"Ebb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... out of the wet, leaving their gaunt roots exposed in midair." High-tide or low- tide, there is little difference in the water; the river, be it broad or narrow, deep or shallow, looks like a pathway of polished metal; for it is as heavy weighted with stinking mud as water e'er can be, ebb or flow, year out and year in. But the difference in the banks, though an unending alternation ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... midnight and the ebb tide set in. The good wind was still blowing down the river. Two lanterns went aloft in the rigging of the Sutherland, and the signal for one of the great adventures of history was given. All the troops had gone into boats ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... aspects of the subject, which must be considered in turn. There is the classifying of woman's apparel which comes under the head of European dress, woman's costume affected by cosmopolitan influences; costumes worn by that part of humanity which is in close intercommunication and reflecting the ebb and flow of currents—political, geographical and artistic. Then we have quite another field for study, that of national costumes, by which we mean costumes peculiar to some one nation and worn by its men and ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills It rests; and still as the divided frame 650 Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood, That ever beat in mystic sympathy With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still: And when two lessening points of light alone Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp 655 Of his faint respiration scarce did stir The stagnate night:—till ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... sun, the buttercups gilding the pastures and hill-slopes, the clover shedding its perfume, the timothy shaking out its little clouds of pollen as the sickle-bar strikes it, most of the song-birds still vocal, and the tide of summer standing poised at its full. Very soon it will begin to ebb, the stalks of the meadow grasses will become dry and harsh, the clover will fade, the girlish daisies will become coarse and matronly, the birds will sing fitfully or cease altogether, the pastures will turn brown, and the haymakers will find ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... subtile matter; but nothing like it is seen in London. In France, it is the pressure of the moon that causes the tides; but in England it is the sea that gravitates towards the moon; so that when you think that the moon should make it flood with us, those gentlemen fancy it should be ebb, which very unluckily cannot be proved. For to be able to do this, it is necessary the moon and the tides should have been inquired into at the very instant of ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... enough to allow conditions to be favorable to getting up without "taking a chance"? Inasmuch as her muscular tone is poor, her strength depleted, her vitality wasted, her ambition and hope at a low ebb, nature should be given a longer time, under the most favorable hygienic and domestic conditions, to help in the problem of readjustment, because her whole future, as an efficient machine, as wife, as mother, as home-maker, and as an economic individuality, is dependent ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... felt sufficient interest in affairs going on around him to realise the state of musical art in America, so he scarcely knew how to begin. It seemed like the commencement of a new life. The period was that between Jenny Lind and Adelina Patti, and he soon realised that musical art was at its lowest ebb. There were one or two ambitious orchestra conductors in America; one in Chicago trying to introduce the Wagnerian polyphonic school, and perhaps one or two in New York; but the public clamoured after divas, prima donnas ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... judgment, is for the sake of expression—equally true of the drama as of painting and sculpture. No poem touches the human heart unless it touches the universal. It must, at some point, move in unison with the great ebb and flow of things. The same is true of the play, of a piece of music or a statue. I think that all real artists, in all departments, touch the universal and when they do the result is good; but the result need not have been a ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... was a low house, with smooth grey thatch and buff walls, looking pleasant and mellow in the evening light. The leaded windows were bright and speckless, and the door-stone was as clean as a white boulder at ebb tide. On the door-stone stood a clean old woman, in a dark-striped linen gown, a red kerchief, and a linen cap, talking to some speckled fowls which appeared to have been drawn towards her by an illusory expectation of cold potatoes or barley. The old woman's sight seemed to be dim, for ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... more, sweet! You have no speaking part here. We'll do the talking. I just love to talk. I am the original tongue-tied man; I ebb and flow. Don't let me hear a word from ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... into two unequal portions by the straits of White Horse, where vessels are often weather-bound, and cannot make way against the wind, which sets a current through the narrow channel. There is no tide; the sweet waters do not ebb and flow; but while I thus discourse, I have forgotten to state how they came to fill the middle of the country. Now, the philosopher Silvester, and those who seek after marvels, say that the passage of the dark body through space caused an immense volume ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... Jocelyn conducted himself with rare discretion; and while avoiding giving offence, never suffered a liberty to be taken with himself; and having on the onset established a character for courage, he was little afterwards molested. It was creditable to him, that in a court where morality was at so low an ebb as that of James I., he should have remained uncorrupted; and that not all the allurements of the numerous beauties by whom he was surrounded, and who exerted their blandishments to ensnare him, could tempt him for a moment's disloyalty to the object ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... an uncle of the ill-fated Jehoiachin. He was the third son of Josiah, and, like his brothers, Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim, he was to see the fortunes of Judah ebb to their lowest point, and finally to witness the destruction of the capital and the ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... the minister's feelings toward the new custodian of his tin box, and an utter revulsion of sentiment ensued, wherein sympathy for General Rene Laurance reigned supreme. Oh instability of human compassion! To-day at the tumultuous flood, we weep for Caesar slain; To-morrow in the ebb, we vote ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... are beneficial to man, but hardly less in those which work to his hurt. Even in those alternations of good and bad trade, which spell so much unemployment and misery, there is discernible a rhythmic regularity like that of the process of the seasons, or the ebb and flow of the tide. This is not an elegance to be admired. Furthermore, in so far as the order comprises adjustments and tendencies which are beneficial (as, indeed, is mainly true), there is no warrant for assuming that these are either ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... it would naturally have been expected that one of our first acts upon assuming the government of Cyprus would have been to abolish an abuse that had excited the remonstrances of our own representatives. The fact is that we were reduced to a financial ebb of the gravest character by the absorption at Constantinople of an unfair proportion of the revenue, and our government was not in a position to risk a reduction of income by such an important change in the system of taxation. The Cypriotes ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... an element in civilization, or however advantageous as a means by which the general taste of the people may be elevated and refined, will not be found all-sufficient, in itself, to raise our musical reputation as a nation. Native music is at a low ebb at present; and, while musical entertainments are in such general request as almost to have excluded the "legitimate" drama from the stage, no attempt to introduce any English opera has been recently made. Into ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... terrible affairs. The vessel which bears them to Italy has been ready to sail for a week. During all that time the wind blew constantly from the south-west; it changed to the east only last night, so that their departure before was impossible. But the tide is high now and will commence to ebb at the very hour fixed for the death of the assassin. You see that God himself willed Mr. Van de Werve to remain here until his vengeance ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... in this way that the world began to hear of Mr. Nathaniel Hawthorne, of Salem; but it was still long before the public knew him. Meanwhile, at the very moment of the disclosure, he was in the lowest ebb of discouragement, in spirits, that he ever knew. It is to this time that his gloomiest memories attached themselves. He had tried to enter the world, he had even tried to earn a living, and had failed. Cilley, ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... swing low "— The sea singeth so, And it waileth anon in its ebb and its flow; And a sleeper sleeps on to that song of the sea Nor recketh he ever of mine or of me! "Swing high and swing low While the breezes they blow— 'T was off for a sailor ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... tide was on the ebb, you could actually ford the lake to the islands farther south. It might be worth while trying ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... his enemies could in no other manner have been so completely refuted. Unmoved by the storm of calumny and detraction which raged around him, he has calmly and silently awaited the unerring judgment, the triumphant verdict, which he knew time and the ebb of the bad passions his success ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... of civil wars and all kinds of sorrows and troubles. When the new king was crowned and began the business of governing, he found little to govern with. There were no money, no soldiers, no trade, no order in the kingdom, everything being at so low an ebb that he found it necessary, as some writers state, to secure support from Germany by recognizing the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa as his suzerain and doing homage to him as a vassal in 1162. But this ceremony did not entail ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... Diffused throughout the infinite, abides, Dwells and upholds:—then, haply, dwells in thee? Yea, verily. Within thy frame resides What, by its movement only mayst thou know. The circling blood, thy being's ambient tides, Is't thine own will that bids them ebb and flow, And from their inundating flood depose Organic germs, whence health and vigour grow? Yet though such witness serve thee to disclose In human tenement divine abode, Not thine be the material creed that shows The spirit's ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... children took scarlet fever at school. They had the disease lightly, but what anxiety the mother endured! Thank God, they got through it safely; but there was the doctor's bill to be settled, and funds were at a low ebb once more. To cap the climax, when the house had been thoroughly fumigated by the board of health, and Mrs. Farrell was prepared to take up her occupation again, an attack of rheumatism crippled her fingers and rendered them almost powerless. Then it was that, worn ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... all the munitions are going there, it is certain that they were very outclassed upon the three days (June 10, 11, 12) which I allude to. There were signs that for some reason their spirits were at a low ebb. On the evening before our arrival the French had massed all their bands at the front, and, in honour of the Russian victory, had played the Marseillaise and the Russian National hymn, winding up with general shoutings and objurgations calculated to annoy. Failing ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... drear and desolate shore! Where no tree unfolds its leaves, And never the spring wind weaves Green grass for the hunter's tread; A land forsaken and dead, Where the ghostly icebergs go And come with the ebb and flow..." ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... achievements only because, when formed, they support a joyful and liberal experience. Nature's works first acquire a meaning in the commentaries they provoke; mechanical processes have interesting climaxes only from the point of view of the life that expresses them, in which their ebb and flow grows impassioned and vehement. Nature's values are imputed to her retroactively by spirit, which in its material dependence has a logical and moral primacy of its own. In themselves events are perfectly mechanical, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the Rabbits themselves were the extreme case, millions in 1904, none at all in 1907. The present, then, was a year of low ebb. The first task was to determine whether this related to all mammalian life. Apparently not, because Deermice, Lynxes, Beaver, and Caribou were abundant. Yet these are not their maximum years; the accounts show them to have been so ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... with its usual midnight throng; there was the hubbub of loud voices and the ebb and flow of laughter. From midway of the gambling-hall rose the noisy exhortations of some amateur gamester who was breathing upon his dice and pleading earnestly, feelingly, with "Little Joe"; from the theater issued the strains of a sentimental ballad. As Rouletta and her companion edged their ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... of the multitude of things which Albinia had to discuss with her brother? The floodtide of bliss had floated her over all the stumbling-blocks and shoals that the ebb had disclosed, and she had absolutely forgotten all the perplexities that had seemed so trying. Even when she sought a private interview to talk to him about Gilbert, it was in full security of hearing the ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wild clutch, grabbed hold of the cage before it sank, and dragged it and the screaming bird out of danger. The gridiron and skewers went down at once—luckily in four feet of water, whence they could be recovered at low-ebb. The cullender sank slowly and with dignity. The cat headed straight for shore, and, defying all attempts of Mr. Toy and Aunt Butson to head him off, slipped between them and dashed up the hill on a bee-line for home. Master Calvin, seated astride the low wall above the slipway, ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... their son, together with those interested in them. Time, the supreme solvent, flows over existence, submerging here, lifting there, altering the relative attitudes of husband and wife, parent and child, friend and enemy. For no human relation is static. The ebb and flow forget not the closest or remotest connection between members of the human family; not a friendship or interest stands still, and not a love or a hate. Time operates upon every human emotion as it operates ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... hastily wading the surf towards us; and we saw that they were twelve weaponed men, great, and grim, and all clad in black raiment. Then indeed were we afraid, and we turned about and fled up the beach; but now it was too late, for the tide was at more than half ebb and long was the way over the sand to the place where we had left our horses tied among the tamarisk-bushes. Nevertheless we ran, and had gotten up to the pebble-beach before they ran in amongst us: and they caught us, and cast us down ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... tank was at its lowest ebb, and it would be dangerous for him to attempt to run more than one hour or so longer before replenishing it. Consequently he was unable to stand anything like another chase ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... contrast, each species of plant and animal will gradually change its limits of distribution—will be driven back, here by the winter's increasing cold, and there by the summer's increasing heat—will retire into those localities that are still fit for it. Thus during 10,000 years, each species will ebb away from certain regions it was inhabiting; and during the succeeding 10,000 years will flow back into those regions. From the strata there forming, its remains will disappear; they will be absent from some of the superposed strata; and will be found in strata ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... and say it in fewest words, and only to help. He was a man of marvellous faith, and prayer, and bold daring, in the midst of a very crooked and perverse generation. Israel was at its very lowest moral ebb thus far. ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... the life-blood seemed to ebb away from Ursula, and within the emptiness a heavy despair gathered. Her passion seemed to bleed to death, and there was nothing. She sat suspended in a state of complete nullity, harder to ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... develop his "Laws of Sound" in that voiceful silence; or was it in that solitude he had first watched the gentle ebb and flow of his own life-current and learned the secret which Harvey, ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... of his situation was painfully accurate: he was marooned upon what a flood tide made a desert island but which at the ebb was a peninsula—a long and narrow strip of sand, bounded on the west by the broad, shallow channel to the ocean, on the east connected with the mainland by a sandbar which half the ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... until finally Perk realized they were just around the corner, for he could pick up every word that was uttered as well as see specks of foam from the working oars as it carried past, the tide being on the ebb just then. ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... cinch, had his forehead pressed against the saddle and could afford a grin. He knew that the courage of a killer is largely dependent on his physical well-being. If he is cold or hungry or exhausted, his nerve is at low ebb; if life is running strong in his arteries his grit is above par. For years Roush had been drinking to excess. He had reached the point where he dared not face in the open a man like Albeen with nerves of unflawed steel. The ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... of the kingdom was trebly unsettled, yet no card seemed to turn up favourable to the royal cause, until the movement of General Monk from Scotland. Even then, it was when at the point of complete success, that the fortunes of Charles seemed at a lower ebb than ever, especially when intelligence had arrived at the little Court which he then kept in Brussels, that Monk, on arriving in London, had put himself under the ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... in the morning, and make a circuit of the island, for a possible sight of the refugees, was not destined to be carried out. For somewhere around two o'clock, when bodily functions are said to be at their lowest ebb, Walter heard Jack calling ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... a period of check and disappointment in every great and holy work. The tide of evil may be driven into ebb for a time, but it always rallies and flows back upon the servant of God, and usually when the prime of his strength is past, and he is less able to withstand. Most good and great men have closed their eyes upon apparent failure and disappointment in what is especially their own task, ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... end of 1816 the cause of liberty in Chili was at its lowest ebb. After four years of struggle the patriots had met with a crushing defeat in 1814, and had been scattered to the four winds. Since then the viceroy of Spain had ruled the land with an iron hand, many of the leading citizens being banished to the desolate island ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... starboard, rocks to port, all the passage scarred and scored, Shall the Formidable here with her twelve and eighty guns Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow way, Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty tons, And with flow at full beside? Now, 'tis slackest ebb of tide. Reach the mooring? Rather say, While rock stands or water runs, Not a ship will ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... tells me of the clerk of Bierton, near Aylesbury, of which her father had sole charge for a time at the end of the forties. His predecessor had been a Mr. Stephens. The place had been neglected, and church matters were at a low ebb. Mr. Elton instituted a service on Saints' Days, which was quite an innovation at that time, and the first of these was held on St. Stephen's Day. The old clerk came into the vestry after the service and said, "I be sorry, sir, to hear the unkid ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... quotation from Washington's journal, how gloomy was the prospect presented to him at this time. He evidently saw little to encourage a hope of the favorable termination of the campaign of that year. Indeed, it is quite apparent that our national affairs were then at a lower ebb than they had ever been since the period immediately preceding the battle of Trenton. But by the merciful interposition of divine Providence, the course of events took a favorable turn much sooner than he had anticipated. His letter to Col. John Laurens, ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... have been there, but she could not remember having seen him. There were so many, many youths of the New York sort, all dressed alike, all resembling one another—many, many people flowing past her where she stood submerged in the silken ebb ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... took their King prisoner. So all the ogres did homage to Little Peachling, and brought out the treasures which they had laid up. There were caps and coats that made their wearers invisible, jewels which governed the ebb and the flow of the tide, coral, musk, emeralds, amber, and tortoise shells, besides gold and silver. All these were laid before Little ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... place during a short cessation of firing, when, for some reason not ascertained, the French troops retreated. They now came back with more field-pieces, and opened on the ships. Happily the ebb just then made, and a light breeze sprang up and blew down the harbour. A fire was kept up from the ships, however, all the time, while their anchors were weighed, and their topsails being sheeted home, they stood out of the harbour. Still the shot followed ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... The tide was at quarter-ebb, and a dismal haze lay thick on shore and sea. It was not enough to be called a fog, or even a mist, but quite enough to deaden the gray light, always flowing along the boundary of sky and sea. But over the wet sand and the white frill of the gently gurgling waves ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... unjustly accused of treason, led to his imprisonment at Pavia[279] and his execution in 524.[280] Not many generations after his death, the period being one in which historical criticism was at its lowest ebb, the church found it profitable to look upon his execution as a martyrdom.[281] He was {72} accordingly looked upon as a saint,[282] his bones were enshrined,[283] and as a natural consequence his books ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... the treasury was reduced to the lowest ebb, and Charles was obliged to pay his troops in meal, and even this was frequently deficient, and the men suffered severely from hunger. Many deserted, and others scattered over the ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... resigned his claim to the Pope, who thereupon appointed him Abbot. He wrote a Register of things done in his time, compiled a book of Decretals and Constitutions of Provincial Chapters, and sundry works on geometry and astronomy. He constructed a clock showing the courses of the sun and moon, the ebb and flow of the tides, etc., which Leland, Librarian to Henry VIII., speaks of as still going in his day. He also made an astronomical instrument to which he gave the name "Albion," and wrote a book describing the manner of using it. Edward ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... don't say that, Mrs. Fontenette. Pardon me, but— not that, please." I felt for an instant quite cruel enough to have told her what ebb tides she had given that husband's happiness; what he had been so near doing and had been led back from only by the absolute christliness of that other woman and wife, whose happiness scarcely seemed ever to have occurred to her; but that was his ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... tradition of a deluge, but here supported by geological evidence which is appreciated by the natives themselves: i.e. the finding of mussel shells on the hills far inland. The principle of the tides is recognized in what is otherwise a fairy tale; "There will be no more ebb-tide or flood if you strangle me," says the Moon Man to the ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... me more than I can ever express to her; she has many a time given me courage when my spirits were at a very low ebb. ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... came to scoff. I must see all there is to be seen. If there is an apple to be bitten, I must bite. I have floated in with the flood and out with the ebb of almost every fad from crystal-gazing to bridge. I always hope that one of them is going ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... any more there than in other places. I was at a strange loss to understand this, and resolved to spend some time in the observing it, to see if nothing from the sets of the tide had occasioned it; but I was presently convinced how it was - viz. that the tide of ebb setting from the west, and joining with the current of waters from some great river on the shore, must be the occasion of this current, and that, according as the wind blew more forcibly from the west ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... can get on with Mrs. Peake you deserve considerable praise, lad. Not but what she is a good enough woman, and with a kindly heart; but ever since little Joe went out on the ebb tide and never came back again she seems to have become what I might say, soured on humanity. Abner is meek enough to stand it, but she has had quarrels with many people in the village. Still, who knows but what you may be the very one to do her good. ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... nulla-nullas (throwing-sticks), supported by barking and yelping dogs swept the timid wallabies up through the tangle of jungle, until like the Gaderene swine they ran, or rather hopped, down a steep place into the sea, or fell on fatal rocks laid bare by the ebb-tide. Those who partook of the last of the wallabies have gone the way of all flesh, and the incident is instructive only as an illustration of the manner in which animals may suddenly disappear from confined localities, leaving no relic of previous existence. Considering ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... these there is a large one which is not to be regarded. Having the capes thus opposite each other, you are in the middle of the channel and by the first buoy. The current runs outside along the shore, east and west, to wit: the ebb tide westerly, and the flood easterly, and also very strong. The ebb runs until it is half flood. There are still two other channels, the old one which is the middle one, and the Spanish Channel stretching to the east. We had reached the middlemost ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... of a tideless sea, upon the shore, is at once unrestful and monotonous; in this only too closely resembling the beat of the human heart, when the glory of youth has departed. The splendid energy of the flow and grateful easing of the ebb alike are denied it. Foul or fair, shine or storm, it pounds and pounds—as a thing chained—without relief of advance or of recession, always at the same level, always in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... possessed of the power of rejecting or admitting motions in the senate, the speaker might either admit or reject bills in the house. D'Ewes, p. 677. The house declared themselves against this opinion; but the very proposal of it is a proof at what a low ebb liberty was at that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... supported by six stays, like the Norse galleys of old, but it had no yards; for, although the sea was indeed its home, and it incessantly braved the fury of the storm, diurnally cleft the waters of flood and ebb-tide, and gallantly breasted the billows of ocean all the year round, it had no need of sails. It never advanced an inch on its course, for it had no course. It never made for any port. It was never either homeward or outward ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... gold began to flow and ebb in the hands of Coppinger. At one time he had enough money to purchase a freehold farm bordering on the sea. When the day of transfer came, he and one of his followers appeared before the lawyer and paid ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... long as you like. You won't tire me when there's no tide and no waves. This is a very different business from getting out the sweeps to pull a nobby five miles against the strength of the ebb, with a heavy ground ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... came out of a dwelling that was half farmhouse, half manor-house, and that lay in a cup of low hills on the edge of a tract of moorland. The house belonged to a man named Walter Raleigh, of Fardell, a gentleman of good family whose fortunes had sunk to a low ebb. It was one-storied, with thatched roof, gabled wings, and a projecting central porch. Here lived Mr. Raleigh of Fardell with his wife Katherine, four sons and a daughter. It was a large family for such a small estate, and already the father ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... yell "bravo!" but wisely refrained. Her eyes were full of tears, though, and her resolution at ebb tide. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... by the breaker. By these means, and particularly at the greatest height of the tide, the shingles are projected on the land beyond the reach of the retiring waves: and this great accumulation of land upon beach being effected at high water, it is clear, the ebb tide cannot deprive the land of what it has gained. Smaller lines are formed in moderate weather, to be swept away by heavy gales: hence it would appear, that the sea was diminishing the beach; but attention will show that the shingles of the lines so apparently ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 560, August 4, 1832 • Various
... equally destroyed, through the nervous disturbance and the intense depression which followed the winning of a liberty too dearly bought. The incessant rising and quelling of her impulse and her courage—like the ebb and flow of tides—represented a vast amount of force not merely wasted, but expended in producing a dangerous wear and tear upon the system. The process told upon her health, and was the beginning of the weakening and unbalancing of the splendid constitution which Hadria, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... fact as gently as he could, while he watched the blood ebb from her face. As she swayed he caught her in his arms and carried her to the divan. When, presently, her eyes fluttered open, it was to look into his pitiful ones. He was kneeling beside her, and her head ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... propelled by her own steam and machinery, left the wharf near the Brooklyn ferry, and proceeded majestically into the river; though a stiff breeze from the south blew directly ahead, she stemmed the current with perfect ease, as the tide was a strong ebb. She sailed by the forts and saluted them with her thirty-two pound guns. Her speed was equal to the most sanguine expectations; she exhibited a novel and sublime spectacle to an admiring people. The intention of the Commissioners being solely to try her enginery, no ...
— Fulton's "Steam Battery": Blockship and Catamaran • Howard I. Chapelle
... leaned against a balustrade of the great basin, to speak about a carp. Nobody made any answer. He afterwards addressed his remarks about these carp to some builder's-men who did not keep up the conversation in the regular way; it was but a question of carp with them. Everything was at a low ebb, and the king went away some little time after. As soon as we dared look at one another out of his sight, our eyes meeting told all." There was no venturing beyond looks. Fenelon had said, with severe charity, "God will have ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... and it was fortunate for him that he took the water on the turn of the tide, so that where the tail of the ebb set him down the first of the flood bore him back. The stimulus of the chill and the labor of swimming cleared the poison from his body and brain; he swam steadily, with eyes fixed on the lights beading the waterside and mind clenched ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... gray, the marsh that lay Out-stretched afar—a dreary waste Of tide lands low, where ebb and flow The waters, that with ...
— Within the Golden Gate - A Souvenir of San Fransisco Bay • Laura Young Pinney
... and then south by east a half-east for the long stretch. But for most of us the way to the war lay through a stranger region than that. Years ago (as it seems) on a rainy winter evening, we watched the buoys of the Solent Channel streaming past us all aslope on the strong ebb-tide, and as the Trinity Brothers began to open their eyes for an all-night watch on the south coast, we closed ours to ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... time, the rank grass is of a deeper green, and the face of the salt-meadows is seamed with irregular clay-brown channels, which at high-tide show out like crows'-feet on an ancient countenance, but at the ebb dwindle to little gullies with greasy-looking banks and a dribble of iridescent water in the bottom. It is in the autumn that the moles heap up meanders of miniature barrows, built of the softest brown loam; and ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... to him. The enemy receives small succors from time to time by sea. The Court is about to negotiate another loan, in which if it does not succeed, perhaps it must have recourse to another emission of paper. The treasury is at a low ebb. The Minister of Marine demanded lately ten millions of reals, and received but three. The credit of the paper has lately risen, it is not negotiated at one and a half ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. IX • Various
... strong tides about the island, and scarce any running in a stream, to set me alongshore either way. But after this time I had pretty much of them; and found at present the flood set to the eastward, and the ebb to the westward. The ebb (with which I was now carried) sets very strong and runs 8 or 9 hours. The flood runs but weak, and at most lasts not above 4 hours; and this too is perceived only near the shore; where, checking the ebb, it swells the seas and makes the water rise in the ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... splendid remains of architecture at Pagan. The city and the dynasty were destroyed by a Chinese (or rather Mongol) invasion (1284 A.D.) in the reign of Kublai Khan. After that the empire fell to a low ebb, and Central Burma was often subject to Shan dynasties. In the early part of the 16th century the Burmese princes of Toungoo, in the north-east of Pegu, began to rise to power, and established a dynasty which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... his pocket with angry decision. But—it didn't come out. The color began to ebb out of his face. The countenances about him showed a growing interest; and some of them a heightened satisfaction. There was an uncomfortable pause—then he forced out, with difficulty, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... water the Cimarron was a brackish stream. But numerous tributaries put in from either side, and by keeping above the river's ebb, an abundance of fresh water was daily secured from the river's affluents. The fifth day out from Red Rock was an excessively sultry one, and suffering would have resulted to the herd had we not been following a divide where we caught an occasional breeze. The river lay some ten miles to our right, ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... strawberry ice In one's own particular damp sea-cave, Dipping one's feelers in each green wave. It is good, for a very rapacious maw, When storm-tossed morsels come to the claw; And 'the better to see with' down below, To wash one's eyes in the ebb and flow Of the tides that come and the tides that go." So sang the Lobsters, thankful for their mercies, All but the hero of these simple verses. Now a hero— If he's worth the grand old name— Though temperature may change from boiling-point to zero ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Till Peter's pale-green eyes ajar Dream, wake; wake, dream, in one brief bar; And I am sitting, dull and shy, And she with gaze of vacancy, And large hands folded on the tray, Musing the afternoon away; Her satin bosom heaving slow With sighs that softly ebb and flow, And her plain face in such dismay, It seems unkind to look her way: Until all cheerful back will come Her cheerful gleaming spirit home: And one would think that poor Miss Loo Asked nothing ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... the right and left the bawling barkers shout their enticements, begging one's patronage. Up and down the street the endless patter of the feet of men and women, the wheeze of the little electrics and the blare of brassy music ebb and flow. Here and there is the dominant note of the Exposition, its pastel shades of burnt orange and red, and its indefinable blue. They flutter forth, hooped about the flagpoles with Oriental effect. Those wonderful lanterns, that delightful medieval touch which ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... as we sat down under our buttonwood and spread upon the sward our pastoral meal, the veery-thrush—sadder and stranger than any nightingale—played for us, unseen, on an instrument like those old water-organs played on by the flow and ebb of the tide, a flute of silver in which some strange magician has somewhere hidden tears. I wondered, as he sang, if the veery was the thrush that, to Walt Whitman's fancy, "in the swamp in secluded recesses" mourned the ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... death and birth, Why is it fretted with the ceaseless flow Of flood and ebb, with ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... bold spirit who had spoken before, presumed, in spite of the commander's threat, to open his mouth again as the boats slowly left the beach, rowing through the passage and up the harbor against the ebb just beginning; he pulled the stroke ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... sell him, but Anna laughed and said: 'Fair sir, were ye to buy all this and all that is in it, from groundsell to roofridge, and all our kine and sheep and horses to boot, little would the tide of gold ebb in thy bags yonder.' 'I wot not,' said he; 'who may say what treasure ye have been hoarding here this long while?' He looked on me as he spake, and I reddened and looked down, for in my heart I was thinking of the pipe and the gemmed necklace which the ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... valiant defender. However, there was no want of enterprising vessels, which, under the favor of the night and the floodtide, passing through the still open bridge in spite of the enemy's fire, threw provisions into the town and returned with the ebb. But as many of these vessels fell into the hands of the enemy the council gave orders that they should never risk the passage unless they amounted to a certain number; and the result, unfortunately, was that ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sport there was ever something to attract him. He might see sword-playing at Hockley, or cocking at Shoe Lane, or baiting at Southwark, or shooting at Tothill Fields. Again, he might walk in the physic gardens of St. James's, or go down the river with the ebb tide to the cherry orchards at Rotherhithe, or drive to Islington to drink the cream, or, above all, walk in the Park, which is most modish for a gentleman who dresses in the fashion. You see, Clarke, that ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... constituent parts, so in like manner Catholic Christendom is no simple exhibition of religious absolutism, but it presents a continuous picture of Authority and Private Judgment alternately advancing and retreating as the ebb and flow of the tide;—it is a vast assemblage of human beings with wilful intellects and wild passions, brought together into one by the beauty and the majesty of a superhuman power—into what may be called a large reformatory or ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... being quite forgotten, or preserved only through a chance reference; and of course the work of elimination went on much more rapidly during the Middle Ages, when the interest in classical literature sank to so low an ebb in the West. Such collections of references and quotations as the Greek Anthology and the famous anthologies of Stobaeus and Athanasius and Eusebius give us glimpses of a host of writers—more than seven ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... in Princes Street, Birmingham, the days continued as of old, with the ebb and flow of business. On each floor clerks bent over their high desks and the workers of each concern sat behind their mahogany defences and toiled early and late for the treasure they desired. At stated ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... and more; and in the end the old lady began to speak without reserve about her past. It came about thus. After Christmas, Dave being culture-bound, and work of a profitable nature for the moment at a low ebb, Aunt M'riar had fallen back on some arrears of stocking-darning. Dolly was engaged on the object to which she gave lifelong attention, that of keeping her doll asleep. I do not fancy that Dolly ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... sir," replied the other; "it's now more than half-flood; in three hours we can drop down the river with the first of the ebb, and if this breeze holds we'll be in ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... death. Characteristics of General Grant as President. Reflections on the campaign. Questions asked me by a leading London journalist regarding the election. My first meeting with Samuel J. Tilden; low ebb of his fortunes at that period. The culmination of Tweed. Thomas Nast. Meeting of the Electoral College at Albany; the "Winged Victory'' and General Grant's credentials. My first experience of "Reconstruction'' ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... God! the love of my husband," she whispered; "let my children grow great in name and in soul. Oh, if I could purchase happiness for them by sacrificing my life, I would gladly let my heart's blood ebb away drop by drop—if by my death I could restore to my husband his former power, how cheerfully I would die! O my God, save and protect Prussia: but if such should not be Thy will, teach us how to fall and die with her in an honorable ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... least those left open in the desk; merely accounts of the estate, kept with brevity and with much apparent labour; sixty years ago literature, nay, education, were at a low ebb among English country gentlemen. But all the papers were so carefully arranged, that Nathanael had nothing to do but to glance over them and tie them up—simple yearly records of the just life and honest dealings of a good man, who transferred unencumbered ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... however, could be more brilliantly successful. At the arrival of Mountjoy the English power in Ireland was at about the lowest ebb it ever reached under the Tudors. Ormond, the Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, had recently been taken captive by the O'Mores in Leinster, by whom he was held for an enormous ransom. Success, with all its glittering train, seemed ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... large woman, with a conscientious head and gray eyes. As she waited, she realized that it was one of her timid nights, when colour came easily and temper ran at its lowest ebb. She had begged Van Kuyp to cancel the habit of not listening to his own music except at rehearsal, and, annoyed by his stubbornness, neglected to tell him of the other invitation. The house was quite full when the music began. Uneasiness overtook her as the Oberon ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... rock, a terrific but welcome downpour of rain fell, and we were able to satisfy our thirst by pressing our mouths to crevices in the rock overhead. But we were not long allowed to remain undisturbed in our shelter, for, although the tide was on the ebb, the enormous influx of water, driven over the reef by the violence of the wind, so swelled the lagoon that we had to abandon our refuge and crawl on our hands and knees up over the bank, and thence into the thorny scrub, where we were at least safe ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... mind has its ebb and flow of disquiet, with intervals of peace between. At length—how long, though, he could not have said—he came to the conclusion that the affair was an accident or mistake. The palace certainly belonged to somebody; it must have care and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... The ebb and flow of life remains much the same from day to day. The earliest street sound, before the dawn breaks, is the rattle of the trams, the meat-carts on their way to the markets, the dust-carts and the watering-carts; and then, just as the grey thread of the dawn fringes the horizon, the hymn of ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... and bloom less transient than her own. It is the constant revolution, stale And tasteless, of the same repeated joys That palls and satiates, and makes languid life A pedlar's pack that bows the bearer down. Health suffers, and the spirits ebb; the heart Recoils from its own choice—at the full feast Is famished—finds no music in the song, No smartness in the jest, and wonders why. Yet thousands still desire to journey on, Though halt and weary of the path they tread. The paralytic, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... by Tolman's account of a case of alternating personality which he had studied with so much care. The fact that the secondary self appeared when the subject's life seemed at a lower ebb, and when the cerebral centres were sparsely supplied with the life-current, and the further fact that the use of a certain substance which stimulated (without poisoning) the higher brain-centres, was able to bring ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... Shoal, because it does not break, unless probably it may appear in foul Weather. It lies about two mile to the Westward, without the small Batt Island. Here we found the Tide of Flood setting to the Southward, and the Ebb to the Northward. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... peninsula. Owing to the fact that no ruler emerged capable of keeping the distracted country in order, there was a regular chasse-croise of rival princelets, an unceasing tale of political marriages and murders, conspiracies and revolts of feudal nobles all over the country, and perpetual ebb and flow of the boundaries of the warring principalities which tore the fabric of Bulgaria to pieces amongst them. From the point of view of foreign politics this period is characterized generally by the virtual disappearance ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... for the duty he has to pay on them is exceedingly high, therefore making it impossible for him to compete with his Christian neighbour. These disadvantages have reduced the commerce of the Israelites to a deplorably low ebb, and are banishing prosperity from amongst them. And it is a fact that in one of the principal cities where formerly there were thirty Hebrew Moscow merchants, there are at present only two, and these can only preserve their commercial standing ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... interest in the saloon cabins at that moment. My task accomplished, I returned to the music-room, in which the wounded men still slept restlessly. I occupied my time in preparing a meal, and I took a strong glass of whisky and water, for my strength was beginning to ebb. I had endured much and fought hard, and had slept but little. As I stood looking down on my companions, I was aware of a grey shadow that the slender sunlight cast as a ghost upon the wall. I turned and saw ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... lockers below. If the wind is fair you won't have much of our company, because we shall hold on till we moor alongside the wharves of London; but if it's foul, or there is not enough of it to take us against tide, we have to anchor on the ebb, and then of course ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... of man's desire, That waileth upward in hoarse discontent, And here to list but to that liquid voice That riseth in the spirit, and whose flow Is like a rivulet from Paradise— To hear the wanderings of divine thought Within the soul, like the low ebb and flow Of waters in the blue-deep ocean caves, Forming itself a speech and melody Sweeter than words unto the aching sense— To stand alone with Nature where man's step Hath never bowed a grass-blade 'neath its weight, Nor hath the sound of his rude utterance Broken the pauses of the wild-bird's ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... the ship. 'Twas scarce to be hoped, in spite of our muffled oars, that our approach should be wholly unheard; and we were no more than ten fathoms distant when the alarm was given. There was not sufficient way on the boat, the tide being between flood and ebb, to bring us quite to the vessel, but after a few more strokes I ordered the men to ship oars and seize their arms, and we came under the brig's counter just in time to escape a volley from ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... Russia was just at the lowest ebb in her fortunes, did the western Allies try again. Then, starting on September 25, 1915, they launched terrific drives in Champagne and Artois, came within an ace of piercing the German lines, captured some 30,000 prisoners and many guns, but in the end failed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... suzerain, the King of France, a weak man of vicious habits, who lay for many years of his life under sentence of excommunication for an adulterous marriage with Bertrade de Montfort, Countess of Anjou. The power of the king and of the law was probably at the very lowest ebb during the time of Philip I., though minds and manners were less debased than ...
— History of France • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and not of constitutional principle. Of all men, Peel is the last to favour any attempt to question the virtual supremacy of the House of Commons, and if he becomes Minister, and has a majority (as of course he must, to stay in), the high tide of the Lords will begin to ebb, and everything will be seen to settle down into the usual practice. If a victory is achieved, it will not be that of the Lords over the Commons, but of the Conservatives over the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... told you my own romance? Women are poets, if you so take them, One third poet,—the rest what chance Of man and marriage may choose to make them. Give me ten minutes before you go,— Here at the window we'll sit together, Watching the currents that ebb and flow; Watching the world as it drifts below Up the hot Avenue's dusty glow: Isn't it ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... hardly say that both literature and education are at a very low ebb in Mexico. Referring to Tejada again, I find that he reckons that in the capital, out of a population of 185,000, there are 12,000 scholars at primary schools; but of course, as in other countries, a large proportion of these children attend so irregularly that they can hardly learn anything. ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... to wash it out of existence. But sand-banks grow when the conditions favor; and weak as reason is, it has this unique advantage over its antagonists that its activity never lets up and that it presses always in one direction, while men's prejudices vary, their passions ebb and flow, and their excitements are intermittent. Our sand-bank, I absolutely believe, is bound to grow. Bit by bit it will get dyked and breakwatered. But sitting as we do in this warm room, with music and lights and smiling faces, it is easy to ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... from the Indies, rose on the ruins of a house of Our Lady in that beautiful valley through which the Thames, not yet defiled by the precincts of a great capital, nor rising and falling with the flow and ebb of the sea, rolls under woods of beech round the gentle hills of Berkshire. Beneath the stately saloon, adorned by Italian pencils, was a subterraneous vault, in which the bones of ancient monks had sometimes ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the ebb of blood to his cowardly heart, Roarin' Russell opened his fingers wide, judging implicit obedience his greatest safety. Sandy did not move position, he hardly seemed to move wrist or finger as his guns spat fire, left and right, eight shots blending, eight bullets smashing their way through ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... himself to the upright. That act, and his tears for his beloved, were almost his last acts of perfect reason: for next day came the delusions and the dreams that succeed when hunger ceases to torture, and the vital powers begin to ebb. He lay and saw pleasant meadows with meandering streams, and clusters of rich fruit that courted the hand and ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... replied magnanimously that he had only done his duty and wanted no reward. All he asked was that his tutor might be brought up and his head cut off. Then the scene changed to other situations, each very different, florid with details, but motivated by ending in the discomfiture of the tutor. In the ebb or ambivalent reaction of this passion he and the tutor ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... far more strictly than before, for an officer and two men remained always in his cell, and two sentinels were stationed outside. The reason of these precautions, of course, was to prevent his gaining over his guards singly, either by pity or bribery. His courage sank to its lowest ebb, as he was told on all sides that his imprisonment was for life, whereas long after he discovered the real truth, that the king's intention had been to keep him under arrest for a year only, and if he had had a little more patience, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... The ebb of the company's prosperity dated from Kate's marriage. Somehow things did not seem to go well after. In the first place the production of Olivette was not a success. Mortimer was drunk, did not know his words, and went 'fluffing all over the shop.' Kate, excited with ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... Eating. We should not eat for at least two or three hours before going to bed. When we are asleep, the vital forces are at a low ebb, the process of digestion is for the time nearly suspended, and the retention of incompletely digested food in the stomach may cause bad dreams and troubled sleep. But in many cases of sleeplessness, a trifle of some ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... village within three or four miles of the metropolis, may be remarked a tide of young men wending diurnal way to and from their respective desks and counters in the city, preceded by a ripple of errand-boys, and light porters, and followed by an ebb of plethoric elderly gentlemen in drab gaiters. Now these individuals compose—for the most part—that particular, yet indefinite class of people, who call themselves "gentlemen," and are called by everybody else "persons." They are a body—the advanced guard—of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... our boat was left by the ebb at a great distance from the water, but no sooner did we wish it afloat, than the islanders gathered round it, and, by the union of many hands, pushed it down the beach; every man who could contribute his help seemed to think himself happy in the opportunity of being, for ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... swift Rivers, which ebb and flow; and are there plentifully to be found: As likewise Rocky and Weedy Rivers. But in the latter end of the Year he is to be found high up in the Country, in swift and violent ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... from the riotous and insolent behaviour of the boat's crew, and the other men brought down by the sergeant of marines. One of them fell back into a basket of eggs, and smashed them all to atoms; still the marine officer did not come down, and it was getting late. The tide being now at the ebb, running out against the wind, there was a heavy sea, and I had to go off to the ship with a boat deeply laden, and most of the people in her in a state of intoxication. The coxswain, who was the only one who was sober, recommended our shoving off, ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... colour ebb from her face as she echoed him. This was already late afternoon; perhaps her thoughts raced ahead to to-morrow afternoon at this time when they two would be leaning on the rail of the little steamer, gazing out over the smooth, ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... her hold. Right ahead were the foothills of the Cordilleras, and the gorge where the Jiron came down, and where the mule path came down beside the river. The big wave went up to the foot of the hills, and now it came back peaceful. Then it was quiet everywhere, except for the sobbing of the ebb among the tree trunks, and afterward lower down in the bed of the river. The ground rose to the foothills there, and the channel of the river lay deep below, with a sandy bank maybe twenty feet high on either side, and on the bank above the river lay the Helen Mar, ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... of the moment and reveal the greater drama that is without end. They arouse those deep and lasting emotions which grow out of the recognition of elemental and universal tragedy. His aim is not merely to tell a tale; his aim is to show the vast ebb and flow of forces which sway and condition human destiny. One cannot imagine him consenting to Conan Doyle's statement of the purpose of fiction, quoted with characteristic approval by the New York Times: "to amuse mankind, to help ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken |
