"Downhill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tragic end. It is only a question of how long it can hold out against its foes. But Rag's life was proof that once a rabbit passes out of his youth he is likely to outlive his prime and be killed only in the last third of life, the downhill third we call ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... she continued, 'by the help of Brooks, who knew his master's ways, I have pottered on, to my own wonderment; but Brooks is past work, my downhill-time is coming, high farming has outrun us both, and I know that we are not doing as Humfrey would wish by his inheritance. Now I believe that nothing could be of greater use to me, the people, or ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... vigil nor Lent, they worked as hard as their legs permitted, and had a good time. Wherefore, dear my ladies, I am of opinion that Messer Bernabo in his altercation with Ambrogiuolo rode the goat downhill.(4) ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... streets—such as the Kant Strasse, running downhill from the royal castle to the river, and the Kneiphof'sche Langgasse, leading southward to the Brandenburg gate and the great world—must needs make use of the Kramer Brucke. Here, it may be said, every man in the town must sooner or ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... these excellent under-paid Italians carry theirs as lightly as possible, and their answers to your inquiries don't in the least bristle with rapiers, buttons and cockades. After leaving Modane you slide straight downhill into the Italy of your desire; from which point the road edges, after the grand manner, along those It precipices that stand shoulder to shoulder, in a prodigious perpendicular file, till they ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... with a kind of horror. Whatever words might have passed between them, never yet that he could remember had his wife allowed herself a sneer at his religion. It seemed to him suddenly as though he and she were going fast downhill—slipping to perdition, because of Sandy's ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gap between two high hills, there appeared a tiny speck of greenish ice. Rapidly it increased in size. A gigantic glacier came sliding downhill. Huge stones were being pushed into the valley. With the noise of a dozen thunderstorms torrents of ice and mud and blocks of granite suddenly tumbled among the people of the forest and killed them while they slept. Century ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... natural modesty, which led him to attribute his advancement to accident or fate. He once told me that he owed all his success in life to the fact that, as a country boy in Ohio, while driving his father's cart downhill at daybreak, he fell asleep and was jolted off his seat, breaking his leg. During the weeks of enforced seclusion that followed he taught himself to read, and developed a studious turn of mind, which, his leg having been permanently weakened by the accident, ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... wordless; he gets pale, but sharp an' deadly; an' his notion is to fight for a finish. Peets is haughty an' sooperior on the few o'casions when he onbends in battle, an' comports himse'f like a gent who fights downhill; the same, ondoubted, bein' doo to them book advantages of Peets which elevates him an' lifts him above the common herd a whole lot. Enright who's oldest is of course slowest to embark in blood, an' pulls his weepons—when he does ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... he heard our approach and rose on his hind legs to listen. He gave a great jump as Unk Wunk hove into sight, covered all over with the dead leaves that his barbed quills had picked up on his way downhill, and lay quiet where he thought the ferns ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... little save hunger to fear so long as they were in the open country. They marched on, breaking into a trot whenever their course led downhill, during the whole of the day on which their retreat began. Each man still had a small supply of meat left, and portions of this they ate raw as they proceeded. At dusk the foremost of the Balotsi were some distance behind, and after marching for about two hours longer the weary fugitives ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... combining extreme rapidity of utterance with very perfect clearness. His manner, I remember thinking, was unlike any that I had ever witnessed in the pulpit, and appeared to me to resemble rather that of a very earnest speaker at the hustings than the usual pulpit style. His sentences seemed to run downhill, with continually increasing speed till they came to a full stop at the bottom. It was, I think, the only sermon I ever heard which I wished longer. He carried me with him completely, for the century was in those days, like me, young. But if I were to hear a similarly fervid discourse now on the ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... finished while you wait. It is not one of his best; yet a moment ago there was a tear in his eye, and now he is grinning like a child at play. And at play he is, though he be paid for playing, and though the game is only being won after weeks and months of uphill labor and downhill joy. ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... open and get well, and make a man of Vic. Three thousand dollars ought to be ample to put the ranch on a paying basis. And don't blame your dad for collecting it now, when it will do the most good. I could see no benefit in waiting and suffering, and letting you get farther downhill all the while, making it that much harder to climb back. Go at once to your claim, and do your best—that is what will make your dad happiest. You will get well, and you will make a home for you and Vic, and be independent and happy. In doing this ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... the trail, where he had run so often before, but over the ridge he turned abruptly downhill and Billy refused to follow. Wunpost certainly had taken the upper trail, for there were his tracks leading on; and the dog, after all, had no notion of leading her to his master. He was still young and inexperienced, ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... straw, and not an inch of wood was left in sight. A pole was inserted through the centre of the wheel, so that long ends extended about a yard on each side. If any straw remained, it was made up into torches at the top of tall sticks. At a given signal the wheel was lighted, and sent rolling downhill. If this fire-wheel went out before it reached the bottom of the hill, a very poor harvest was promised. If it kept lighted all the way down, and continued blazing for a long time, the harvest would be exceptionally abundant. Loud cheers and shouts accompanied the progress of the wheel."[512] ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... there is, within certain degrees of latitude and longitude, an uphill and a downhill, made by the convexity of the globe, we, perhaps, may have reached the meridian of the great voyage, and may have begun to feel the inclination which will set us forward more swiftly to the end. The power of the great consummation ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... that the people of the Vindhyan or Bundelkhand Districts where the Dahaits live do not perforate the nostrils of bullocks, and drive them simply by a rope tied round the mouth. In consequence they have little control over them and are quite unable to stop a cart going downhill, which simply proceeds at the will of the animals until it reaches the level or bangs up against some obstacle. In Bilaspur a widow is expected to remain single for five years after her husband's ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... held in her hand, and flung the fragments into the road. The Laird was groping in his pocket for half a crown, and thinking meanwhile what answer to make. But disdaining both his reply and his peace-offering, Meg strode defiantly downhill ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... when considered objectively. If he stumbled on a stone, it produced a surge of sharp alarm which lingered for seconds; and his breathing had quickened much more than could be accounted for by the exertions of the downhill climb. ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... "Or run backwards downhill. I'm a passenger in a car of that kind. Near to the top, but not reaching it. So I get ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... one in the region thereabouts. A much later explorer tells how the curious atmospheric effects made the land seem to tip up in front of him in whichever direction he walked, making level land and even downhill look like uphill, so uplifting is the ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... crying from the same woman. I opened my door and held out my lantern, and just as far as the light would reach I saw a woman: she turned her head when the light sheened on her, and then hurried on downhill. I hung up the lantern, and was curious enough to pull on my things and dog her a few steps, but I could see nothing of her any more. That was where I had been when you came up; and when I saw you I thought ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... atmosphere of fried oil and roasted chestnuts and baked pine-cones; and presently turn left into a still narrower street, with tailors and boot-makers and smiths all at work in the open air; and pass through the Piazzetta Mondragone, and turn again to the left, but this time downhill; then lose yourself amid filthy little alleys, where the scent of oil and chestnuts and pine-cones is stronger than ever; then emerge on a little terrace where there is a noble view of the bay and of Capri; then turn abruptly between walls overhung with ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... past eight at night before his toil was rewarded and he issued at last out of the forest on the firm white high-road. It lay downhill before him, with a sweeping eastward trend, faintly bright between the thickets; and Otto paused and gazed upon it. So it ran, league after league, still joining others, to the farthest ends of Europe, there skirting the sea-surge, here gleaming in ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pulled in quietly to the side of the road. And Ruth did the same. She was too well trained in the things of the hills not to know that if there was trouble, then it was no time to be weakening horses' knees in mad and useless dashes downhill. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... happy man is hampered and thwarted in a great work by annoyances and disasters, he behaves like an Arab horse on a heavy march. At first it moves at a brisk trot, uphill and downhill, and it goes faster and faster as its strength begins to flag. And when at last it is thoroughly out of breath and ready to drop, it ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... two Communions with definite resolves, two definite upward stages in life. If you let yourself go till you get back to the crutches of school, you will have gone two very definite stages downhill. ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... "The generally received theory that 'the great descent which leads towards the Kingdom of Mien,' on which 'you ride for two days and a half continually downhill,' was the route from Yung-ch'ang to T'eng-Yueh, must be at once abandoned. Marco was, no doubt, speaking from hearsay, or rather, from a recollection of hearsay, as it does not appear that he possessed any notes; but there is good ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... improvements, either, or the changes in the dingy Quartier, to which she was accustomed. It was, in fact, a little hard for her to see all these embellishments just when she was going downhill so fast over the piles of brick and mortar, while she was wandering about ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... applied and published. ADELAIDE ROAD leads also into the bush, to the banana patch and by a second bifurcation over the left branch of the stream to the plateau and the right hand of the gorges. In short, it leads to all sorts of good, and is, besides, in itself a pretty winding path, bound downhill among big woods to the margin ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... excitement about fashion and "family" reached Saint X; how he was then gradually dropped until he, realizing what was the matter, haughtily "cut" all his former friends and associates. "We've certainly been racing downhill these last few years. Where the Wilmots used to be about the only silly people in town, there are scores of families now with noses in the air and eyes looking eagerly about for chances to snub. But, on the other hand, there's the university, and Arthur—and ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... ash bough there," said the weasel, "and when you are outside the thicket turn to your left and go downhill, and you will come to the timber—and meantime I will send for the dragon-fly, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... about the demon lover and the waning moon. The darkness, the red wreck of sunset, the yellow and lurid moon, the long fantastic shadows, actually created that sense of monstrous incident which is the dramatic side of landscape. The bare grey slopes seemed to rush downhill like routed hosts; the dark clouds drove across like riven banners; and the moon was like a golden dragon, like the Golden ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... breezy miles a day were written in his very whiskers. His manners were a canter; his conversation a round trot. He was a fast coach upon a downhill turnpike road; he was all pace. A wagon couldn't have moved slowly, with that guard and his key bugle on top ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... satisfied that we could walk to Oppenau in one day, now that we were in practice; so we set out the next morning after breakfast determined to do it. It was all the way downhill, and we had the loveliest summer weather for it. So we set the pedometer and then stretched away on an easy, regular stride, down through the cloven forest, drawing in the fragrant breath of the morning in deep refreshing draughts, and wishing we might never have anything to do forever but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... no longer young, that my hair is already half gray, that my strength is fading, now I'm starting again at the beginning and as a child! Again, he had to smile. Yes, his fate had been strange! Things were going downhill with him, and now he was again facing the world void and naked and stupid. But he could not feed sad about this, no, he even felt a great urge to laugh, to laugh about himself, to laugh about this ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... kindly settle a matter involving a wager between myself and a friend? A. bet B. that a pedestrian in walking downhill over a given space and alternately stepping with either foot, covers more ground than a man coasting over the same road on a bicycle. Which of ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... that point, and there, to your wonder and your surprise, at your feet nestles the loveliest of smiling canyon-like valleys, filled with trees, aspen, oak, and pine, with here and there a tent or red roof gleaming through the green, and a noisy brook hurrying on its way downhill. By a steep scramble you reach the lower level, birds singing, flowers tempting on every side, and the picturesque, narrow trail leading you on, around the ledge of rock, over the rustic bridge, till you reach the ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... you'll show us why the water doesn't run downhill in our bean patch, as it ought ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... My father struck spur and rode forward, in time to catch at and check the leader of two horses slithering downhill tandem-fashion before the weight of a heavy cart. "Confound you, sir! What the devil d'you mean by flinging stones in this manner across the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the gallant Montcalm. The first volley from the English line had mowed his soldiers down like ripe wheat. At the second volley the ranks broke and the ground was thick strewn with the dead. When the English charged, the French fled in wildest panic downhill for the St. Charles. Wounded and faint, Montcalm on his black charger was swept swiftly along St. Louis road in the blind stampede of retreat. Near the walls a ball passed through his groins. Two soldiers caught him from falling, and steadied him on either ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... advances. This it does then irrespective of gravity. No natural force propels it, and the inference is forthright and inevitable that it is artificially helped to its end. There seems to be no escape from this deduction. Water only flows downhill, and there is no such thing as downhill on a surface already in fluid equilibrium. A few canals might presumably be so situated that their flow could, by inequality of terrane, lie equatorward, but not all....Now it is ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... remark a tree in a hedgerow, or follow a cart along a country road. You turn to the city, and see children, dwarfed by distance into pigmies, at play about suburban doorsteps; you have a glimpse upon a thoroughfare where people are densely moving; you note ridge after ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one behind another, and church spires rising bravely from the sea of roofs. At one of the innumerable windows you watch a figure moving; on one of the multitude of roofs you watch clambering chimney-sweeps. The wind takes a run and ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... and organ-builder, who was willing to employ me to collect bad debts in the country. He put me on an old horse which had one very bad fault. He was afflicted with what the Western people called the 'swaleys,' and could not go downhill. I frequently had to dismount and back him down, as the only way of getting along. The road often lay through forests and clearings, in mire, and among the roots of the beeches, with which my poor beast was constantly struggling. I would sometimes ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... were giving mother a ride on it, and she's too heavy— especially going downhill. She thought we were holding it, but it got away. We yelled to her to put on the brake, but she didn't, and it went bang ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... his feet down unsteadily, Mr. Trimm left the clearing, heading as well as he could tell eastward, away from the railroad. After a mile or two he came to a dusty wood road winding downhill. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... at the foot of the street on which the Bobbsey house stood. The street went downhill to the tracks, and the railroad passed through what Charley had called ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... speaker paused and stared hard at a member of his audience who had passed a humorous remark at his expense—"just like I'll jump you, stranger, if you don't keep your trap closed. I say who can read those secrets, who can harness those forces? The man who can has got the world by the tail and a downhill pull. Now then, for the plot of my story, and it will pay you to do a week of listening in the next five minutes. Awhile ago an eminent scientist, unknown to me or to my partner, Mr. Stoner, came into our office, which is at your backs, one flight ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... to bring his horse. A large steed is brought to him, upon which he springs by the stirrup, and he rides off with some of his men: three knights and two squires he bade to go with him. They did not stop their ride downhill until they came to the bridge, where they see him stanching his wounds and wiping the blood from them. The king expects to keep him as his guest for a long time while his wounds are healing; but he ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... hadn't any eau-de-Cologne, and if I had it might not have done him much good. At last he got better, and I got on again (all my life I've been used to mounting and dismounting without assistance). Thinking downhill must be the way home, downhill I turned him, and proceeded slowly on, now running over in my own mind the glorious hour I had just spent, now wondering whether I should be lost and have to sleep amongst the Downs; and anon coming back to the old subject, and resolving ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... talk about it a bit. You see, I know 'tis all my fault—I know that, an' with that we can let it be. But before I went an' took this woman—Hanne, I mean—before that it all began ... slowly it began, slowly—but downhill right along. First thing, a good bonehandled whip broke. After that, I remember it right well, I drove over my dog an' he died. 'Twas the best little dog I had. Then, one right after another, three o' my horses died; an' one of 'em was the fine stallion that cost me five hundred crowns. An' ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... at her heart, and a nameless dread as if a phantom of evil were pursuing her, Bryda fled downhill with a speed which surprised herself, and reached the ferry just as the ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... eminence on the other side of a Nek to the south-east, and from a salient protruding from the northern extremity of the hill. From the wall bounding the upper terrace, however, other walls, running downhill, intersected this face of the mountain at right angles, and served as low traverses affording some protection from flanking fire. These formed the enclosures of Smith's farm, a group of tree-encircled buildings around an open space at the base of the mountain, near its centre, and some 400 feet ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... pillow, "I'll stuff this in. Oh, golly, how you look! if you ain't a sight to see!" and he shouted with laughter as he surveyed Charlie, to whom the pillow had imparted the appearance of a London alderman. "If you don't look like Squire Baker now, I'll give it up. You are as big as old Daddy Downhill. You are a regular ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... was not much in the habit of flying. She ran downhill a few yards flapping her shawl, and then she jumped ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... Carley to action. His words were jest, yet they held a hint of earnest. With her heart at her throat Carley stepped on the first rock, and, poising, she calculated on a running leap from stone to stone. Once launched, she felt she was falling downhill. She swayed, she splashed, she slipped; and clearing the longest leap from the last stone to shore she lost her balance and fell into Glenn's arms. His kisses drove away both her panic and ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... is flat, but the path runs downhill. Consequently we soon find ourselves tramping along below the ground-level, with a stout parapet of clay on either side of us. Overhead there is nothing—nothing but the blue sky, with the larks singing, ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... Balancin loved hunting, and it was his custom to spend several mornings every week chasing the boars which abounded in the mountains a few miles from the city. One day, rushing downhill as fast as he could go, he put his foot into a hole and fell, rolling into a rocky pit of brambles. The king's wounds were not very severe, but his face and hands were cut and torn, while his feet were in a worse plight still, for, instead of proper hunting boots, he only wore sandals, to enable ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... how Baby allowed me to roll him downhill, crawling and puffing up again each time, with perfect good humor; how he climbed a young sapling after my Panama hat, which I had "shied" into one of the topmost branches; how after getting it he refused to descend until it suited his pleasure; how when he ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... that these mysterious agencies," he said quietly, "may be due to some kind of life we cannot understand. Why should water only run downhill? Why should trees grow at right angles to the surface of the ground and towards the sun? Why should the worlds spin for ever on their axes? Why should fire change the form of everything it touches without really destroying them? To say these things follow the law of their being ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... confessed. "But, for dat matter, how she run downhill? She 'ain't got no legs. I s'pose de book hexplain it somehow. Wal! I stake two claim—one for you, one for me. It's dandy place for cabin! You look forty mile from dat spot. Mak' you feel jus' lak bird on top of high tree. Dere's plenty dry wood, too, an' down below is de Forks—nice ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... their road dipped downhill, and they passed a huge oak and then another. More and more often now they met these solitary giants, till their view began to be obscured by them. The road dwindled till it was no better than a track, the earth beside it was wild and rocky; Rodriguez wondered to ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... was downhill and around many hairpin turns. Then many small streams were crossed and followed. Several times the sun seemed to set, only to reappear again through a cleft in the hills. Where the terrain was level enough, hundreds of jack rabbits were seen. They were not the nervous, string-halt jacks ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... of the sleigh was all white now with scattered fruit blossoms, and one of Waitstill's earliest remembrances was of going downhill with Patty toddling at her side; of Uncle Bart's lifting them into the sleigh and permitting them to sit there and eat the ripe red apples that had fallen from the tree. Uncle Bart's son, Cephas (Patty's secret adorer), was a painter by trade, and kept his ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... however, a fine afternoon for our drive back, a quick downhill journey along the edge of a tremendous precipice, clothed with beech-trees and brushwood. A most beautiful road it is, and the two little lakes looked lovely in the sunshine, encircled by gold-green swards and a delicate screen of alder branches. Through pastures white with meadow-sweet ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... Valley for shipment. An amusing story is told of this railroad, too. It extended down the mountainside in a series of sharp inclines between which lay long stretches of level ground. Now you know when you coast downhill your speed will give you sufficient impetus to carry you quite a way on a flat road before you come to a stop. So it was with this railroad. But the force the cars gained on the hillside could not carry them entirely across these long levels, and therefore platform ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... turned downhill, riding fast until we came to a place where rocks lay loose and scattered everywhere, and our horses stumbled among them. There he reined up suddenly, holding up his hand, and shouting through the ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... at the log-landing in Pennington's camp, the locomotive uncoupled and backed in on the siding for the purpose of kicking the caboose, in which Shirley and Colonel Pennington had ridden to the woods, out onto the main line again—where, owing to a slight downhill grade, the caboose, controlled by the brakeman, could coast gently forward and be hooked on to the end of the log-train for the return ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... fire and the direction of the wind that fanned it. He learned that all Genessee was out, fighting to keep the flames from sweeping down across the valley. Three hundred men were fighting it, the supervisor told him. They would check it on the downhill slope, where it would burn more slowly; and if the wind did not change in the night it would probably be brought under control by morning. After that the supervisor very discreetly inquired after the welfare of the young lady who had telephoned. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... on the main point, but not a stone of the many he smelled under turned him out a cougar or a big-horn. Hunting was over for that day, and so much time had been consumed that Two Arrows felt like running to make it up. He did but walk, however, and as the road was now all the way downhill, like a bad man's life, he walked easily. The great gorge widened until its broken walls stretched away to the right and left, and the eager-hearted explorer came out from among the scattered rocks ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... out lovely, and if my cough had not been so bad, I should have enjoyed the drive down from Mount Morgan. The pitches were just as steep, but they were nearly all downhill, which made our progress seem quicker and pleasanter. The country looked very pretty; the ferns were quite lovely, and the lilies in full bloom. The pleasure of the drive was further marred by the dreadful odours arising from ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... railing and gasped. He wanted to run downhill after the 'rickshaw, but that was impossible; so he went forward with most of his blood in his temples. It was impossible, for many reasons, that the woman in the 'rickshaw could be the girl he had known. She was, he discovered later, the wife of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... up the steep height he had so swiftly descended, and raced after the guide. He came upon the goat at last, but winded as he was, and with the sweat in his eyes, he shot too high, cutting the skin above the spine. The goat plunged downhill and the hunters plunged after him, pursuing the elusive animal until darkness ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... it was," said Annie in answer to his query;" so I will make a favour of telling you. Do you remember the Rev. Mr. Darner, rector of Downhill Market?" ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... remained uncovered. In other places numbers were living under the snow as the breathing holes testified. The visit and inspection were as satisfactory as we hoped, and after a short rest and hasty lunch, we started on our return journey, which, as it would be in our old tracks, and for the most part downhill, would be very much easier than ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... Flared up in vain before me? knew I not What stench arises from some purple gears? And how the sceptres witness whence they got Their briar-wood, crackling through the atmosphere's Foul smoke, by princely perjuries, kept hot? Forgive me, ghosts of patriots,—Brutus, thou, Who trailest downhill into life again Thy blood-weighed cloak, to indict me with thy slow Reproachful eyes!—for being taught in vain That, while the illegitimate Caesars show Of meaner stature than the first full strain (Confessed incompetent to conquer Gaul), They swoon ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the longest road, and Joan, whose return journey from the holy well was for the most part downhill, soon found herself back again in Penzance. The fire of devotion still actuated her movements, and she walked fearlessly, doubting nothing, to the post-office. There would be a letter to-day; she knew it; she felt it in ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... his climbing on the steep hillside, his rifle was in his left hand, downhill, and his footing, caught as he was with one foot half raised, was insecure. At no time these last four hours had his opportunity been so close—or ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... remember ever havin' been deserted by my sweetheart when I was young and trusting. If I was to draw a picture of my life it would look like one of those charts that the weather bureau gets out—one of those high and low barometer things, all uphill and downhill like a chain of mountains in a ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... indeed, be remarked here that I never knew a woman sexually till my marriage; and with the one exception mentioned I do not recall any instance of conduct on my part toward a woman which could be described as giving her an impulse downhill. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... bent, like an old labourer who has lived a life of stooping, and came out into the dry and dusty lane. One moment his instinct hesitated as to which turn to take—only a moment; he was soon walking swiftly, almost trotting, downhill with this vivid exaltation in the huge dark night in his heart, and Sheila merely a little angry Titianesque cloud on a scarcely perceptible horizon. He had no notion of the time; the golden hands of ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... of a much more agreeable interlocutor. He talked with a ready, easy command of words, so that his discourse flowed smoothly. He was fluent. He introduced you to a lady whose speech possessed smoothness and ease in too great degree; it fairly rolled along, as a hoop does downhill. The lady was voluble. Into your triangular group broke a newcomer whose speech had in it a flippant, or at least a superficially clever, fluency. He was glib. Leaving these three to fight (or talk) it out as best they might, you ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... aggressive hue has not been made here. Those that flame from the hill slope above Portland station only succeed in emphasizing the general bleakness of their surroundings. At Easton clock tower a street called "Straits" turns left and east and presently a broad road leads downhill to the right to the gates of Pennsylvania Castle, built, it is said, at the suggestion of George III by John Penn, Governor of Portland, and a descendant of the great Penn in whose honour it was named. A narrow passage by the castle wall brings us to Rufus, or "Bow and ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... pretty." I thought of Dr. Johnson and the herdsman with his "See, such pretty goats." [See Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, Sept. 1 1773. "The Doctor was prevailed with to mount one of Vass's grays. As he rode upon it downhill, it did not go well, and he grumbled. I walked on a little before, but was excessively entertained with the method taken to keep him in good humour. Hay led the horse's head, talking to Dr. Johnson as much as he could and, (having heard him, in the forenoon, express a pastoral pleasure on seeing ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Could she have passed and he not seen? Clearly not, for Louis had come downhill as fast as a big boulder set a-rolling. What, then, ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... more poignant, and more permanent than any that can be found elsewhere. Steadily climbing like some mountain railway, it reaches at last the short tunnel on the summit level, and then dashes out into the blinding blaze of a new sunshine. The other goes merrily enough, at first, downhill, but at last it comes to the edge of the abyss, and there it stops, but the traveller does not. He goes over; and nobody can see the darkness into which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of phantom men and girls sliding downhill on their derrieres and ending in a heap at the bottom. A nice change from traveling under their own power. Their maximum speed while swift and incomprehensible to mortals, seemed relatively slow to one of Hell's old timers. Only Nick and his best scout, ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... caught a thousand times in as many feet last night," Scotty commented. "It's easy by day, but don't try it by night." He led the way through clear spaces between the thorny patches, always going downhill. ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... door open gently and looked aloft. The night, before so starry, was now clouded over. The troopers—I could hear their horses' hoofs above the whoops and yells of their chorusing—were winding downhill by a sunken way within ten yards of me. A gravel path lay between me and the hedge overlooking it. This I saw by the faint upcast rays of the lanterns they had lit for guidance. I tip-toed across to the ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... good service and all that sort of thing, but when a fellow of his age gets going downhill with debts and drinking and cards—well, you know how it has been in ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... an hour," answered Grandpa Ford. "We'll be there before you know it. It's downhill, and the horses are anxious to ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... and easy—the saying enforces the not less solemn truth that sin deceives as to its results, and that the path of wrong-doing, which is flowery and smooth at first, grows rapidly thorny, and goes fast downhill, and ends at last in a cul-de-sac, of which death is the only outlet. We are not to trust our own consciences, except as enlightened by God's Word. We are not to listen to sin's lies, but to fix it well in our minds that there is only ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the department," he said, "we're the 'Valiants.' I'll be there in twenty-five minutes if I have to kill the horses. It's downhill most of the way, anyhow. Jim, you run off and ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... that the sun was getting low, and said it was time to be going back. She made the remark again and again, but, every time, the princess begged her to go on just a little farther and a little farther; reminding her that it was much easier to go downhill, and saying that when they did turn they would be at home in a moment. So on and on they did go, now to look at a group of ferns over whose tops a stream was pouring in a watery arch, now to pick a shining stone from a rock ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... that again, Tom, because we have no means of knowing how they got the money. Some of them are often supplied with larger amounts than seem to be good for them. Unless you know positively, don't start the snowball rolling downhill, because it keeps on growing larger every time some one ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... was soon forgotten, and the boys dashed off downhill as hard as they could go, neither of them hearing a shout, nor seeing the little monk come panting up, to stand gazing ruefully after them and wiping the great drops of perspiration off ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... and steadily things had gone downhill with me for a long time, till, in the end, I was so curiously bared of every conceivable thing. I had not even a comb left, not even a book to read, when things grew all too sad with me. All through the summer, up in the churchyards or parks, where I used to sit and write my articles ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... Once you've made a thousand pounds you can swim along a bit, but the first hundred, I shall never forget it! Afterwards it is just the same; the proportions are changed, that is all. The first twenty thousand is very uphill work, the second is on the flat, the third is going downhill—it ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... long slither downhill, still through a whole necklace of tunnels, which fortunately no longer stank. So down and down, till the plain appears in sight once more, the Arno valley. But then began the inevitable hitch that always happens in Italian travel. The train began to hesitate—to ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... Odette, he would gladly have crushed those eyes which, a moment ago, he had loved so dearly, have torn the blood into those lifeless cheeks. He continued to climb with Mme. Verdurin, that is to say that each step took him farther from Odette, who was going downhill, and in the other direction. A second passed and it was many hours since she had left him. The painter remarked to Swann that Napoleon III had eclipsed himself immediately after Odette. "They had obviously arranged it between them," he ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... machine—always a most difficult feat—he swung his legs and hips to one side or the other, as occasion required, and, after hundreds of glides had been made, he became so skilful in maintaining the equilibrium of his machine that he was able to cover a distance, downhill, of ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... narrow path led downhill from the cleared space. Trix set off down it, swinging her hat airily by the brim the while. Presently the sense of uncanniness abated somewhat; the elfin in her went out to meet the weirdness ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... plenty?' Jesse pointed to the ragged perspective ahead of them that plunged downhill into the fog. 'I lay there's a cord an' a half o' firewood, let alone faggots, 'fore we ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... shorter, downhill almost all the way, the horses going along at a good steady trot, knowing ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... and far less rich army, intrenched behind earthworks of doubtful formidableness, and finally to besiege and capture an isolated city of more historic than strategic advantages, seemed on the face of it as easy as rolling a barrel downhill or eating when hungry. But the level, fertile country was discovered to be very muddy, its supply of rain from heaven unparalleled in nature, its streams as deadly as arsenic, and its topography utterly different from that assigned to it in any known geography. Furthermore, ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... least, was our conclusion, from the absence of any subsequent motion or movement on board, the deck being as steady now as any platform on dry land, although rather downhill on one side, from the vessel heeling as ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... fair matron sat beside the fire, she glanced occasionally with all the pride of ownership, about the room; which was a large apartment, such as one may see in country places, with a low roof and a sunken flooring, all downhill from the door, and a descent of two steps on the inside so exquisitely unexpected, that strangers, despite the most elaborate cautioning, usually dived in head first, as into a plunging-bath. It was none of your frivolous ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... impassable barriers of the living rock had been removed from the mountain passes. But that was all. What with the long climbs upgrade and the bad going through loose sand or mud, it was always necessary for the driver to keep his six animals at a swinging trot when they came to a level or a downhill pull. Often he had to whip them into a dead run for miles where most men would hesitate to drive ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... cause, as shoes which are too narrow across the toes, or not long enough, or those with high heels which throw the toes forward so that they are compressed by the toe of the boot, especially in walking downhill. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... limping about over the landscape, to attract enemies from afar, and be quickly shot by a man or torn to pieces by wolves? Not he! With the keen intelligence of the wounded wild ruminant, he chose the line of least resistance, and on three legs fled downhill. He went on down, and kept going, until he reached the bottom of the biggest and most tortuous coulee in his neighborhood. And then what? Instead of coming to rest in a reposeful little valley a hundred feet wide, he chose the most ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... will freshen in a few days. About six days ago she seemed weak in her hind legs and on going downhill would drag or stumble for 10 or 12 feet, then catch herself and go ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... to Calmenare in the Duke's presence; and I would have pressed a gold piece into his hand for "opening my prison door," but he would not have it. Afterwards, while we followed the grey car on the downhill road to Madrid, Pilar told the whole story with dramatic ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... next to Rhes, looking through a screen of leaves, downhill towards the perimeter. They were both wrapped in heavy furs, in spite of the midday heat, with thick leggings and leather gauntlets to protect their hands. The gravity and the heat were already making Jason dizzy, but he forced himself ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... that I have been obliged to turn most of my Navy bills into cash, and at the same time, to my great concern, am very deficient in my balance. This gives me great uneasiness, nor shall I live or die in peace till the whole is restored." He had, however, made the first false step, after which the downhill career of dishonesty is rapid. His desperate attempts to set himself right only involved him the deeper; his conscious breach of trust caused him a degree of daily torment which he could not bear; and the discovery ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... action overbalanced him so that he rolled some six or eight feet downhill, under the lee of a rough rock. His brain was working with a swiftness and clarity strange in all his experience of Alf Copper. While he rolled he spoke, and the voice from his own jaws amazed him: "If you did, 'twouldn't make you any less of a renegid." As a useful ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... projection that appears on the maps of this region as a sierra. Probably it sent low spurs to the west, and the farthest points of these spurs now and then caused rapids in our course (for the rapids generally came where there were hills) and for the moment deflected the river westward from its general downhill trend to the north. There was no longer any question that the Duvida was a big river, a river of real importance. It was not a minor affluent of some other affluent. But we were still wholly in the dark as to where it came out. It was still possible, although exceedingly ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... act on a hill; or the seat-pillar would get loose, and the saddle drop three or four inches with a disconcerting bump; or the loose and rattling chain would jump the cogs of the chain-wheel as the machine ran downhill, and so bring the mechanism to an abrupt and disastrous stop without at the same time arresting the forward momentum of the rider; or a tyre would bang, or sigh quietly, and give up ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Amsterdam Avenue, in the eighties. It had been a shining new development once, but it was beginning to slide downhill now. The metal on the window frames was beginning to look worn, and the brickwork hadn't been cleaned in a long time. Where chain fences had once protected lonely blades of grass, children, mothers, and baby carriages held sway now, and the grass was gone. Instead, the building was ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the porters into a long shed reaching downhill from West Street to the river. It was dark, the wind blew clean through it from end to end; and here I found a great block of passengers and baggage, hundreds of one and tons of the other. I feel I shall have a difficulty to make myself believed; and certainly the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... road-bat so as to push the coulter aside. These operations are done in a minute, and correspond in some degree to turning the rudder of a ship. The object is that the plough, which has been turning the earth one way, shall now (as it is reversed to go downhill) continue to turn it that way. If the change were not effected when the plough was swung round, the furrow would be made opposite. Next he leans heavily on the handles, still standing on the same spot; this lifts the plough, so that it turns ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... present—the ever-fleeting present. It lies, then, in the very nature of our existence to take the form of constant motion, and to offer no possibility of our ever attaining the rest for which we are always striving. We are like a man running downhill, who cannot keep on his legs unless he runs on, and will inevitably fall if he stops; or, again, like a pole balanced on the tip of one's finger; or like a planet, which would fall into its sun the moment it ceased to hurry ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... from which is the next thing to a miracle. All this came upon him in consequence of keeping bad company. Learn from it to avoid evil company and betting. The boy that suffers himself to bet the smallest amount, has already entered the downhill road of the gambler's career. And there is no evil that can be named but he may be drawn into, who begins to keep bad company. You might as well expect to go into lazarhouse, without being infected, as to go into bad company, and not fall into ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... connects very diverse topics, is that of considering this principle of selection. Of the principle itself, he remarks that it is neither a theory nor an hypothesis, but the expression of a necessary fact; that to deny it is very much like denying that round stones will roll downhill faster and farther than flat ones; and that the question of the present day in natural history is not whether there be natural selection, or even whether forms are derived from other forms, but to comprehend how, in what proportions, and by what means hereditary ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... in a very intricate manner, squeezed a downhill direction in one corner: 'To Mary, Housemaid, at Mr. Nupkins's, Mayor's, Ipswich, Suffolk'; and put it into his pocket, wafered, and ready for the general post. This important business having been transacted, Mr. Weller the elder proceeded to open ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Heriot Row at right angles, only a few paces prom No. 17. It dips sharply downhill toward the Water of Leith, and Mifflin and I used to stand at the corner and wonder just where took place the adventure with the lame boy which R.L.S. once described when setting ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... There the wife had been innocent and had done it for her children. Laura was guilty, she hadn't a child, she was already planning to marry again. And then what, he asked himself. "From bad to worse, very likely. A woman can't stop when she's started downhill." His eye was caught by the picture directly before him on the wall—the one his wife had given him—two herdsmen with their cattle high up on a shoulder of a sweeping mountain side, tiny blue figures against the dawn. It had been like ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... Fall with a buckboard and a pair of half-broken little Morgans; and away they tore into the woods, scrambling uphill, plunging downhill, running away most of the time to the secret satisfaction of Malcourt, who cared particularly for what was ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... be suffering any particular discomfort from the enormous increase of his waist. On the next day there was a blizzard, duly predicted by Wilson's twinges of rheumatism, and on the 8th Scott reluctantly records that the dogs were steadily going downhill. 'The lightening of the load is more than counter-balanced by the weakening of the animals, and I can see no time in which we can hope to get the sledges ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... back firing. On favorable ground, where some choice is offered, much may be done by falling timber inward so as to leave few tops near the uncut timber and by the location of skidroads. So far as practicable fire lines should be on the tops of ridges, for, being slower to go downhill than up, fire is more easily discouraged just as it reaches a crest. Bottoms of gulches are next in strategic ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... the practice of his art. He returned to the asylum in half an hour!—a proceeding which was almost an evidence of insanity. He was subsequently officially dismissed, and from this time went steadily downhill, adding to his other vices that of intemperance. Every effort was made by friends and relatives to reclaim him. Studios were taken for him, commissions were given him, clothes were bought for him. He spent his week-ends in the ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... taking her with him to the forest, tied to the sledge, and wrapt in the remnants of his old sheepskin and a shawl. Uphill and downhill over the hummocks bumped the sledge, until they arrived on level ground, where the slanting rays of the sun, endlessly reflected from the snow-crystals, fell into their eyes. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... amount, ever since; but a few years ago she had the sum then standing transferred to the boy's name, telling me frankly, at the time, that she did so to save trouble, in case anything happened to her. I fancy, from what she said, that for the last year or two she had been going downhill. I had a chat with her, the last time she came in. She told me that she had been consumptive, and that it was for the sake of her health they ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... branch of the Montefeltro house maintained a countship through seven centuries, and only sold their fief to Rome in 1815. Monte Coppiolo lies behind, Pietra Rubia in front: two other eagle's-nests of the same brood. What a road it is! It beats the tracks on Exmoor. The uphill and downhill of Devonshire scorns compromise or mitigation by detour and zigzag. But here geography is on a scale so far more vast, and the roadway is so far worse metalled than with us in England—knotty masses of talc and nodes of sandstone cropping up at dangerous turnings—that only ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... hung the second venison, and when we reached our camp and had our own delicious breakfast of grouse, bread, butter, and coffee, Gavotte took Chub and went for our venison. In a short time we were rolling homeward. Of course it didn't take us nearly so long to get home because it was downhill and the road was clearly marked, so in a couple of hours ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... downhill under the archway when you did go in, and you came to a step. If you did not tumble owing to the suddenness and depth of this step, you came to another; and were stupefied by reaching the ground four inches sooner than you expected, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... said with a shrug. "You can't get lost. If you should lose your bearings, just walk downhill and you'll come to food and water. Follow the shore line until you get back, either direction. And, I reckon, the way things go now, you ain't goin' to hurt yourself. We won't worry about you none. We're all gettin' along ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... pass down into the city again, taking a new route past the Northern Club, a lofty and unsightly building, whose members are notoriously hospitable, and much given to whist and euchre. Downhill a short distance, and we come to the Albert Barracks, where newly-arrived immigrants are housed, and where most of our sometime shipmates now are. They are comfortably quartered here for the present, but no incitement ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... occurred at Rochemalan, which the crusaders attacked with great courage. But the Vaudois had the advantage of the higher ground, and, encouraged by the cries and prayers of the women, children, and old men whom they were defending, they impetuously rushed forward and drove the Papal troops downhill in disorder, pursuing ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... those putts in which it is not all plain sailing from the place where the ball lies to the hole. The line of the putt may be uphill or it may be downhill, or the green may slope all the way from one side to the other, or first from one and then the other. There is no end to the tricks and difficulties of a good sporting green, and the more of them the merrier. ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... windows, and then extended himself at full length and went to sleep. There he lay, his great paunch sagging—prosperity exuding from every pore—an emblem and type of what in the West we call a "successful" man. And the other? The other, no doubt, was going downhill. Both, of course, were Japanese types; but the civilisation of the West chose the one and rejected the other. And if civilisation is to be judged, as it fairly may be, by the kind of men it brings to the top, there ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Ottokar I had settled himself firmly on the throne he found that the confused, almost anarchic, state which Germany had drifted into could mean many advantages to Bohemia, if the situation were properly handled. The House of Hohenstaufen began to go downhill after the death of Henry VI, and we find a lusty Welf, Otto, clamouring for the imperial diadem, assisted by a number of German Electors. This gave the ruler of Bohemia his opportunity, and Ottokar took it. His son Wenceslaus I and grandson ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... in a strong seaway, the omnibus crossed Seventh Avenue and sped downhill toward Sixth with dangerous momentum. Shortly, however, this began to be modified by the brakes, a precaution against mishap which even the fugitive must approve. Ahead loomed the gaunt structure of the Sixth Avenue "L," bridging the roadway at so low an elevation as ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... virtues; you always have. I'm not half the fellow you think I am. I do love beautiful things, but I don't believe my poetry is any good." He paused a moment and then confessed mournfully: "I'll admit, though, that I have been going downhill. I'm going to do better from now ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... about practicing law. I'm a free man now and any political work I do is going to be along the lines of the simple, childish ideas I brought home from college with me. I had begun to feel that all this political idealism was sheer rubbish, but I put the brakes on before I got too far downhill. If a few of us who have run with the machine and know the tricks will turn and help the bewildered idealists, we can make idealism effective. Most of the people don't want a handful of crooks to govern ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... the plains of Lombardy on both banks of the Po, at the foot of the Alps, telling them that at that moment they were crossing not only the walls of Italy but of the Roman capital; that the rest of the march was easy and downhill." The situation of Hannibal and his Carthaginians surveying Italy for the first time is in some respects closely analogous to that of Cortes pointing out the Valley of Mexico ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... attacking an army drawn up in calm and confident array:—this is the art of studying circumstances. 33. It is a military axiom not to advance uphill against the enemy, nor to oppose him when he comes downhill. 34. Do not pursue an enemy who simulates flight; do not attack soldiers whose temper is keen. 35. Do not swallow ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... Imperial Light Horse that Boers must have been lying there almost under the feet of our men, if they did not actually join the ranks for a time to escape detection. But a sound greeted their ears at that moment, and knowing what it meant, they scampered downhill without waiting to hear more. It was a ringing British cheer followed by strident commands to "Fix bayonets and give the devils cold steel." Begun by Major Karri Davis, the order ran along from Imperial ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... the beach, climbed a road across the neck of the promontory, and rattled downhill into Port Nassau. Dusk had fallen before they reached the head of its cobbled street; and here one of the postillions drew out a horn from his holster and began to blow loud blasts on it. This at once drew the townsfolk ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... which appeared to him, as he was high above it, to be level as a billiard table, a pilot has found, when it is too late, that the ground has sloped so steeply that his machine, after landing, has run on downhill and ended by crashing into ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... desolate state of parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, once among the richest specimens of soil and cultivation in the world; and even the more recently colonized Alabama, as he shows, is rapidly following in the same downhill track. To slavery, therefore, it is a matter of life and death to find fresh fields for the employment of slave labor. Confine it to the present States, and the owners of slave property will either be speedily ruined, or will have to find means ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... been traveling downhill all this time, but at this point we crossed the road and the ground began to rise. I was in that painful condition which occurs when one has lost one's first wind and has not yet got one's second. I was hotter than I had ever ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... known, unless it's the bitterness of a bad conscience. Now I've come here to-day"—she raised her voice to a note of warning—"to give you a chance. To make you think, by pointing out the path you are treading. You are young, and it is my duty to let no young person go downhill without one warning word. You have brought much evil on our village—why you, a stranger, should be bent on making us all unhappy I can't imagine. You hypocritically try to pretend that what plain people call evil is really good. But your last action, forcing Emma ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... while And feed upon some nourishing employ But otherwise shake their wise heads and smile— Protesting that one man can no more move the mass For good or ill Than could the ancients kindle the sun By tying torches to a wheel and rolling it downhill. But not the wet circumference of the seas Can quench the living light in even these, These who forget, Eating the fruits of earth, That nothing ever has been done To spur the spirit of mankind, Which has not come to pass Forth from the heart and mind Of ...
— The New World • Witter Bynner
... remember a classmate of mine saying, "Why, man, can't you let anything alone?" I said, "I let everything alone that you can show me is not itself moving in the wrong direction, but I am not going to let those things alone that I see are going downhill"; and I borrowed this illustration from an ingenious writer. He says, "If you have a post that is painted white and want to keep it white, you cannot let it alone; and if anybody says to you, 'Why don't you let that post alone,' you will say, 'Because I want ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... be given again and again; for, though the track was as bad as ever, it was for the most part downhill, and the patches of snow lying in the jagged hollows on either side of the pass were less frequent, while the sheltered slopes and hollows were greener with groves of stunted fir and grass, and, far below, glimpses were obtained of deep valleys branching off from the lower part ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn |
