"Precipice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... up the rocks, The wombats hiding in their caves dug deeper underground, As Mulga Bill, as white as chalk, sat tight to every bound. It struck a stone and gave a spring that cleared a fallen tree, It raced beside a precipice as close as close could be; And then as Mulga Bill let out one last despairing shriek It made a leap of twenty feet ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... treated you! But it's your fault. Whatever I did, I should know that I could always trust you and that in time you'd understand!" A single sob escaped her, and she steadied herself like a man stopping short at the edge of a precipice. "You've quite made up your mind? . . . I must go now. Will you do something ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... Mediterranean, and they eventually found their way into the Black Sea. Stress of weather compelled them to put into the little port of Yalta, on the north coast, where they went on shore. The Colonel, on the Lucretian principle of "Suave mari magno," &c., proceeded the next morning to the verge of the precipice to observe the magnificent prospect of a sea running mountains high. As it was raining at the time, he put up a huge gingham Umbrella he happened to find in the hotel. Suddenly, however, a furious blast of wind drove across the cliff, and ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... joy I discover, my dearest son," replied the Abbot, "that I have arrived in time to arrest thee on the verge of the precipice to which thou wert approaching. These doubts of which you complain, are the weeds which naturally grow up in a strong soil, and require the careful hand of the husbandman to eradicate them. Thou must study a little ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... dragged as it were by irresistible force to the verge of a precipice which she saw but could not avoid, permitted not a moment's respite by the eager words and menacing gestures of the offended Queen,—Amy at length uttered in despair, "The Earl of Leicester ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... thousand acres there is a small piece of upland, separated from the main only by a brook, which in some seasons is dry. This island, as we may call it, is nearly covered with an enormous rock, which to this day is called Annawan's Rock. Its southeast side presents an almost perpendicular precipice, and rises to the height of twenty-five or thirty feet. The northwest side is very sloping and easy of ascent, being at an angle of not more than thirty-five or forty degrees. A more gloomy and hidden recess, even now, although ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... carriages are dragged up the former, and let slowly down the latter, by means of stationary engines; the comparatively level spaces between being traversed, sometimes by horse, and sometimes by engine power, as the case demands. Occasionally the rails are laid upon the extreme verge of a giddy precipice; and looking from the carriage window, the traveler gazes sheer down, without a stone or scrap of fence between, into the mountain depths below. The journey is very carefully made, however; only two carriages traveling ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... about 4,000 feet, are wall-like ridges of grey or coloured rock, rising precipitously out of the trees and grass, and that these walls are broken up into pinnacles and needles. At the Pali (wall-like precipice), the summit of the ascent of 1,000 feet, we left our buggy, and passing through a gash in the rock the celebrated view burst on us with overwhelming effect. Immense masses of black and ferruginous volcanic rock, hundreds of feet in nearly ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the rocks and trees to the right, and shortly afterwards I found myself going down the somewhat steep side of a hill, with a number of springboks directly ahead of me. I again fired, but missed, when I stopped to reload; and just then looking up, I saw a high precipice, towards which several of the springboks were making. Rushing on, regardless of the height of the cliff, they leaped over it. I thought they must have broken their legs; but they alighted unhurt. Just then I saw Donald coming on at full speed, directly after another herd. They, ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... heart the most, suddenly he subsides into such pathetic gentleness, such tearful remorse, that I feel as if resentment to one so helpless, desertion of one who must fall without the support of a friendly hand, were a selfish cruelty. It seems to me as if I were dragged towards a precipice by a sickly child ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rocks, but, borne irresistibly along in the strong current of a mighty, still emotion, pressed on with a certainty that left no room for excitement, because none for doubt. And so I came upon it. Swinging round one more rock, hanging over a breathless precipice, and landing upon the summit of the mountain, I beheld it stretched at my feet: a lake about five miles in circumference, bedded like an eye in the naked, bony rock surrounding it, with quiet rippling waters placidly smiling in the level rays of the afternoon sun,—the Unfathomable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... that sinks behind the hill at the first turn and reminds me no longer by sight or sound that life is fretting its channels there and everywhere with its world-old pathos and onward movement, caught on the sudden by unseen currents and swept into wild eddies, or flung over a precipice in a mist of tears. As I go on I feel a return of emotions which I am sure have their root in my earliest ancestry, a freshening of sense which tells me that I am nearing again those scenes which the unworn perceptions of primitive men first fronted. ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... became terrific, and as they hurtled along the face of the cliff with the precipice below, Wilbur noted to his horror that he was gradually being forced to the outer edge. Being lighter than the steers, the heavier animals were surging ahead alongside the cliff wall, and the little pony with the boy on his back was inch by inch ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... Distilleries and Breweries. "Well, Christopher," he would say (having grovelled his lowest on the earth, half a moment before), "looking out for a House to open, eh? Can't find a business to be disposed of on a scale as is up to your resources, humph?" To such a dizzy precipice of falsehood has this misrepresentation taken wing, that the well-known and highly-respected OLD CHARLES, long eminent at the West Country Hotel, and by some considered the Father of the Waitering, found himself under ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... daze, but a great sense of security was over her. She had not the slightest doubt of this strange little creature who was befriending her. She felt like one who finds a ledge of safety on a precipice where he had feared a sheer descent. She was content to rest awhile on the safe footing, even if it were ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... frequented by every fowl whom nature has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake discharged its superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and fell with dreadful noise from precipice to precipice till ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson
... to others. They modestly asked if they might have the books for a while; and when we said they were given to them, there was a little jealousy who should have them; this we removed by saying that more should be sent. Many of the kind-hearted people accompanied us to the precipice, and ran before to clear the way; and, through divine mercy, we reached the dwelling of our kind host in safety; not without ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley
... those of Europe. Proceeding two hours 76 further, we came to a narrow pass, on the east side of which was an inaccessible mountain, almost perpendicular, and entirely covered with snow; and on the west, a tremendous precipice, of several thousand feet in depth, as if the mountain had been split in two, or rent asunder by an earthquake: the path is not more than a foot wide, over a solid rock of granite. Here the whole army dismounted, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... without injury. This feat had led the grandmother of one of the boys to declare that the squirrel was bewitched, and the boys proposed to put the matter to further test by throwing the squirrel down a precipice six hundred feet high. Our traveler interfered, to see that the squirrel had fair play. The prisoner was conveyed in a pillow-slip to the edge of the cliff, and the slip opened, so that he might have ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... escapade was scarcely startling in his social world, but it had clung to men's minds because of an additional tragedy: the alleged suicide of the insulted husband, who appeared to have flung himself over a precipice in Sicily. The prince then lived in Vienna for a time, but his more recent years seemed to have been passed in perpetual and restless travel. But when Flambeau, like the prince himself, had left ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... flavored with delicate woodland odors. On the other side, under the monastery, was an orchard of large apple-trees in full bloom, on a shelf near the water; above them grew huge oaks and maples, heavy with their wealth of foliage; and over the tops of these the level coping of the precipice, with a balustrade, upon which hundreds of pilgrims, who had arrived before us, were leaning and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... in a panic and precipitate flight. Hemmed in on all sides, amidst a shower of lances and stones thrown from the mountain above, the Turks fled pele-mele down the rocky and precipitous ravines. Mistaking their route, they came to a precipice from which there was no retreat. The screaming and yelling savages closed round them. Fighting was useless; the natives, under cover of the numerous detached rocks, offered no mark for an aim; while the crowd of armed savages thrust them ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... of the evil one; so go away and leave me." And if he persisted in remaining near me, I should have set off and run from him as hard as I could go. This is the only way to treat temptation in whatever form it appears. Fly from it as you would from the slippery edge of a precipice. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... talking love to one another high up on some rocks above a steep bank of snow that overhung a precipice on the eastern side of the Fee glacier. By this time Capes' hair had bleached nearly white, and his skin had become a skin of red copper shot with gold. They were now both in a state of unprecedented physical fitness. And such skirts as Ann Veronica had had when she entered the valley ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... eagle trying the same tactics upon a herd of elk that contained one yearling. The eagle doubtless had his eye upon the yearling, though he would probably have been quite satisfied to have driven one of the older ones down a precipice. His chances of a dinner would have been ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... V THE PRECIPICE: A Novel from the Russian of Ivan Goncharov. A picture of country life in the old leisurely Russia of the first half of the nineteenth ...
— The Shield • Various
... might feel that a precipice was opening at my feet. There was something in the plan so devilish, yet so accordant with those stories I had heard of the Wolf, that I felt no doubt of my insight. I read his evil mind, and saw in a moment why he had troubled himself with us. He hoped to draw Mademoiselle ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... might perhaps take his glass of beer, or even something worse, with relative safety. But, as stupidly as stampeded animals pushing each other over a precipice, each insists on buying poison in his turn. And every one spends his money to make every other one, if possible, a hard-drinking and ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... is not yet out—the devil thou servest Has not as yet deserted thee. He aids The friends who drudge for him, as the blind man Was aided by the guide, who lent his shoulder O'er rough and smooth, until he reached the brink Of the fell precipice—then hurl'd ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Joining the Indian canoes, he slipped past the hilly shores of the St. Lawrence and in five days was between the main bank on the north side and the muddy shallows of the Isle of Orleans. Sheering out where the Montmorency roars over a precipice in a shining cataract, the canoes glided across St. Charles River among the forests of masts heaving to the tide below the beetling ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... on the verge of the crater, at the very summit of the mountain, commanded a view of all the surrounding country. The rock upon which it was built projected over a precipice, whose abysses were concealed by creeping plants, cactus, and bamboos. The species of table-rock thus formed had been encircled with a railing and transformed into a terrace, on a level with the sleeping-room, by my predecessor in this hermitage. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... was part of the bluff that hemmed in the valley. It was a sort of promontory, however, that jutted out from the general line, so as to be a conspicuous object from the plain below. Its brow was of equal height with the rest of the precipice, of which it was a part—a sort of buttress—and the grassy turf that appeared along its edge was but the continuation of the upper plateau. Its front to the valley was vertical, without terrace or ledge, although horizontal seams traversing its face showed a stratification of lime and sandstone ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... declaration of love. The hurdy-gurdy tune and the unsung words had acted like a spell. For a space of seconds she gazed with a fixed look at Jonah, waiting for him to move or speak. She seemed to be slipping down a precipice without the power or desire to resist. Then, like a fit of giddiness, the sensation passed. She stumbled to her feet and ran wildly down the rocky path to the wharf where the ferry-boat, glittering with electric lights, like a gigantic firefly, ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... but—suppose, in fact, he had to judge the conduct of another man thus placed? Upon the heated pulsing of his blood succeeded a coolness, almost a chill; he felt as though he had been on the verge of a precipice, and had been warned to draw back only just in time. Every second showed him more distinctly what his duty was. He experienced a sensation of thankfulness that he had not spoken definitely on Saturday evening. His instinct had ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... had to bite to get at the dainties of the booty. It cannot be denied that victory and booty, in our impoverished circumstances, were very close together in our thoughts. The enemy's camp lay at the foot of the long, high cliff that forms a precipice on that side of the mountain, while the slope of the mountain on our side was not steep, and there were a great many footholds and boulders. The artillery had been left in the neck of the pass to protect the lagers. Beyers, with some Zoutpansbergers, turned away from us to the ...
— On Commando • Dietlof Van Warmelo
... they arrived at the foot of the last precipice. Before scaling it they paused to rest a little under a great oak, and immediately flocks of birds gathered around them, testifying their joy by songs and flutterings of their wings. Hovering around Francis, they alighted on his head, his shoulders, or his arms. "I see," he said ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... melancholy situation to which we have been brought by those very maxims and counsels which would now deter us from adopting the proposed constitution; and which, not content with having conducted us to the brink of a precipice, seem resolved to plunge us into the abyss that awaits us below. Here, my countrymen, impelled by every motive that ought to influence an enlightened people, let us make a firm stand for our safety, our tranquillity, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... feeling in my mind that I had reached any considerable height. And I had come up that one beautiful staircase; no more; and yet now, when I looked from this window, I found myself on the edge of a precipice—not a very deep one, certainly, yet with all the effect of many a deeper. For below the house on this side lay a great hollow, with steep sides, up which, as far as they could reach, the trees were climbing. The sides were not all so steep as ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... of Harrisburg the Brant House or Hotel, or whatever it is called, seems most worth notice. Its facade is imposing, with a row of stately columns, high above which a broad sign impends, like a crag over the brow of a lofty precipice. The lower floor only appeared to be open to the public. Its tessellated pavement and ample courts suggested the idea of a temple where great multitudes might kneel uncrowded at their devotions; but from appearances about the place where the altar should be, I judged, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... however brave in the field, was one of those whom a great height strikes with giddiness and sickness. He shrunk back from the view of the precipice, on the verge of which Cromwell was standing with complete indifference, till the General, catching the hand of his follower, pulled him forward as far as he would advance. "I think," said the General, "I have found the clew, but by this light it is no easy one! See you, we stand in the portal ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... very agreeable appearance. The author of the Grand Tour says, that from Antibes to Nice the roads are very bad, through rugged mountains bordered with precipices On the left, and by the sea to the right; whereas, in fact, there is neither precipice nor mountain ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... even thus early, I had some notion of the bo'sun's design; for I went to the edge that overlooked the valley, and peered down, and, finding it nigh a sheer precipice, found myself nodding my head, as though it were in accordance with some part formed wish. Presently, looking about me, I discovered the bo'sun to be surveying that part which looked over towards the weed, and I made across ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... her brow, and she did not avoid my lips. I kissed her sacredly, without unworthy passion, without one impure impulse, but solemnly, with tenderness. Was she willing to make the sacrifice; or did she merely come, as I did once, to the verge of the precipice? If love were leading her to give herself could she have worn that calm, that holy look; would she have asked, in that pure voice of hers, "You are not angry with ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... valley below them. Arthur knelt down and bent over the sheer edge of the precipice. The great pine trees, dusky in the gathering shades of evening, stood like sentinels along the narrow banks confining the river. Presently the sun, red as a glowing coal, dipped behind a jagged mountain peak, and all the life and light deserted the face of nature. Straightway there came ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... asleep to the danger that's hanging over them while they are in the current. And I say, drinking young man, don't you think you are standing still. You are in the current, and if you don't pull for a rock of safety you will go over the precipice. On he goes. I can see him in the boat laughing at the danger. A man on the bank is looking at him, and he lifts up his voice and cries, "Stranger, stranger, pull for the shore; if you don't you'll lose your life;" and ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... strong gust for a moment Dispersed the thick cloud from our sight, And revealed an astonishing prospect, Which filled not our hearts with delight: On our right was a precipice awful; On the left chasms yawning and deep; Glazed rocks and snow-slopes were before us, At ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... of its immediate environs. By a serpentine road cut through the rock, we climbed an ascent, by nature inaccessible; this path, in some parts not three fathoms in breadth, is bounded on one side by the perpendicular rock, and on the other overlooks an abrupt precipice, from which however it is defended by a strong stone balustrade, so that however fearful in appearance, its only real danger lies in an accident which sometimes happens, that large fragments detach themselves from the ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... fearfully grand. In one part was a powerful steam-engine, which had to be lowered almost 200 feet down the cliffs. Here tall chimneys, pouring out dense volumes of smoke, were seen perched on the ledges of a tremendous precipice. Here and there also were the huts of the miners, disputing the ground with the wild sea-birds, while ladders of great length scaled the rocks in all directions, enabling them to ascend and descend to their work. In some parts were paths up which ...
— The Mines and its Wonders • W.H.G. Kingston
... before the battle of Agincourt[260]; but it was observed, it had men in it. Mr. Davies suggested the speech of Juliet, in which she figures herself awaking in the tomb of her ancestors[261]. Some one mentioned the description of Dover Cliff[262]. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir; it should be all precipice,—all vacuum. The crows impede your fall. The diminished appearance of the boats, and other circumstances, are all very good description; but do not impress the mind at once with the horrible idea of immense height. The impression is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... over Telegraph Hill, had built as they listed and with little regard for streets, and their houses hung crazily on a side hill which was little less than a precipice. The Chinese, although they occupied an abandoned business district, had remade their dwellings Chinese fashion, and the Mexicans and Spaniards had added to their houses those little balconies without which life is ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin
... never been. From the charmed ring beneath the beech-tree she took possession of her world; for her the wind murmured, the birds sang, insects hummed or shrilled, the green saplings nodded their heads. Flowers, and the bedded moss, and the little stream that leaped from a precipice of three feet into the calm of a hand-deep pool spoke to her. She was happy. Gone was the house and its inmates; gone Paris the schoolmaster, who had taught her to write, and whose hand touching hers in guidance made her sick and cold; gone Hugon the trader, whom she feared and hated. ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... some lower down in the trunk—some large and others small—but still to be found on every tree. I was almost in despair when we came to a part of the wood where we found one of these trees down in a hollow, under the road, and another upon the precipice above. I was ready to stake my credit upon the probability that no traveller would take the trouble to go up to the tree above, or down to the tree below, merely to write the name of the god upon them; and at once pledged myself to Nathu ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... warning me of a dangerous place. Then I came to a sharp-cut fissure which lay across my path—a gash in the rock, as if one of the Cyclops had struck it with his axe. It sloped very steeply for some twelve feet below, opening on the face of the precipice above the glacier, and was filled to within about four feet of the surface with flat, slaty gravel. It was only four or five feet across, and I could easily have leaped it had I not been so tired. But ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... cold philosophy the heart disdains, And friendship shudders at the moral tale. My friend, the fearful precipice is past, And danger dare not meet us more. Fly swift, Ye better angels, waft the welcome tidings Of pardon to my friend—of ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... author follows in springless wagon. Beautiful scenery. Marysville Buttes. Sierra Nevada. Indian women, their near-nudity, beautiful limbs and lithe forms, picturesqueness. Flower-seed gathering. Indian bread. Marvelous handiwork of basketry. A dangerous precipice. A disclaimer of bravery. Table Mountain. Arrival at Bidwell's Bar. Rejoins husband. Uninviting quarters. Proceed to ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... This wadi, it will be remembered, was to us terra incognita. The first thing to be done therefore was to make a hurried reconnaissance, and decide on the best method of getting down and across. It was found that the descent was almost a sheer precipice, and that we had not one but two wadis to cross; a smaller tributary wadi, scarcely marked on the map, forming, in fact, a rather serious obstacle. Carrying out such a reconnaissance, upon a forward slope, under machine gun fire from across ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... to prejudice' they are. 'Puritanism,' not only in theology, but in life and conduct, has come to be at a discount in these days. And it seems to be by a great many professing Christians thought to be a great feat to walk as the mules on the Alps do, with one foot over the path and the precipice down below. Keep away from the edge. You are safer so. Although, of course, I am not talking about mere conventional dissimilarities; and though I know and believe and feel all that can be said about the insufficiency, and even insincerity, of such, yet ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... the guide, pointing over the pine-wood toward the top of the wall of rock, a perpendicular precipice fully three thousand feet in height. "The rock split off up the mountain somewhere, ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... then said, "Shall we come down now? Is your dance quite finished, Tony? Are you content, Marko? All right. We'll descend. This is us descending. Lady Tybar, who is a superb horsewoman, descending a precipice on her beautiful half-bred Derry and Toms, a winner ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... (Tyranny repulsed by virtue.) A unicorn (Great Britain), royally gorged, lies extended at the foot of a precipice, against which it has broken its horn; in the background a vast country (America), diversified by plains, rivers and mountains. Exergue: SUB GALLIAE AUSPICIIS (Under the auspices of France). On the platform: I. G. HOLTZHEY ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... theology, nor political and social strata, was there any belief in the necessity of radical changes, or prescience of a coming alteration of the intellectual atmosphere. Speculation, like politics, could advance quietly along the old paths without fearing that they might lead to a precipice; and society, in spite of very vigorous and active controversy upon the questions which decided it was in the main self-satisfied, complacent, and comfortable. Adherence to the old system is after all the general rule, and it is of the change ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... start, which discomposes 5 The drowsy waters lingering in your eye? And are you really able to descry That precipice ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... time at the fountain, taken a drawing, and made the necessary observations on the situation of the place, we proceeded to an examination of the precipice, climbing over the terraces above the source among shady fig-trees, which, however, did not prevent us from feeling the powerful effects of the mid-day sun. After a short but fatiguing ascent, we arrived at the rock, which extends in a vast perpendicular semicircle, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... and after struggling along some distance they came out suddenly on a portion of the mountain side, where to continue their course meant that they must clamber up, descend a sheer precipice of at least a hundred feet by hanging on to the vine-like ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... upon by some of the crowd of peasants who surrounded us, and who at once proceeded to push and pull us up a steep slippery grass slope, interspersed with large boulders. The view from the top, looking down a sheer precipice of some 1,500 feet in depth into the valley below, was lovely. Quite at the bottom, amid the numerous ravines and small spurs of rocks by which the valley is intersected, we could distinguish some small patches ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... toward which she pointed, and grew faint and sick as he saw that they had been standing on the very verge of a precipice. A stone, dislodged by Blanche's hasty movement had rolled over the edge, and they now heard it bounding with a loud echoing clang down the face of the rock, down, down, down, the sound, loud at first, growing fainter and ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... Pfeiffer, "to descend its steep and dangerous sides by a narrow path leading over fragments of lava. My uneasiness increased as we went down, and could see the colossal masses, in the shape of pillars or columns tottering loosely on the brink of the precipice above our heads, threatening death and desolation at any moment. Mute and anxious, we crept along in breathless haste, scarcely venturing to raise our eyes, much less to give vent to the least expression of alarm, for fear of starting the avalanche ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... with the day; and the rising sun found him already standing on the rusticbridge, which hangs over the verge of the Falls of the Aar at Handeck, where the river pitches down a precipice into a narrow and fearful abyss, shut in by perpendicular cliffs. At right angles with it comes the beautiful Aerlenbach; and halfway down the double cascade mingles into one. Thus he pursued his way down the Hasli Thal into the Bernese Oberland, restless, impatient, he knew not why, stopping ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sides with trees and diverse kinds of luminous medicinal herbs, it was inhabited by Siddhas and Gandharvas. And there we all saw a quantity of honey, of a bright yellow colour and of the measure of a jar, placed on an inaccessible precipice of the mountain. That honey, which was Kuvera's favourite drink, was guarded by snakes of virulent poison. And it was such that a mortal, drinking of it would win immortality, a sightless man obtain ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... last to the foot of an exceeding steep wood, which scrambled up a craggy hillside, and was crowned by a naked precipice. ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... me—it was a good thing that I was a girl—rash, never counting the cost, without caution, it is well that I have to tread the quiet paths of domestic life. Had I been a boy, thrown out into the rough, dangerous world, I'd have rushed over the first precipice, breaking my moral, or physical neck, or both. As it is, had I been like Miss Nancy, I would have been spared many an ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... alone would be to blame? Stumbling over roots, dodging trees and rocks, they plunged wildly along until finally they saw a light spot ahead and a moment later came out suddenly upon the edge of a precipice, from which they could look straight down into a deep valley below. The goats were there before them huddled together an the brow of the cliff, bleating piteously. Bello sat on his haunches with his tongue hanging out and looked at the scenery! Seppi ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... had broken up their hearth and scattered them on the world, filled his heart with a deep and deadly animosity that occasioned him to pause as a person would do who finds himself unexpectedly upon the brink of a precipice. ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... what information they could get on their situation; and their first step was to venture as close as possible to the queer little horizon which lay almost at their very feet. It gave them a frightened feeling, as though they were standing high up on a precipice ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... it the ordeal was over and her horse was following its leader through a sparse grove of bull pine. The ascent was still rather sharp, and the way strewn with boulders, and fallen trees, but the awful precipice, with its sheer drop of many hundreds of feet to the black rocks below, no longer yawned at her stirrup's edge, and it was with a deep-drawn breath of relief that she allowed her eyes once again to ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... far. More than that he could not honestly add. Beyond this awful hour he could not look. It was as if one stood on the edge of a precipice, and the next step would be ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... east, and had lost his way. Then some of the party recollected having seen him going towards the edge of the cliff. He was a stranger, and was not aware how abruptly the downs terminated in a fearful precipice. It was too late to send back that night. They still hoped that he might have slipped down, and have lodged on some ledge. At daybreak boats were despatched to the island. At length his mangled remains were found at the foot of the highest ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... to cross the river at the point of junction with the Salaam, I continued along the margin of the precipice that overhangs the latter river, until I should find a place by which we could descend with the camel, as this animal had made a great circuit to avoid the difficulties of the Angrab. We were at length united, and were continuing our route parallel with the river, over undulations ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... mountains. He was after his favorite sport of squirrel-shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and re-echoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees, he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or the sail of a lagging bark, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... and replied, "What fame!" After he went away, I read "Bettina von Arnim." She is not to be judged; she is to be received and believed. She is genius, life, love, inspiration. If anybody undertakes to criticise her before me, I intend to vanish, if it is from a precipice into the sea. Tuesday, my Demon called upon me to draw some of the Auxiliary ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... town has backslided.... The great road keeping to the bluff, runs on, turning first south, and then a trifle to the east of south, until the road, the bluff, and Shan-si, all end together, making a sudden plunge down a precipice and being lost in the dirty ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... curled sharply round the rock precipice, and plunged into a thick forest. A guide had met them, and absolute silence was ordered. They had breasted the rise, and were nearing the trenches. The road had ceased abruptly, and the paths that they had laboured along were nothing but narrow canals ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... through the abysses Love moves on. Florestan ceased, and there was a long silence; and then he told the unspeakable portion of his story by performing these two: "Sternenkranz," "Warum." Who has ever scaled the rapture of the former, or fathomed the pathos of the latter? Every summit implies its precipice; and the star-wreath that crowned Love was snatched at by the Fate which soon burdened two hearts with the terrible ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... on the precipice during the dinner hour, Breitmann doubtless would never be told. A woman scorned is an old story; still, the story goes on, retold each day. Education may smooth the externals, but underneath the fire burns just as furiously as of old. To this affront ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... Antony and la Tour de Nesle. Scribe invents and eludes where Dumas invents and dares. The theory of Scribe is one of mere dexterity: his drama is a perpetual chasse-croise at the edge of a precipice, a dance of puppets among swords that might but will not cut and eggs that might but will not break; to him a situation is a kind of tight-rope to be crossed with ever so much agility and an endless affectation of peril by all his characters in turn: in fact, as M. ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... next, what will happen to me or to her, I cannot say. My life might have run on quietly towards that ocean where all life is absorbed,—now it may run like a cataract down to a precipice. Let it be so. At the worst I can only be a little more unhappy, that is all. Until now I have not been lying on a bed of roses, with that consciousness of my useless life continually ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... drawback to that plan is this: the road lies along the edge of a precipice, straight down a thousand feet into the river. Ef these devils get a shot into any one o' the six and it DROPS, the coach turns sharp off, and down we go, the whole kerboodle of ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... neither 'monsieur,' nor 'my friend,' nor 'dear count,' nothing at all. She begins abruptly: 'Once before, many years ago, I came to you as a suppliant. You were pitiless, and did not even deign to answer me. And yet, as I told you, I was on the verge of a terrible precipice; my brain was reeling, vertigo had seized hold of me. Deserted, I was wandering about Paris, homeless and penniless, and ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... ingenuity shown in making use of the water supply is nothing short of marvellous. At one point we ascended a long, wide, gentle slope all laid out in tiny fields, and well watered from two large, fast-flowing streams. But where did they come from, for the slope ended abruptly in a sharp, high precipice overlooking a gorge through which flowed the Chin Ch'uan, a tributary of the Anning. But on turning a corner at the head of the slope we saw that from high up on the mountain-side an artificial channel had been constructed with infinite labour, bringing water from the upper course ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... cliffs which Montcalm had declared a hundred men could hold against the whole British army. It was defended here and there by small posts. Below one of these, a mile and a half above the city, the traces of a zigzag path up the bush-covered precipice could be made out, though Wolfe could not see that even this was barricaded. Here, at the now famous Anse du Foulon, he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the climbing of a precipice, upheld above infinity by one slender sustaining rope. Call it what we like—will, faith, ambition, the wish to live—in the end it fails us all. And in that moment, when we begin to imagine how and when it may fail us, we hear, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... us, until a rocky peninsula running right into the river, after we had clambered up its sides like squirrels, he led the way across its spiky surfaced summit, and soon we were leaning forward over our horses' necks in danger of taking somersaults into space, as we peered over the sides of a precipice at the river away down beneath us. "Nothing like variety," Dan chuckled; and a few minutes later again we were leaning well back in our saddles as the horses picked their way down the far side of the ridge, old Roper letting himself down in his most approved style; dropping ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... comes into its more proper line at a celebrated sea-marsh called Cameria,[524] concerning which the oracle said "Ne moveas Camarinam," and the transgression of which precept brought on a pestilence. The road here is a wild pass bounded by a rocky precipice; on one hand covered with wild shrubs, flowers, and plants, and on the other by the sea. After this we came to a military position, where Murat used to quarter a body of troops and cannonade the English gunboats, which were not slow in returning the compliment. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... found to be steeper, and more difficult than was expected. What from below seemed a gentle acclivity turns out to be almost a precipice—a very common illusion with those unaccustomed to mountain climbing. But they are not daunted—every one of the men has stood on the main truck of a tempest-tossed ship. What to this were even the ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... in the sixth century were about to end in a glissade. From Buda-Pest to Sligo, "late Gothic" stands for something as foul almost as "revival." Having come through the high passes, Europe, it seemed, was going to end her journey by plunging down a precipice. Perhaps it would have been as well; but it was not to be. The headlong rush was to be checked. The descent was to be eased by a strange detour, by a fantastic adventure, a revival that was no ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... remember, that your brother, in one of his letters, observed, that the common cock makes a very respectable figure, even in the grand Parisian assembly of all the stuffed birds and beasts in the universe. It is a glorious thing to have a friend who will jump into a river, or down a precipice, to save one's life: but as I do not intend to tumble down precipices, or to throw myself into the water above half a dozen times, I would rather have for my friends persons who would not reserve their kindness wholly for these grand occasions, but who ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... of Apostles and Evangelists. Meanwhile, I suspect that he is not by any means without a suspicion that he is on a platform beset with far greater dangers, himself. He has walked a little this way, and that way; and his "common sense" has shewn him that there is an ugly precipice on every side. Nay; he perceives that the ground trembles, and cracks, and shakes,—and even yawns beneath ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... great granite cliff that seemed such an unpromising retreat for pursers, then he stepped out of the motor, and made his way around the sharp angle of stone wall. As he did so, a gale struck him that sent his hat careening over the precipice. He gazed after it in chagrin. The fact that one of the great panoramic views of the world lay at his feet was quite obliterated by the unhappy knowledge that an English Bowler had landed in the fork of ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... leaped on exultantly. They leapt chasms like a waterfall taking a precipice. Now they are here, now there, always pressing on into the west and through to ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... secretary, Sir Thomas Smith, subsequently assured Walsingham. Elizabeth neither had done so, nor intended anything of the kind.[917] But it was wonderfully like the usual practice of Henry the Eighth's daughter, and Catharine believed it, and looked with horror at the precipice before which she stood. Deserted by her faithless ally, France was entering single-handed a contest of life or death with the world-empire of Spain. In fact, the English ambassador ascribed to the receipt of ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... extravagances of their day, he had stood by the side of law and government, though the popular cry was a frenzied one for "liberty." Moreover, he had held back his whole chafing and stamping tribe from a precipice of disaster, and had secured valuable recognition of their office-holding capacities from that really good governor and princely Irishman whose one act of summary vengeance upon a few insurgent office-coveters has branded him in history as Cruel O'Reilly. But the experience of those days turned ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... as the Oolitic Conglomerates abundantly testify, to denuding and disintegrating agencies,—a platform beaten by the surf where it descended to the sea level, and washed in the interior by rivers, with here a tall hill or abrupt precipice, and there a flat plain or sluggish morass,—there grew vast forests of cone-bearing trees, tangled thickets of gigantic equisetaceae, numerous forms of Cycas and Zamia, and wide-rolling seas of fern, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... is—a retrospect to the past, leading to a prognostication of the future? (The best of Prophets of the future is the Past.) Why is this? or these?—I know not, except that on a pinnacle we are most susceptible of giddiness, and that we never fear falling except from a precipice—the higher, the more awful, and the more sublime; and, therefore, I am not sure that Fear is not a pleasurable sensation; at least, Hope is; and what Hope is there without a deep leaven of Fear? and what sensation is so delightful as Hope? and, if it were not for Hope, where ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... Another steep precipice was to be climbed before they could reach the Valley of the Wahiria. This stretches from north to south, and forms an oval, in the centre of which lies the lake, according to barometrical measurement, one thousand ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... I had expected, the wild ruck came to a halt—those in the lead drawing up their horses, as suddenly as if they had arrived upon the edge of a precipice! They had come to a stand just in the nick of time. Had they advanced but five paces further, at least two of their number would have tumbled out of their saddles. Sure-shot and I had each selected our man, and agreed upon the signal ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... from the glen, No pathway meets the wanderer's ken, Unless he climb, with footing nice, A far projecting precipice. The broom's tough roots his ladder made, The hazel saplings lent their aid; And thus an airy point he won. Where, gleaming with the setting sun, One burnish'd sheet of living gold, Loch-Katrine lay beneath him rolled; In all her length far ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... species of American female flirts are amusingly and clearly sketched by a few light but powerful strokes, and this, together with the simple yet surprisingly successful methods employed to make the girls' acquaintance, to lead them gently on to the brink of the precipice, and then to drop them, instantaneously and utterly, makes the book a veritable 'flirt's vade ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... plunging with impetuous fury at my feet. It seemed as if it were some living thing rushing on to some terrible fate. I wish I could describe the cataract as it is, its beauty and awful grandeur, and the fearful and irresistible plunge of its waters over the brow of the precipice. One feels helpless and overwhelmed in the presence of such a vast force. I had the same feeling once before when I first stood by the great ocean and felt its waves beating against the shore. I suppose you feel so, too, when you gaze up to the ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... Archdeacon in the Anglican Church. Real charity urges us to set forth the truth in all its nakedness and beauty. This must be done, even though it may sometimes give pain and cause irritation. If a man be walking in a trance towards the crumbling edge of some ghastly precipice, who—let me ask—acts with the greater charity, he who is afraid to interfere, and will calmly allow the somnambulist to walk on, till he fall over into the abyss; or he who will shout, and, if need be, roughly shake him from his fatal ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... the Swedish war a troop of the enemy's cavalry compelled a peasant here to mount his horse and serve as a guide. Darkness came on; they found themselves already upon the high sand-banks. The peasant guided his horse toward a steep precipice; in a farm-house on the other side of the fjord they perceived a light. "That is Lemvig," said the peasant; "let us hasten!" He set spurs to his horse, the Swedes followed his example, and they were precipitated into the depth: the following morning their corpses ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... instant a fishing boat passed under sail near the mouth of the cove. I shouted with despair, but my voice was lost in the echo of the rocks; it passed fleeting by, and with it my last chance of life. The shout had aroused the strange singer; she arose, advanced to the very extremity of the precipice, where one quiver would have been certain death, and flinging her arms towards the ocean, called out as I imagined from her gestures, to some imagined form. What could this fair apparition mean? I distinctly saw her tall white ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... next decide what route will reach it, and will be short, safe, economical, and desirable; and the roads to the presumably ideal discipline are many and well-traveled. Some of them, it is true, lead you into a swamp, some to the edge of a precipice; some will hurl you down a mountain-side with terrific rapidity; others stop half-way, bringing you face to face with a blank wall; and others again will lose you entirely on a bleak and trackless plain. But no matter which route you select, you will have the wise company of a great many ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... fields, yellow and green, of the King of Koti. The purple-brown Himalayas shouldered the eye out to the horizon, and there the Snows lifted themselves, hardly more palpable than the drifted clouds, except for a gleam of ice in their whiteness. A low stone wall ran along the verge of the precipice, and, looking down, they saw tangled patches of the white wild rose of the Himalayas, waving and drooping over ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... the depths of me I had a feeling that I stood on the edge of a precipice. It was as though I were about to see a new and awful revelation of life. And not I alone. My whole world was turning over. There was my father. I could see the effect Ernest was beginning to have on him. ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... just behind. The crosses of the past week, of the day before, of two days before, extended in a line down the slope; they glided along, plunged suddenly downward, and seemed to be taking long strides as if they were in danger of being carried over a precipice. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... would result from one of the shoes being loose. A terror—strange even to my experience—seized me, and I hastened home. The sounds gradually died away as I descended the hill. Could they have been an echo from some precipice of the mountain? I knew of no road lying so that, if a horse were galloping upon it, the sounds would be reflected ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... straight down more than three thousand feet to the level floor of the Yosemite Valley. There below, more than half a mile below, she saw her neighbors' cottages; and the thought occurred to her, as she clung to Mat, that if she should fall over the precipice she might crash through the roof of one of these. She actually saw the good neighbor who was caring for her own child during his mother's absence. Before the day of aviators it seemed strange enough to look straight down from half a ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... at a point in the heart of one of the hills. This was singularly well adapted for defense The hill itself was extremely precipitous on all sides. On one side, it fell sheer down. A goat track ran along the face of this precipice, to a point where the hill fell back, forming a sort of semicircular arena on the very face of the precipice. This plateau was some two acres in extent. Here quantities of forage were heaped up in readiness, for the food of such animals as might be driven in there. ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... a melancholy reverie, when I thought that I perceived, as the clouds on the horizon occasionally opened, something that had the appearance of the summit of a precipice. They closed again; I watched them with anxiety until they gradually rolled away, and discovered a lofty island, covered with trees and verdure down to the water's edge. I shouted with delight, and pointed it out to Rosina, who answered my exultations with a faint smile. My blood curdled ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... as her governess left her, "I have forfeited both for ever! Yet let me reflect:—the irrevocable step is not yet taken: it is not too late to recede from the brink of a precipice, from which I can only behold the dark abyss of ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... dulcet sweetness of the farewell to his heart's adored, the mathematical exactitude of his position while embracing her, the cool deliberation which marked his exit—offered a picture of calm stoicism just on the point of tumbling over the precipice of destruction not to be equalled—not, at least, since those halcyon dramatic days when Osbaldiston leased Covent ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... valuable effects of Hanover had been removed. In this engagement, colonel Bredenbach attacked four brigades very strongly posted, with a battery of fourteen pieces of cannon, repulsed, and drove them down a precipice, and took all their artillery and ammunition; but preferring the care of his wounded to the glory of carrying away the cannon, he brought off only six, nailing up and destroying the rest. The loss of the allies ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... height of more than a thousand feet; sometimes perpendicularly, and at other times inclining inwards, so as to form gigantic arches. The path runs along the base of these mountains, washed by the foaming waves of the stream; or it winds up the side of the precipice, over huge fragments of rock, which, being loosened by the rain, afford no secure footing for the heavily laden mules. Frequently these loosened blocks give way, and roll down into the valley. The journey from Viso to San Mateo is associated in my mind with the recollection of a most mortifying ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... chimney-piece and exhort me to stand up straight like a hero, which I did, straighter and straighter, and then suddenly 'was 'ware' (as we say in the ballads) of the walls' growing alive behind me and extending two stony hands to push me down that frightful precipice to the rug, where the dog lay ... dear old Havannah, ... and where he and I were likely to be dashed to pieces together and mix our uncanonised bones. Now my present false position ... which is not the chimney-piece's, ... is the necessity you ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... mountainous district of Ardeche Department fell a thousand feet down a precipice, but escaped without injury. We understand that in spite of many tempting offers from cinematograph companies the motorists have decided not to repeat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various
... on this side of the fort, the road Crosses a deep ravine; 't is rough and narrow, And winds with short turns down the precipice; And in its depth there is a mighty rock Which has, from unimaginable years, Sustained itself with terror and with toil Over a gulf, and with the agony With which it clings seems slowly coming down; ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... problem should be oral instead of in written form, and should be a straight, business-like talk, such as a father would have with his son about his studies or work. The gush of sentiment plays havoc with the emotions of the boy and lures him to the edge of the precipice, just to look over. First, there should be the spoken word concerning the function of the sex organs; and then, if the need is urgent, a choice book to guide him a little farther on the way. The less a boy thinks about these things the better. The instruction should be for the purpose of teaching ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... of the mountain tops all crimson and purple with the sunset; and there were bright tongues of fiery cloud burning and quivering about them; and the river, brighter than all, fell, in a wavering column of pure gold, from precipice to precipice, with the double arch of a broad purple rainbow stretched across it, flushing and fading alternately in the wreaths of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... who determined to resist Persia at any cost, met together at the Isthmus of Corinth, and laid their plans of defence. The Asiatic army, coming by land, would be obliged to march through a narrow pass called Thermopylae, with the sea on one side of the road, and a steep and inaccessible precipice on the other. Here, then, the Greeks made up their minds to stand. They did not know, till they had marched to Thermopylae, that behind the pass there was a mountain path, by which soldiers might climb round and over the mountain, and fall upon their rear. As the sea on ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... horse fell over a precipice. Papa's leg and three ribs are broken. Not dangerous. That is all it says; and mamma is going ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is generally kind-hearted, he is often sentimental, he is sometimes intolerably maudlin; but you never know when you will not come upon one of the convictions of Dickens; and when you do come upon it you do know it. It is as hard and as high as any precipice or peak of the mountains. The highest and hardest of ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... rock, With hardly room for a toe to wag; But holding on by a timber snag, That looks like the arm of a friendly hag; Then stooping under a drooping bough, Or leaping over some horrid chasm, Enough to give any heart a spasm! And sinking down a precipice now, Keeping his feet the Deuce knows how, In spots whence all creatures would keep aloof, Except the Goat, with his cloven hoof, Who clings to the shallowest ledge as if He grew like the weed on the face of the cliff! So down, still down, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... might be pleasant enough uphill, but when they were coming down it was very dangerous, because the slope nearly always ends with a steep escarpment. We came once, without observing it, to the edge of such a precipice, and if we had not succeeded in time in slackening our speed a nice confused mass of men, dogs, and sledges would have tumbled over it. In order to excite their draught animals the Chukches avail themselves of their dogs' inclination to run after the reindeer, and during their journeys ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... had been made, when he found himself confronted by his original pursuers, who had, by this time, gained the top of the ridge, and a third party was discovered pressing up the hill directly on his right. He was now completely hemmed in on three sides, and the fourth was almost a perpendicular precipice of one hundred and fifty feet descent, with Wheeling creek at its base. The imminence of his danger allowed him but little time to reflect upon his situation. In an instant he decided upon his course. Supporting his rifle in his left hand and carefully adjusting his reins with the other, ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous |
