"Conflagration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those with whom he had been on habits of intimacy years before the war. Their plate and linen were found in his possession after his surrender to General Brock. He marked out the loyal subjects of the King as objects of his peculiar resentment, and consigned their property to pillage and conflagration." ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... sequel. The room seemed all on fire in five minutes. Next, the overhead beam was blazing. I can tell you that the fire was extinguished by those gentlemen, and no one ever knew we had been so near a conflagration until three years later when the kind lady of the house wrote to me: "Dear Friend, did you ever have a fire in your room? In making it over I found some wood badly scorched." I have the most reliable witnesses, or you would ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... late summer, half a lusty sugar maple set up a conflagration which, I was informed, presaged its early death. But the next summer it grew as freely as ever, and retained its sober green until the cool days and nights; just as if the ebullition of the season previous was but a breaking ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... before the rise of Christianity, 139 sq.; the pagan character of the Easter fire manifest from the superstitions associated with it, such as the belief that the fire fertilizes the fields and protects houses from conflagration and sickness, 140 sq.; the Easter fires in Muensterland, Oldenburg, the Harz Mountains, and the Altmark, 141-143; Easter fires and the burning of Judas or the Easter Man in Bavaria, 143 sq.; Easter fires and "thunder poles" in Baden, 145; Easter fires in Holland and Sweden, 145 sq.; the burning ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... the hot life he had at twenty-five would be the same reckless, profligate, arrogant sinner that he was then. It is the life, not the pride, that he has lost. Many and many a man thinks that he has saved his house from conflagration because he, sees no flame, when really the flame is hidden only because the house is burnt down and the fire is still lurking among the ashes, hunting out any little prey that is left and hungrily waiting for ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... that Calyste finally composed and which he read aloud to his poor, astonished mother. To her the old mansion seemed to have taken fire; this love of her son flamed up in it like the glare of a conflagration. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... set fire to the Fleet, and to the King's-Bench, and I know not how many other places; and one might see the glare of conflagration fill the sky from many parts. The sight was dreadful. Some people were threatened: Mr. Strahan advised me to take care of myself. Such a time of terrour you have been ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... eyes. Presto, and it was no more! The sentiment he had roused in favour of public ownership, and against the regime of Blake, was as a thing that had never been. With him in jail, his candidacy was but the ashes that are left by a conflagration—though, to be sure, since the ballots were already printed, it was too late to remove his name. He was a thing to be cursed at, jeered at. He had suddenly become a little lower than nobody, a little ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... equaled the mental agony to which the usurer was submitted. The sight of the demolishing of his beautiful ranch—probably the most beautiful in the country—was a cruelly exquisite torture to the money-loving man. That dread conflagration represented the loss to him of a fortune, for, with grasping pusillanimity, Lablache had refused to insure his property. Had Retief known this he could not have served his own purpose better. Possibly he did know, and possibly that was the inducement which prompted his action. ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the light shed abroad by the flashes of the blade, and in these they beheld the air suffocated with Afrites and Genii in a red and brown and white heat, followers of Karaz. Strokes of the blade clove them, and their blood was fire that flowed over the feathers of Koorookh, lighting him in a conflagration; but the bird flew constantly to a fountain of earth below and extinguished it. Then the battle recommenced, and the solid earth yawned at the gashes made by the mighty blade, and its depths revealed how Karaz was flying with Shagpat from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... been a magnificent and awe-inspiring sight to witness these destructive operations, effected as they were during the darkness of the night. The conflagration of the stores, warehouses, and ships, the explosion of powder magazines and powder vessels—the latter being set on fire by our lubberly allies, the Spaniards, instead of being scuttled, as had been ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... terror of its arms into every sea, from Spiting Devil Creek to Antony's Nose; that it even bearded the stout island of Manhattan, invading it at night, penetrating to its centre, and burning down the famous Delancey house, the conflagration of which makes such a blaze in revolutionary history. Nay more, in their extravagant daring, these cocks of the Roost meditated a nocturnal descent upon New York itself, to swoop upon the British commanders, Howe and Clinton, by surprise, bear them off captive, and ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... we narrate, says, "that although volley upon volley was fired at him, Butler, after making some steps on his way back, turned to see if the fire had taken, and not being satisfied, returned to the barn and set it in a blaze. As the conflagration grew, the enemy was seen retreating from the rear of the building, which they had entered at one end, as the flame ascended in the other. Soon after reaching the pickets in safety, amid the shouts of his friends, he was struck ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... tail ablaze As through the cloud red lightning plays, He scaled the palaces and spread The conflagration where he sped. From house to house he hurried on, And the wild flames behind him shone. Each mansion of the foe he scaled, And furious fire its roof assailed Till all the common ruin shared: Vibhishan's house alone was spared. From blazing pile to pile he ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... powder lying round loose to-morrow, with such a face as that. As for Creamer, he can't have any cotton sheets to-night, for fear of a conflagration. I don't think I ever saw anybody burn as bad as Kennedy has; and this is only the first day, too. A few days more like this would peel him down to an 'atomy. As to La Salle, he's too black to take any more color, but Risk ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... worthy of life, and much better worshippers of the gods. So saying he took a thunderbolt, and was about to launch it at the world, and destroy it by burning it; but recollecting the danger that such a conflagration might set heaven itself on fire, he changed his plan, and resolved to drown the world. Aquilo, the north wind, which scatters the clouds, was chained up; Notus, the south, was sent out, and soon covered ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... all the little mouths still parched and gaping and the clean and quite white area unblemished, Mrs. Samstag found her way back to bed. She was in a drench of sweat when she got there and the conflagration of neuralgia curiously enough, was now roaring in her ears so that it seemed to her she could hear ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to make a Nero. But, happily for Russia, for thirteen years the tiger was chained. Ivan was seventeen years of age when a frightful conflagration which broke out in Moscow gave rise to a revolt against the Glinski, his wicked kinsmen. They were torn to pieces by the furious multitude, while terror rent his youthful soul. Amid the horror of flames, cries of vengeance, and groans of the dying, a monk appeared ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the forests wherewith the mountains were clothed, and lasted many days; at the end of which time the surface of the soil was found to be intersected by streams of silver from the melting of the superficial silver ore through the intense heat of the conflagration. The natives did not know what to do with the metal, so they bartered it away to the Phoenician traders, who already frequented their country, in return for some wares of very moderate value.[101] Whether this tale be true or no, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... hen-coop was a mighty conflagration. The fact that the point of the pencil was broken profoundly surprised me. We had a perfectly gorgeous time. It's a beastly shame that I missed my car. It is awfully funny that he should die. The saleslady pulled the washlady's hair. A cold bath ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... on this day, this time by the Russians. A squadron of four Russian giant aeroplanes of the Slyr-Murometz type bombarded the German seaplane station on Lake Angern in the Gulf of Riga. The Russians claimed to have dropped about seventy-five bombs and to have started a great conflagration. They also claimed that eight German seaplanes counterattacked, but were repulsed by machine-gun fire, and that as the result of the bombing and the air fight not fewer than eight German machines were destroyed or put out of action. None of the Russian machines were reported ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... I might have would indeed be no more than an echo. I—am not like other women; something in me is dead—it is the power to love as women love. I am like a person who emerges from a conflagration, blinded; the eyes are there, ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... one-half of the little things which I saw in the process of destruction I should be accused of sentimentalising; but the principle of the thing seems clear enough. If one could only hope that with the conflagration would die down those hotter fires that burn in the heart of this country, one might accept the manifest disadvantages. But good feeling will never spring from ashes like these; every charred spot is the grave of that which neither ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... to be their apprehensions here. About a fortnight ago a great number of flat boats were discovered by a sentinel from the bank of the river (Hudson's), which are said to have been intended to fire the suburbs, and in the height of the conflagration to make a descent on the lower part of the city and wrest from our embraces His Excellency Sir H. Clinton, Prince William Henry, and several other illustrious personages, since which great precautions have been taken for the security of those gentlemen, by augmenting the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... political distemperature was over;— there was something more of the old prudence in men's reflections; and it was plain to see that the elements of reconciliation were coming together throughout the world. The conflagration of the French Revolution was indeed not extinguished, but it was evidently burning out; and their old reverence for the Grand Monarque was beginning to revive among them, though they only called him a consul. Upon the king's fast I preached on this subject; and when ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... CO2 is formed by the combustion; name it. The equation is C 2O CO2. Affix the names and weights. Is CO2 a supporter of combustion? Note that when C is burned with plenty of O, CO2 is always formed, and that no matter how great the conflagration, the union is atom by atom. Combustion, as here shown, is only a rapid union of O with some other substance, as C ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... "I was one of the boys with you on them boxes the night of your pa's fire!" Mingled with the surprise in his tone was a respectful unction which intimated how greatly he honored her father for having been the owner of so satisfactory a conflagration. ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... the enemy. He ran to Gen. Winder, and he to some one else, and then a hundred or more negroes, and as many wagons, were "pressed" by the detectives. They are now gathering the weed from all quarters, and piling it in "pressed" warehouses, mixed with "combustibles," ready for the conflagration. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... the sculptures, and not from a ceiling covering the whole room. He further observed that the quantity of charred wood and charcoal within the chambers, and the calcined appearance of all the slabs, were phenomena incompatible with any other theory than that of the destruction of the palace by the conflagration of a ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... door of the schoolroom open. There are some spectacles which a man never forgets. The burning of Troy probably seemed a large-sized conflagration to the pious Aeneas, and made an impression on him which he carried ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... George Abbot, were hurrying out of the school dormitory. Some of the monitors began a remonstrance, but when a Senior or two pointed out to Doctor Meredith, who had been hastily aroused, that it was the duty of the students to help prevent the spread of the conflagration, so near the Hall, the head of the school allowed as many as cared to ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... house was burned because she was stingy, and perished arguing about the expense of a fire-escape. It is, nevertheless, broadly true that they both were burned because I set fire to their house. That is the story of the thing. The mere facts of the story about the present European conflagration are quite as ...
— The Barbarism of Berlin • G. K. Chesterton
... nose bleed,—"Never did a Brandenburg face suffer the like of this!" cried the poor Prince, driven to the edge of mad ignition and one knows not what: when the Buddenbrocks, at whatever peril interfered; got the Prince brought on board a different Yacht; and the conflagration moderated for the moment. The Yachts get under way towards Mainz and down the Rhine-stream. The Yachts glide swiftly on the favoring current, taking advantage of what wind there may be: were we once ashore at Wesel in our own country,—wait ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... You've been wise enough to keep clear of me, if that be truly wisdom. Come, Euan, what do you think? Do you and I contain these fellow elements, that you seem to dread our mutual conflagration ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... Roman monuments—Les Arenes and the Maison Carree. The amphitheatre is a complete oval, visible at one glance. Its smooth white stone, even where it has not been restored, seems unimpaired by age; and Charles Martel's conflagration, when he burned the Saracen hornet's nest inside it, has only blackened the outer walls and arches venerably. Utility and perfect adaptation of means to ends form the beauty of Roman buildings. The science of construction and large intelligence ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... unusual within the walls of Parliament this! And from a trusted servant, too; and one whom we have so highly honoured; and one—' Come, come,' exclaims my Lord General, in a very high key, 'we have had enough of this'—and in fact my Lord General, now blazing all up into clear conflagration, exclaims, 'I will put an end to your prating,' and steps forth into the floor of the House, and 'clapping on his hat,' and occasionally 'stamping the floor with his feet,' begins a discourse which no man can report! He says—Heavens! he is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... the light jest and the merry word, while the red flames kept up their wild sport, and great masses of rolling vapor upheaved from the crackling roof, and blackened the midnight sky. None sought to read the mystery of that conflagration. It was but an old barn gone to ashes a little before its time. Perhaps some mischievous hand among them had applied the torch for a bit of deviltry. Perhaps the flames had caught from Rawbon's pipe, which he had thrown carelessly among a heap of rubbish when startled by Molly's sudden apparition. ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... body of the queen. There could be no doubt that this was so, for look! among the ashes lay some calcined human bones, while the roof above was blackened with the smoke and cracked by the heat of the conflagration. There was nothing left ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... belonging less than any other to Mid-Victorian days, Swinburne was that man. But by the calendar it was in those days that he had blazed—blazed forth with so unexampled a suddenness of splendour; and in the light of that conflagration all that he had since done, much and magnificent though this was, paled. The essential Swinburne was still the earliest. He was and would always be the flammiferous boy of the dim past—a legendary creature, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... into competition with any other nation for supremacy on the ocean; but it is due not only to the honor but to the security of the people of the United States that no nation should be permitted to invade our waters at pleasure and subject our towns and villages to conflagration or pillage. Economy in all branches of the public service is due from all the public agents to the people, but parsimony alone would suggest the withholding of the necessary means for the protection of our domestic ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John Tyler • John Tyler
... men on the ground, however—for just then a third engine dashed up to the scene of conflagration—that it was difficult for the excited boy to appreciate fully what he saw. He got as close to the engine, however, as the policemen would allow him, and observed that a fire-plug had been already opened, and over it had been placed a canvas cistern of ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... double, he decided to hurry on without making the change. As the mare responded to the rein ends, something like a prayer moved his dry, firm-set lips. For he knew that they were menaced not only by a conflagration, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... exploits were repeated at the other Huguenot church, known from its situation, outside of the gate of St. Antoine, as "Popincourt." Here, however, not only the benches, but the building itself was burned, and several adjacent houses were involved in the conflagration. Having accomplished these outrages and encouraged the people to imitate his lawless example, the aged constable returned to the city. He had well earned the contemptuous name which the Huguenots henceforth gave him of "Le Capitaine Brulebanc."[71] ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... dim, intense happiness she first experienced two nights before had blazed up within her into a conflagration, the nature of which there was no mistaking, while the dim and almost intenser doubts and miseries of two nights before she saw now to be but the shadows cast by the first kindling of the other light. Now, as it blazed higher and more triumphantly, the shadows ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... if they are," replied George, thinking for the first time of such a possibility. "In that tank alone there must be fully thirty-five thousand barrels of oil, and the conflagration would be something terrible." ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... gestures, all held the audience spellbound. I felt at the time that I had never before realised the supreme and vital importance of the subject on which he spoke. But when I tried to reconstruct from the ashes of my industrious notes the mental conflagration which I had witnessed, I was at a complete loss to understand what had happened. The records were not only dull, they seemed essentially trivial, and almost overwhelmingly unimportant. But the magic had been there. Apart from the substance, the performance ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Abstinence." Finally, the pleasant-faced fat gentleman's coach proceeds on the way from which the waggon had deviated, carrying with it some of the former drivers of the same; the mob burn the derelict obstructing vehicle; and their noise, and the stink and smoke of the conflagration wake the dreamer. ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... his interview with his father, and was standing close by Uncle Richard. Every eye was fixed on the ship. The fire increased every second, and with a loud roar the flames burst out above the roof of the storehouse, and at each blast of wind the conflagration waxed higher and higher, until the heat by the engines became almost intolerable. The more furiously the fire raged, the more silent grew the crowd. No orders were heard, and the shouts of encouragement from the seamen died ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... that all political questions may be solved, and all catastrophes averted. I am sanguine enough to believe that war is not absolutely indispensable to the salvation of Italy and the security of Europe, and that it is possible to extinguish a conflagration without firing guns. ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... of bodies. Metals would be more or less transparent, and a telegraph wire through the air would look like a long narrow hole drilled through an impervious solid body. A dynamo in active work would resemble a conflagration, whilst a permanent magnet would realise the dream of mediaeval mystics, and become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... him; Queen Elizabeth favouring the design, And, when the work was complete, Opening it in person, with a solemn Procession. Having been reduced to ashes, Together with almost the entire City, By a calamitous and widely-spreading Conflagration, They were Rebuilt in a more splendid form By the City of London And the ancient Company of Mercers, King Charles the Second commencing the building On the 23rd October, A.D. 1667; And when they had ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... years after Roemer's death a great conflagration broke out in Copenhagen, and ruined large portions of the city. The successor to Roemer, Horrebow by name, fled from his house, with such valuables as he possessed, to the observatory, and there went on with his work. But before long the wind shifted, and to his horror he ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... are called upon to do curious things. One night, not long ago, a big residence burned down in the foothills back of our hotel. At the first alarm of fire one of the directors wakened us and we jumped into our clothes and were whisked in an automobile to the scene of the conflagration. The camera-man was already there and, while we had to dodge the fire-fighters and the hose men, both Flo and I managed to be 'saved from the flames' by some of our actors—not once, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... on a similar plea of religious zeal. A Presbyterian meetinghouse was pulled down, and cries of "An Ormond!" "A Bolingbroke!" "Down with the Roundheads!" "No Hanover!" "A new Restoration!" accompanied the conflagration. On the same day similar exclamations were again heard in the streets of London; and all windows not illuminated were broken to pieces. The tenth of June, the anniversary of the Chevalier's birthday, was the signal ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... this event, though it produced so great a sensation in Constantinople. The vizier's superb palace was utterly consumed, and the melted lead poured down from the roof of the mosque of St. Sophia. Various were the opinions formed by my neighbours respecting the cause of the conflagration. Some supposed it to be a punishment for the sultan's having neglected one Friday to appear it the mosque of St. Sophia; others considered it as a warning sent by Mahomet to dissuade the Porte from ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... out against the yellow of its framework, a number of dark figures were surging to and fro as around a conflagration. Presently we heard something smashed to pieces—at all events, we heard the cracking and scraping of wood against stone, and then ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... cry of fire in theatres, churches, and other public buildings, may be said to cause a considerably greater number of deaths than the flames themselves. Few persons, indeed, are burnt to death, means of escape from conflagration being usually found; whereas, the number suffocated and bruised to death by mere panic, is lamentably large. The following is the account of a most disastrous fire-panic, which we gather from a paper in an American Journal ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... eternal fitness of things as seen in the operations of Nature. Stringent orders were issued accordingly, and many scholars were put to death for concealing books in the hope that the storm would blow over. Numbers of valuable works perished in a vast conflagration of books, and the only wonder is that any were preserved, with the exception of ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... the comet before the fire was bright and sparkling, or, as others said, flaming, and its motion swift and furious; and that, accordingly, one foretold a heavy judgement, slow but severe, terrible and frightful, as was the plague; but the other foretold a stroke, sudden, swift, and fiery as the conflagration. Nay, so particular some people were, that as they looked upon that comet preceding the fire, they fancied that they not only saw it pass swiftly and fiercely, and could perceive the motion with their eye, but even they heard it; that it made a ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... a week-old beard; his eyes were bright and quick; his glance restless and comprehensive. A cunning reader of features would have found a home for high thoughts behind the fine forehead, the lines of infinite tenderness upon the mobile lips, the light of some noble conflagration in the wild eyes. He was dressed in faded finery of many colours, so ragged and patched and hostile that he had very much the air of a gaudy scarecrow. His ruined cloak was tilted by a long sword; his disordered thatch ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... hearkening to the dismal hooting of the owl at her feet, the sharp insistent cry of gray killdees hovering above icy marshes, the wailing tempest dirge over the dead earth; and while with one benignant hand she tenderly folded her mantle about the sleepers, the other kindled a conflagration along the western sky, that reddened and warmed even the wastes of snow, and when she beckoned, the attendant stars seemed to circle closer and closer, burning with an added lustre that made night ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... The portraits of the two Popes, both from the hand of Raphael, are exceedingly characteristic. Julius, bent and emaciated, has the nervous glance of a passionate and energetic temperament; though the brand is hoar with ashes and more than half burned out, it glows and can inflame a conflagration. Leo, heavy jawed, dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the coarser fiber of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... rather than offend, and the whole thing would die out of itself. The contrast between Miltitz and Cajetan was such that he had reason to be satisfied. Miltitz also considered that he had done well, and had extinguished a conflagration that might have become serious. He advised the Elector not to send the Wittenberg professor out of the country. More eager spirits were impatient of so tame a conclusion; for there were some to whom plenary indulgences ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... overhangs London; the setting sun is just gleaming underneath with a dim and bloody glare, and the crimson rays spreading upward with a lurid and portentous grandeur, a subdued and dusky glow, like the light reflected on the sky from some vast conflagration. The deep flush fades away, and the rain begins to descend; and we hurry homeward rapidly, yet sadly, forgetful alike of the flowers, the hedgehog, and the wetting, thinking and talking ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... when Parliament shall declare every American charter void; but the natural, inherent, and inseparable rights of the colonists as men and as citizens would remain, and, whatever became of charters, can never be abolished till the general conflagration."[100] ...
— The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens • Georg Jellinek
... came running from every side, jostling one another in the corridors, hurrying across the yards. Orders flew hither and thither, and there was a great calling and shouting; but above all the other noises soared the noise of a grand scrubbing, of rushing water, as if Bethlehem had been surprised by a conflagration. And the wailing of sick children torn from their warm beds, all the whimpering little bundles carried through the damp park, with a fluttering of bedclothes among the branches, strengthened the impression of a fire. ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... had not moved meanwhile. But as the sound of running feet and a loud call of "Au feu! Au feu!" shattered the quiet, she sprang like a frightened fawn out into the darkness. An instant later, blinded by the glare of the conflagration, Paul followed. He was too late. The darkness had swallowed her completely, and with the blaze still dazzling his eyes Paul could scarcely see even the hurrying forms that came racing up ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... was characterized, also, by the great conflagration and Roman fireworks of July, 64, by which two-thirds of the city of Rome was destroyed. The emperor was charged with starting this fire in order to get the insurance on a stock of dry goods ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... colour, too, has sensibly changed, now presenting a dun yellowish appearance, like that mixture of smoke and mist known as a "London fog." But it is somewhat brighter, as though it hung over, half-concealing and smothering, the flames of some grand conflagration. ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... of Brandenburg. The latter opinion received a further notable development from the fact that in 1618, a year remarkable for the appearance of three bright comets, the sun was almost free from spots; whence it was inferred that the cindery refuse from the great solar conflagration, which usually appeared as dark blotches on its surface, was occasionally thrown off in the form of comets, leaving the sun, like a snuffed taper, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... Florence abandoned the attack at the first cry and surged to the hold to fight the conflagration. A gasoline stove, carelessly left burning by one of that vessel's drunken crew, had been overturned by the shock of collision, and had fired the bilge. Fanned by the rising winds, the flames were licking at the oil-soaked timbers and spreading ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... matches we understand that many smokers now adopt the plan of waiting for the fire-engine to turn out and then proceed to the conflagration to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... and to set wheels working within the wheels which in course of time should spew him up on the ledge which his brother now occupied. Long before the rebellion was ready he had all his preparations made and waited only for the general conflagration to strike for his own hand. And was so certain of success that he dared make plans as well for ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... act as a warning to others the bodies were kept up as long as possible, and for this purpose were saturated with tar. On one occasion the gibbet was fired and the tar helped the conflagration, and a rapid and effectual cremation ensued. In many ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... became alarmed. Before the flames could be extinguished, a number of houses had been burned down and much damage done. The creature could not be found, and only when the parchment with the Name, which could not burn, was discovered amid the ashes, was it known that she had been destroyed in the conflagration. ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... light is so pure, clear, and brilliant that colour is more intense, and at dawn and sunset more deep, delicate, and various than it is in our land. Sometimes, as Ruskin says, "it is not colour, it is conflagration"; but wherever it is, in the bell of a flower, on the edge of a cloud, on the back of a lizard, on the veins of a lichen, it strikes in Browning's verse at our eyes, and he only, in English poetry, has joy enough in it ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... be snatched afar, to the top of one of the mountains of eternal frost and snow, where they would be allowed to shiver for a time; thence they would be precipitated into a loathsome pool of boiling brimstone, to wallow there in conflagration, smoke and the suffocation of horrible stench; from the pool they would be driven to the marsh of Hell, that they might embrace and be embraced by the reptiles, many times worse than serpents and vipers; after allowing them half an hour's dalliance with these creatures the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... found one comparatively clear, but in terrible proximity to the conflagration. Indeed, the houses were burning on each side, but the street seemed clear of flame. He thought that by swiftly running they could get through. But Christine's strength was fast failing her, and just as they reached the middle of the block a tall brick building fell across ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... which came through the crash of the conflagration were indeed of an odd sort, and MacIan turned a face of puzzled ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... a half dozen others ran about from house to house, setting them on fire with great torches, making fifty blazes which grew rapidly, because the timbers were now dry, uniting soon into one vast conflagration. ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... places responsibility for the flinging of the first firebrand upon the government of the Kaiser. Now, who added fuel to the flames, until the great conflagration was under way? ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... found the crowds smaller and the border of chairs in front of his hotel largely empty. A few cigars still burned in the half-light, but they were the last flicker of a conflagration now all but extinguished. The restless throb of the human dynamo was lower and more subdued. The street cars were practically empty. Instead of a constant stream of vehicles, an occasional cab clattered past. The city was preparing for ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... world has his heart contracted by a proud self- complacency, while that of the man of nature often beats in sympathy; and every man seeks for nothing more than to save his wretched property from the general destruction, as it were from some great conflagration. It is conceived that the only way to find a shelter against the aberrations of sentiment is by completely foregoing its indulgence, and mockery, which is often a useful chastener of mysticism, slanders in the same breath the noblest aspirations. Culture, far from ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... centre of a valley, forming a semicircle round a small gulf of the sea. On the land side it is defended by mountains; and on the other, by several fortifications. This city is chiefly constructed of wood, and has been many times destroyed by fire. So dreadful was the last conflagration, in 1771, that it is said the flames were visible in the Isles of Shetland, or at least the red lurid glare of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... within twenty-four hours or war, whereupon Russia declared that, if war was thus forced upon little Serbia, she would stand by her. After much backing and filling, at the last minute, Austria shrank from the calamity of a world conflagration and declared herself ready to enter into friendly negotiations with Russia. The frightful danger which threatened the world seemed to be on the way ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... political abilities his only talents; his eloquence was an era in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom—not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. Like Murray, he did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation; nor was he, like Townshend, ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... considerable decreasing gradations in the quantity of the mass of the nucleus, are all considerations more than equivalent, both as to number and variety, to the vague fears entertained in early ages of the general conflagration of the world by 'flaming swords', and stars with 'fiery streaming hair'. As the consolatory considerations which may be derived from the calculus of probabilities address themselves to reason and to p 111 meditative understanding only, and not to the imagination ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... And the havoc did not slack, Till a feeble cheer the Dane To our cheering sent us back— Their shots along the deep slowly boom: Then ceased, and all is wail As they strike the shatter'd sail, Or, in conflagration pale, Light ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... the music, Quiet, The glacial period renewed, Monsters on earth, A mad conflagration of worlds ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... the drama Ratnavali a magician makes the characters see an imaginary conflagration of the palace and also a vision of heaven. His performance seems to be accepted as merely a ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... ship that she was in imminent danger of taking the flames every minute. Ahead of us, and within a biscuit's throw of our flying boom, a long shed containing kerosene and other inflammables had taken fire, but how does not so clearly appear. But that doesn't matter. In a moment there was a general conflagration. It burst out with sudden and alarming fierceness, threatening speedily to overwhelm the ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... world, to things foreign and to foreign countries, little better than so many uncaged beasts of prey. Here they enjoy liberty from all social restraint ... and become rejoicing monsters, who perhaps go on their way, after a hideous sequence of murder, conflagration, violation, torture, with as much gaiety and equanimity as if they had merely taken part in some student gambols.... Deep in the nature of all these noble races there lurks unmistakably the beast of prey, the blond beast, lustfully roving in search ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... who had earlier returned to the cottage. They all stood looking. There was a glow of light certainly; it brightened and spread for a while; yet it was rather like the glare from a good-sized bonfire than the token of any more serious conflagration. Nevertheless they watched it, the younger women painfully; until they saw that the light was stationary, did not increase, then certainly was less, then evidently fading. 'It's all getting over,' said Gyda; 'and it's not great thing at all. Come you in before the master gets back. ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... their final deliverance frem the British yoke. But the Garrison continued stern spectators of the ruin—they had been compelled to effect, until the flames had attained a power which rendered their suppression an impossibility; then and then only, did they quit the scene of conflagration, and embarking in the boats which had been kept in readiness for their transport, joined their comrades, who waited for them on the opposite bank. The two Garrisons thus united; the whole preceded ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... in each of the Scandinavian capitals. Since quitting Bergen about three weeks earlier a sore misfortune had befallen the place, for a great part of the best quarter of the town had been destroyed in a disastrous conflagration which had obliterated whole streets. But the flames fortunately had not reached the railway station, nor yet the quays on the side of the harbour where the steamers berthed, so that transit was not appreciably interfered ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... in ponderous metal Panoplied, they seemed to settle, Condors gaunt of devastation, On the world: behind their march— Desolation; conflagration Loomed ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... thing that the dejeune dansant so absorbed Mr. Richard Avenel's thoughts that even the conflagration of his rick could not scare away the graceful and poetic images connected with that pastoral festivity. He was even loose and careless in the questions he put to Leonard about the tinker; nor did he send justice in pursuit of that itinerant trader; for, to say truth, Richard Avenel was a man ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... himself on the edge of the table, while the Italian leaned against the mantelpiece, and glanced round the room with furtive eye, as if to detect its innermost secrets, or decide where safest to drop a Lucifer-match for its conflagration,—"confrere," said the Pole, "your country ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with the Parliament men later. He had predicted a town in conflagration, and when the Fire of London occurred in 1666 he was accused of having caused it. He had to appear before a Parliamentary committee specially sitting on the matter, but he was able to satisfy the chairman that he had nothing to do with the fire. He admitted that he had drawn mysterious ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... I now began? Oh, my dear Chamisso, to confess it even to thee makes me blush. I drew the unlucky purse from my bosom, and with a kind of rage which, like a rushing conflagration, grew in me with self-increasing growth, I extracted gold, and gold, and gold, and ever more gold, and strewed it on the floor, and strode amongst it, and made it ring again, and, feeding my poor heart on the splendor and ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... face He saw with consternation, And back to hell his way did he take, For the Devil thought by a slight mistake It was general conflagration. 70 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... one of those cases in which necessity gives sovereign right. It is doubtless a very illegal thing to blow up people's houses, yet what civic magistrate, not a fool, would hesitate to do it when nothing else could arrest the conflagration of a city; and what court of law is there (outside of Liliput, where poor Gulliver was condemned to death for saving the royal palace by an illegal fire engine) so foolish as to sustain an action against the magistrate in such ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... in worshiping the beautiful ideals set up by the new school, which were as far removed as possible from their own effete civilization, did not realize that they were playing with the fire which was to burn out the whole social edifice of France with such a terrible conflagration; for, back and beneath all this, there was a people groaning under long centuries of accumulated wrong, in whose imbruted hearts the theories applauded by their oppressors with a sort of doctrinaire delight were ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... to find dry moss, and had soon gathered sufficient. This he laid on a bed of damp leaves, just where the large branches began to fork out, forming a natural hearth, where there was little fear of conflagration. ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... gathered dust of ages, God is brushing from His book; He is opening up its pages, and He bids His children look; And in shock and conflagration, and in pestilence and strife, He is speaking to the nations, of the ...
— Poems of Experience • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... good. If the foe is insignificant, he should not yet be despised, for he may soon grow like a palmyra tree extending its roots or like a spark of fire in the deep woods that may soon burst into an extensive conflagration. As a little fire gradually fed with faggots soon becometh capable of consuming even the biggest blocks, so the person who increaseth his power by making alliances and friendships soon becometh capable of subjugating even the most formidable foe. The hope ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... longer be unconcerned. If in his own street the conflagration might be in the very house he inhabited, and in that case—— He set off at a run. Ahead of him was a thickening throng, its position indicating the entrance to Clipstone Street. Soon he found his progress retarded; he had to dodge this way and that, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... out of it some time ago. As he was set to work in it, perhaps it was with a view of making it less damp; at any rate, it was crackling, blazing, and smoking cheerily, and I should think would be insupportable for the snakes. While stopping to look at the conflagration, Mr. —— was accosted by a three parts naked and one part tattered little she slave—black as ebony, where her skin was discoverable through its perfect incrustation of dirt—with a thick mat of ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... rejected, and the Czar marched troops into the Danubian provinces, to hold them in pledge until the required concession should be made to his high protective claims. This issue was no good cause for a general conflagration. Unfortunately many combustibles happened to lie about the world at that time, and craft, misunderstanding, dupery, autocratic pride, democratic hurry, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... by the deserted byways of the village. The moon, full and red like the glow of a conflagration, was beginning to make its appearance from behind the jagged horizon of the house-tops; the stars were shining tranquilly in the deep, blue vault of the sky; and I was struck by the absurdity of the idea when I recalled to mind that once upon a time there were some exceedingly ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... tired men were set to work desperately fighting once more to check and put out the fire. Long and hard was the struggle, the issue much in doubt; but in the end the efforts of her crew were crowned with merited success, and their ship was eventually saved from the dangerous conflagration which had menaced her with ruin, not less complete and disastrous than had ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... lurid touch of horror to the picture that might surpass all the rest a conflagration came to mock those who were in fear of drowning with a death yet more terrible. Where the ruins of Johnstown, composed mainly of timber, had been piled up forty feet high against a railroad bridge below ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... than the one who gets his head cut off; and the Boston massacre, for all the hullabaloo that was raised about it, was merely an insignificant street riot. No doubt Samuel Adams did his full share in fanning that little spark into a conflagration! ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... last absolutely blown over. Spain has sent us word she is disarming. So are we. Who would have expected that a courtesan at Paris would have prevented a general conflagration? Madame du Barri has compensated for Madame Helen, and is optima pacis causa. I will not swear that the torch she snatched from the hands of Spain may not light up a civil war in France. The Princes of the Blood[1] are forbidden the Court, twelve dukes and ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... longitudes, but this he was not able to accomplish: he had set the example, however and it was followed by subsequent astronomers. He fixed on the Fortunate Islands, which are supposed to be the Canaries, for his first meridian. His principal works most probably were destroyed in the conflagration of the Alexandrian library. His catalogue of the stars is preserved in the Almagest of Ptolemy; and his commentary on Aratus and Eudoxus is ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... unendurable and unending strain they worked like men driven by a merciless dream to toil in an atmosphere of ice or flame. They burnt and shivered in turns. Their eyeballs smarted as if in the smoke of a conflagration; their heads were ready to' burst with every shout. Hard fingers seemed to grip their throats. At every roll they thought: Now I must let go. It will shake us all off—and thrown about aloft they cried wildly: "Look out there—catch the end."... "Reeve clear"... "Turn this block...." They nodded ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... moment he laid eyes on him. A large horse for a riding animal, he was none too large for a big man like Daylight. In splendid condition, Bob's coat in the sunlight was a flame of fire, his arched neck a jeweled conflagration. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... at Wilna; in giving the command of his right to his brother, who was unequal to it; and in confiding to Prince Schwarzenberg a duty which that general could not perform with the devotedness of a Frenchman. I do not speak now of his error in remaining in Moscow after the conflagration, since then there was no remedy for the misfortune; although it would not have been so great if the retreat had taken place immediately. He has also been accused of having too much despised distances, difficulties, and men, in pushing ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... the spot where the conflagration raged; for it is only within the region of religious antiquities and dominant religious ideas,—the region which Vatke in his Biblische Theologie had occupied in its full breadth, and where the real battle first kindled—that the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... all this are the ever important economic causes. Famines and floods in recent years have greatly intensified the already strong feeling of discontent and unrest, and served to pile up more fuel for the general conflagration. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... intimate study of a different civilization could produce. This argument is bound to appeal to the generation which has experienced the war. The war is obviously one of the great crises of our civilization. It is like a conflagration lighting up the dim past and throwing it into perspective. The war makes it impossible for us to take our own history for granted. We are bound to inquire into the causes of such an astonishing catastrophe, and as soon as we do that we find ourselves inquiring ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... only do this, there surely would be no evil. Do we obey this greatest command of our Master? No. For instead of loving God, we fear Him, and lay every evil that befalls us at His door. If there be a cyclone, a flood, a cloudburst, a railroad disaster, a conflagration, an earthquake, an epidemic, we say it is the will of God. Oftentimes we labor long and faithfully to accomplish a desired result, and just as we think we have success in our hands, we fail, and all our hopes and desires are destroyed; again we say, it is ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... for her school, which was composed of well-behaved girls from the best Colored families of the district. The persecution of those neighbors, however, compelled her to leave, as the Colored family who occupied the house was threatened with conflagration, and after one month her little school found a more unmolested home in the dwelling-house of a German family on K Street, near the western market. After tarrying a few months here, she moved to L Street, into a room in the building known, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... magazine, and then it becomes every patriot's business to see that it isn't put out. I hate war. It accomplishes nothing, and leaves everything in a greater muddle than it was before. But if the idea ever catches fire, I shall have to do all I can to fan the conflagration. Unless I am prepared to be branded as a poltroon. Every professional soldier is supposed to welcome war. Most of us do: it's our opportunity. There's some excuse for us. But these men—Carleton and their lot: I regard them as nothing better than the Menades of the ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... consult with him and test his powers of divination. The three had a memorable sitting. Some time afterwards the results were given to the world. Tolstoy predicted the great war, and he stated his belief that the torch which would start the conflagration would be lighted ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... imperial husbandman! But there were some who viewed it as the sowing of dragons' teeth. Those reactionaries induced the Dowager Empress to come out from her retirement and to reassume her abdicated power in order to save the Empire from a threatening conflagration. It was the fable of Phaeton enacted in real life. The young charioteer was struck down and the sun brought back to his proper course instead of rising in the west. The progressive legislation of the two previous ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... good sable men and true Were soon engaged upon The conflagration that o'erthrew The home of John ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... much in Lucy's good graces. I was much inclined to speak of Duffy, but Lucy evidently didn't wish to mention him. We had observed the marks of fire on some of the houses as we came along, and Mr Talboys told us that since we had been there there had been a fearful conflagration; and had not the wind shifted, the whole town would have been burned down. He and his family were at that time in the country, and so escaped the alarm ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... ensure to their native Land, they may feel towards you who make the wiser choice the gratitude which you will have deserved.—The beginnings of great troubles are mostly of comparative insignificance;—a little spark can kindle a mighty conflagration, and a small leak will suffice to sink a stately vessel. To that loyal decision of the event now pending, which may be confidently expected, Britain may owe the continuance of her tranquillity and freedom; the maintenance of the justice and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... we could be more cheerful, more gay, more debonair, and if they could take from us some of the superfluous ice which we produce morally as well as naturally, and some of that cold resistance against the inflammation of enthusiasm which sometimes raises a conflagration among their citizens at home, we have no tariff on either side that would interfere in the blending and intercommunication of the moral resources of both nations, that shall make us more and more one people, in laws, liberties and national glory, and in all the passions ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... the second part of the Faerie Queen, pub. in 1596. In 1598 he was made Sheriff of Cork, and in the same year his fortunes suffered a final eclipse. The rebellion of Tyrone broke out, his castle was burned, and in the conflagration his youngest child, an infant, perished, he himself with his wife and remaining children escaping with difficulty. He joined the President, Sir T. Norris, who sent him with despatches to London, where ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin |
