"Climax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... economy, business had revived about 1861. Confidence had increased, loans had been made more freely, and capital had taken up again its search for profitable investment. In the newer regions, where permanent improvements were least numerous, the field for exploitation had been great. The climax of exploitation was ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... instincts which are the crown of human nature. The recognition of the extension of infancy as the source from which in our slow evolution comes the brightest thing in the universe belongs to our own time. It is perhaps the climax of our philosophic speculation. What more feeble than the snowflakes! But accumulated and compressed they become the glacier which may carapace an entire zone and determine its configuration into mountain and valley. What more feeble than the feebleness of the babe! And yet that multiplied by ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... legend, wherein Nicolas so strikingly differs from his precursors, Matthew Paris and Philippe Mouskes, or as to the probable course of latter incidents in the romance (which must almost inevitably have reached its climax in the foundation of the house of Lusignan by Perion's son Raymondin and Melusina) are more profitably left to M. ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... flood, and dragged onward still faster and faster. About it, the racing waters would leap and boil in their furious, headlong career, shaking and tossing the helpless victim of their might with a vicious strength from which there would be no escape, until, in the climax of the river's madness, the object of its angry sport would be dashed against the cliff, and torn, and crushed, and hammered by the terrific weight of the rushing flood against that rocky anvil, into a battered and ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... place. No servant was allowed to work when ill—no matter how light the tasks to which he was assigned. Sam was but twenty years old and he had been given the honor of superintending the arrangements for the dance. And, climax of all, he had been made leader of the music with the sole right to call the dances, although he played only the triangle in the orchestra. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... will become so habitual to him that he will have appreciated the metrical duration of every syllable before it shall have dared to show itself upon paper. The art of the orator is the same. He knows beforehand how each sound which he is about to utter will affect the force of his climax. If a writer will do so he will charm his readers, though his readers will probably not know how they have ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... was one of those mellow, golden days that we New Englanders get in October. The year really begins in March, as every farmer knows, and by the end of September or the beginning of October the season has come to its perfect, ripened climax. There are a few days when the world seems to hang still in a dreaming, sweet hush, at the very fulness of the fruit before the decline sets in. I have no words (like Andrew) to describe it, but every autumn for years I have noticed it. I remember that sometimes at the farm I used to lean ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... art of violin making developed, so did that of violin playing, but, whereas the former reached its climax with Stradivari, the latter is still being developed, as new writers and players find new difficulties and new effects. While there are many proofs that orchestras existed, and that violins of all sizes were used in ecclesiastical music, there is still some doubt as ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... Duchess for a mistress: he introduces her Grace to the Countess his wife. The Countess his wife, in order to ramener her lord to his conjugal duties, is counselled, by a friend, TO PRETEND TO TAKE A LOVER: one is found, who, poor fellow! takes the affair in earnest: climax—duel, death, despair, and what not? In the "Faubourg St. Germain," another novel by the same writer, which professes to describe the very pink of that society which Napoleon dreaded more than Russia, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not to look too conscious when some of the girls actually tittered in the rear; and she absolutely blushed when Aunt Jane deliberately stated that Ascension Day would fall on a Tuesday. So Gillian averred as she walked up the hill with Jasper and Mysie. It seemed a climax to the diversion she and Jasper had extracted from it in private, both wearing Punch's spectacles for the nonce, and holding such aberrations as proof positive. Mysie, on the other hand, was ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... David tuned his instrument. Mendelssohn used no copy. His memory was prodigious. The violin gave out a beautiful melody that soared passionately, yet gracefully, above an accompaniment, simple at first, but growing gradually more intense and insistent till a great climax was reached, after which the solo voice sank slowly to a low, whispering murmur, while the piano played above it a succession of sweetly delicate and graceful phrases. The movement was worked out with the utmost complexity and brilliance, but came suddenly to an end. The playing of the two masters ...
— A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy • George Sampson
... full of 'swelling figures and sonorous epithets'. Nor could it well be otherwise; Dr. Johnson's general powers of reasoning overlaid his critical susceptibility. All his ideas were cast in a given mould, in a set form: they were made out by rule and system, by climax, inference, and antithesis:— Shakespeare's were the reverse. Johnson's understanding dealt only in round numbers: the fractions were lost upon him. He reduced everything to the common standard of conventional propriety; and the most exquisite refinement or ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... of ideas, is a continuous quantity, and therefore it is difficult to mark off any definite period of time to show social causation. Roughly speaking, the period from the beginning of the eighth century to the close of the fifteenth is a period of intellectual ferment, the climax of which extended from the eleventh to the close of the fifteenth century. It was in this period that the forces were gathering in preparation for the achievements of the modern era of progress. There was one general movement, an awakening along the whole line of human endeavor ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... and agitated reader will pass a sleepless night in endeavouring to decipher the mutilated sentence. She will fail, and consequently call the book delightful. But should there not have been a marriage previously to this happy awful climax? ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... a climax, for their chief, Sequassen, was related to Miantonomo and Miantonomo took up his quarrel. The trouble, which had so long been smouldering between the Mohegans and the Narragansetts, broke out in earnest. Miantonomo collected all the Narragansett warriors ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... again cried our chief, and we retreated to a considerable distance. The old warrior's practiced eye had detected the coming climax of our efforts, the dying agony, 5 or "flurry," of the great mammal. Turning upon his side he began to move in a circular direction, slowly at first, then faster and faster, until he was rushing round at tremendous speed, his great head raised ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... The climax of his revulsion, remorse, and despair is reached when the Prior, the man whom he has impeached as the true author of all his sin, is led forth to die. Then all sophistries are swept away, and the full import of ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... pianist having doubled his speed, the emotion of the music-lovers was reaching its climax, a servant was handing refreshments about on a salver, and was making the spoons rattle, and, as on every other 'party-night', Mme. de Saint-Euverte was making signs to him, which he never saw, to leave the room. A recent bride, who had been told that a young woman ought never ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... was his duty to attend the usual Sabbath service, if he could. He went. The occasion was of unusual solemnity, as a revival was in progress. The minister preached a sermon, well calculated for effect. His peroration was a climax of great beauty. Assuming the attitude of one intently listening, he recited to the ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... of "that little Smith girl" was known throughout the house, and mothers and fathers and guardians heard with amazement that so serious a little drama had been going on without their slightest knowledge until this climax. One mother, however, Mrs. Robson, was more than amazed when she found what an influence Agnes had exerted ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... with which her son regarded her during this long address, gradually increasing as it approached its climax in no way discomposed Mrs Nickleby, but rather exalted her opinion of her own cleverness; therefore, merely stopping to remark, with much complacency, that she had fully expected him to be surprised, she entered on a vast quantity of circumstantial evidence of a particularly ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... play. He strengthened the climax of the third act, and introduced a mechanical effect that was very ingenious. And when the piece next went on the road it met ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)
... racers all unconscious of each other, yet spurred impartially by events that were now hurrying to a climax. ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... Bill's courage and audacity had reached its climax here. To openly and publicly accuse a "lady" before a group of chivalrous Californians, and that lady possessing the further attractions of youth, good looks, and innocence, was little short of desperation. There was an evident movement of adhesion towards the fair stranger, a slight muttering ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of the eighteenth century, rush onward rapidly from success to success, their stage effects outbid one another, men and things seem to be set in flaming brilliants, ecstasy is the prevailing spirit; but they are short-lived, they reach their climax speedily, then society relapses into a long fit of nervous reaction before it learns how to appropriate the fruits of its period of feverish excitement. Proletarian revolutions, on the contrary, such as those of the nineteenth ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... whom Heaven had bestowed shrewdness to an extraordinary degree, perceived in the plan proposed to him higher, more artistic possibilities than had been perceived in it by its inventor. There was a dramatic instinct, an appreciation of surprise, of climax, in this man's mind that he proceeded to apply to the existing situation. With a wave of his hand he banished the suggested sign on the walking advertiser's back, and the suggested silken banner. His plan at once was simpler and more profound. Dressed in the highest ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... The climax of this instance of the infallibility of the Church occurred when in his seventieth year Galileo was again brought before the Inquisition; he was forced to abjure under threats of torture and imprisonment by command ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... his partner with a grandiloquent flourish, and returned thanks in a speech which sent the Northern visitors into spasms of delight at the quaintness of the darky dialect and the darky wit. To cap the climax, the winner danced a buck dance with a skill and agility that brought a shower of complimentary silver, which he gathered up and ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... treat her with only the utmost deference. He saw with alarm himself the mother's nervous and trembling apprehension, for there was scarcely anything under heaven that he would not rather face than a scene with a hysterical woman. If this was to be the climax of his policy he would rather have lost the thousand dollars than have had it occur. Rising from ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... it up. With ten years more of youth and less of age I might have tried to hew my way to Falconnet's stirrup, and so to square accounts with him. But had I been a-mind to rush upon the stage without my cue, another climax in the ghastly tragedy ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... of cooking, was devoured with an eagerness and avidity, a keen, fiendish expression of impatience for more, from which scene, a memory too tenacious upon this subject will not allow me to escape; the kidneys and heart were in like manner immediately consumed, and as a climax to these revolting orgies, when the whole viscera were removed, a quantity of blood and serum which had collected in the cavity of the chest, was eagerly collected in handsful, and drunk by the old man ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... prevailing notion that this influx after the great famine was the commencement of Irish migration. In reality it was only the climax. Long before this, Irishmen were found in the colonies, chiefly as indentured servants; they were in the Continental Army as valiant soldiers; they were in the western flux that filled the Mississippi ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... The climax of the service came with the singing of "When I survey the wondrous Cross." The physical effect of it on Hilda was nearly overwhelming. The terrible and sublime words seemed to surge upon her charged with all the multitudinous significance of the crowd. She was profoundly stirred, and to prevent ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... into the Mediterranean and that the battle of the Marne turned the fortunes of France from disaster to expansion. But the rest of the settlement is still vague and uncertain, and German imperialism, at least, is already working hard and intelligently for a favorable situation at the climax, a situation that will enable this militarist empire to emerge still strong, still capable of recuperation and of a renewal at no very remote date of the struggle for European predominance. This is a thing as little ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... was not conscious of any difficulty due to my size. The charm of bondage and compulsion was here, again, in the ascendant. I fancy that it was in this connection that I first anticipated whipping as the delightful climax to my emotions, administered when my possessor, at the end of his day's work, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... anti-climax, Frank, that is the best thing of its kind you have ever brought off," ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... have used Harold is very naturally accounted for. Actors live only to be admired; vanity rises to its climax in them. Booth preferred this sparrow to sing him peans rather than live by an eagle and be screamed at ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... Staff, and in my hand was the Baton of a Marshal, yet, never in my life, had I felt so utterly alone as at that moment. And Lotzen's recent sneer, that I could hope to hold the Crown only if the Princess Dehra were my Queen, struck me in all its truth. Surely, it was the climax of absurdity for me to aspire to rule this people, to whom I was a stranger and in whose eyes I would be, in ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... describe color? He wants "a topazy yellow" and a red that is not Turkish nor Roman nor Indian, but that "seems to partake of the last two, and yet it can't be either of them." As a cap to the climax comes his demand for "patterns of the exact shade." Thus one of the clearest and most forceful writers of English finds himself unable to describe the color he wants. And why? Simply because popular language ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... Store the stools have long since been removed and the holiday hysteria of Peace on Earth rose to its Christmas Eve climax, as a frenzied gale drives upward the sea into mountains of water, or scuds through black-hearted forests, bending them ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... Clare's pecuniary embarrassments grew to a climax. He could not refuse anything to his family; and though living personally worse than a beggar, eating little else than dry bread and potatoes, and drinking nothing but water, his expenditure, including medical attendance and many articles of comfort for ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... constructed a trapeze. Completed, it was suspended to the roof of the cow stable; the boys spent many hours practicing. The climax of the act, Livingston, the stronger of the two, hung by his knees on the little horizontal bar above, holding Alfred by the ankles both hanging head downwards, swinging to and fro, as does the pendulum of a clock; ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... prominent part, especially in the seventeenth century, is the so-called Hebraism, i.e. the attempt to derive the whole of paganism from Judaism. This fashion, for which the way had already been prepared by Jewish and Christian apologists, reaches its climax, I think, with Abbot Huet, who derived all the gods of antiquity (and not only Greek and Roman antiquity) from Moses, and all the goddesses from his sister; according to him the knowledge of these two persons had spread from the Jews to other peoples, who had woven about them ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... rally to nineteen and six-tenths cents during the next month (July, 1887), the pendulum again swung downward. The climax came with the culmination of the "European fiasco" of the spring of 1888. Reports were received that various European coffee firms had failed; and future contracts in the American market sold as low as nine cents ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... in the above selection, eighty per cent are monosyllables. Few authors could have resisted the tendency to try to be impressive at such a climax. One has more respect for this world, on learning that it has set the seal of its approval on such earnest simplicity and has neglected works that strive with ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... least by this time the English, like the French, persecutors were oppressing a minority. Unfortunately there was another province of government in which they were still more madly persecuting the majority. For it was here that came to its climax and took on its terrific character that lingering crime that was called the government of Ireland. It would take too long to detail the close network of unnatural laws by which that country was covered till towards the end of the eighteenth ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... the village, and of the instructions he had given to the agent. At the recital of the latter, Miss Jemima held up her hands in dismay, while the eyes of the secretary glistened with unconcealed delight. But the climax was reached when "Cobbler" Horn spoke of his intentions with regard to the old Hall. Miss Jemima uttered a positive shriek, and shook her head till her straight, stiff side-curls ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... seek to delay ascending by a natural climax to that final consummation and perfect crown of my felicity—that almighty blessing which ratified their value to all the rest? Wherefore, oh! wherefore do I shrink in miserable weakness from——what? Is it from reviving, from calling up again ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... interests and the local or sectional passions which they aroused, there was seldom a year after 1840 when the country did not face a situation of extreme difficulty or danger. Indeed, even while Webster was meditating his prophetic oration with its superb climax of "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable," many of the most thoughtful minds, south and north, believed that Congress faced a problem beyond its power to solve; that no single government was wise enough or strong enough to meet the situation, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... all done to the right sort of moaning. His audiences must go home delightfully miserable, I should fancy. He has set the 'Song of the Shirt' ... and my 'Cry of the Children' will be acceptable, it is supposed, as a climax of agony. Do you know this Mr. Russell, and what sort of music he suits to his melancholy? But to turn my 'Cry' to a 'Song,' a burden, it is said, is required—he can't sing it without a burden! and behold what has been sent 'for my ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... emotional climax, the spiritual atmosphere was charged with fervour. The people sat rigid, fixed in their places, incapable of motion, until released by the invitation of the leader, "Let us pray." The boy seemed to wake as from a sleep, glanced at his mother, ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... horror came now to temper his bewilderment. Was there to be no end to these astounding revelations? Had they reached the climax yet, he wondered, or was there still more to come? "You married that infamous villain?" he asked, and his voice ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... for a nickul librury, and having got it out of his system Mr. Wheeler wasted no more valuable space on the scenery. From this point on he gave you action—action with reason behind it and logic to it and the guaranty of a proper climax and a satisfactory conclusion to follow. Deadwood Dick marched many a flower-strewn mile through my young life, but to the best of my recollection he never shut off anybody's sublunary prospects. If a party deserved killing Deadwood just naturally up and killed him, and the historian ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... real source of health and healing is always there, at the climax of all efforts; and the palpitating energy which springs inexhaustibly therefrom is the only reality which makes evident this revival of the living. This medical science and this mystery cannot but ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... chosen instrument of a great and blessed revolution; but in other respects it is as impossible to look back to the period of Constantine without horror—an era when bloodshed and barbarism, and the general depravity of morals and taste seemed to have reached their climax. ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... them, I pray. It is this woman who is seeking to entrap us. She has played some little comedy, and she chooses to-day above all others for its denouement. It is her stage climax; her masterpiece of treachery. ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... listened spell-bound as the sweet singer went on, their interest growing to feverish eagerness until the climax was reached ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... writer of this Essay. Steele's Plays were as pure as his 'Spectator' Essays, absolutely discarding the customary way of enforcing feeble dialogues by the spurious force of oaths, and aiming at a wholesome influence upon his audience. The passage here recanted was a climax of passion in one of the lovers of two sisters, Act II., sc. I, and was thus retrenched in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... a sailor's daughter yourself, you know Jack's account of his wife's domestic creed! 'A good fire, a clean hearth, the children abed, and the husband at sea,' is supposed to be the climax of felicity." ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Sunday after Sunday he made the most awful mistakes, and, in consequence, was continually warned of his probable dismissal. The Princess, with her invariable kindness, had been the cause of his staying so long as he had; but one Sunday the climax was reached and the Royal patience fairly exhausted. Mr. Gladstone (then in office) was on a visit, and his solemn, grim countenance as he stood in the church quite frightened the poor man, inasmuch ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... there seems no reason why he should not have used his plain advantage as explained, but instead he allowed us to gain time, intrench, and recover a confidence that at first was badly shaken. Finally, to cap the climax of his errors, he directed Breckenridge to make the assault from his right flank on January 2, with small chance for anything but disaster, when the real purpose in view could have been accomplished without the necessity of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... blows of the hammer on the anvil beat it on the water—like the smitings of a mounted host trampled it upon the roof—like the spray flying from the cataract smoked it upon the earth. The fierce elements of fire and air and water were now at the climax of their strife—the dark blended shadow of the banners under which they fought almost blotting out the view. Occasionally glimpses of writhing branches could be seen, but only for a moment—all again was dim and obscure, with the tremendous sights and sounds of the storm dazzling the eye and stunning ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... the delights of which she had never experienced. The King held many private conferences with her on the matter, in which sometimes Professor von Glauben was permitted to share;—and the upshot of these numerous discussions resulted in a scheme which was as astonishing in its climax as it was unexpected. Over and over again it has been proved to nations as well as to individuals, that the whole course of events may be changed by the fixed determination of one resolute mind; but it is not often that the moral ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... apparent. It is to the Old Dominion that the colonies turn for the commander-in-chief of their armies. The Lees, Morgan and other Virginia aristocrats were among the most gallant leaders of the American army. But the development was even then far from its climax. Not until the Civil War do we note that dash, that gallantry, and bravery that made the Virginia gentleman famous as a warrior. Then it was that the chivalrous Stuart and the reckless Mosby rivaled the deeds of Bayard and of Rupert. Then it was that ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... delightful audacities. Yet The Congo is a great poem, possessing as it does many of the high qualities of true poetry. It shows a splendid power of imagination, as fresh as the forests it describes; it blazes with glorious colours; its music transports the listener with climax after climax; it interprets truthfully the ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... Baker was before him, and had seized it in her arms. She had been too preoccupied and bewildered to resent his first intrusion behind the partition, but this last familiarity with her sacred official property—albeit empty—capped the climax ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... science. Up to 1824 Greek was not absolutely required; from 1824 to 1837 it was required, unless the substitution of a modern language was permitted; but after 1837, when the type of German secondary school had become fairly well fixed, and the devotion to humanistic studies had reached a climax, Greek became a fixed and unvarying ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... merriment was at its highest, and the boisterousness was at its climax, Dorothy remembered that the time was fast approaching when she would have to depart. Her lover—he who had risked so much for her sake—would be waiting in the cold meadow with the horses waiting for her! and she sank down to rest, ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... Mrs. Miller, nouvelle riche and in true American subjection to her children, is travelling abroad. Her only daughter is pretty, unconventional, and so bent upon having "a good time" that she falls under the most degrading suspicions. The climax of flirtation and escapade is a midnight expedition to the Colosseum, where she contracts Roman fever and dies.—Henry James, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... was tremendous, and Mr. Lincoln at once called out 75,000 men of the militia of the various States to put down the rebellion—the border States being ordered to send their proportion. This brought matters to a climax. Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri all refused to furnish contingents to act against the Southern States; and Virginia and North Carolina a few days later passed Ordinances of Secession and joined the Southern States. Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware were ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... first Restoration, he was obliged to conceal himself for a time; and to cap the climax, the conduct of his son, who was still in ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... the girl still held out stubbornly, trying to evade the final word that would force a climax disastrous any way she viewed it, Inglesby's patience was exhausted. He was determined to make her come to terms by the word of her own mouth, and he had no doubt that her final word must be Yes; perhaps a Yes reluctant ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... She gaily recounted her climax of confusion and weariness, and the sudden appearance of this ministering angel. "She arrived at about quarter of ten. I engaged her inside of five minutes. She was into a gingham gown and at work ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... struggle to get out of the deep water into which he had been thrown, the expression of her face softened, and one might imagine the thought passing through her mind—"They don't know any better;" and when, at last, the child, instead of carrying out the climax that Mrs. Chints had intended, began vigorously to munch the envelope containing the precious check, there was even a twinkle of humor in the young lady's ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... The climax to all the beautiful things that Clara had already seen upon the mountain came at the ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... sat gripping my swaying litter and staring at the Grand Lunar, unable to turn my gaze aside. And at last, as I reached a little landing that was separated only by ten steps or so from the supreme seat, the woven splendour of the music reached a climax and ceased, and I was left naked, as it were, in that vastness, beneath the still scrutiny of the Grand ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... probable, however, that, even despite the avowed abandonment of the Prince de Conde, Concini might have hesitated to quit his post had not the affair of Picard convinced him that his prosperity had reached its climax. Even the Queen-mother, indignant as she expressed herself at the insult to which he had been subjected, betrayed no inclination to resent it; and so entire was his conviction that his overthrow was at hand, that there can be no doubt but that thenceforward ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... hired man, who had stopped into the shoes of August at Samuel Anderson's. He sat by August and kept up a running commentary, in a loud whisper, on the sermon, "My feller-citizen," said Jonas, squeezing August's arm at a climax of the elder's discourse, "My feller-citizen, looky thar, won't you? He'll cipher the world into nothin' in no time. He's like the feller that tried to find out the valoo of a fat shoat when wood was two dollars a cord. 'Ef I can't do it by substraction I'll do it by ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... the fire-god, and follows her into the Root-land, or Hades, whereupon begins another round of wonderful stories of the birth of many gods. Among these, though evidently out of another cycle of legends, is the story of the birth of the three gods—Fire-Shine, Fire-Climax and Fire-Fade, to ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... elsewhere. Many a furious stanza remains to show how deeply and bitterly the spectacle of this injustice burnt into his soul. But these pieces are accidents. They do not belong to the immortal part of his work. An American original, unconsciously bringing the revolutionary mind to the climax of all utterances possible to it, has said that 'men are degraded when considered as the members of a political organisation.'[2] Shelley's position was on a yet more remote pinnacle than this. Of mankind he was ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 3: Byron • John Morley
... generous sentiments, "a boundless liar," and finishing in high colors the outline of his moral deformities, Emerson gives us a climax in two sentences which render further ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... suite, furnished with rugs, chairs, centre table, and writing-desk. Here all waking hours are supposed to be passed. The largest homes of the residents are similarly arranged; such an exterior forms the large drawing-room, often beautifully furnished. It all seemed new and novel to us, but the climax was reached when we saw even matrons on exhibition in these show boxes, dressed in loose jackets, sarongs drawn closely around them, and their bare feet simply encased in sandals; also stout Dutchmen in pajamas, and sometimes this costume was worn ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... had earned him a high reputation for honesty, strictness, and parsimony, was, at this moment, therefore, at the climax of inward delight. His chief accomplice removed (his only other being the Dr. Polidori already mentioned) he believed he had nothing to fear. Louise Morel had been replaced by a new servant, much more ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... before our small packets could be fetched from the station, a fearful thunder-storm, preceded by a dust-storm, came on; and we had to take refuge in an hotel, which, contrary to our expectations, was not only clean, but comfortable. The climax to all our troubles has been that the man from the livery-stable was unable to get our hand-bags, so that we actually had to go to bed last night and get up this morning without a sponge, comb, toothbrush, or any blessed thing. We were nearly sprinkling ashes on our heads and rending ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... Swallows are arranging their plan of operations in the spring. Again, in addition to the shriek of the Martin, there was the note which it utters when on the wing in pursuit of its food. There was also the chirrup of the Greenfinch, and the whee, whee, whee which is the climax of the Linnet's song, by which it is so irresistible as a call-bird, and which appears to bring down the flock ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... was she who had made it sure that knowledge of Truesdale's transgression should reach the ears of Susan Bates; yet her own son had just established relations with a "baroness" who still lingered behind on the scene of the late national festivities, and at the climax of an insane extravagance had been openly ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... her, happiness enveloping them, looking across the marvelous sward, Bill Wrenn was at the climax of his comedy of triumph. Admitted to a world of lawns and bungalows and big studio windows, standing in a belvedere beside Istra ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... captain of the schooner were working together. If they were responsible for Nancy's disappearance, as Dan was convinced, he had not succeeded in getting a scrap of evidence against them. And to cap the climax, he had stupidly allowed himself to be captured. The method of his capture seemed to him quite as ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... light something. He unfolded a bit of paper before us and triumphantly across its surface he directed the rays of a bull's-eye lantern. This was his climax. We studied the paper. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... its central rotunda, is the climax of the entire structure. It is backed up and given solidity by the walls of the gallery behind it, 1,100 feet long. These walls, unbroken save for the entrances, are relieved and beautified by shrubbery set on a terrace halfway between the ground and the eaves. (p. 113.) At the extremities ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... joy and grief of both at meeting again, only to part for ever—the strong conflict between duty and love—the lacerated feelings of the doting mother, the true and affectionate son, and the devoted servant and friend—may be better imagined than expressed; but their grief was raised to its climax when our hero, pressed in his mother's arms as he narrated his adventures, confessed that another pang was added to his sufferings in parting with the ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... arts which one knows to what is unknown. The musician and poet make use of contrast, light and shade, gradation, antithesis, balance, accent, force by opposition, isolation and omission, rhythm, tone-color, climax, and above all unity ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... that we might have the pleasure of sitting still in the very midst of the waters, and rest, as it were, in the plenitude of our satisfaction; and when the anchor dragged a few yards over the sand before it held, and then suddenly brought up the boat with a jerk, it seemed the climax of our pleasure. This, the sagacious reader, in the depth of his gravity, will consider extremely boyish. But should we not rejoice and be thankful whenever we find among the many simple pleasures of our boyhood, a single one which retains the power of gladdening our maturer years? Alas! one ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... climax at last, at half-past twelve!" cried Nastasia Philipovna. "Sit down, gentlemen, I beg you. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... seemed changed into balls of fire; she could not realize that it was Beatrice who lay there, so calm and still—Beatrice, who had knelt at her feet and prayed that she would save her—Beatrice, who had believed herself so near the climax of her happiness. ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... is this, that the moderato's are five times better than the so, so's;—show ten times more knowledge of the human heart;—have seventy times more wit and spirit in them;—(and, to rise properly in my climax)—discovered a thousand times more genius;—and to crown all, are infinitely more entertaining than those tied up with them:—for which reason, whene'er Yorick's dramatic sermons are offered to the world, though I shall admit but one out of the whole number of ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... readers in the good things they say about your magazine in "The Readers' Corner." There is one story, however, "The Planet of Dread," in your August issue, that gives me a rather sickening feeling of disgust. The trouble was in the climax. After the hero has wandered over quite a portion of the planet Inra, he arrives at some mountains where, lo and behold! an unexpected space ship drops from the clouds to an unfrequented ledge of ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... it be presented in the true spirit of Christian faith. The amplifications of the Scripture narrative are often conceived with high poetic insight, and this "Dream of the World's Tragedy" is, despite some trifling incongruities, a lofty and not inadequate paraphrase of the supreme climax of ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... climax of wisdom. A man has done something if he has only added a 'thing of beauty' to the joys of a friend's imagination; what others do by hard work you do by mere existence. Be quiet, Argus!" For, while he was speaking, the hound had risen, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was warm and invigorating, and nature at the very climax of her summer beauty, the leaves green and plentiful, and the breeze gentle and refreshing. Everything in the external world tempted one to "fling dull care away" and be happy while these propitious ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... immortal! It is a natural instinct, this yearning of the heart for offspring; and yet little is said upon this subject, in which so much is experienced. All that is beautiful and lovely in woman, finds its climax in motherhood. What earthly being do we love ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... was being wrought up to a climax was Nanny's, the maid-of-all-work, who had a warm heart and a still warmer temper. Nanny adored her mistress: she had been heard to say, that she was 'ready to kiss the ground as the missis trod on'; and Walter, she considered, was her baby, of whom she ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... recollection of Lady Dunborough to hope that that lady would forget or forgive him! Moreover, at the present moment he was much straitened for money; difficulties of long standing were coming to a climax. Venuses and Titian copies have to be paid for. The tutor, scared by the prospect, to which he had lately opened his eyes, saw in early preferment or a wealthy pupil his only way of escape. And in Lady Dunborough lay his main hope, which a catastrophe of this nature ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Mr. James was unable to complete his plans and estimates in time for the ensuing Session; and another year was thus lost. The Railroad Committee became impatient at the delay. Mr. James's financial embarrassments reached their climax; and, what with illness and debt, he was no longer in a position to fulfil his promises to the Committee. They were, therefore, under the necessity of calling to their ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... Alexandrian period, far from marking the advent of purity and refinement in literature and life, really represents the climax of degradation, is made most obvious when we regard the role which the hetairai played in social life. In Alexandria and at Athens they were the centre of attraction at all the entertainments of the young men, and to some of them ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... foresight of the Confederate leaders long before led them to believe that the struggle would be concluded, or would at least reach its climax, in the Piedmont region. From the coast to the mountains the Confederacy spanned, at this point, only two hundred miles. The country was open, accessible from three points upon the coast, at which lodgment was early made or ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... I should have let them lie upon the tables on which they were strewn with careful negligence, like books in a drawing-room: being quite satisfied with the stupendous silliness of certain stanzas with an anti-climax at the end of each, which were framed and hung up on the wall. Curious, however, after reading this announcement, to see what kind of morsels were so carefully preserved, I turned a few leaves, and found them scrawled all over with the ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... interpretations is—that the Incarnation, Life, and Death are the great examples of living humility and self-sacrifice. To be born was His supreme act of condescension. It was love which made Him assume the vesture of human flesh. To die was the climax of His voluntary obedience, and of His devotion ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... o'clock. A short dialogue ensued upon the subject of the ladies. They must have gone to bed? Why, yes; of course they must. It is good that they should go to bed early to preserve their complexions for us. Ladies are creation's glory, but they are anti-climax, following a wine of a century old. They are anti-climax, recoil, cross-current; morally, they are repentance, penance; imagerially, the frozen North on the young brown buds bursting to green. What know ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... heavily on the golden cone at the right of his chair, his chin depressed, his eyes staring, scarcely breathing, he waited, knowing, that having gone so far, there was before the speaker an unavoidable climax; and seeing it in his face, and coming, he presently aroused, and motioned ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... stands shoulder to shoulder with them, blind to the nature of the illicit partnership. Believers in this cause are legion, but many, satisfied that victory will come without their help, do nothing. We are approaching the climax of the great contest and every friend is needed. If the final victory is long in coming, the responsibility rests with those who believe but who do ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... was "where they don't rake up the fires at night." A man, speaking to us once of a very rocky clearing, said, "Stone's got a pretty heavy mortgage on that farm"; and another, wishing to give us a notion of the thievishness common in a certain village, capped his climax thus:—"Dishonest! why, they have to take in their stone walls o' nights." Any one who has driven over a mountain-stream by one of those bridges made of slabs will feel the force of a term we once heard applied ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... never to reach again. In listening to and admiring their champions, the tribes forgot the smoking mountains and the feeling of apprehension that had oppressed them. At length Snoqualmie made a speech breathing his own daring spirit in every word. It went immeasurably beyond the others; it was the climax of all the darkly splendid eloquence of ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... perhaps that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have spoilt us in this respect? For it is only in these latter days that to the child, in deliberate and avowed portraiture, is allowed that freakishness, that natural espieglerie and freedom from artificial control which has its climax in the unapproached portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds. This is the more curious when it is remembered how tenderly, with what observant and sympathetic truth the relation of child to mother, of child to child, was noted in the innumerable "Madonnas" and ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... inspiriting, are rather heavy diet for the young, immature minds growing quickly tired in the efforts to digest them—Damaris, having reached this happy, if partially erroneous, climax of emancipation, ceased to philosophize either consciously or unconsciously. The russet moorland and spacious landscape shut the door on her, had no more to tell her, no more to say. Or, to be strictly ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... for themselves. It was not fair that they should be made to suffer for her mad caprices. She must play it out boldly to the final line, come evil or not.... Love! She laughed brokenly and struck her hands in suppressed fury. A fitting climax, this! All the world was mad and she was the maddest ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... difficulty into Mr. Mafferton's vacant place opposite Mrs. Portheris, and even before the carriages started I saw that he was going to have a bad time. His own version of the experience was painful in the extreme, and he represented the climax as having occurred just as they arrived at the hotel. The unfortunate youth must have been goaded to his fate, for his general attitude toward matters of orthodoxy ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... On witnessing this climax, Mr. Kennedy, senior, pulled up, dismounted, and ran—with an expression of some anxiety on his countenance—to the help of his son, while Tom Whyte came out of the stable just in time to receive the "noo 'oss" as he floundered out ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the climax, and the end comes rapidly. By this time Brown, who had put the fire out with a few pails of water before the alarm sounded, has persuaded the department to call off its hose, the barn being full of valuable hay. So there isn't anything to do. The ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... 1888. The last of all contains a reference to Robert Elsmere. Five days later, on April 15, a sudden exertion, it seems, brought on the fatal attack, and he died. He had outlived his grand climacteric of sixty-three (which he had thought would be "the end as well as the climax") by two years and ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... this despoliation more rife than in the time of which we write. It had reached its climax of horrors, day after day recurring, when Colonel Miranda became military commandant of the district of Albuquerque; until not only this town, but Santa Fe, the capital of the province itself, was menaced ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... hovering and protecting love he got from his mother's and Adelaide's anxious faces. Sorer than the really trifling wound was the deep cut into his vanity. How his fellow-workmen were pitying him!—a poor blockhead of a bungler who had thus brought to a pitiful climax his failure to learn a simple trade. And how the whole town would talk and laugh! "Hiram ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... magnificent acknowledgment of the divine plan of it all, of life and war and all, he sweeps that truly great poem, "The Hosts," to a swinging climax in its last tremendous stanza; which, fitting too, shall be the closing lines of this chapter on our dead ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... described by the sand-diviner, and here Domini knew that her love was to be crowned, that she would become a mother. She hesitated to tell her husband, for in this place his misery and fear of men seemed mounting to a climax. Nevertheless, as if in a frantic attempt to get the better of his mental torture, he had gone off, saying he wanted ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... anything so dreadful. But being a prudent old gentleman he refrained from uttering these words at Podgorica, where the Skup[vs]tina had met; a better plan was to communicate with the Press Association, in the hope that many editors would print his words. If it was a final anti-climax for a mediaeval prince—ah well, what is life but one long anti-climax? He would protest against the constitution of the Skup[vs]tina. He had by no means given his approval to the new election laws; and if, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... rehashed. The public don't want to think; it wants to laugh. This story is all right for a book, but won't do for a play. I don't see why you quit a good thing for a risk like this. It is foolish and will lose money," he added, as a climax. ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... to play—I believe there was some very unsuitable joking about it—and he consented. He attended that service; he played their English hymns," Father Greer paused, and gathered up the table with a glance before his climax. "That young man, I regret to say, was an Irish Catholic, one whom you all know—young ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross |
