"Ascent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... earlier had built Rudham Court, had been wiser than the generation in which he lived in his choice of a site. Instead of a valley he had chosen the side of a hill, and the sloping foreground had been levelled into a succession of terraces, giving the impression of an almost mountainous ascent to the house from the road which lay beneath. The house, not beautiful in itself, was softened by the hand of time into a dull red that contrasted harmoniously with the group of trees behind it, and the gravelled terrace in front with its box-bordered ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... emperor; and the weary fathers were transported to Chalcedon under the immediate eye of Marcian and the senate of Constantinople. A quarter of a mile from the Thracian Bosphorus, the church of St. Euphemia was built on the summit of a gentle though lofty ascent: the triple structure was celebrated as a prodigy of art, and the boundless prospect of the land and sea might have raised the mind of a sectary to the contemplation of the God of the universe. Six hundred and thirty bishops were ranged in order in the nave of the church; but the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... transported from one place to another. Huge triangular piles of planks are also reared in different parts of the devoted messuage; and a little group of trees, that still grace the eastern end, which rises in a gentle ascent, have just received warning to quit, expressed by a daub of white paint, and are to give place to a ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... and six others in their ordinary Camisard dress bound with ropes as prisoners of war. Cavalier himself donned the uniform of the fallen officer; and thus disguised and well armed, the party moved up the steep ascent to the castle. On reaching the outer gate Cavalier presented the order of Count Broglie, and requested admittance for the purpose of keeping his pretended Camisard prisoners in safe custody for the night. He ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... first of the three zones into which the Slopes of Etna are divided. This lowest one is the Regione Piemontese and Nicolosi is about 2250 feet above the sea—the place from which tourists often start to make the ascent of the volcano. Here we spent a declamatory half-hour discussing where we should eat the provisions we had brought from Catania and drink the wine we had bought at Mascalucia on the way. The discussion ended by our being received in a peasant's hut, where we spread a table for ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... ten minutes, there sounded a knock without, and Piers threw the door open. It was Olga, breathing rapidly after her ascent of the stairs, and a startled look in her eyes as she found herself face to face with Otway. He explained his ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... whirring noise beneath the leaves of coarse mullein plants or the slender, unopened pods of milkweed, the puppy made sudden desperate skirmishes into the tangled pathside, pointing ineffectually at the heavy-legged insects, his red tongue lolling and his short tail wagging. Up the steep ascent of the orchard a rocky trail ran, bordered by a rail fence. From the point of the hill one could see the adjoining country unrolled like a map, olive heights melting into emerald valleys, bare clearings into luxuriant crops, ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... remove it into a darkened room, that it may appear to the bees as if it were late in the evening. Then gently turning the hive bottom upwards, and supporting it in that position, cover it with an empty hive a little raised towards the window, to give the bees sufficient light to guide their ascent. Keep the empty hive steadily supported on the edge of the full hive, and strike the hand round the full hive to frighten the bees, till they have nearly all ascended into the other. The new hive containing the bees must be placed on the stand of the apiary, to receive the absent bees ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... the orange boughs, and floated to the ears of the parson, as he wound slowly up the gentle ascent,—so sweet, so silvery, he paused in delight—unaware, wretched man! that he was thereby conniving at Papistical errors. Soft it came and sweet; softer and sweeter,—"Ave Maria!" Violante was chanting ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... kingdoms there, such as the war discovered. The Rhine rising in the Rhoetian Alps from a summit altogether rocky and perpendicular, after a small winding towards the west, is lost in the Northern Ocean. The Danube issues out of the mountain Abnoba, one very high but very easy of ascent, and traversing several nations, falls by six streams into the Euxine Sea; for its seventh channel ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... Proceeding eastward from the Agua del Zorro, and afterwards leaving on the north side of the road a rancho attached to some old goldmines, you pass through a gully with low but steep rocks on each hand: the road then bends, and the ascent becomes steeper. A few hundred yards farther on, a stone's throw on the south side of the road, the white calcareous stumps may be seen. The spot is about half a mile east of the Agua del Zorro.) They projected between ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... time on such declamatory description, but it is essential to the whole effect. This particular piece is followed by the difficulty of a long ascent, by a sleep of exhaustion on a rude and dirty bed, by Borrow's arrest as the Pretender, Don Carlos, in disguise, by an escape from immediate execution into the hands of an Alcalde who read "Jeremy Bentham" day and night; all ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... down the cypress-bordered path of Mollie's first visit, and joined the stream of people going along the road, like themselves, to see the balloon ascent. Mollie felt very gay and festive; everybody feminine wore light frocks, the sun was bright but not too hot, the grass was green, and the whole countryside was frothed with almond-blossom, white and pink. Birds flew briskly about, indifferent to balloons, and horses with shining chestnut ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... on. Many of the ridges promised well, only to end in impassable cliffs or breaks or ascents too steep. There were many slopes and they all looked alike. It took hard riding and hard climbing. The chief and his staff were in despair. Must their great project fail because of a few miles of steep ascent? ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... sound came through the orange boughs, and floated to the ears of the Parson, as he wound slowly up the gentle ascent—so sweet, so silvery, he paused in delight—unaware, wretched man! that he was thereby conniving at Papistical errors. Soft it came, and sweet: softer and sweeter—"Ave Maria!" Violante was chanting the evening hymn to the Virgin Mother. The Parson at last distinguished the sense ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... which my bluejackets have worked, shot, and stood the cold and marching. To sum up our recent operations, they are:—March from Elandslaagte to Glencoe, reoccupation of Newcastle; crossing of Buffalo Drift and occupation of Utrecht; ascent of Van Wyk at night with guns; turning and capture of Botha's Pass; march through Orange River Colony and Transvaal in pursuit of the Boers; taking of Almond's Nek and occupation of Volksrust and Charlestown, with the strong position of Laing's Nek turned and evacuated by the enemy ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... the faces of the Spaniards, he and his son, each taking a sack of flour on their shoulders, issued out through a back door and made their way up the hill. They had got some distance up the steep ascent before they were discovered by the Spaniards, who then began firing at them. The gallant millers made their escape, but the old man received a wound of which he ultimately died. The son declared that his sack, from the number of bullets in it, ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... eastward of the city. The road which reaches the Huerto de los Arcos is rather smoother for driving than the streets of Cordova, but the rain had made it heavy, and we were glad of our good horses and their owner's mercy to them. He stopped so often to breathe them when the ascent began that we had abundant time to note the features of the wayside; the many villas, piously named for saints, set on the incline, and orcharded about with orange trees, in the beginning of that measureless forest of olives which has ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... two or three of these houses, we chose that which we thought the most pleasing, which was the property of a gentleman of the army, called M. Noiret. This house was in good condition, before it a garden, forming a terrace; below that on the declivity an orchard, and on the ascent, behind the house, a vineyard: a little wood of chestnut trees opposite; a fountain just by, and higher up the hill, meadows for the cattle; in short, all that could be thought necessary for the country retirement we proposed to establish. To the best of my remembrance, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... him to "carry Miss Delia up to the nursery." Delia could still feel herself held, wriggling and shrieking face downwards, under the young man's strong arm, unable either to kick or to scratch, while Grandmamma half fearful, half laughing, watched the dire ascent from the bottom of ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a steep and rugged ascent, which brought us, after an hour's heavy climbing, to an elevated region of pine forest, years before ravished by lumbermen, and presenting all manner of obstacles to our awkward and incumbered pedestrianism. The woods were largely pine, though yellow birch, beech, and ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... were by mutual incitement, had reached their highest pitch in the ravings that were uttered at Munich, the too pointed point broke in this superabundance of absurdity almost by its own pointedness, and so we were quit of it with one blow. Now, happily, all is over with the theory of descent, or ascent, but natural science will not on that account fare any the worse, for many of its adherents belong to her ablest youth, and as they now need no longer waste their best time on romantic schemes, they will have ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... his life, like a lovely view seen from a carriage window on a swift journey, gone before it is half seen, and never to be seen again, except in dreams. But he was utterly unable to look forward and reason about the future. Everything dragged him back, up the steep ascent to the convent, through the arched ways and vaulted corridors, to the room in which he had passed the supreme moments of his life. The only distinct impression of the future was the strong desire to feel again what he had felt that day; to feel ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... cliff, so as to observe narrowly all that went on below, but, being a stout, lethargic man, he soon fell fast asleep! It was just at the spot where this man lay that Ruby reached the summit. The ascent was very difficult. At each step the hunted youth had to reach his hand as high above his head as possible, and grasp the edge of a rock or a mass of turf with great care before venturing on another step. ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... to mention a young lady's legs, on any terms, I would observe of Miss Slowboy's that there was a fatality about them which rendered them singularly liable to be grazed; and that she never effected the smallest ascent or descent, without recording the circumstance upon them with a notch, as Robinson Crusoe marked the days upon his wooden calendar. But as this might be considered ungenteel, I'll ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... her feet for every stone step. The ascent appeared to be interminable; the narrowing stone spiral seemed to have no end. Her hand grew ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... turned to the door, it opened slowly to admit the figure of his aunt, who was panting heavily from her hurried ascent of the stairs. Her ill-humour toward Susan had entirely disappeared, for the only resentment she had ever harboured for more than a few minutes was the life-long one which ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... world again. It was a painful ascent, and when he looked around him, he recognized the interior of his motorboat cabin, heard and felt the throbbing of his motor, and discovered aches and pains that made his extremities tingle. He sat up, but the blackness ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... together up the rough ascent, and turned into Rosaly's Lane. Mellony walked wearily, her eyes down, the red feather, in its uncurled, unlovely assertiveness, looking more like the oriflamme of a forlorn hope than ever. But Mrs. Pember ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... nourishes and preserves the body. Consider, therefore, whether it is not the weakness and coldness of the body that makes it wind, bend, and creep upon the ground; for those qualities check its rise, and depress it in its ascent, and render it like a weak traveller, that often sits down and then goes on again. And therefore the ivy requires something to twine about, and needs a prop; for it is not able to sustain and direct its own branches, because it wants heat, which naturally tends upward. The snow is melted ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... on the Post Road is all that a country road should be. It plunges immediately into a thicket of tall weeds, Joe Pie and goldenrod mostly, which shoot up in many instances six feet above the ground. After crossing the creek the road begins the steep ascent of Gallows Hill, where Putnam hanged a British spy in spite of Sir Henry Clinton's attempts to prevent it. This summary action seems to have tempered the Red-coats' curiosity, as "Old Put" was not bothered afterward. One of a small bunch of chestnut trees west of ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... another thicket, Koolau watched a body of police trying to make the ascent from the opposite side of the valley. He saw the wild goats flee before them as they climbed higher and higher, until he doubted his judgment and sent for Kiloliana, who crawled in ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... civic virtues precede the cathartic; but they are not, as with some perverse mystics, considered to lie outside the path of ascent.] ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... the fierce heats that round the tropic glow, Turns not from the regions black With northern winds, and hard with frozen snow; Sailors override the wave, While guilty poverty, more fear'd than vice, Bids us crime and suffering brave, And shuns the ascent of virtue's precipice? Let the Capitolian fane, The favour'd goal of yon vociferous crowd, Aye, or let the nearest main Receive our gold, our jewels rich and proud: Slay we thus the cause of crime, If yet we would repent and choose the good: Ours the task to take in time ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... strength which carried them in wild bounds across impassable chasms, their laboring lungs checked them in the ascent. The joyous inebriation was wearing off. Winslow met his companion's eyes sheepishly as they stopped where a sheer cliff of basalt above caught and held the warmth of the sun's rays. Behind them it rose a straight hundred ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... began to twinkle in the streets, and the ship's night-watchman, coming sleepily on duty after his unsatisfactory day slumbers, hauled down the flags and fastened a lighted lantern at the break of the gangway. The night closed rapidly upon the silent ships with their crews on shore. Up a short, steep ascent by the King's Head pub., patronized by the cooks and stewards of the fleet, the voice of a man crying "Hot saveloys!" at the end of George Street, where the cheap eating-houses (sixpence a meal) were kept by Chinamen (Sun-kum-on's was not bad), is heard at regular intervals. ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... company with Messrs. Wild and Gaze I started from Hut Point, December 31, 1916, at 8 a.m., and a course was steered inshore as close as possible to the cliffs in order to search for any possible means of ascent. At a distance of half a mile from Hut Point we passed a snow slope which I had already ascended in June 1916; three and a half miles farther on was another snow slope, which ended in Blue Ice Glacier slope, which ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... General Howe's orders almost totally destroyed by hot shot during the attack. Instead of attempting to cut off the Americans by occupying the neck to the rear of their position, Gage ordered the advance to be made up the steep and difficult ascent facing the works on the hill. Whether or not in obedience—as tradition asserts—to an order to reserve fire until they could see the whites of their assailants' eyes, the American volunteers with admirable steadiness waited till the attack ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... methought this select band sprang forward, with a resolution to climb the ascent, and follow the call of that heavenly music. Every one took something with him that he thought might be of assistance to him in his march. Several had their swords drawn, some carried rolls of paper in their hands, some had compasses, others ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... always used except in seasons of extraordinary severity (such as that of Major Smith's journey, when this route was impassable from snow), answers better, as described to Major St. John by muleteers, to Polo's account. The first six days are occupied by a gentle ascent through the districts of Bardesir and Kairat-ul-Arab, which are the best-watered and most fertile uplands of Kerman. From the crest of the pass reached in those six marches (which is probably more than 10,000 feet above ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... of branches and a rolling of small pebbles came from the ravine which skirted one side of the graveyard, and at the bottom of which flowed the Mascle, a stream which descended from the high lands of the Paradou. But the ascent here was so rough, so impracticable, that Desiree imagined that the noise could only have been made by some lost dog or straying goat. She stepped quickly to the edge, and, as she looked over, she was amazed to see amidst the brambles a girl who was ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... were the sole inhabitants of this rock. After leaving Seal Island, we landed on the sandy beach abreast of the anchorage; in doing this the boat filled, and the instruments were so wetted, that they were left on the beach to dry during our absence. Our ascent, from the hill being steep, and composed of a very loose drift sand, was difficult and fatiguing; but the beautiful flowers and plants, with which the surface of the hill was strewed, repaid us for our toil. These being all new to Mr. Cunningham fully occupied ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... streets; and from one window and another, glimpses could be caught of the distant heights about the city,—San Miniato in one direction, Bellosguardo in another, and for the third the long olive-hung ascent of Fiesole, crowned ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... very large trees in the hills frequently perish for want of root, and are then easily overturned. This circumstance occasioned the death of one of our men, who, being on the hills in search of goats, caught hold of a tree upon a declivity to assist him in his ascent, and this giving way, he rolled down the hill; and though, in his fall, he fastened on another tree of considerable bulk, this also gave way, and he fell among the rocks, where he was dashed to pieces. Mr Brett, also, having rested his back against a tree, near ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... loaded on the scow, and ferried over to the cliff. Then we carried them on our backs, three or four at a time, up the slanting hillside to the first ledge. From there up, owing to the steepness of the ascent, we had to employ ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... we encamped at a short distance from the thick wood, by the side of the stream I spoke of, hoping early next morning to begin our ascent of the mountains. We might have proceeded further, but the spot was so tempting, that, although we had a couple of hours of daylight, we agreed to stop where we were. The blacks soon had the huts erected and fires lighted—an operation they would not have undertaken ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... the D——, made king's chaplain and preacher at the Rolls; so he was bribed to hold the peace."—Lansdowne MSS., 990. This was quite a politician's short way to preferment! An honest man cannot leap up the ascent, however he may try to climb. There was something morally wrong in this transaction, because Burnet notices it, and acknowledges—"I was much blamed for what I had done." The story is by no means ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... plainly to be distinguished from thence. In the passage are scattered several small islands, each of which consists of one immense rock, and which may have been originally connected with the main island. The face of the country is rough and irregular, consisting of high hills of sudden and steep ascent, and covered with trees to their summits, among which the species called bintangur or puhn, fit for the largest masts, abounds. The sago-tree grows in plenty, and constitutes the chief article of food to the inhabitants, who do ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... this matter by a charming description in the Shun-pao of a late balloon ascent from Calais, which was so nearly attended with fatal results. Written in a singularly easy style, and going quite enough into detail on the subject of balloons generally to give an instructive flavour to its remarks, this article ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... human and natural, of human love, of the human intellect, and of the natural world. All those things which to the Eastern thinker are but an obstruction and a veil, to the Western have become the very means of spiritual ascent[5]. The ultimate goal of the Eastern mystic is summed up in his assertion, "I am Brahman," whereas the Western mystic believes that "he who sees the Infinite in all ...
— Mysticism in English Literature • Caroline F. E. Spurgeon
... injections of morphia would be so great that they could not fail to excite remark. Although the new day brought every motive which can influence a man, Mr. Jocelyn found the path to freedom so steep and difficult that the ascent seemed well-nigh impossible. His muscles were relaxed, his whole frame so weary and limp that he even dreaded the effort required to return to the house where his family was waiting for him. But the physical oppression was nothing to that which weighed upon his mind. The sense of misery and ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... in a cheerfully normal frame of mind, not likely to be led too far afield by premonitions of New England tragedy. Perhaps that was why he did whistle, for when he reached the road he stopped and completed the first half of the ascent in silence. Then, as the whistle might mean something reassuring to Tira, he began again with a bright loudness, bold as the oriole's song. He reached the hut, whistling up to the very door, and then his breath failed him on a note, the place looked so forbiddingly black in the shadow, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the elevator Farrington took his leave, and Madame Beaumont made her last ascent. But before they reached the noiseless cage he said: "Just forget that 'Harold Farrington,' will you?— McManus is the name—James McManus. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... possession of the mind of Bute. In general, a statesman climbs by slow degrees. Many laborious years elapse before he reaches the topmost pinnacle of preferment. In the earlier part of his career, therefore, he is constantly lured on by seeing something above him. During his ascent he gradually becomes inured to the annoyances which belong to a life of ambition. By the time that he has attained the highest point, he has become patient of labour and callous to abuse. He is kept constant to his vocation, in spite of all its discomforts, at first ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... time he wanted two things: a deputyship and the cross of the Legion of Honour. These were for him the first two stages of the great ascent to which his ambition pushed him. Deputy he would certainly be through the influence of the Territorial Bank, at the head of which he stood. Paganetti of Porto-Vecchio was often saying it to him: "When the day arrives, the island will rise and vote ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... another, a train of fiery honours, festooned round four wooden pillars, was fired at different places, by as many doves practised to the task. Here, an imitation of a jet d'eau elicited applause—there, the gyrations of a Catherine's wheel were suddenly interrupted by the rapid ascent of a ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... During the first term after his appointment he was incapacitated from work by an attack of typhoid fever. Going to the Alps to recruit his health, he perished, probably on the 19th of July 1882, in attempting the ascent of the Aiguille Blanche, Mont Blanc, at that time unscaled. Besides being a brilliant morphologist, Balfour was an accomplished naturalist, and had he lived would probably have taken a high place ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... courage. The back side of the town, next the country, was guarded by a wall from 25 to 40 feet in height and 20 feet thick; this is called the lower town. The upper town is situated on a rock one hundred feet above this. The ascent from the lower to the upper town is very steep and strongly fortified with pickets and gates. The front of the town bordering on the river is almost inaccessable, and strongly fortified by nature and art. But our heroic General seemed resolved on victory or death, and no difficulties were ...
— An interesting journal of Abner Stocking of Chatham, Connecticut • Abner Stocking
... distance up the winding path. It was a nice little nook, thickly shaded on all sides, having a small aperture in the west, and was completely covered with wild flowers of every description. The ascent was very difficult, for they had quite to force their way through the underwood. They arrived at last, tired and breathless, but the wild secluded beauty of the spot quite repaid them for their trouble. Isabel was in ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... in imitative harmony, an act of expressing a slow and difficult movement by adding to the usual number of pauses in a verse. This is observable in the line that describes the ascent of the mountain: ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... already said, to within ten or twelve feet from the lower limbs of the tree, and was still engaged driving in his pegs and binding on the upright bamboo to continue his ascent, when all at once he was seen to start and abruptly suspend operations. At the same time an exclamation escaped his lips, in a low tone, but seemingly ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... just reached the foot of this last ascent at the moment he looked up. Twenty yards ahead of him he could see the end of the path, marked by a pale oblong of sky set in a dark frame of foliage, but it was not that familiar sight which held him spellbound, started ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... You will have three friends here with me. They are all armed and I can see they know how to use their weapons. I cannot possibly harm you. I will be the third to descend. I assure you that the descent and the ascent are comparatively easy for athletic young chaps, as the sides of the shaft are very uneven. By the aid of this rope you can come up almost as easily as you would climb a ladder. The adventure is well worth ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... acquaintance of this remarkable woman without increased admiration for her. The ascent of the steep and rugged path of science has not unfitted her for the drawing-room circle; the hours of devotion to close study have not been incompatible with the duties of the wife and the mother; the mind that has turned to rigid demonstration has not thereby lost its faith in the truths ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... hardly be more profitably occupied upon our route than by visiting the Yosemite Valley, where the grandeur of the Alpine scenery is unsurpassed, and where there are forests which produce giant trees of over three hundred feet in height and over thirty in diameter. The ascent of the mountain which forms the barrier to the valley, commences at a place called Clark's, the name of the person who keeps the hotel, and which is the only dwelling-house in the neighborhood. The stage is drawn upwards ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... party of six—David, Mawson, Mackay, Adams, Marshall, and Brocklehurst—prepared for the ascent of Mount Erebus, the volcano, then active, discovered by Ross and named after one of his ships. The crater rim was only a few miles distant, and during the first three days the party could be seen from the camp by means of a powerful telescope—tiny black ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... nears the summit, and the pines begin to show sterile reaches of rock and waste in their drawn-up files, there are signs of occasional departures from the main road, as if the weary traveller had at times succumbed to the long ascent, and turned aside for rest and breath again. The tired eyes of many a dusty passenger on the old overland coach have gazed wistfully on those sylvan openings, and imagined recesses of primeval shade and virgin wilderness in their dim perspectives. Had he descended, however, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... When Dant[^e] began the ascent of fame, this beast met him, and tried to stop his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... following the ascent of Snowdon, Mrs Borrow and Henrietta returned to Llangollen by train, leaving Borrow free to pursue his wanderings. He eventually arrived at Llangollen on 6th September, by way of Carnarvon, Festiniog ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... raging current. Although there was only the canoe's length between the old trapper and the youth when they were left struggling in the water, they were swept in totally different directions. Redhand was hurled violently into the eddy where the canoe had lain before the ascent was commenced, and was dragged safe to land by his comrades. March Marston, on the other hand, was swept out near to the main current, and would, in a few seconds more, have been carried over the fall, had he not, with wonderful ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... himself, however, after breakfast, and was in high spirits while on the march. He rode a remarkably strong horse that day, which he appeared very anxious to spare from fatigue—dismounting and leading him up every ascent. ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... Jupiter," in five acts. The subject of this tragi-comic piece is nothing more than the fable of the frogs who asked Jupiter for a king. In the pantomimical scenes of a wild fancy, the actors were seen croaking in their fens, or climbing up the steep ascent of Olympus; they were dressed so as to appear gigantic frogs; and in pleading their cause before Jupiter and his court, the dull humour was to croak sublimely, whenever they did ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... police-court process, and one is evidently in the hands of very poor bunglers indeed. Such was the new departure in propaganda instituted by a little magazine, mean in appearance, as the mouthpieces of all despised 'isms' seem to be, with the first number of which, need one say, ended Narcissus' ascent of 'The Path.' I don't think he was deeply sad at being disillusionised. Unconsciously a broader philosophy had slowly been undermining his position, and all was ready for the fall. It cost no such struggle to return to the world as it had taken to leave it, for the poet had ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... driving piles, by allowing the monkey to fall on a cartridge placed in the cavity in the cap on top of the pile; the cartridge is exploded by the fall, and in the act of explosion drives down the pile and raises the monkey; during its ascent, and before the completion of its descent, time is found for the removal of the empty cartridge and the insertion of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... after a while, the ascent began. Broken and bare the soil was; and thin grass, Dry and scarce green, was scattered here and there In tufts: and, toiling up, my knees almost Reaching my chin, one hand upon my knee, Or grasping sometimes at the earth, I went, With eyes fixed on the next step to be taken, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... John Jamieson, which overlooks the Nepean River, and commands the most beautiful and extensive views of the Blue Mountains. Crossing the ford on the 14th, we overtook the men as they were toiling up the first ascent of those rugged bulwarks, which certainly gave no favourable earnest of the road before us; and, as we could scarcely hope to reach the level country to the westward without the occurrence of some accident, I determined ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... two horses, the side-saddled one has about one hundred pounds avoirdupois for his share, and, in spite of the lack of habit and equestrian "pomp and circumstance" generally, I cannot term it the most unpleasant three miles I ever travelled. The road is a wild, rugged ascent up a well-wooded hill-side. There is a tonic vigor in the atmosphere, which communicates itself irresistibly to one's mental state; the gladdened lungs inhale it eagerly, as a luxury. When one walks in this air, one seems ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... reached the passage which I had seen ahead of me, and found it in some places not more than two or three feet wide. The ascent became steeper, though not at all difficult, except at one place, where for about ten yards I was obliged to use both hands and feet to make sure ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... pathos the fall of so great a one; and specifies selfish ambition as the occasion: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascent into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... which they were bound was some dozen or more miles away. It was a wild rough place. Arrived at the foot of it, they could go no further by the road; the Captain tied his horse to a tree, and he and Daisy scrambled up the long winding ascent, thick with briars and bushes, or strewn with pieces of rock and shaded with a forest of old trees. This was hard walking for Daisy to-day; she did not feel like struggling with any difficulties, and her poor little ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... to climb down a precipice is always more difficult than the ascent; and that to attempt the descent in a thick mist was doubly perilous. Kiddie argued, therefore, that Rube had either remained where he was when overtaken by the mist, or else that he had climbed farther up the mountain. This, indeed, was in any case the safer ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... remonstrances of Nature against, and her subsequent acquiescence in, the primal draughts of vin ordinaire, whether expertly served by a Delmonico, or carelessly decanted by the Hibernian attendant in the gorgeous saloon of a Taylor; next the ascent to St. Julien, Number 2, when haply a friend from the country lingers at the office, and you see no way of escape but an exodus in quest of chicken and green peas; a blushing crimson at the surface and unknown clouds below; then the De Grave in delicate flagons, a fit sacrifice to the exquisite ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... fear-provoking horse, hurried off he knew not whither, through a drought-stricken land under a searing sun, the road reeking with dust—what a plight for a devout Buddhist, who had sought to avert calamity and prolong life by the ascent of the chill mount where, alone in all the world, is revealed ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... architecture, wonderful in their lights and shades, wonderful in their strange mixture of shops and palaces— and now, alas! also of Austrian barracks—and wonderful in their intricacy and great steepness of ascent. Balatka's house stood in a small courtyard near to the river, but altogether hidden from it, somewhat to the right of the main street of the Kleinseite as you pass over the bridge. A lane, for it is little more, turning from the main street between the side walls of what were once ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... leant back in her chair. Her pose was all unconscious. She had toiled hard to keep pace with the sturdy gait of Bat in the ascent from the quay. Now she was glad of the ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the ascent twice before, I needed no guide. So I decided; but I regretted the decision. Three times I lost the path; once I came perilously near descending on the village below—well, without hesitation. It was well after midnight when I passed the Half-way House, and I ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... dark and beautiful; the great purple velvet arch that spread from side to side of the river was gloriously spangled with stars, for in the day's ascent the little party seemed to have left the river mists behind, and as they sat together the doctor and his young companions revelled in the loveliness of the scene, while they listened to the strange sounds from forest and river which constantly smote upon their ears ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... rugged declivity up which, through the long ages, divine Providence, the guide of man, has been in the ceaseless and finally successful endeavor to raise it. The American republic is the highest level, the loftiest table land yet reached by man in his political ascent; and the forces that would drag him from thence are forces from beneath, the animal, selfish, devilish element of depraved human nature, which so long have held the race in bondage; and which, now that they see their victim slipping from their grasp, and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... preparation to be made for their reception and suitable entertainment. The officers alone, with their colours and an escort to guard them, were seen to take the steep road up to the gate of the Tower, appearing by intervals as they gained the ascent, and again hidden by projections of the bank and of the huge old trees with which it is covered. When they emerged from this narrow path, they found themselves in front of the old Tower, the gates of which were hospitably open for their reception. Lady Margaret, ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... flags. San Giovanni Decollato is a little church, or rather oratory, which I have always hitherto seen shut up (as so many churches here are shut up except on great festivals); and situate behind the ducal palace, on a sharp ascent, and forming the bifurcation of two steep paved lanes. I have passed by the place a hundred times, and scarcely noticed the little church, except for the marble high relief over the door, showing the grizzly head of the Baptist in the charger, and for the iron cage ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... win hearts; 'In the ascent of this bold usurper to greatness . . . he had encouraged the levellers and persecuted them; he had flattered the Long Parliament and betrayed it; he had made use of the sectaries to crush the Commonwealth; he had spurned the sectaries in his last advance to power. These, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... still rose up before them like a wall; they climbed it slowly and painfully, their hands and their teeth filled with its dust, which drifted in a cloud before them. He bade her close her eyes, and she obeyed him. He stretched his arm out and drew her after him up the ascent, which was slippery from drought and prickly from the ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... The ascent was easy. Arrived at the top of the cliff, I saw before me on the other side a vast and gradual declivity of stone, lying bare to the moon and the surrounding mountains. Nowhere was any vantage or concealment; and knowing how these deserts ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Sao Lourenco to its junction with the Paraguay, and once more began the ascent of the latter. At one cattle-ranch where we stopped, the troupials, or big black and yellow orioles, had built a large colony of their nests on a dead tree near the primitive little ranch-house. The birds were breeding; the old ones were feeding the young. In this neighborhood ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... thought on what they had told him, about his having laid with his mother, in one of these cold-breathing chasms. Such thoughts soon vanished; it seemed to him as though it were some other story—one of the many which had been related to him. Now and then, when the men thought that the ascent was too difficult for the little lad, they would reach him their hand, but he was never weary and stood on the slippery ice as firm as a chamois. Now they reached the bottom of the rocks, they were soon among the bare stones, which were void of moss; soon under the low ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... about his own altitude. He called on his machine for all she could produce in the way of power, and depressed his elevator planes. The moment the nose of his plane turned upward, the three enemy planes began to climb also. Jimmy dared not try a steeper angle of ascent. Any machine which he had ever seen, save his new mount, would have refused to climb as she ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... 16th the vanguard, under Lannes, reached the beautiful vale of Aosta, and the other divisions descended rapidly on their footsteps. This part of the progress was not less difficult than the ascent before. The horses, mules, and guns, were to be led down one slippery steep after another—and we may judge with what anxious care, since Napoleon himself was once contented to slide nearly a hundred ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... his army boldly awaited the assault, looking down from their commanding position on the Swedes, who came on heedless of the roar of guns and flight of arrows. Reaching the foot of the hill, they began its ascent, met as they did so by the Danes, who rushed down upon them with lance and sword. In a moment more the hostile lines met and the bloody ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... rolls down again the other side irresistibly. It descends according to the laws of gravity with quickness and ease, and one can calmly look on while it is descending; for the mass follows its natural tendency, while the laborious ascent is, in some degree, a painful spectacle. Hence it is, for example, that the paintings which belong to the age of declining art are much more pleasing to the unlearned eye, than those which preceded the period ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Pembroke called; "hold in your hound till the others join you." But Archie paid no attention to the shout, but kept up the steep path at the top of his speed. Shouts and threats followed him, but he paused not till he reached the top of the ascent; then he unfastened Hector's collar, and the dog, relieved from the chain which had so long restrained him, bounded away with a deep bay in pursuit of his master, whose scent was now strong before him. As Archie looked back, the four knights and their ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... therefore, not be deemed surprising that accounts of hill-climbing contests are generally lacking in definiteness. The name of the car and the driver are always given with scrupulous care, but such incidental details as length of ascent, minimum, maximum, and average gradient, maximum curvature, and so on, are generally ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... defects, and that element of the uncommunicated and unexplained which was always to be felt in him. Eleanor began to look happier and younger than she had looked for days. And Lucy wondered why the long ascent to Nemi was so delightful; why the scirocco seemed to have gone from the air, leaving so purpureal and divine a light on mountain and ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... actively engaged; the right could not at first surmount the heights, from their precipitous character; but Colonel Taylor and his men, not to be defeated, stole round the base of the mountain unseen, and found a more practicable ascent than that they had at first tried. "Then on both sides the British infantry were soon hotly engaged with the mountaineers, clambering up the precipitous peaks, and pouring down a hot and destructive fire upon the surprised and disconcerted Khyberees, who had not expected ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... street, bordered by cottages peeping out of green and white orchards, stretched in a straight line to the base of the ascent which led up to the Pink Cliffs. A green square enclosed a gray church, a school-house and public hall. Farther down the main thoroughfare were several weather-boarded whitewashed stores. Two dusty men were riding along, one on each side of the wildest, most vicious little horse Hare had ever ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... her bag and umbrella were wrested from her by an imperious uniformed attendant, and in what seemed to her an incredibly short space of time, she was following him along a velvet lined corridor on the tenth floor. The swift ascent in the elevator had made her dizzy, and the physical sensation reminded her that she was weak for food. Then the attendant rapped imperatively at a door just beyond a shining staircase, and she forgot herself as completely as it had been ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the most compendious scale for so much to the height of the Roman Eloquence, when I consider how equally it turnes and rises with so many figures it seems to me a Trajan's columne, in whose winding ascent we see imboss'd the severall monuments of your learned victoryes: And Salmatius and Morus make up as great a triumph as that of Decebalus, whom too, for ought I know, you shall have forced, as Trajan the other, to make themselves away out of a ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... whole mountain within a lower enclosing line. In that figure, however, the dotted peak interferes with the perception of the form finally determined upon, which therefore I repeat here (Fig. 106), as Turner gave it in color. The eye may not at first detect the law of ascent in the peaks, but if the height of any one of them were altered, the general form would instantly be perceived to be less agreeable. Fig. 107 shows that they are disposed within an infinite curve, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... of water on the oilcloth. Thence I stumbled up the ladder, dived overboard, and buried bad dreams, stiffness, frowsiness, and tormented nerves in the loveliest fiord of the lovely Baltic. A short and furious swim and I was back again, searching for a means of ascent up the smooth black side, which, low as it was, was slippery and unsympathetic. Davies, in a loose canvas shirt, with the sleeves tucked up, and flannels rolled up to the knee, hung over me with a rope's end, and chatted unconcernedly about ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers |
