"Climber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... girl of twelve, very straight and slim and with big dark eyes. She gave him when he went away the little Testament she had gotten as a prize, and which was one of her most cherished possessions. Other boys found the first honor as climber, runner, rock-flinger, wrestler, swimmer, and fighter open once more to them, and were free from the silent and somewhat contemptuous gaze of him who, however they looked down on him, was a sort of silent ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... privately they considered Mrs. Hollister a snob, and worried lest Ethel should become one. Archibald seldom asserted himself, but when he did his word was law. While his wife was a social climber he was exactly the opposite. He had been known to bring home the most disreputable looking men—men who had been his friends in youth and who were playing in hard luck. He would ask them to dinner without even sending word, and his wife would invariably plead a sick headache to ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... Harcourt were urging White, a delicate boy, and no climber, to mount a high tree in the wood, to enjoy they said the glorious sea-view; but in reality to make themselves merry at his expense, being certain that if he managed to scramble up he would have some difficulty in getting down, and would get a terrible fright at least. White stood at the bottom ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... business with the thrush, he kept out of the way, knowing that you had vowed vengeance against him, and although I go about a good deal, and peep into so many odd corners, I could not discover his whereabouts, till the little tree-climber told me. You know the tree-climber, dear, you have seen him in your orchard at home; he goes all round and round the trees, and listens at every chink, and so he learns almost all the secrets. He heard the weasel in the elm, and came ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... dropped in to see him one day and I was sitting in there joshing him and carrying on, he was that painfully embarrassed! I guess she made him move; but, Lord, they have to bribe tenants to get 'em in here. To crawl up one flight of that stairway you have to be a mountain climber. I only stay because the work's so congenial and it's a quiet place for reading, and all the processions pass here. The view of that hairdressing shop across the way is something I recommend. If I hadn't studied stenography I should have taken up hairdressing ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... It was my own favourite diversion. I soon found that the rock contained all manner of strange crypts, crannies, and recesses, where owls nestled, and the weasel brought forth her young; here and there were small natural platforms, overgrown with long grass and various kinds of plants, where the climber, if so disposed, could stretch himself, and either give his eyes to sleep or his mind to thought; for capital places were these same platforms either for repose or meditation. The boldest features of the rock are descried on the northern side, where, after shelving down gently from the wall ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... get a general view and a few pencil sketches, and make my way back to the steamer in the night. Mr. Young, one of the missionaries, asked permission to accompany me, saying that he was a good walker and climber and would not delay me or cause any trouble. I strongly advised him not to go, explaining that it involved a walk, coming and going, of fourteen or sixteen miles, and a climb through brush and boulders of seven thousand feet, a fair day's work for a seasoned mountaineer to be done in ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... bear smells the honey from a distance, and comes to find it. On reaching the place he sees the pot of honey on the tree. As the bear is a good climber, he soon scrambles up the trunk of the tree and walks along the ...
— The Wonders of the Jungle - Book One • Prince Sarath Ghosh
... stratagems; she was practiced in every form of gymnastic exercise. Vagualame could and would reach her room by the gutter-pipe ladder, it was not too difficult; but it was a risky undertaking, for, and particularly from the Esplanade des Invalides, a climber might be seen, an alarm raised, and the police ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... this meant the loosening of myself with my own hand for ever from her who was my mentor and my glory, to gain whom I was in the very tideway. I could not submit to it, though the view was like that of a green field of the springs passed by a climber up the crags. I went to Anna Penrhys to hear a woman's voice, and partly told her of my troubles. She had heard Mr. Hipperdon express his confident opinion that he should oust me from my seat. Her indignation was at my service as a loan: it sprang up fiercely and spontaneously in allusions ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Chaka the King, the greatest man who has ever lived in Zululand, and the most evil, pass by my hand to those kraals of the Inkosazana where no sleep is. In blood he died as he had lived in blood, for the climber at last falls with the tree, and in the end the swimmer is borne away by the stream. Now he trod that path which had been beaten flat for him by the feet of people whom he had slaughtered, many as the blades of grass upon a mountain-side; but ...
— Nada the Lily • H. Rider Haggard
... behind them. Maldar was the man, and he had stretched forth his hands toward the boy. The count perceived him in the nick of time, and clutching him by the throat, threw him headlong down into the courtyard. The next minute the bold climber had jumped over the wall and ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... that in warm sheltered situations, this climber might grow in the open ground; to such as have it in abundance, we recommend ...
— The Botanical Magazine Vol. 8 - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... he may do danger with. Th' abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins Remorse from power; and, to speak truth of Caesar, I have not known when his affections sway'd More than his reason. But 'tis a common proof, That lowliness is young ambition's ladder, Whereto the climber-upward turns his face; But, when he once attains the upmost round, He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend: so Caesar may; Then, lest he may, prevent. And, since ...
— Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... Tucker, greatly startled by Joan's unexpected appearance. "Why, what do 'ee mane, child, eh? But there!" she added starting up, "us'll make sure to wance and knaw whether 'tis lies or truth we'm tellin'.—Here, Sammy, off ever so quick as legs can carry 'ee, and climber up and fetch Adam ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... the amusing incidents represented, is that of a redeemed soul, quite naked, climbing up a vine to reach heaven, in which God the Father is in the act of "receiving" Adam and Eve, shaking hands most sociably! The friends of this aspiring climber are "boosting" him from below; the most deliciously realistic proof that Stoss had no use for the ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... down the tree here, and went back the same way," Steve proposed. "We know already that the thief is a climber, don't we, Max?" ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... the far northwest, a spill of lava, now the haunt of mountain sheep, the continental divide southward piles climax upon climax. Following it at an elevation well exceeding twelve thousand feet, the hardy, venturesome climber looks westward down a slope of bald granite, thickly strewn with boulders; eastward he gazes into a succession of gigantic gorges dropping upon the east, forest grown, lake-set canyons deep in mid-foreground, the great plateau spreading ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... two immediately jerked off Rev. Mr. Hudson. The three falling jerked off Lord Francis Douglas. Four were loose and falling; only three left on the rocks. Just then the rope somehow parted, and all four dropped that great fraction of a mile. The mountain climber makes a sad pilgrimage to the graves of three of them in Zermatt; the fourth probably fell in a crevasse of the glacier at the foot, and may be brought to the sight of friends in perhaps two score years, ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... the soft and friable stuff to be found at Bridlington, but of hard and slippery sandstone, with bulky ribs oversaling here and there, and threatening to cast the climber back. At such spots nicks for the feet had been cut, or broken with a hammer, but scarcely wider than a stirrup-iron, and far less inviting. To surmount these was quite impossible except by a process of crawling; and Mary, with her heart in her ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Alone! no climber of an Alpine cliff, No Arctic venturer on the waveless sea, Feels the dread stillness round him as it chills The heart of him who leaves the slumbering earth To watch the silent worlds that ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... and restraints were odious and insulting. That was how the row came about. It took place on the night before his return to Prance. It was her fault no doubt because really he had been a ripping friend and loyal and trustworthy but the little climber felt that for once she had failed to climb. She was left, so to speak, in mid air, inoculated with the germs of all manner of new ambitions no longer realisable. Wherefore she forgot her affection for him and forgot all the lessons of politeness so studiously acquired in the years ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... only heard him. It was some one who endeavored to enter by the bathroom window, which, I am told, may be reached fairly easily by an agile climber." ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... upward, with Tom's eyes following every movement. It seemed an easy task for the climber. Just what he would discover when he had gained the open window ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... of the ascent was easy enough, the ground having been irregularly broken, so that the climber disappeared behind masses of rock at times, while he kept as much as possible to the western edge of the mountain where the cleavage had occurred; but as he ascended he was forced to come out upon narrow ledges that had been left here and there on the face of ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... My fellow-climber rises dim From her chilly grave - Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb, Laughing, her ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... I made and rigged boats and went sailing them, and I went rafting and pole-leaping. I became a very good jumper and climber, could go up a rope, bowl overhand, throw like a boy, and whistle three different ways. I collected beetles and butterflies and went shrimping and learned to fish. I had very little money to spend, but I picked things up and I made all traps, nets, cages, etc., myself. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... ought to have stood out against this stealing a march, as it was for her the expedition was said to be planned, but she said nothing; she had set her heart upon seeing the Tor, and realising somewhat of the thrilling sensation of an Alpine climber; and she was but nine—no great age for unerring wisdom. "Young people's heads are renowned for folly." Mrs. Grant said something like this when Dick and Jenny mustered at the gates, and the four set off, fortified with a good supply ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... you can put up with an ignorant old hill-climber like meself, I'll be grateful, and I'll try not rub your fur ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... polished boughs, from which, seated as in a cradle, she had played Juliet to Pin's Romeo, and vice versa—but oftenest Juliet: for though Laura greatly preferred to be the ardent lover at the foot, Pin was but a poor climber, and, as she clung trembling to her branch, needed so much prompting in her lines—even then to repeat them with such feeble emphasis—that Laura invariably lost patience with her and the love-scene ended ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... trees. It made a pretty picture in the early morning, the white rock peeping out of luxuriant creepers and foliage. It rises very abruptly from the surrounding forest, and at a distance looked quite inaccessible to a climber. ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... I hope," Dick called down, as he went to still loftier heights. He was now among the slender uppermost branches, where a boy would need to be a fine climber in order to make such swift progress. Even Dick Prescott might readily enough snap a branch now, and ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... a skillful climber, however, and when he reached the trunk he moved down it, with the nimbleness of a monkey, taking care, however, not to be too rapid or sudden, as the movement might attract notice. Then, too, he had the benefit of a denser vegetable growth, ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... a tree, but a climber. The plants are cultivated by training them about some canes planted in the middle of certain little channels which serve to convey irrigation to the plant twice each day. A plantation of betel—or ikmo, as the Tagals call ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... would be like trees without roots. Stop and think: sometimes a ladder breaks or slips, which is bad for the climber—and bad for any one who happens to be under that ladder just then. And sometimes a painter's heavy paintpot falls—and woe to him who walks under the ladder then, be he the wisest man in the kingdom. Now go, and one ...
— Sure Pop and the Safety Scouts • Roy Rutherford Bailey
... a knight of Northgalis, and he is of a hasty temper; wherefore, I beseech you, help me." "Well, lady," said Sir Launcelot, "I will serve you if I may; but the tree is hard to climb, for the boughs are few, and, in truth, I am no climber. But I will do my best." So the lady helped Sir Launcelot to unarm, and he led his horse to the foot of the tree, and springing from its back, he caught at the nearest bough, and drew himself up into the branches. ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... fat nuts in the top of it, watching them grow bigger and fatter, and hoping that when they grew ripe, Old Mother West Wind would find time to shake them down to him. You know Striped Chipmunk is not much of a climber, and so he cannot go up and pick the nuts as do his big cousins, Happy ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... together, Looking down upon the weather, When they heard our friend had planned his Little trip among the Andes! How they'll bare their snowy scalps To the climber of the Alps, When the cry goes through their passes, "Here comes the great Agassiz!" "Yes, I'm tall," says Chimborazo, "But I wait for him to say so,— That's the only thing that lacks,—he Must see me, Cotopaxi!" "Ay! ay!" the fire-peak thunders, "And he must view my wonders! I'm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... the trail narrowed horizontally, leading across a foot-wide ledge overhanging a sheer drop of fifty feet and covered with loose shale and scrub plants. Nothing, of course, to an experienced climber—a foot-wide ledge might as well be a four-lane superhighway. Kendricks made a nervous joke about a tightrope walker, but when his turn came he picked his way securely, without losing balance. The amateurs—Lerrys Ridenow, Regis, Rafe—came across without hesitation, ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... meal they got the dinghy overboard and started on a tour of exploration. First they visited the beach and found a rude pathway leading up beside the waterfall that promised exit from the basin to an active climber. ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... to you his chief title to distinction? You thought they did him honor? He would have writhed in his grave, as Miss Mayberry said. Like it? When the cheap jack or the social climber dies, he may like it, but not the gentleman or lady. Leading society girl? Why, every shop-girl who commits suicide is immortalized in the daily press as 'a leading society girl,' and every deceased Tom, Dick, or Harry has become a 'well-known club man.' ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... toward her friends, so that for the first time Jack Kilmeny stood plainly revealed. India's pretty piquant face set to a red-lipped soundless whistle. Joyce stared in frank amusement. Verinder, rutted in caste and respectability as only a social climber dubious of his position can be, ejaculated a "God bless my soul!" and collapsed beyond further articulation. Captain Kilmeny nodded to the Westerner ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... and her breath was gone. She felt light-headed. She could not get enough air. Her feet felt like lead, and her riding-coat was a burden. A hundred times, hot and wet and throbbing, she was compelled to stop. Always she had been a splendid walker and climber. And here, to break up the long ride, she was glad to be on her feet. But she could only drag one foot up after the other. Then, when her nose began to bleed, she realized that it was the elevation which was causing ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... a first-rate lesson for most persons, who if they cannot do something of considerable moment are disposed to do nothing at all. They forget that it is the brief three-minute rests that enable the mountain-climber to press on till he reaches the top whereas longer periods of inactivity might serve to stiffen his limbs and impede ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... course he must take in the final climb, that Buck's actual danger came home to the onlooker. He was very little more given to realizing personal danger than Buck himself, but now a sudden apprehension for the climber gripped ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... the prairies of Paraguay are vast and terrible. Swift as lightning he darts upon his prey, overthrows it by weight, or breaks its neck by a blow of his paw. His strength is so great, he can easily drag off a full-sized horse. He is an expert climber, and the prints of his claws have been seen on the bark at the top of trees fifty feet in height and without branches. He sometimes feeds on monkeys, but they are generally too active for him; having the power to swing themselves from branch to branch with wonderful ...
— Fun And Frolic • Various
... ladders, but as some of these caves are so high up that no single ladder could reach their mouths, a succession was contrived notched below and above into the rock where ledges either existed naturally or were contrived artificially, so as to enable the climber to step from one ladder to the next. In the event of danger the ladders could be withdrawn. A third method was by a windlass, rope and basket, and this was employed where the ascent by finger and toe notches was peculiarly perilous, for ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... about my ability as a climber, for I've never made any big ascents, though I've scrambled about in the mountains a little ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... others). We all have our beginnings. But it wouldn't have mattered how I began, Caroliny: I should have come to the top just the same. (Becoming a poet himself.) I am a climber and there are nails in my boots for the parties beneath me. Boots! I tell you if I had been a bootmaker, I should have been ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... fishy, snaky, ornery man, it's this T. Morgan Carey—an' at that he's a dead ringer for a church deacon. That Carey man would steal a hot stove without burnin' himself. Now, this young Bob is an impulsive cuss, an' if he has any dealin's of a money nature with this sweet-scented porch- climber that's on his trail, you take a tip from Harley P. Hennage, Miss Donnie, an' act as lookout on Bob's game. Miss Donnie, I can tell a crook in the dark. Let a crook try to buck my game an' I have him spotted in a minute. I just ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... impressionism, cubism, etc. Except among the very rich, where, as elsewhere, temptations are many and pressing, they have few scandals to discuss, but much gossip, and there is the ever recurrent flutter over births, marriages, deaths. They have no snobbery in the climber's sense. When a bourgeois, however humble in origin, graduates as an "intellectual" he is received with enthusiasm (if his table manners will pass muster) by the noblesse; but it is far more difficult for a nobleman to enter the house of a bourgeois. It is seldom that he wants ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... of them," Mabel went on. "The first is the nearest to the road, but the third's the easiest. It takes you to the Hause—that's the gap between it and the next big hill. You must be a climber ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... dwindled till they dotted the hill-side like spare scrub. Above the trees is a cut in the mountain, above that the bare grass, and then the frowning weather-worn bastions of the mountain with its ancient horizontal strata. It is cut and scarped into gullies and chimneys; for the mountain climber it offers difficult and impossible climbs at every point. Down the upper gullies hung wisps of ragged cloud, pouring over from the plateau 4000 feet above ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... English very much, but I tolerated this little sickly thing because it seemed to please Abigail. I asked her what were the salient features of the English ivy. What did the English ivy do? What might be its specialty? Mrs. Adams said that it made a specialty of climbing. It was a climber from away back. "All right," I then to her did straightway say, "let her climb." It was a good early climber. It climbed higher than Jack's beanstalk. It climbed the golden stair. Most of our plants are actively engaged in descending the cellar stairs or in ascending ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... mountain-climber, said he to his heart, I love not the plains, and it seemeth I cannot long ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... him with a buoyant, untiring step, without haste and without effort. He told her that he would like to take her up into the Himalayas. She would make a good climber. In his heart he knew there was no place on earth to which he wouldn't like to take her. She was born to be a man's comrade, observant, unexacting, level-headed. She was the kind of girl you wouldn't ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... mother's hand, and began scrambling up the rocks. They were jagged and irregular fragments, with bushes and trees among them, and Dwight, who was a very expert climber, soon had the blue-bell in his hand, and was coming down delighted with his prize. He brought the leaves of the plant with it, and it was in ...
— Caleb in the Country • Jacob Abbott
... though Anthea at once said, 'Of course it will come back; I'm certain it's a bird of its word,' a further gloom was cast by the idea. For, curiously enough, there was no door to the tower, and all the windows were far, far too high to be reached by the most adventurous climber. It was cold, ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... thus far translated. Plant gods do not appear prominently, the chief one seeming to be the ginseng, addressed in the formulas as the "Great Man" or "Little Man," although its proper Cherokee name signifies the "Mountain Climber." ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... morning with an exhilarating thrill of anticipation, comparable to that of the mountain climber who knows not what panorama of glory may be disclosed to his eyes when he reaches the summit. I had whistled in my ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... autumn at the height of spring-time. Yet the king of the forest flowers is, perhaps, the crimson, feathery rata. Is it a creeper, or is it a tree? Both opinions are held; both are right. One species of the rata is an ordinary climber; another springs sometimes from the ground, sometimes from the fork of a tree into which the seed is blown or dropped. Thence it throws out long rootlets, some to earth, others which wrap round ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... shouted Bob. "A great mountain climber you are, sleeping here all day. Have you forgotten you're going ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... to them by which they knew that some one had passed in and out of the cavern recently. The stone, when examined, bore those marks of friction which passage and repassage over it will always give. At the spot from whence the climber left the platform and commenced his ascent, the side of the stone had been rubbed by the close friction of a man's body. A light boy like Danny Lund might find his way in and out without leaving such marks behind ...
— Aaron Trow • Anthony Trollope
... days on board, when the youngsters proposed a walk into the main top. I mounted the rigging with perfect confidence, for I was always a good climber; but I had not proceeded far, when I was overtaken by the captain of the top and another man, who, without any ceremony or preface, seized me by each arm, and very deliberately lashed me fast in the rigging. They laughed at my remonstrance. I asked what they meant, and the captain of the ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... infant life, and put him on the throne, an outrage on the claims of family connections, for Joash and Zechariah were probably blood relations. My brother! once get your foot upon that steep incline of evil, once forsake the path of what is good and right and true, and you are very much like a climber who misses his footing up among the mountain peaks, and down he slides till he reaches the edge of the precipice and then in an instant is dashed to pieces at the bottom. Once put your foot on that slippery slope and you know not where ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... is Lord of might; In deeds, in deeds, he takes delight; The plough, the spear, the laden barks, The field, the founded city, marks; He marks the smiler of the streets, The singer upon garden seats; He sees the climber in the rocks: To him, the shepherd folds his flocks. For those he loves that underprop With daily virtues Heaven's top, And bear the falling sky with ease, Unfrowning caryatides. Those he approves that ply the trade, That rock the child, that wed the maid, That with weak virtues, ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up a new exercise requiring considerable exertion, precautions should be observed to prevent an overstrain of the heart. The heart of the amateur athlete, bicyclist, or mountain climber is frequently injured by attempting more than the previous training warrants. The new work should be taken up gradually, and feats requiring a large outlay of physical energy should be attempted only after ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... perilous was this for Douglas's feet! The path up the edge of the Matterhorn is a foot wide, yet it is granite, even if the climber does look down thousands of feet upon his right and thousands of feet upon his left. But Lincoln made Douglas walk not upon a narrow granite way, but on a sharp sword. He who tries to walk a tight rope across Niagara has two alternatives—he either arrives, or he does not. Yonder is ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... plant, from Dammara Land in S. Africa, is remarkable from being the one known member of the Family which is not a climber; it has been described in 'Transact. Linn. Soc.,' ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... lists may be indefinitely prolonged. Why not add to the first class the pachydermatous indifference to rebuffs which is of such service to the social climber, and, to the second, taste in dress and the habit ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... creeping plant called by the Kandyans the Maha-pus-wael, or "Great hollow climber,"[1] has pods, some of which I have seen fully five feet long and six inches broad, with beautiful brown beans, so large that the natives hollow them out, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... mistletoe is a climber that has discovered large opportunities of theft in ascending the stem of a supporting plant. On this continent the mistletoe scales a wide variety of trees and shrubs, preferring poplars and apple trees, where ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... a good climber, Lieutenant Boggs?" Lieutenant Boggs looked mystified, but he said ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... flowers. A native of North America, it is perfectly hardy in this country, and makes an excellent wall plant where plenty of space can be afforded for the rambling branches. What a pity it is that so ornamental a climber, whose big, dark-green leaves overlap each other as if intended for keeping a house cool in warm weather, is not more generally planted. It does well and grows fast in ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... melting, Alec had removed his skis and stuck them upright in the snow. He dropped his pack and unfastened a pair of mountain-climber's ice crampons and lashed them to his ski boots. In five minutes Troy had "burned" a sloping, ice-glazed ramp deep into the snow field, sloping down into a ten-foot deep chasm and terminating on bare wet soil. Sitting ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... at the head of each horse, and reasons softly with him when he misbehaves. We rode for thirteen miles to the foot of the volcano, then at one o'clock we left the horses with one of the men and began to climb. Each climber was tied to a coolie whose duty it was to pull, and to carry the lantern. We made a weird procession, and the strange call of the coolies as they bent their bodies to the task, mingled with the laughter and exclamations of ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... in the hall asleep: beside him his wife, Comely, a mirthful woman, one that delighted in life; And a girl that was ripe for marriage, shy and sly as a mouse; And a boy, a climber of trees: all the hopes of his house. Unwary, with open hands, he slept in the midst of his folk, And dreamed that he heard a voice crying without, and awoke, Leaping blindly afoot like one from a dream that he fears. A hellish glow and clouds ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... feet, washed by the waves at its base; but the beach was easily accessible from every other point, although in some places the descent needed sure feet and agile limbs. But I had always been the best climber in Belfield, and I ran up and down the rocks now with the ease of a monkey, until Helen begged me not to terrify her by any new exploits. Under the frowning citadel of rocks the beach was particularly fine, well pebbled below watermark and above a strip of shining sand. The tide was coming in with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... quite unnecessarily, yet lest any should mistake, a final personal note. He is no professed explorer or climber or "scientist," but a missionary, and of these matters an amateur only. The vivid recollection of a back bent down with burdens and lungs at the limit of their function makes him hesitate to describe this ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... over. Thomas was helping me by pushing at my feet. As I reached a near-vertical position, I felt a metal rod under my hand. That was a relief; I had been expecting to have to go up the last stretch the way a mountain climber does a rock chimney, back against one wall ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... opportunities for climbing, as the sweetest and largest clusters were always at the very top of the trees. The limbs of the grey birch, although small, are very elastic and tough, making a sure footing for the climber. The danger was, that, as he approached the slender spire of the tree, it would suddenly bend or break and drop him into the water. This was all the more fun, if he could swim. When he reached home he was liable to have his jacket ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... are a climber!" he cried admiringly. "Here, give me your hand." And when he had helped her up he still held it—or perhaps she ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... year, so clean from dissipation, so full of vitality and the beauty of a long race of strong men, that he did not look forty, and in all out-door activities rivalled the boys in their early twenties. He was an expert mountain-climber and explorer of regions from which he brought his own literary material; inured to fatigue, patient in hardship, and resourceful in danger. Money and reputation and the power which attends them he had wrung from fate as his right, and felt himself fit to match with the best ...
— The Indian On The Trail - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... asked that, because of course they had. It was like asking a mountain climber if he had ever felt a taut rope over the razor edge of a precipice ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... England, where this war is said to have been ferociously waged, both rats exist and flourish, and under conditions which do not usually even bring them into competition with each other. The black rat (Mus rattus) is smaller than the other, but more active and a better climber; he is the rat of the barn and the granary. The brown or Norway rat (Mus decumanus) is larger but less active, a burrower rather than a climber, and though both rats are omnivorous the brown rat is more especially a scavenger; he is the rat of sewers and drains. ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... overgrown with creeping plants, yellow convolvulus, tropaeolum, and a charming little climber like canariensis. On each side is a gate built of balks of timber, and so heavy that it must run on wheels. This gate is always shut at nightfall, so that no one can enter the village unknown to the watchman, who is called "kinthamah" and ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... study. There was the bell but where was the mysterious ringer? The bell rope had long ago rotted away. The walls had once been plastered and were still too smooth to offer a foothold to the most expert climber. How then to account for the regular nightly tolling? The mystery had in reality deepened instead ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... from the bed of the river over the mountain spurs, the pathfinder takes his bearings from countless signs. Moss is on the north side of tree-trunks. A steep slope compels a zigzag, corkscrew ascent, but the slope of the ground guides the climber as to the way to go; for slope means valley; and in valleys are streams; and in the stream is the 'float,' which is to the prospector the one shining signal to be followed. Timber-line is passed till the forests below look like dank banks of moss. Cloud-line is passed till the clouds ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... along the track made by the other, but their progress was not very rapid owing to the weakness of the man who had fallen who, as it afterwards transpired, suffered from his heart, and was affected by the altitude. The climber behind Godfrey was strong and bold; also, as it chanced at the moment of the fall, this man's feet were planted upon a lump of projecting rock, so firmly that by throwing himself forward against the snow ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... that winds up that grey mountain is rough; its harsh stones and remorseless gradients take toll of leather as of flesh. Yet half a sole and a sound upper are better than no boot; and what climber but would postpone till after his descent the discarding of his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... the weight of the body pressing diagonally across the trunk of the tree, prevent the rope from slipping. Anything, provided it be strong enough, is better than a round rope, which does not hold so fast." A loop or hoop embracing the body of the climber and the tree, is a helpful addition. Large nails carried in a bag slung round the waist, to be driven into the bare trunk of the tree, will facilitate its ascent. Gimlets may be used for the same purpose. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... more turns, we reached a spot where the stream leaped down a precipice some twenty feet. Our further progress in the direction we were pursuing was barred by a wall of rock; an active and fearless climber might, it is true, have scaled it by the aid of the stunted shrubs and jutting crags upon its face, but we knew that Arthur accompanied by Eiulo and Johnny, could not have passed ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... no bulky boilers, engines, sails, or coal-bunkers, and consequently can carry unprecedentedly large cargoes with comparatively small crews. The officers on the bridge and the men in the crow's nest—the way to which is by a ladder INSIDE the mast, to protect the climber from the weather—are about all that is needed; while disablement is made practically impossible, by having four screws, each with its own set of automatically ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... degrees 46 minutes South; longitude 118 degrees East:— Marsdenia Leichardti, the climber with edible pods and milky sap, the seeds with a downy top, called by ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... transition is the same individual plant having the same part in different states: thus Corydalis claviculata, if you look to one leaf, may be called a tendril-bearer; if you look to another leaf it may be called a leaf-climber. Now I am sure I remember some cases with plants in which important parts such as the position of the ovule differ: differences in the spire of leaves on ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... a half-hour. He did not like the transference to the dean, who was no anxious old lamb like S. Alcott Wood, but a young collegiate climber, with a clipped mustache, a gold eye-glass chain over one ear, a curt voice, many facts, a spurious appreciation of music, and no mellowness. He was a graduate of the University of Chicago, and aggressively proud of it. He had "earned his way through ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... arose to his feet it was because he knew that the lions and the men were moving cautiously closer to him and his party. He might easily have eluded them, for he had seen that the face of the cliff rising above the mouth of the cavern might be scaled by as good a climber as himself. It might have been wiser had he tried to escape, for he knew that in the face of such odds even he was helpless, but he stood his ground though I doubt if he could ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... gaped a deep fissure or donga, on the brink of which we now stood, originally dug out, no doubt, by the rush of water from the peak and cliff. This gulf beneath would be trying to the nerves of a weak-headed climber at the critical point, and so it proved in the result. The projecting angle once passed, the remainder of the ascent was very simple. At the summit, however, the brow of the cliff hung over and was pierced by a single narrow path cut through ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... the United States (Colaptes auratus) often escapes Falcons either by throwing himself into the first hole that he finds, or if he cannot find one, through seizing the trunk of a tree with his claws. As he is a very good climber, he describes rapid spirals around it, and the falcon cannot in flying trace such small circles. By this method the Colaptes ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... with us. "Aw sure—I kill bear too," he said. Takahashi outwalked and outclimbed us all. He never made detours. He climbed straight up or descended straight down. Copple and Edd were compelled to see him take the lead and keep it. What a wonderful climber! What a picture the sturdy little brown man made, carrying a rifle longer than himself, agile and sure-footed as a goat, perfectly at home in the depths or on the heights! I took occasion to ask Takahashi if he had been used to mountain ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... statement of these gentlemen failed utterly. Mr. Spalding, who was the first member of his party to reach the summit, writes: "I believe that Mr. Langford reached the summit because he says he did, and because the difficulties of the ascent were not great enough to have prevented any good climber from having successfully scaled the peak, * * * and I cannot understand why Mr. Owen failed so many times before ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... quality than before." "Well," he said, "I don't wonder; the last book must have been a great strain, though I am sure you were happy when you wrote it. I remember a friend of mine, a great Alpine climber, who did a marvellous feat of climbing some unapproachable peak—without any sense of fatigue, he told me, all pure enjoyment—but he had a heart-attack the next day, and paid the penalty of his enjoyment. ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Excused myself and interviewed my C.O. behind the dining-room door. Came back and accepted. Q.M.S. so overjoyed (apparently) that he fell over the scraper. Seemed to jog his memory. He paused, and gazing in absent fashion at the topmost rose on the climber in the porch, asked whether I could take three! Added hopefully that the third was only a boy. Excused myself. Heated debate with C.O. Subject: sheets. Returned with me to explain to the Q.M.S. He smiled. C.O. accepted at once, and, returning smile, expressed regret at size ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... English pretty good. Ay don't tell too moch." His cheerful smile brought a faint response from Senator Warfield. At Lone he did not look at all. "I go quick. I'm good climber like a sheep," he boasted, and whistling to Jack, he began working his way up a rough, brush-scattered ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... Then great Blacksnake, "The Climber," offered to go for fire. He was much larger than the black racer. Blacksnake swam over to the island and climbed up the tree on the outside, as the blacksnake always does, but when he put his head down into the hole the smoke choked him so that ...
— Myths and Legends of the Great Plains • Unknown
... enough, once you get off on the Continent. Annie Climber was asked three times in ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... teach him by the laboratory method. Then, again, if one boy decides to become a pharmacist, I may find it necessary to attend night classes in this subject myself in order to meet the situation with a fair degree of complacency. Nor do I see my way clear in providing for the steeple-climber, the equilibrist, the railroad president, or the tea-taster. I'll probably have my troubles, too, with the novel-writer, the poet, the politician, and the bareback rider. But I must manage somehow if I hope to retain ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... of the most salient and important of the peaks that surround Tahoe, its elevation being 10,800 feet. The professor of Latin in the Nevada University, James E. Church, Jr., a strenuous nature-lover, a mountain-climber, gifted with robust physical and mental health, making the ascent of Mt. Whitney in March, 1905, was suddenly seized with the idea that a meteorological observatory could be established on Mt. Rose, and records of ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... the path of light until the intruder looked up. Then she jerked back, forgetting that she was in the darkness and absolutely invisible. The action was disastrous, however, for it shook Chris's diamond star from her head, and it fell gently almost at the feet of the climber. An instant later and his eyes had ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... runner of races and climber of walls was very far from being the sedentary weakling, afraid to enjoy the pleasures of the body or face its pains, in whom popular imagination fancies it sees the man of letters. No man was ever more fearless of {114} pain than Johnson. The only thing he was afraid of was death. ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... Chatterer, and then suddenly he started up that tree after Chatterer. With a frightened little shriek Chatterer scampered to the top of the tree. He hadn't known that Buster could climb. But Buster is a splendid climber, especially when the tree is big and stout as this one was, and now he went up ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... splendid tree-climber. It can mount a tree with the agility of a cat; and although so large an animal, it climbs by means of its claws—not by hugging, after the manner of the bears and opossums. While climbing a tree, its claws can be heard ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... very promising, for the Thal wind was bringing the heavy mist-spume pouring over the throat of the pass, and driving past the hotel in thin hissing wisps on a chill breeze. However, even in May the frost was keen at night, and to-morrow might be a day after the climber's heart. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... pinyon tree as best suited to the purposes of a lazy climber, Stacy climbed it, grunting and grumbling unintelligibly. He had hopes that he might discover something worth while, something that would distinguish him from his fellows on that ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... Witch now (I altered it this morning) and Mead the old one—the climber. Poor old chap, he'll not ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... an agile lad, and a very fair climber, for the task which he had set himself was no ordinary one. But, by wriggling more or less, Bob managed to finally get a grip on the cedar. After that it was easy work; and having succeeded in reaching solid ground himself, he aided the almost exhausted Frank ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... above must have frightened the climber, for, with an excited little gasp, she missed her hold on the rope and fell backward, where she lay for a moment perfectly still. It was not a very great fall, but it must have hurt, and instantly Molly climbed to the window sill and began to make her way slowly down ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... of nuts are all removed from the tree, the climber throws down the rope and comes ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... plain to the west of Colesberg there arose an isolated kopje, some six hundred feet in height, called Coles Kop. This hill, which rises almost sheer from the plain, taxes the wind of the unencumbered climber to the utmost. Being higher than the surrounding kopjes, it commands both Colesberg and the enemy's laager. The Boers had left it ungarrisoned, thinking it useless either to themselves or to the enemy. They made ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... when she wanted any of her pets. It was a shrill whistle, and we could hear it a long way from home. I have seen her standing at the back door whistling for Malta, and the pretty creature's head would appear somewhere always high up, for she was a great climber, and she would come running along the top of the fence, saying, "Meow, meow," ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... olives, vines, maize and chestnuts; the most picturesque beech forests, the noblest pine woods in Europe; granite peaks, snows and frozen lakes—all these are brought into the compass of a day's journey. Everything is as novel to the Alpine climber as if, in place of being on a fragment of the Alps, severed only by 100 miles from their nearest snows, he was in a different ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... sailor is a good climber, but not nearly so good as a monkey. Mappo waited until the sailor was almost up to him, and then, quick as a flash, Mappo swung himself out of the way by another rope, and, just as he had done in the jungle, he went over to the ...
— Mappo, the Merry Monkey • Richard Barnum
... The climber will know that he is at the top of Ben Muich Dhui, when he has to scramble no longer over scaurs or ledges of rock, but walking on a gentle ascent of turf, finds a cairn at its highest part. When he stands on this cairn, he is entitled to consider himself the most elevated personage in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... ardent mountain climber, glorying not only in the difficulties of the ascent, but particularly in the satisfaction coming from the magnificent view to be obtained at the top. His zeal had led him once, in winter, to ascend the highest ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... break into New York society, because look what he'd done in one brief evening without trying—and he flashed three cards on which telephone numbers is written in dainty feminine hands. He said if a modest and retiring stranger like himself could do that much, just think what an out-and-out social climber ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson |
