"Swash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... large fibrous roots of the pond-lilies. He splashes along till he finds a suitable spot, when he begins feeding, sometimes thrusting his bead and neck several feet under water. The hunter listens, and when the moose lifts his head and the rills of water run from it, and he hears him "swash" the lily roots about to get off the mud, it is his time to start. Silently as a shadow he creeps up on the moose, who by the way, it seems, never expects the approach of danger from the water side. If ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... discovered a steamer, which had just passed through the narrow opening between Odderoe and the main land, and whose course lay close to the point of the island where the cutter was moored. He saw that the swash of the steamer was likely to throw the boat on the rocks, and grind her planking upon the sharp points of ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... charming little river, in the wilds of the West, near the Mississippi. I went down that way to-day by the Iron Mountain Railroad—was switch'd off on a side-track four miles through woods and ravines, to Swash Creek, so-call'd, and there found Crystal city, and immense Glass Works, built (and evidently built to stay) right in the pleasant rolling forest. Spent most of the day, and examin'd the inexhaustible and peculiar sand the glass is made of—the original ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... it's then I fare with some other slave who is hired for the things he writes To a Den of Sin where they mingle gin—such as Lipton's, Mouquin's, or Whyte's, And my spirit thrills to a music sweeter than Sullivan or Puccini— The swash of the ice in the shaker as ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... ocean, which extended afar, under a sky that was dark with mountainous masses of piled-up clouds. The great roll of the sea struck the foot of the cliffs rather slowly, as if performing some solemn function, and the swash of the returning water was like some strange dirge. The very waves had lost their blueness and were tinted with ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... Judith, and she, now aged twenty-one, was possibly the sole member of the house of Talbot-Lowry for whom a successful future might confidently be anticipated. Judith, a buccaneer by nature and by practice, was habitually engaged in swash-bucklering it on a round of visits. She was good-looking, tall, talkative, and an able player of all the games proper to the state of life to which she had been called. She was a competent guest, giving as much entertainment as she received, being of those who contribute ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... thick yer could cut it 'Thout reachin' a foot over-side, The dory she'd nose up ter butt it, And then git discouraged an' slide; No noise but the thole-pins a-squeakin', Or, maybe, the swash of a wave, No feller ter cheer yer by speakin'— 'Twas lonesomer, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... settling fast, and I could hear the loose cargo, which had broken adrift below in the main hold, playing the devil's own game; smashing and crushing from side to side as the vessel rolled, and coming in contact with the stanchions and beams, with a surging swash of water, too, which told the tale without the trouble of breaking open the hatches. I took, however, the precaution to run my eye over the manifest to see if, perchance, there was any treasure in the after run or any where else, as, in case there had been, I should have made some ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... just then as peculiarly appropriate, though its real meaning is quite different. A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless Southern night. There was no sound but the faint swash of the coming tide, the noises of the reed-birds in the marshes, and the occasional leap of a fish; and it seemed to my overstrained ear as if every footstep of my own must be heard for miles. However, I ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the New York Central, where the road-bed is quite perfect and the steel rails continuous, I have heard this irreverent train give the words of a certain popular revival hymn after this fashion: "Hold the fort, for I am Sankey; Moody slingers still. Wave the swish swash back from klinky, klinky klanky kill." On the New York and New Haven, where there are many switches, and the engine whistles at every cross road, I have often heard, "Tommy make room for your whooopy! that's a little clang; bumpity, bumpity, boopy, clikitty, clikitty, clang." ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... stooping posture and, being of slovenly habit, flung the water from her pail straight out, without moving from where she stood. The smooth round arch of the falling water glistened for a moment in mid-air. John Gourlay, standing in front of his new house at the head of the brae, could hear the swash of it when it fell. The morning ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... Jurymen, 1630, 12mo, the following list of the names of the more celebrated familiars of English witches. "Such as I have read of are these: Mephistophiles, Lucifer, Little Lord, Fimodes, David, Jude, Little Robin, Smacke, Litefoote, Nonsuch, Lunch, Makeshift, Swash, Pluck, Blue, Catch, White, Callico, Hardname, Tibb, Hiff, Ball, Puss, Rutterkin, Dicke, Prettie, Grissil, and Jacke." In the confession of Isabel Gowdie, a famous Scotch witch, (in Pitcairne's Trials, vol. iii. page 614,) we have the following catalogue of attendant ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... of rebellious factions, the historic 300 miles of adventurous coast has scarcely known for hundreds of years whom rightly to call its master. Pizarro, Balboa, Sir Francis Drake, and Bolivar did what they could to make it a part of Christendom. Sir John Morgan, Lafitte and other eminent swash-bucklers bombarded and pounded it in the ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... or 'swash,' which stretches inside Ocracoke Inlet, (at that time the only passage to the sea,) the vessels take in but a part of their cargoes at Newbern, while lighters with the remainder accompany them across the 'swash,' where the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... was too deep for kicking—Stranger was ever uncertain and not to be trusted too far—he caught him firmly by the tail and felt the current grip them both. The feel of the water was glorious after so long a ride in the hot sun, and Happy Jack reveled in the cool swash of it up his shoulders to the back of his neck, as Stranger swam out and across to the sloping, green bank on the home side. When his feet struck bottom, Happy Jack should have waded also—but the water was so deliciously cool, slapping high up on his shoulders ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... when I had stepped out into the swash of the rain. "Frankly, I hardly enjoyed it. You ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... metropolis, but another Battery, overlooking another harbor, or estuary, landlocked save for an entrance about a mile in width. Behind him lay, not a great, but a little, city; hardly more than a big town; before him a few vessels of moderate tonnage placidly plied the main or swash channels. ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... friend, there you happen to be mistaken: these are none of Impayable's; but done by Nicholas Pouseen. I have seen prints of them in England, so that none of your tricks upon travellers, Mr. Swiss or Swash, or what's your name." He was much elated by this imaginary triumph of his understanding, which animated him to persevere in his curious observations upon all the other pieces of that celebrated ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... from the stove. Too, he remembered how he and his companions used to go from the school-house to the bank of a shaded pool. He saw his clothes in disorderly array upon the grass of the bank. He felt the swash of the fragrant water upon his body. The leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody in the ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... morning, the engines were at work again, and their heavy thud, thud, was mingled with the swash of water, as the Bengali boys washed down decks, while a rattling of spars and creaking of cordage showed that sails were being set, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... other eye was out, my dear; And the calves of his wicked-looking legs Were more than two feet about, my dear, O, the great big Irishman, The rattling, battling Irishman— The stamping, ramping, swaggering, staggering, leathering swash ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... frighted mast-heads to the sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... as the hours passed, although hardly aware of doing so. The soft, continuous chugging of the engine, the swash of water alongside, the ceaseless sweep of the current, and the dark gloom of the shadows through which we struggled, all combined to produce drowsiness. I know my eyes were closed several times, and at last they opened to a realization that gray, sickly dawn rested upon ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... slave system. Hark! I hear the clanking of the ploughman's chains in the fields; I hear the tramping of the feet of the hoe-hands. I hear the coarse and harsh voice of the negro driver and the shrill voice of the white overseer swearing at the slaves. I hear the swash of the lash upon the backs of the unfortunates; I hear them crying for mercy from the merciless. Amidst these cruelties I hear the fathers and mothers pour out their souls in prayer,—"O, Lord, how long!" and their cries not only awaken the sympathy ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... Power's cheated claimants mutter, And foiled fire-eaters utter Most sanguinary threats. "He Freedom's fated suckler? The traitor, trickster, truckler!" So fumes the fierce swash-buckler, And his toy-rapier whets. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... man," said the woman tartly. "And if you'll take my advice, you won't bring him into these parts again, where they're doing nothing else but swash-buckling from morning to night. The broken heads I've seen this year is ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... came soon the familiar racket of making sail and trimming yards and the clank of the capstan pawls. Then the anchor flukes scraped and banged against the bow timbers. The vessel heeled a little and the lapping water changed its tune to a swash-swash as the hull pushed it aside. The brig was alive ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... Jack, putting his ear to the door and listening intently. "I can hear the swash of water just the same, Dick. We had better be ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... castle, not a road that did not clack romantically with horses' hoofs on bold adventure. But the wars have changed all this by bringing too sharp a light upon the dim scenery of this pageantry, and swash-bucklery is all ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... age long past, the time of the Second Emperor Frederick of Swabia. In its revival of old forms, old customs, it is a masquerade. But behold that it is a gorgeous blood-coloured masquerade and that Cercamorte is a distinct portrait of the swash-buckler hero of ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... had drifted upon one of the boats anchored in the ferry-way. Paddling away, he suddenly heard the swash of waves, and found himself approaching a wharf, but on which side the ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... guard, standing motionless in the swash of the rout, like rocks in running water, held out till night. They awaited the double shadow of night and death, and let them surround them. Each regiment, isolated from the others, and no longer connected with the army, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... sail. The Wabash lies off the Main Ship Channel. Of course, all the others are blockaded, too, but General Beauregard thinks that if we can torpedo the flagship the others will hurry to her assistance and the blockade-runners can get out through the Swash Channel. Our magazines are running low, and we must have arms, powder, everything. There are two or three shiploads at Nassau. This is an attempt to get to them. If we can blow up Admiral Vernon's flagship, perhaps we can raise the blockade. At any rate it's the only chance ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... long awake full of thought both for myself and for the poor souls around me. At last, however, the measured swash of the water against the side of the vessel and the slight rise and fall had lulled me into a sleep, from which I was suddenly aroused by the flashing of a light in my eyes. Sitting up, I found several sailors gathered about me, and a ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to linger, gazing and listening, while the storm was in its richest mood—the gray rain-flood above, the brown river-flood beneath. The language of the river was scarcely less enchanting than that of the wind and rain; the sublime overboom of the main bouncing, exulting current, the swash and gurgle of the eddies, the keen dash and clash of heavy waves breaking against rocks, and the smooth, downy hush of shallow currents feeling their way through the willow thickets of the margin. And amid all this varied ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... seven bells were struck, the log hove, the watch called, and we went to breakfast. Here I cannot but remember the advice of the cook, a simple-hearted African. "Now,'' says he, "my lad, you are well cleaned out; you haven't got a drop of your 'long-shore swash aboard of you. You must begin on a new tack,— pitch all your sweetmeats overboard, and turn to upon good hearty salt beef and ship bread, and I'll promise you, you'll have your ribs well sheathed, and be as hearty as any of ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... sea running, over which the poor maimed Althea was wallowing along at a speed of about eight and a half knots, with a dismal groaning of timbers that harmonised lugubriously with the clank of the chain pumps and the swash of water washing nearly knee-deep about the decks—for the hooker laboured so heavily that she was leaking like a basket, necessitating the unremitting use of the pumps throughout the watch. And—worst of all—Keene whispered ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... of the passengers. Some were silently gazing at the changing scenes along the banks, others were playing cards or conversing in the midst of the scraping of shovels, the roar of the engine, the hiss of escaping steam, the swash of disturbed waters, and the shrieks of the whistle. In one corner, heaped up like corpses, slept, or tried to sleep, a number of Chinese pedlers, seasick, pale, frothing through half-opened lips, and bathed in their copious perspiration. Only ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... catching occasional glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass, whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play or as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The other children about the tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against the side; but Billy manfully ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... of corn. This going to bed in the morning seemed a foolish business to me that day and I lay a long time looking up at the rustling canopy overhead. I remember listening to the waves that came whispering out of the further field, nearer and nearer, until they swept over us with a roaring swash of leaves, like that of water flooding among rocks, as I have heard it often. A twinge of homesick ness came to me and the snoring of Uncle Eb gave me no comfort. I remember covering my head and crying softly as I thought of ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... were never invited to invade the cricket's corner, where we were permitted to beguile the hours in gossip, song, and story until the scrub-women had cleaned the rest of the big basement and "the first low swash" of the suds and brush threatened the legs of our chairs. Then, with a parting anathema on the business of slaves that toiled when honest folk should be abed, we would ascend the stairs and betake ourselves to our several homes. It was at the Boston that Field varied his diet of pie ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... multitude of eider-ducks, and other sea-fowl, which thronged the islet, and which now, being roused, began their night-feeding and flying, though at an earlier hour than usual. When their discordant cries were left so far behind as to be softened by distance, the flapping of wings and swash of water, as the fowl plunged in, still made the air busy ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... Mr. Mulford?" called out Capt. Stephen Spike, of the half-rigged, brigantine Swash, or Molly Swash, as was her registered name, to his mate—"we shall be dropping out as soon as the tide makes, and I intend to get through the Gate, at least, on the next flood. Waiting for a wind in port is ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... to him for the glowing picture of a knight-errant of the sixteenth century, moving with the port of a swash-buckler across the field of vision, wherever cities were to be taken and heads cracked in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and, in the language of one of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... beneath me, I discovered one that could be shifted without difficulty. But scarcely had I stooped to raise it when an emotion of fear seized me, and I started back alert and listening, though I was unconscious of having heard any thing more than the ordinary swash of the water beneath the windows and the beating of my own overtaxed heart. An instant's hearkening gave me the reassurance I needed, and convinced that I had alarmed myself unnecessarily, I bent again over the board, and this time succeeded in moving it aside. A long, black garment, smoothly ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... spurred with the spikes in our soles; There is water a-swash in our boots; Our hands are hard-calloused by peavies and poles, And we're drenched with the spume of the chutes; We gather our herds at the head, Where the axes have toppled them loose, And down from the hills where the rivers are fed We harry ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... "Oh, a sorter swash-bucklin' Spanish don—the kind whut likes ter dress up, an' play the dandy. He's got a pink an' white complexion, the Castilian kind yer know, an' wears a little moustache, waxed up at the ends. He's ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... west, in the hot, hazy morning, full of women in light summer dresses, and white-faced straw-hatted men fresh from Boston desks; the stack of bicycles outside the post office; the come-and-go of busy officials, greeting one another; the slow flick and swash of bunting in the heavy air; and the important man with a hose ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... the mouth of the Kabekanka River. A brisk wind was blowing from the north, and the waves ran so high as to cause some anxiety in the minds of those who were not accustomed to the motion of a canoe; for, now they rose lightly to the top of the wave and anon sank with a swash into the trough, splashing and dashing the water over their bows. Gradually, however, as they became more used to their frail barks, their anxiety lessened, and they began to enjoy the beautiful prospect before them, and to inhale with delight ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... was feeling hands on his legs and arms—hard, strong, little hands—and then a swash of branches in his face, and then he was staring down through the swaying boughs as Baloo woke the jungle with his deep cries and Bagheera bounded up the trunk with every tooth bared. The Bandar-log howled with triumph and scuffled ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... the girl heard their steps shuffle off, and even caught the swash of their knees against the stiff rubber coats, so near they passed. The girl, who had been staring with strained neck and motionless eyes at the tall figure of the waiting man at her side, drew a long breath and laid her hand ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... whitens all awash, and the "old man" shivers in his oilskin coat as he hangs on to a pin in the rail to watch us. The poop is wet and gleaming, wet with the spray of following seas, and as our ship rolls the swash of shipped seas hisses, and her cleanness is as the cleanness of something newly varnished. Once and again as she rolls (the wind now quartering) the scuppers spout geyser-like and gurgle. As she ran like a beaten thing she wallowed a little, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... were becoming so frequent and outrageous. Vigorous measures were taken to check and punish them. Several of the most noted freebooters were caught and executed, and three of Vanderscamp's chosen comrades, the most riotous swash-bucklers of the Wild Goose, were hanged in chains on Gibbet-Island, in full sight of their favorite resort. As to Vanderscamp himself, he and his man Pluto again disappeared, and it was hoped by the people of Communipaw that he ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... conceived and cherished a bitter loathing. But there was one man who had always been ready to champion her cause, the daring, reckless, ruffianly James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who nevertheless was no mere swash-buckler, but according to Scottish standards of the day, a man of education [Footnote: Lang, Hist. Scotland, ii., p. 168.] and even, it would seem, of some culture. From this time, Bothwell was her one ally. She had the policy and the ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... be supposed that I had become a swash-buckler of a soldier. The cold chill of fear still crept up and down my spine whenever I thought of taking part in an engagement; but I was becoming so nearly a man as to desire, in case it became necessary to fight, that I might gain some honor for standing stiffly when really ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... a little pale-faced, delicate-looking boy in the class, who blundered a good deal. Every time he did so the cruel serpent of leather went at him, coiling round his legs with a sudden, hissing swash. This made him cry, and his tears blinded him so that he could not even see the words which he had been unable to read before. But he still attempted to go on, and still the instrument of torture went swish-swash round his little thin legs, raising ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... agen me doned it. I could n' 'elp myself from goun in, an' when I got out I was astarn of all, an' there was the schooner carryun on, right through to clear water! So, hold of a bight o' line, or anything! an' they swung up in over bows an' sides! an' swash! she struck the water, an' was out o' sight in a minute, an' the snow drivun as ef't would bury her, an' a man laved behind on a pan of ice, an' the great black say two fathom ahead, an' the storm-wind blowun 'im ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... busy street with its bustle of coaches, and water-carriers with their asses, and porters, and mounted nobles with trains of followers, and swash-buckling swordsmen, any of whom might have insulted Miriam, conspicuous by her beauty and by the square of yellow cloth, a palm and a half wide, set above her coiffure. They walked on in silence till they came to the Arch of Titus. Involuntarily both stopped, for by reason of the Temple ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... victuals he would wade across the tides to the mainland and furnish himself forth with all that came in his way. The poor folk and the rich folk alike ran out of their houses and hid themselves when they heard the swish-swash of his big feet in the water; for if he saw them, he would think nothing of broiling half-a-dozen or so of them for breakfast. As it was, he seized their cattle by the score, carrying off half-a-dozen fat oxen on his back at a time, and hanging ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... rear, and began to heehaw' in a most melodious strain. The nags pricked up their ears in a twinkling, and made no more ado but bolted. Poor aunty tugged! but all in vain; her bay-cob ran into the water; and she lost both her presence of mind and her seat, and plumped swash into the pond—her riding habit spreading out into a beautiful circle—while she lay squalling and bawling out in the centre, like a little piece of beef in the middle of a large batter-pudding! Miss Scragg, meanwhile, stuck to her graymare, and went bumping along to ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... A swash of ice-water filled the bottom of the skiff. She was low enough down without that. They could not stop to bail, and the miniature icebergs they passed began to look significantly over the gunwale. Which would come to the point of foundering first, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... come roaring across to us at almost the same moment from the deck of the Orion. And no more than into the open Atlantic than we were plugging into it. The sea came mounting up over our low lee-rails—up, up our swash-swept decks, clear across us sometimes, when for a moment a doubtful helmsman would let her ship an extra cargo. But, again, no harm in that. Let 'em slosh and let 'em roll—we were standing up, the pair of us, like two brick houses. And the rest didn't matter. And so almost ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... old schooner was rollin' like a washtub. One minute I'd see the skipper and the mate h'isted up in the air, hammerin' for dear life, and then, swash! under they'd go, clear under, and stay there, seemed to me, forever. Every dip I thought would be the end, and I'd shet my eyes, expectin' to see 'em gone when she lifted; but no, up they'd come, fetch a breath, shake the salt water out ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... we are the sufferers? No, it is Christ in us; for He sends none a warfaring on their own charges." The tide crept up upon this second martyr like the death-chill, but her heart was strong and fearless in the Lord. Her voice arose sweetly above the swash of the waves, reciting Scripture, pouring forth prayer, and singing Psalms. The tide swelled around her bosom, ascended her naked neck, touched her warm lips, yet the heavenly music continued. But now a breaker dashes over the uplifted face; the voice is ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... of Pantomime there were many other personages in these dumb shows which we never had in the English Pantomimes. To note a few of them:—The Captain, a bragging swash-buckler; the Apothecary, a half-starved individual with a red nose; and a female soubrette, who acted for her mistress, Columbine, similar duties as what Clown performed as valet for his master. The Doctor brought at first on the stage in 1560, was supposed to be a lawyer or a physician. ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... brand," admitted Smith, laughingly; "but I believe it's good sound criticism just the same. If a man is going to play the swashbuckler, I like to see him able to swash his buckle. But seriously, I shouldn't have objected to that one bad piece of business if it hadn't seemed to me that the whole performance was out of key and wrong. But here's the curtain ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... pleasures and dangers past; and he was folded again to the dear mother heart, the safest, sweetest place in all the whole wide world. In warm, still summer evenings, if you will take a walk on the sea-beach, you will hear the gentle rippling swash of the waves; and some very wise people think it must be the gurgling voices of Aqua and his brother water-drops telling each other about their wonderful journey round ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pools were stagnant and their edges invariably lined with dead cattle that had died while trying to get a drink. Selecting a carcass that was solid enough to hold us up, we would walk out into the pool on it, taking a blanket with us, which we would swash around and get as full of water as it would hold, then carrying it ashore, two men, one holding each end, would twist the filthy water out into a pan, which in turn would be emptied into our canteens, to last until the ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... few inches nearer the goal, but no more than that. It was Don who bore the brunt of that attack and after the piled-up bodies had been pulled aside he and the Claflin full-back remained on the ground. On came the trainers with splashing buckets. Don came to with the first swash of the big, smelly sponge on his face. Danny Moore ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... After passing through a channel, six and seven fathoms deep, which the dry extreme of the sandbank fronting the flat, extending off McAdam Range, bearing South-South-East led through, we hauled over to the westward for a swash way in the sands, extending off the north-west end of Clump Island. In crossing the inlet, running under the south end of McAdam Range, we found as much as ten fathoms, a depth that led to the hope of its being of great importance, perhaps ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... sail seemed swung only to show its whiteness in the bright moonlight. Every cord upon it hung lifeless, serving only the purpose of pictured lines, one silvered in the light, the dark shadow of the other traced in clear outlines on the sail. The swash of the waves against the side of the boat was too slight to sway it; the sheet dipped in the water and swung almost imperceptibly, while now and then a few straws floated against it and caught there. The moon, high in the heavens, gave pearly tints to ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... sheen that resides upon excellent briar of many years' service. He has had (though I speak only by guess) a rummer of hot toddy to celebrate the greatest of all Evenings. At his elbow is a porthole, brightly curtained with a scrap of clean chintz, and he can hear the swash of the seas along his ship's tall side. And now he is reading. I can see him reading. I know just how his mind feels! Oh, the Perfect Reader! There is not an allusion that he misses; in all those lovely printed words he sees the subtle secrets that a lesser soul would miss. He (bless his ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... live as students ought to do—viz., temperat, abstemious, and plaine and grave in the apparel; but to live like gentlemen, to keep dogs and horses, to turne their studies and coleholes into places to receive bottles, to swash it in apparell, to wear long periwigs, &c., and the theologists to ride abroad in grey coats with swords by their sides: the masters have lost their respect by being themselves scandalous, and keeping company with ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... it as well as it could be done—at least, the way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash—there's your road." He paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of a barn. "Swish, swash—there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt the edges of your foliage ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... must have grown stupid at his work, for suddenly there was a growling of water, and a crest came with a roar and a swash into the boat, and it was a wonder that it did not set the cook afloat in his life-belt. The cook continued to sleep, but the oiler sat up, blinking his eyes and ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... stream are still, Save now and then a low and gentle swash, All which doth try me sore against my will— So hot! And all my ducks are ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... sitting in his chamber, indolently trimming his nails. A tall swash-buckler, with a red nose and a black patch over his eye, was with him, also seated and conversing with familiar ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... was heard, save the low, tremulous swash of the sleet outside, or the death-rattle in the throat of the bath-tub. Then all was still as the bosom of a fried chicken when ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... shining, Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors, The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw, Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan, These ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... him his passengers were gathered in merry groups, singing, laughing, chatting, the ladies in their rich-lined mantles, the gentlemen in their bravest attire; while to the sound of song and merry talk the well-timed fall of the oars and swash of driven ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... keep you out of the swash," he advised her. "Sit there in the stern while I toss ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... Swash! Down fell the Fiddler into the apple-tree and down fell a dozen apples, popping and tumbling ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... advanced scholars most, And in their times what writers flourished. Rich men and magistrates, whilst yet they live, They flatter palpably, in hope of gain. Smooth-tongued orators, the fourth in place— Lawyers our commonwealth entitles them— Mere swash-bucklers and ruffianly mates, That will for twelvepence make a doughty fray, Set men for straws together by the ears. Sky-measuring mathematicians, Gold-breathing alchemists also we have, Both which are subtle-witted humourists, That get their meals ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... and the confusion was indescribable. Fenton's first impulse was to put his hands over his ears, to shut out the horrible din. The officers were shouting orders and getting the boats manned, for even in this short time the steamer was settling. The hissing swash of the waves beating into the breach, the prayers, the imprecations, the hysterical sobs, the agonized cries of the struggling passengers, the darkness, the terror, the yawning abyss of death beneath them,—combined to sweep away all human feelings save the instinct of self-preservation. ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... the body of the wagon, and the swift ripples deluded the eye into almost conviction that horses, vehicle, and all were not gaining an inch in forward progress, but drifting surely down. They came up out of the depths, however, with a tug, and a swash, and a drip all over, and a scrambling of hoofs on the pebbles, at the very point aimed at in such apparently sidelong fashion,—the wheel-track that led them up the bank and into the ten-mile pine woods through which they were to skirt the base of the Cairn and reach Feather-Cap ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... I say to you about this matter," said Aramis, "is not for the sake of hunting a quarrel. Thank Heaven, I am not a swash-buckler, and being a musketeer only for a while, I only fight when I am forced to do so, and always with great reluctance; but this time the affair is serious, for here is ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... once aloft, and I may hit in the right vein, Where I may beguile easily without any great pain. I will flaunt it and brave it after the lusty swash:[147] I'll deceive thousands. What care I who lie ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... to continue the argument, but realizing that the sentiment of his men was not with him and that his position was growing momentarily more ridiculous, he ceased abruptly. Rough though he was and of the swash-buckler type, he was neither insensible to the humor of the situation nor to the nerve it had taken on Dick's part to hold twenty armed men at bay single-handed. It is usually a difficult matter to pocket one's pride, especially if ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... the lovely bay of Bolinas, blue and sparkling in the summer afternoon sun, its borders dotted with thrifty ranches, and the woody ravines and bristling Tamalpais Range rising over all. The tide was running out, and only a peaceful swash whispered along the level sandy beach on our left, where the busy sandpiper chased the playful wave as it softly rose and fell along the shore. On the higher centre of the sandspit which shuts in the bay on that ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... the great showman had fallen short of his printed promise. The hurricane had come by night, and with one fell swash had made an irretrievable sop of everything. The circus trailed away its bedraggled magnificence, and the ring was ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... after being wounded the first thing that met my ears was the roar of musketry and the boom of cannon, with the continual swish, swash of the grape and canister striking the trees and ground. I placed my hand in my bosom, where I felt a dull, deadening sensation. There I found the warm blood, that filled my inner garments and now trickled down my side as I endeavored to stand upright. I had been shot through ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... anything at all. The dreary, damp atmosphere and the cold, sloppy turf of Glasgow Green might have brought them back to the ordinary cares and troubles of every-day life, but it did not. This grim oasis in the very centre of the hardest and bitterest existences was now deserted. The dull, heavy swash of the dirty Clyde and the distant hum of the sorrowful voices of humanity in the adjacent streets hardly touched the sharp, cutting accents of the two quarrelling men. No human ears heard them, and no ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... in motion) 348; high water, flood tide. V. be watery &c adj.; reek. add water, water, wet; moisten &c 339; dilute, dip, immerse; merge; immerge, submerge; plunge, souse, duck, drown; soak, steep, macerate, pickle, wash, sprinkle, lave, bathe, affuse^, splash, swash, douse, drench; dabble, slop, slobber, irrigate, inundate, deluge; syringe, inject, gargle. Adj. watery, aqueous, aquatic, hydrous, lymphatic; balneal^, diluent; drenching &c v.; diluted &c v.; weak; wet &c (moist) 339. Phr. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... gun he made his plans. Swish-swash the sponge-staff ran in and out—he would try to steal away at dog-watch. He struck the sponge smartly on ma couzaine's muzzle, cleansing it—he would have to slide into the water like a rat and swim very softly to the shore. He reached for a fresh cartridge, and thrust it into the throat of the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to pass, he could not, from the land, see Mortimer, on account of the willows. The nearest house was three or four miles distant; and a voice could be heard but a little distance, above the swash of the flood and the rush of the ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... an hour, an hour passed, and, strain his eyes as he would, he could see nothing but inky darkness, and hear nothing but the dull swash, swash of the tide upon the sand. The fire was dying down. He went groping up and down the beach for wood, and built ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... a sharp decline to the river, down the lane, and one of the men stumbled and rolled several yards, picking himself up with a grunt and a groan and a lot of bad language, and then hurrying after the rest. Dick heard the swash of the water on the gravel bank, and then saw the river itself dimly, but in another moment some dark object loomed up before him, and then he and Bob were taken into a house, the front of which was much lower than the back on account ...
— The Liberty Boys Running the Blockade - or, Getting Out of New York • Harry Moore
... mismanagement of affairs at Jullundur had done much to lower our prestige in the eyes of his people, and there was no mistaking the offensive demeanour of his troops. They evidently thought that British soldiers had gone never to return, and they swaggered about in swash-buckler fashion, as only Natives who think they have the upper ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... at last, and went across the sands to her father. Neckart was soon conscious of an uneasy change in everything about him. The atmosphere of sunlit rest was broken. The clouds only meant rain, the sand was sand, and the sea but a wet swash of water: he began to look at his watch and think of the trains. The influence that had quieted him so unaccountably had been in the girl, then? He shut his eyes and tried to recall the erect figure, the fall of yellow hair, the clear Scandinavian face. He felt the same ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... for a chance over "the Swash," the crew of the Mary having little to do, were generally engaged in looking after their physical comforts by laying in a stock of shell-fish. Oysters were found in abundance all along shore, and of excellent quality; also ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... trembles, quivers, and nods her frighted mast-heads to the sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off from ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the water and echoed back and forth from sail to sail. The shouting hushed. Only the creak of the swaying yard, the hoarse swash of the water, the panting of deep breathing broke the silence, then once more from the lofty ...
— The Iron Star - And what It saw on Its Journey through the Ages • John Preston True
... 14, I left Norfolk in the C. W. Thomas, which steamed to Fortress Monroe, where she arrived at 7-1/2 p.m., when I got aboard the John Farran, and steamed by the way of the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Hatteras, through the Swash, and through Pamlico sound to Neuse river, and thence up to Newbern, where we arrived at 7 p.m. of the 15th. Having expended all the money that I took with me but a few cents, I felt perplexed as to ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... down an ass, by all means," said Barker calmly; "but please explain what you mean. I told you not to buy in the Green Swash Mine, and now I suppose you have gone and done it, because I said it might possibly ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... look down on a sea thronged with heavy traffic. A big submersible breaks water suddenly. Another and another follow with a swash and a suck and a savage bubbling of relieved pressures. The deep-sea freighters are rising to lung up after the long night, and the leisurely ocean is all patterned with peacock's ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... black discs at my ears, with the little round holes over the ear openings. It was marvellous. I could hear the men washing down one of the cars, the swash of water, and, best of all, the low-toned, ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... and shouted till our lungs were exhausted, but no answer came, the only sounds we heard being the thrapping and swash of the waves against our boat. Five minutes—which seemed hours—passed, and then we suddenly lost sight of the barque's headlight, and saw the dull gleam of those aft shining through ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... moss-grown stone, it is for us to trace back the dim vista of the centuries to the life, the zeal, the energy, of which this stone is the poor memorial. The rock-fenced islet was covered with cedars, and when the tide was out the shoals around were dark with the swash of sea-weed, where, in their leisure moments, the Frenchmen, we are told, amused themselves with detaching the limpets from the stones, as a savory addition to their fare. But there was little leisure at St. Croix. Soldiers, sailors, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the other. But the huge smith only puffed out his sooty cheeks as if to blow a fly off the next bite of cheese. "So-oftly, so-oftly, muster," drawled he; "do na go to ruffling it here. This shop be mine, and I be free-born Englishman. I'll stand aside for no swash-buckling rogue on my own ground. Come, now, what wilt thou o' the lad?—and speak thee fair, good muster, or thou'lt get a dab o' the red-hot shoe." As he spoke he gave the black ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... surface, or, what was still better, penetrated into the wild- looking creeks and rivers, more than one hundred of which enter the parent stream along the thousand miles of its course. Here, in these secluded nooks, I found security from the steamer's swash. ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... disputatious troopers. In his capacious pocket, he always carried a copy of the New Testament—as, of old, the carnal controvertists bore a sword buckled to the side. Thus armed, he was a genuine polemical "swash-buckler," and would whip out his Testament, as the bravo did his weapon, to cut you in two without ceremony. He could carve you into numerous pieces, and season you with scriptural salt and pepper; and he would do it ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... faces that bent over its sheltered pools, as in a lookin' glass, wavin' locks that scattered gold light down into the water, bright eyes that shone like stars above it. I shouldn't wonder a mite if it missed 'em and tried to say so in its gentle, pensive swish, swash, swish. ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... in "The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green," written long before it was printed in 1659, the following:—"As God mend me, and ere thou com'st into Norfolk, I'll give thee as good a dish of Norfolk dumplings as ere thou laydst thy lips to;" and in another passage of the same drama, where Swash's shirt has been stolen, while he is in bed, he describes himself "as naked as your Norfolk dumplin." In the play just quoted, Old Strowd, a Norfolk yeoman, speaks of his contentment with good ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... gloried in her shame, like other fallen creatures; for her large, slanting oval hawse-pipes and boot-top stripe gave a fine, Oriental sneer to her face-like bow, and there was slur and insult to respectable craft in the lazy dignity with which she would swash through the fleet on the port tack, compelling vessels on the starboard tack to give up their right of way or be rammed; for she was a large craft, and there was menace in her solid, one-piece jib-boom, thick as an ordinary mainmast. An outward-bound coasting-schooner, resenting this lawlessness ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... say that of my part in the war, of which I now loathe the thought for other reasons. The battlefield was no place for me, and neither was the camp. My ineptitude made me the butt of the looting, cursing, swash-buckling lot who formed the very irregular squadron which we joined; and it would have gone hard with me but for Raffles, who was soon the darling devil of them all, but never more loyally my friend. Your fireside fire-eater does not think of these things. He imagines all the fighting ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... island; and, as Irving neatly says, "it was a time of jubilee for offenders; every culprit started up into an accuser." All the ills of the colony, many of them inevitable in such an enterprise, many of them due to the shiftlessness and folly, the cruelty and lust of idle swash-bucklers, were now laid at the door of Columbus. Aguado was presently won over by the malcontents, so that by the time he was ready to return to Spain, early in 1496, Columbus felt it desirable to go along with him and make his own explanations to the sovereigns. ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... into deep water, waves swash up and down the face of the rocks but cannot break and strike effective blows. They therefore erode but little until the talus fallen from the cliff is gradually built up beneath the sea to the level at which the waves drag bottom ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... broke in, "you have challenged every gentleman who has dared address me. Did you think such swash-buckling was going to win my heart? Any girl possessing self-respect would revolt at such methods. Whatever affection I may have felt for you as a boy has been driven from me by these actions. You wanted a slave, a servant, not a companion, and it is not in Mortimer blood to yield to every whim, ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... dreary enough day, no sun, with occasional splatters of rain and a persistent crash of seas over the weather rail and swash of water across the deck. With my eyes glued to the cabin ports, which gave for'ard along the main deck, I could see the wretched sailors, whenever they were given some task of pull and haul, wet through and through by the boarding seas. Several times I saw some of them taken off their feet ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... as they were on board, the schooner spread her white wings and stood in for Sandy Hook, while the ship was headed towards the "Swash Channel." ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... strode past the awed crew with an air that they instinctively recognized as belonging to the quarter-deck. Their meek eyes followed him as he stumped into the swash and kicked up two belaying-pins floating in the debris. He took one in each hand, came back at them on the trot, opening the flood-gates of his language. And they instinctively recognized that as quarter-deck, too. They knew that no mere mate could possess that ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... Boulton, who was then out of town: "I know from experiment that the other contrivance, which you saw me try, performs at least as well, and has in fact many advantages over the crank."[12] The "other contrivance" probably was his swash wheel which he built and which appeared on his next important patent specification (fig. 7a). Also in this patent were four other devices, one of which was easily recognizable as a crank, and two of which were eccentrics (fig. 7a, b). The fourth device was ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... old man stood as if petrified, then muttered: "Jerry ain't gwine know nothin' bout dis here. When ole Mars say, 'Jerry, what you seen in de Vine Ridge Swash?' Jerry, he gwine say, 'Nothin', Marster, fo' de Lord. I seen nothin' 't all!' An' I ain't gwine tell no lie, nuther, ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... lilies, take root upon the bottom, and spread their expanded leaves on the surface of the water. These flexible-leaved and elastic-stemmed plants can endure waves which attain no more than a foot or two of height, and by the friction which they afford make the swash on the shore very slight. In the quiet water, rushes take root, and still further protect the strand, so that the very delicate vegetation of the mosses, such as the Sphagnum, can fix ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... "Ye swash-buckler! Ye stiff-necked braggart!" bawled the priest. "Out wid y'r nonsense, and what good are y' thinkin' ye'll do—? Stir your stumps, y' ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... bidden, and then the little man said, "Swash, swish!" and the steed shot up from the strand like a lark from the grass, and pierced the covering sea, and went bounding on over the level waters; and when his hoofs struck the hard ground, Connla and ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... to look for it, and would simply seize him by the neck and turn out his pockets, without offending him the least bit in the world. Last of all came Bandi Kutyfalvi, the most magnificent tippler and swash-buckler in the realm, who, in his cups, invariably cudgelled all his boon companions; but he had the liquid capacity of a hippopotamus, and nobody had ever seen him dead-drunk ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... for which none are ready, dashes in, and with it tumble ashore, in one great wreck of humanity, small craft and large, stout hulk and swift clipper, helm first, topsail down, forestay-sail in tatters, keel up, everything gone to pieces in the swash of the surges. ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... King Augeas, which appalls human hearts, so rich is it, high-piled with the droppings of two hundred years; and Hercules-like to load a thousand night-wagons from it, and turn running water into it, and swash and shovel at it, and never leave it till the antique pavement, and real basis of the matter, show itself clean again! In any intelligent circle such a rumor, like the first break of day to men in darkness, enlightens all eyes; and each says devoutly, "Faxitis, O ye ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... wife whom he has obliged, he sees a young man attacked by three enemies and ill-bested. Jacob (who is no coward, and, thanks to his wife insisting on his being a gentleman and "M. de la Vallee," has a sword) draws and uses it on the weaker side, with no skill whatever, but in the downright, swash-and-stab, short- and tall-sailor fashion, which (in novels at least) is almost always effective. The assailants decamp, and the wounded but rescued person, who is of very high rank, conceives a strong friendship ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury |
