"Black hole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meet him in a snug quartett party, and hear his manner of playing his own music. If you can bring about such a thing while I am in town, either at Chelsea, or at Mr. Burney's, or at Mr. Salomon's, or I care not where—if it were even in the Black Hole at Calcutta (if it is a good hole for music)—I say, if by hook or crook you could manage such a thing, you should be my Magnus Apollo for the rest of your life. I mention Salomon because we are a little acquainted. He has twice asked me to call upon him, and I certainly ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... was turned towards her right shoulder, the corner of her mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower part of her face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her hands; a kind of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to disappear in that viscous pallor that looks like a thin web, as if spiders had spun it over. ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... he had been following to a place in the woods known only to Rothsky. Close to where they finally halted and began preparations for the punishment of the prisoner, who was also expected to afford them infinite amusement by his sufferings, yawned a great black hole. It was of unknown depth, and was nearly concealed by a tangle of vines and bushes. Rothsky had stumbled upon it by accident only a few days before, and now conceived that it would be a good place in which to dispose of a body, in case they ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... work was in Bengal. In 1756 the young nawab of Bengal, Suraj-ud-Dowlah by name, seized the English fort at Calcutta and locked 146 Englishmen overnight in a stifling prison—the "Black Hole" of Calcutta—from which only twenty-three emerged alive the next morning. Clive, hastening from Madras, chastised Suraj for this atrocity, and forced him to give up Calcutta. And since by this time Great Britain and France were openly at war, Clive ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... 'He is noble, he is brave. He will rest not night nor day whilst his brother lies a captive in these cruel hands. I have but to watch and to wait. He will surely come. And when he comes, I will show him the black hole in the wall — the dark passage to the moat — and he will dare to enter where never man has entered before. He will save his brother, and my ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... up in a black hole in the forecastle of the Silver Heron to await the dawn and to spend the time in making his soul. No words had passed between him and Sir John since his surrender. With wrists pinioned behind him, he had been hoisted aboard the English ship, and in the waist of her he had stood for a moment ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... around the black hole of their prison, hoping to find some way of escape, but without success. They were beginning to get tired and discouraged, and they sat down on the floor to ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... grabbed his arm and so saved him from tumbling headlong into a black hole in the ground. Vines and a small shrub or two had been ruthlessly torn out to bare the opening. It was here that the visitors must have gone to earth. And then Val had a glimmering of the truth; the "Boss" and his friends had at last found Jeems' ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... out of the sky— littler'n a star, little as a spark little as a fierce red spider on a burning thread... and then the light goes out... shivers into blackened bits.... You hold on to a wall that whirls around and the gate is a black hole. You grope your way in like a toad that's blinded by a stone... and mama puts on cold wet rags that get hot soon.... Hush! don't ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... if she were in the Black Hole of Calcutta; but that doesn't make either her or us cool," said Emma Lascelles, an elder girl. "Don't preach, Peony; lessons are bad ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Cathedral—English—was interesting on account of the many memorials and statues, one of Bishop Heber having much merit. Fort William and the grounds of the Government House, the Dalhousie Club, the Black Hole, and other points ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... himself, and this space ought to communicate freely with the external atmosphere by means of direct or indirect channels. Hence, a sleeping-room for one adult person should not be less than nine by ten feet in breadth and length and nine feet in height. What occurred in the Black Hole at Calcutta is an excellent illustration of the effect of vitiated air. One hundred and forty-six Englishmen were confined in a room eighteen feet square, with two small windows on one side to admit air. Ten hours after their imprisonment, only ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... fire had made little headway, though a few minutes more would have given it a dangerous start. The flames hissed and died out as Gussie threw on the water, and in a few seconds only a small black hole in the shingles remained. Gussie slid down the ladder. She trembled in every limb, but she put out her wet hand to me with a faint, triumphant smile. We shook hands across the ladder with a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... colleagues there was a change in the command of the camp. The old General was superseded by a man whose name will never be forgotten by the British prisoners of Sennelager Camp. They will ever couple him with the infamous instigator of the "Black Hole of Calcutta." ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... Bengal. The nabob of that province had died, and his successor, a young man of nineteen, attacked Calcutta. The place fell, after a weak resistance, in June, and the surrender was followed by the famous tragedy known as that of the Black Hole of Calcutta. The news reached Madras in August, and Clive, whose name has already been mentioned, sailed with the fleet of Admiral Watson, after a long and vexatious delay. The fleet entered the river in December and appeared before Calcutta in January, when the place fell ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... caught it up hastily, and it went out. His perception of possibilities enlarged, and he felt for and replaced the candle in its candlestick. "Here! you be lit," said Mr. Fotheringay, and forthwith the candle was flaring, and he saw a little black hole in the toilet-cover, with a wisp of smoke rising from it. For a time he stared from this to the little flame and back, and then looked up and met his own gaze in the looking-glass. By this help he communed with himself ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... burden. At the end of summer Pitt sent a great expedition to attack Rochefort; the military and naval commanders disagreed, and the consequence was failure. There was no light except from far-off India, where Clive won the great victory of Plassey, avenged the Black Hole of Calcutta, and prepared the ruin of the French power and the undisputed ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... can be. 'T was only yesterday he took me to the works, and you'd ha' thought us two Quakers as the spirit hadn't moved, all the way down we were so mum. It's a place to craze a man, certainly; such a noisy black hole! There were one or two things worth looking at, the bellows for instance, or the gale they called a bellows. I could ha' stood near it a whole day; and if I'd a berth in that place, I should like to be bellows-man, if there is such a one. But Jem ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... everything was definite, and there was nothing of which a boy of spirit need be afraid. The shaft was choked with dirt a few feet below their landing-planks, and there was no spot in which a mystery might lurk; but it was very different now with that black hole leading Heaven knew into what awesome depths, harbouring goodness knew what horrors. Ted's defection had suddenly become the sentiment of the majority. At that moment Dick could have counted on ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... more; and now there was feverish haste. An oval door in the wall ahead was swung open, revealing a round, black hole. ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... tell Maka, and when Maka had gone back with him, so greatly surprised that he had deserted his post without thinking about it, he found that what Mok had said was true, and that there was nothing there but a great black hole. Mok must have been asleep when the water went away, but it was gone, and that was all ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... couldn't have said how many roofs she had crossed, when at length she discovered a scuttle that was actually ajar, propped wide to the pounding flood; and without pause to wonder at this circumstance, or what might be her reception and how to account for herself, she swung down into that hospitable black hole, found footing on the ladder, let herself farther down—and by mischance dislodged the iron arm supporting ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... fellow. Come along, you are just in time to take her home; I must be off, or black hole for me." ...
— Legend of Moulin Huet • Lizzie A. Freeth
... head this way and that. The little door slowly slid back, and when Reddy turned to speak to her again, for he had had his back to her, she was nowhere to be seen. Reddy just gaped and gaped foolishly. There was no Granny Fox, but there was a black hole where she had been working, and from it came the most delicious smell,—the smell of fat hens! It seemed to Reddy that his stomach fairly flopped over with longing. He rubbed his eyes to be sure that he was awake. Then in a twinkling he was ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... schools, especially in Belfast, are shamefully over-crowded. Classes are held on the stairs, in the cloak-room, the hall, or the yard. For the more fortunate, class-rooms are provided with an air-space per individual only slightly less than that available in the Black Hole of Calcutta. All over the country, children go to school breakfastless and stupid with hunger, and the local authorities have no power to feed them as in England, and in most European countries. Then again, even where the physical conditions are reasonable, the programme ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... unparalleled coquetry of our ancient Maiden. She would never talk with any woman when any man was in the room. She descended to the stuffy little salon only in the evening, when the Relicts were gathered to their gambling for sous and the atmosphere was an imitation of the Black Hole of Calcutta. She descended en grande tenue, the grandest ever seen there, frizzled, jewelled, and muffled to the throat in fleecy clouds of white wool. She came all quirks and quivers, all flutters and smiles, for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... Dutch Company, was treated with indulgence. Meanwhile the Nabob marched on Calcutta; the governor and the commandant fled; the town and citadel were taken, and most of the English prisoners perished in the Black Hole. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... excellencies on the left—were the long-robed, ermined judges, laying their wigs together and shaking hands, their wigs' many-curled tails shaking on their backs. And the wigs jointly and severally looked like so many vast white and gray birds'-nests from Brobdingnag, with a black hole at the top of each, for the birds to creep out or in. More and more scarlet-ermined dignitaries and nobles swarmed into the hall, and then, in at the scarlet door, came, with white ribbon shoulder-knots ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... it was followed. The English captives were left to the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. Even for a single European malefactor, that dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too close and narrow. The space was only twenty feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... dusty cement inclosing it encouraged me greatly. It was very friable and so shallow that my scissors'-point picked it at once. In five minutes' time the brick was clear, so that I easily lifted it out and set it on the floor. The small black hole which was left was large enough to admit my hand. I wasted no time thrusting it in, expecting to feel the box at once and draw it out. But it was farther back than I expected, and while I was feeling about ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... to the lip of the volcano (it took us half a day to get up to it) we found the stone was unbelievably large—big as a cathedral. Underneath it we could look right down into a black hole which seemed to have no bottom. The Doctor explained to us that volcanoes sometimes spurted up fire from these holes in their tops; but that those on floating islands were always cold ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... preoccupation with the relief and elation of a drama finished, had their first warning of what was to come in a voice that did not seem like the voice of the tenderfoot as they had heard it, but of another man. And Leddy was looking at a black hole in a rim of steel which, though twenty yards away, seemed hot against his forehead, while ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... the earth's great ironing day. And - above all - a day that converts a railway traveller into a martyr, and a first-class carriage into a moving representation of the Black Hole of Calcutta. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... humor of it. "But to understand what I mean by hardship you must know how I've struggled in the ruts and narrow traditions of my profession, and fought, hoped, and starved. Why, I tell you that black hole over there looks like an open door with a light inside of it compared to some of the things I've gone through in the seven years that I've been trying to get a start. Money? I'll tell you how that is, Miss Horton; I've thought along that one ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... trap door or cellar way. In this floating dungeon, we miserable young men spent our first night, in sleepless anguish, embittered with the apprehension of our suffering cruel death by suffocation. Here the black hole of Calcutta rose to my view in all its horrors; and the very thought stopped my respiration, and set my brain on fire. In my distress, I stamped with my feet, and beat my head against the side of the ship in the madness of despair. ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... they do," returned the man. "Sometimes you have it quite chilly after a hot day. Other times you have it suffocatin'—like the Black Hole of Calcutta—as it'll ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... men in the cafe called back, "We can't hear you," and I repeated, "Fire higher! You nearly hit me," and pointed with my finger to where the big 44-calibre ball had left a black hole in the green paint of the trough. When they saw this there were excited exclamations from the men, and I heard the one who was giving the orders repeating my warning. And then came the shock of another volley. Simultaneously with the shock ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... woman down with me. It was very like a dime novel. Three lone women who, for purposes of intensification, may be called enemies, staring with white faces at a wall of dirt, and trying to realise that a minute before it had been a black hole. And at the other end of that hole now were two men horribly imprisoned in a rock-walled tomb without air or food, perhaps dead. We could not tell how much of a cave-in ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... of Indian history leads me to the conclusion that in all likelihood we should never have been rulers in India had we not been grievously injured as traders, in violation of rights accorded to us by the native powers. All know the story of the black hole of Calcutta, which led to our waging war on the Nawab. We had previously fought with the French and French allies in the south, we had contended with other European rivals, but our rule began with the victory of Plassey. ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... towards the abyss. Doesp[oe]na, through vertigo, flings herself in there of her own accord. Britomartis, shrieking with fear, clasps the folds of her fillet. The Centaurs arrive with a great galloping, and dash, pell-mell, into the black hole. ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... for some offence had been confined in the military guardhouse at Parramatta, whence he found means to make his escape, and reached Sydney in time to swim on board the American. On being brought on shore he received a slight punishment, and was confined in the black hole at the guardhouse at Sydney, out of which he escaped a night or two after, by untiling a part of the roof. After this he was not heard of, till the watch apprehended him at Parramatta, where he had broken into two houses, which he had plundered, and was caught with ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... a ladder into a loft where he had his straw-bed, while his son slept below-stairs at the end of a kind of niche near the chimney-piece and the servant shut herself up in a kind of cave, a black hole which was formerly used ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... they cast anchor beside a harbour-town, and presently swarmed out to sell and to buy, and there they delayed for a term of two months until they had finished their business and they had purchased them what sufficed of provaunt. All this while the Prince lay bound in the black hole deep down in the ship's hold, nor did anyone go near him save a Jew, a man of a certain age.[FN533] And whenever he entered that dismal place he heard the youth reciting from the Koran and he would stand to hearken until his heart was softened to the speaker and he would favour him in ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... touched water. Being only a large spaniel, too small for mere heroism, he saved no lives in the water but his own—and that, on one occasion, before our very eyes, from a dark trout stream, which was trying to wash him down into a black hole among the boulders. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... borne the air of that city—in fact, upon having survived such a collision with the local remembrances of the poor historian, very much in those terms which Mr. Governor Holwell might have used on finding himself 'pretty bobbish' on the morning after the memorable night in the Black Hole of Calcutta: he could hardly believe that he still lived. [Footnote 1] And yet, how had the eloquent historian trespassed on his patience and his weak powers of toleration? Livy was certainly not very learned in the archaeologies of his own country; where all men had gone astray, he ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... the "Black Hole." It was a large camp with large frame buildings, which had been erected especially for the purpose. There was one building for the French prisoners, one for the Russians, and one for the British and Canadian contingent. Barbed wire entanglements surrounded the camp and there were sentries ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... with our names painted on a door-post in right of one black hole called a set of chambers,' said Eugene; 'and each of us has the fourth of a clerk—Cassim Baba, in the robber's cave—and Cassim is the only respectable ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... slept. Our breath keeps life agoing through the nose when we are asleep. Boys that stay in a room all day should not breathe. They should wait till they get outdoors. Boys in a room make carbonicide. Carbonicide is more poisonous than mad dogs. A heap of soldiers was in a black hole in India and carbonicide got into that black hole and killed nearly every one afore morning. Girls kill the breath with corsets that squeeze the diagram. Girls can't run or holler like boys because their diagram is squeezed too much. If I was a girl, ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... child all the way over to Portsmouth by himself!" exclaimed good Mrs Driscoll, the Doctor's wife, on hearing the contents of this epistle. "Why, he might be spirited off to the Plantations or the Black Hole of Calcutta, and we never hear any more about him. What could Mr O'Flaherty ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... there—barrows with fried fish upon them, barrows with second-hand-looking vegetables and others piled with more than second-hand-looking garments. Trade was not driving, but near one or two of them dirty, ill-used looking women, a man or so, and a few children stood. At a corner which led into a black hole of a court, a coffee-stand was stationed, in charge of a ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... India; and also the country-house of Warren Hastings at Alipur, for the entertainment of Indian princes. Lord Curzon restored, at his own cost, the monument which formerly commemorated the massacre of the Black Hole, and a tablet let into the wall of the general post office indicates the position of the Black Hole in the north-east bastion of Fort William, now occupied by the roadway. Government House, which is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... was a crash and an unearthly scream, then a thud that sounded as if it had happened in the middle of the earth. Father Donovan and I looked around in alarm, but Paddy was nowhere to be seen. Toward the wall there was a square black hole, and, rushing up to it, we knew at once what had happened. Paddy had danced a bit too heavy on an old trap-door, and the rusty bolts had broken. It had let him down into a dungeon that had no other entrance; ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... shrieks and groans in the dungeon in which she was thrust; a most awful black hole, full of bats, rats, mice, toads, frogs, mosquitoes, bugs, fleas, serpents, and every kind of horror. No light was let into it, otherwise the gaolers might have seen her and fallen in love with her, as an owl that lived up in the roof of the tower did, and a cat, you know, who can see in ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... other villain answered; 'but when is it to be, my most admirable Charron?—how much longer?—how many months?' 'Behold my fingers,' said the one who had abused me; 'I put these into those, and then you know. It would have been already, except for the business that you have been employed upon in this black hole. Hippolyte, you have done well, though crookedly; but all is straight for the native land. You have made this Government appear more treacherous in the eyes of France and Europe than our own is, and ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... coigne of vantage, placed blue lights on them all, and at the word illuminated all together, there was redoubled bedlam in that abode of Hecate, and the eternal calm of the Boodh became awful. For what deeds of outer darkness, done long ago in that black hole of superstition, so many damned souls shrieked from their night-fowl transmigrations, 'twere vain to question there were no disclosures in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... black hole: like a spot, in his forehead. No sensation was created. M. Massarel shot a second time and made a second hole, then a third time, then, without stopping, he shot off the three remaining shots. Napoleon's forehead was ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... as carefully as I did and here you will find a cave." With that she disappeared into the yawning black hole, leading both burros. Barbara and Anne stared at each other in amazement, and the latter said: "Come carefully! Anything ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy |
