this is about the same rate as that collected by the British Government in Burma. At first sight it has the appearance of a tax on marriage, ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... and following him across the hall, Walter came out into the glory of a red sunset. Like a lovely carpet, or rather, like a green, silent river, the lawn appeared to flow from the house as from its fountain, issuing by the open doors and windows, and descending like a gentle rapid, to lose itself far away among trees and shrubs. Over it were scattered groups and couples and individuals, looking like the creatures of a half-angelic paradise. A little way off, under the boughs of a huge beech-tree, sat Lufa, reading, with a pencil in her hand as ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... clouds and a mist had risen upon the sea. The lantern alight in the stern of a ship close at hand was scarcely visible through the mist, and by the shore there glimmered the foam of the waves, which every moment threatened to submerge it. Descending with difficulty, I stole along the steep declivity, and all at once I saw the blind boy come to a standstill and then turn down to the right. He walked so close to the water's edge that it seemed as if the waves would straightway seize him and carry him off. But, judging by the confidence ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... wind was busy stripping what leaves still remained from the woods by the stream and in the hollows of the mountain. Landscape and heavens were of an iron bracingness and bareness; and the beauty in them was not for eyes like Netta's. She had wandered out forlornly on the dank paths descending to the stream. Edmund as usual was interminably busy fitting up one of the lower rooms for some of his minor bric-a-brac—ironwork, small bronzes, watches, and clocks. Anastasia and the baby ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said Sarah. She accepted his help in descending the step with the air of a princess. "But they'll be so disappointed to see me instead of ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... if without detriment to piety great things may be compared with small, I would contend, that every intelligency, descending by way of emanation or impartition from the Godhead, must needs be a personality of that Godhead, from which it has descended, only so vastly unequal to it in personal perfection, that it can form no ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... was descending a stair so narrow that it was only just possible for two people to pass, he met the same young woman ascending. Glad of the opportunity, he stepped aside with his ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... versification, by quoting a speech which he puts into the mouth of an Angel, in the Destruction of Jerusalem. The Angel is represented as descending over the altar prophesying the fall of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... probably interfere with the orthodoxy of so many of the humanists. Domenico, besides, remembered that Virgil and Ovid, whom he had not read, but whose fables he had sometimes been asked to illustrate, were constantly talking of visions of gods and goddesses, nay, of their descending upon earth to unite themselves with mortals in love or friendship, for he had had to furnish designs for woodcuts representing Diana and Endymion, Jupiter and Ganymede, the gods coming to Philemon and Baucis, and Apollo tending ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... knowledge in whose centre stood the primeval man in friendly relation with the powers of the universe, and build our hovels out of the ruins of our ancestral palace; or whether, according to the development theory of others, we are rising gradually, and have come up out of an atom instead of descending from an Adam, so that the proudest pedigree might run up to a barnacle or a zoophyte at last, are questions that will keep for a good many centuries yet. Confining myself to what little we can learn from history, we find tribes rising slowly out of barbarism to ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... from the first day found herself descending steadily to the foot of the class; and there she remained until the awful day, at the close of the first week, when the Large Lady, realizing perhaps that she could no longer ignore such adherence to that lowly position, made discovery that while to Emmy Lou "d-o-g" ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... my hiding the bank of low cliff bounding the beach shelved upward and inland in a stretch of short turf, and from the head of this slope came the thud of footsteps—of heavy footsteps descending ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the door, which Armitage held open. It closed behind them, and their steps were heard descending. The Duchess had not ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... preponderate. I cannot dissemble that six quartos must have tried, and may have exhausted, the indulgence of the Public; that, in the repetition of similar attempts, a successful Author has much more to lose than he can hope to gain; that I am now descending into the vale of years; and that the most respectable of my countrymen, the men whom I aspire to imitate, have resigned the pen of history about the same period of their lives. Yet I consider that the annals of ancient and modern times may afford many rich and interesting subjects; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... thousands present looked straight at the negro orator. A strange thing was to happen. A black man was to speak for his people, and with none to interrupt him. As Professor Washington strode to the edge of the stage, the low, descending sun shot fiery rays through the windows into his face. A great shout greeted him. He turned his head to avoid the blinding light, and moved about the platform for relief. Then he turned his wonderful countenance without a blink of the eyelids and began to speak. ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... So, descending from the sledge, he stood in front of Lysbeth, and, lifting his cap, repeated the oath to her, an oath strong enough to blast her soul if she swore to ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... to know what they must say that they thought of every one and of the Hurrons. But those Barbars had an other designe, ffor their destiny was to doe, and not to speake; but for to doe this, this must be a treachery in which they are experted. You must know that that bande [of] Irokois [in] descending the last streame or falling watter one of their skiffs made shipwrake in which weare seaven, all drowned without none could souccour them. A thing remarkable, that every one strive to help himselfe ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... hydrostatic equilibrium which generate Seiches may be produced by a variety of causes. Among these, the following may be cited: (a) Sudden local variations of atmospheric pressure on different parts of the lake. (b) A descending wind, striking the surface of the lake over a limited area, (c) Thunder-storms, hail-storms, and water-spouts; and especially when the accompanying winds act vertically. (d) The fall of a large avalanche, or of a land-slide into the lake. (e) ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... customs, have already been sufficiently animadverted upon-" No one, says the town of Boston, in a pamphlet, entitled, An appeal to the World,2 can read them without being astonished at seeing a person in so important a department as governor Bernard sustained, descending in his letters to a minister of state to such trifling circumstances and such slanderous chit-chat: Boasting as he does in one of them of his over-reaching those with whom he was transacting publick business; and in order to prejudice the most respectable bodies, meanly filching ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... evidence of being the useless remains of structures which played an active part in the bodies of some former animals. A significant example of this exists in the vermiform appendix, a narrow, blind tube descending from the caecum of man, and detrimental instead of useful, since it is the seat of the frequently fatal disease known as appendicitis. This tube, usually from three to six inches long and of the thickness of a goose quill, is occasionally absent in man, ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... rainbow on the spray against a cliff; or a vista of lawns between descending woods; or a vision of fish moving in a pool under the hazel's shadow? Who has not felt the small surcharged heart labouring ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... home; that broad belt of baldness that stretched over from his forehead to his spine, those silver side-locks that ran wild about his collar, that honest, peculiar voice, which sounded as if virtue and piety, descending awhile from the upper sphere, were helping the old man out in his speech; with the freshness of yesterday I see and hear them all. Though seemingly attended by celestial visitants, and perhaps for that reason, he had not a particle of Young ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... insisted that men could not be allowed by the Almighty to live there, since, if they did, they could not see Christ at His second coming, descending through the air. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... door closed and Faith heard him descending the stairs. In an instant she hurried to join ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... of April, and Julius Barrett, aged fourteen, perched on his father's gatepost, watched ruefully the low descending sun, and counted that day lost. He had not succeeded in "fooling" a single person, although he had tried repeatedly. One and all, old and young, of his intended victims had been too wary for Julius. Hence, Julius was disgusted and ready ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
