"Towering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... endeavours to obtain a shot, I made a considerable circuit, and shortly observed the tall heads of giraffes towering over the low mimosas. There is no animal in nature so picturesque in his native haunts as the giraffe. His food consists of the leaves of trees, some qualities forming special attractions, especially the varieties of the mimosa, which, being ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... still in the carriage for a moment looking up at the ugly towering walls, covered with red and white stripes. Her face was haggard in the sunshine, and her pale lips were set together in a hard line. A beggar with twisted stumps instead of arms whined a petition to her, but she neither saw him nor heard him. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... early darkness was thickening. From somewhere in the distance came the cry of an animal. Camp was left unfinished; I climbed to a jutting shoulder that overlooked the canyon. From far below came the noise of the river as it chugged and sobbed and roared endlessly between its towering walls. I promised myself I would go down and explore that dark canyon at ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... land of Nile, What should the virgin do? should royal knees Bend suppliant, or defenceless hands engage Men of gigantic force, gigantic arms? For 'twas reported that nor sword sufficed, Nor shield immense nor coat of massive mail, But that upon their towering heads they bore Each a huge stone, refulgent as the stars. This told she Dalica, then cried aloud: "If on your bosom laying down my head I sobbed away the sorrows of a child, If I have always, and Heaven knows I have, Next ...
— Gebir • Walter Savage Landor
... following; but my men, eager to earn their reward of one shilling, pushed on through the slush. It was hard work following the slippery path above the river. Few rivers in the world flow between more majestic banks than these, towering as they do a thousand feet above the water. Clad with thick mountain scrub, that has firm foothold, the mountains offer but a poor harvest to the peasant; yet even here high up on the precipitous sides of the cliffs, ledges ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... his wife's just rights!" Whereupon Tryggveson started up, exclaiming, in some heat, "Of thy brother Svein I never was afraid; if Svein and I meet in contest, it will not be Svein, I believe, that conquers;" and went off in a towering fume. Consented, however, at last, had to consent, to get his fine fleet equipped and armed, and decide to sail with it to Wendland to have speech and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... rocks shaded with birch, the hardy native of the North, and covered with fern or heath. On the right the limpid waters of Lough Ness were beating their bank, and waving their surface by a gentle agitation. Beyond them were rocks sometimes covered with verdure, and sometimes towering in horrid nakedness. Now and then we espied a little cornfield, which served to impress ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... of places, in its narrow leafy valley, surrounded by towering cliffs, is celebrated as having been the home of Petrarch for sixteen years during the thirteen hundreds. We may hope that his worshipped Laura sometimes brightened his home there with her presence. The famous Fountain of Vaucluse rushes out from its cave a full-grown river. It ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... Washington, beneath the shadow of Bunker Hill Monument or even Plymouth Rock, here he becomes a man and a brother. I have gazed on Harper's Ferry, or rather the rock at the Ferry; I have seen it towering up in simple grandeur, with the gentle Potomac gliding peacefully at its feet, and felt that that was God's masonry, and my soul had expanded in gazing on its sublimity. I have seen the ocean singing its wild chorus of sounding waves, and ecstacy has thrilled upon the living ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... moment Lee succeeded to the command of the army in Virginia, he was facile princeps in the war, towering above all on both sides, as the pyramid of Ghizeh above the desert. Steadfast to the end, he upheld the waning fortunes of the Confederacy as did Hector those of Troy. Last scene of all, at his surrender, his greatness and dignity made of his adversary but a humble accessory; ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... was unfortunate in my shot at a long range in high grass. We had been marching south-east, and as I intended to return to camp, we now turned sharp to the west. The country was beautiful, composed of alternate glades, copses, and low mimosa forest. At length I espied the towering head of a giraffe about half a mile distant; he was in the mimosa forest, and was already speculating upon our party, which he had quickly observed. Leaving my men in this spot to fix his attention, I succeeded in making a good stalk to within one hundred and twenty yards ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... Upper from Lower Normandy. In Lower Normandy the shore sloped down to the sea in pasture-lands, fields, and meadows. The coast of Upper Normandy, on the contrary, was steep, a high cliff, ravined, cleft and towering, forming an immense white rampart all the way to Dunkirk, while in each hollow a village or a port lay hidden: Etretat, Fecamp, Saint-Valery, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... word was fairly shouted. From temper and sheer exasperation, Simon was in a towering passion. He flung the notebook he was holding onto his desk, raised both hands above his head and shook them in a frenzy at the two men. "Yes! And you can start going by getting out of here, now, and taking your eavesdropping pal with you! Get out—and don't either of ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... Towering above everything else, it is at once the culminating point and the center of the Exposition scheme. It links the palaces of the central group, otherwise divided into two sections. Upon it rests the balance of Festival Hall and the Palace of Horticulture, of the courts, the gardens, the Palace ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... was in point of fact in progress within the towering walls of the Marienkirche—a cathedral built of red brick in the great ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... field; in garden and grove and hedge and bush; in mountain and plain and desert and sea; in hollow logs; amid swaying branches; in rocky dens and earthy burrows; high among towering cliffs and mighty crags; low in the marsh grass and among reeds and rushes; in stone walls; in fence corners; in tufts of grass and tiny shrubs; among the flowers and swinging vines; everywhere—everywhere—in all this great, round, world, Mother's children all are occupied in home building—occupied ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... volume of life that flows through the narrow and winding channels past the dim cliffs and pinnacles, and the lower banks which the lesser buildings form, is such that the highest tide of Broadway or Fifth Avenue seems a scanty ebb beside it. The swelling and towering omnibuses, the huge trucks and wagons and carriages, the impetuous hansoms and the more sobered four-wheelers, the pony-carts, donkey-carts, handcarts, and bicycles which fearlessly find their way amid the turmoil, with foot-passengers ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... picture of idyllic sweetness and grace. Long we can glance behind us and see the little gray town, its spires outlined in steely gray against the embracing hills, its gardens and orchards bright as emerald—towering above all, the ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... excitement to catch the first glimpse of the famous Peak of Teneriffe. There was a nice breeze from the north-east, the true trade wind, we hope, which ought to carry us down nearly to the Line. The morning being rather hazy, it was quite ten o'clock before we saw the Peak, towering above the clouds, right ahead, about fifty-nine miles off. As we approached, it appeared less perpendicular than we had expected, or than it is generally represented in pictures. The other mountains too, in the centre of the island, from the midst of which it rises, are ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... looking astern. Even von Schlichten, who had seen H-bombs and Bethe-cycle bombs, was impressed. Keegark was completely obliterated under an outward-rolling cloud of smoke and dust that spread out for five miles at the bottom of the towering column. ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... him Pelorian; which betokens something vast, and is applicable to any towering personage, but particularly to Orion. For the term Pelorus is the name by which the towers of Orion were called. Of these there seems to have been one in Delos; and another of more note, to which Homer probably alluded, in Sicily; where Orion was particularly reverenced. The streight of Rhegium ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... allows the Kej waters to pass, only forms a local gateway into a mass of impracticable hills. Secondly, to the west of this mountain wilderness, stretching upwards from the sea in a wedge form between the Brahui highlands and the group of towering peaks which enclose the Hingol river and abut on the sea at Malan, are the alluvial flats and delta of the Purali, forming the little province of Las Bela, the home of the Las Rajput. In this hot and thirsty corner of Baluchistan, ruled by the Jam or Cham, there ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... ships formed a noble and a graceful picture as they came sweeping rapidly down upon us with every stitch of canvas set that they could possibly spread, their white sails towering spire-like into the deep, tender blue of the cloudless heavens, with the delicate purple shadows chasing each other athwart the rounded bosoms of them as the hulls that up-bore them swung pendulum-like, with a little curl of snow under their bows, over the low hillocks of swell that chased ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... Roundheads, the Cavaliers, and men of every faith and conviction in the crowning days of the revolution. The deeds of her great men, the history of the past, were an equal heritage of all—we felt bound together by natural bonds equal to the ties of blood or kindred. We loved her towering mountains, her rolling prairies, her fertile fields, her enchanting scenery, her institutions, her literature and arts, all; all were equally the South's as well as the North's. Not for one moment would the South pluck a rose from the flowery wreath of our goddess of liberty and place it ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... up in the gorge. This pass I regard as one of the grandest spots to which my wandering steps have ever carried me, and though I had already lingered about it for many hours, I now walked thither again to take my last farewell of its dark towering rocks, its narrow causeway and roaring river, trusting to my friend the landlady to see that my luggage was duly packed upon the diligence. I need hardly say that my friend did not betray ...
— The Man Who Kept His Money In A Box • Anthony Trollope
... behold a genius bright and base, Of towering talents, and terrestrial alms, Methinks I see, as thrown from her high sphere, The glorious fragments of a soul immortal With rubbish mixed, and glittering ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... Ransom—who had not had time to dress—was seated at his desk, a pile of shabby law books at his elbow, the light from a hanging lamp falling on his grayish stubble of hair, his sallow forehead and spectacled eyes. Dawnish, towering higher than usual against the shadows of the room, and refined by his unusual pallor, hung a moment on the threshold, then came in, explaining himself profusely—laughing, accepting a cigar, letting Ransom push an arm-chair forward—a Dawnish she had never seen, ill at ease, ejaculatory, yet ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... smokes and vapours driven away by the spring winds; he had not been able to neutralize the vast views visible from the miners' sordid, one-storeyed dwellings, the panorama of hill and plain, of glistening water, towering peaks, and larch forests of emerald green amid the blue-Scotch pines and ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... parted from Jasper, and settled himself in the beautiful Mumper's Dingle, where he had the historic fight with the "Flaming Tinman," getting the victory by using his "Long Melford," on the advice of that towering and handsome female bearing the name of Isopel Berners, who now comes on the scene, and who will ever remain one of the most fascinating figures in the wonderful gallery of ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... point of fact, he had entered his fiftieth year, as the peerage would have told any curious inquirer. As he stepped out of a first-class carriage, several eyes were drawn towards him, for he was of notable height, towering above every one; even above Roland Yorke, who was of good height himself, and stood on the platform ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in each of the missionary seminaries the stranger finds a hospitable welcome, but the one we like best of all to visit is the beautiful College of the Holy Saviour in Mayland. It stands in the very shadow of the cathedral, the tall spires of which, towering to the heavens, tell us in which direction to turn our steps to find it. We know full well that the door-keeper, the old Italian Brother with snow-white hair and coal-black eyes, will greet us cordially, and show us the garden and the ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... overwhelmed, and the lava flows down and destroys gleaming houses and smiling fields, and heaven is darkened with ashes, and then everything goes on as before, and people live as if it was never going to happen again, though every morning, when they go out, they see the cone towering above their houses, and the thin column of smoke, pale against the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the south of Boston—the principal villages of the Pequots being on a river of the same name, and on a lesser stream called the Mystic, and along the reverberating shores of the Atlantic. It is a pleasant land of bright waters, and fair valleys, and towering hills, fit to produce a ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... fields enclosed with stone walls, neat white palings, or the hawthorn hedge, scenting the breezes with its balmy "honeysuckle," or sweet wild rose—song-birds filling the air with melody, and stately castles, towering o'er the peasant's lowly home, while far as the eye can reach 'twill rest but on some fair village dome or farm. Here the worm or zigzag fence runs round the irregularly-shaped clearings, in the same rustic garb it wore when ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... and informatively of the antiquities and the beauties of Auvergne. To most English folk it was an undiscovered country. We must steal a car and visit Orcival. Hadn't I heard of it? France's gem of Romanesque churches? And the Chateau—ages old—-with its charmille—the towering maze-like walks of trees kept clipped in scrupulous formality by an old gardener during the war—the charmille designed by no less a genius than Le Notre, who planned the wonders of Versailles and the exquisite miniature of the garden of ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... volcanoes, some, like Hecla, still active. "A wild land of barrenness and lava," Carlyle characterises it, "swallowed up many months of the year in black tempests, yet with a wild gleaming beauty in summer time, towering up there stern and grim, with its snow jokuls and roaring geysers, and horrid volcanic chasms, like the waste chaotic battlefield of frost and fire." The interior comprises lava and sand tracts, and ice-fields, but outside these are river valleys and lake districts ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... goes round again and fires those he missed the first round, then his mate takes the shovel from his hands and fires every other fire, then fires those he missed the first round; the third man does likewise, and so it is constant firing all through. And having towering hot boilers both sides of us and roaring furnaces behind and in front, the sweat pours from us continually, and we are glad to pop into the engine room after firing to get a draught of somewhat cooler air. I happened to have ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... witness—a costume which, from its tightness and simplicity, only served to exaggerate the unusual proportions of his person. Monsieur the Preceptor, had English blood in his veins, and his northern origin betrayed itself in his towering height and corresponding breadth, as well as by his fair hair and light blue eyes. But the most remarkable parts of his outward man were his hands, which were of immense size, especially about the thumbs. Monsieur the Preceptor ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... opportunity for people to meet as folks, as neighbors representing no one but themselves, and the ideas they cherish most. The towering advantage of Community Service is that it is the one movement to which ...
— Games and Play for School Morale - A Course of Graded Games for School and Community Recreation • Various
... forever when the little man, with the narrowly selfish outlook for "Number One," might succeed. The demand of the future will be, however, not so much for BIG men as for big MEN. The world no longer looks up to Kaisers and Czars. Success has ceased to be merely a towering figure. Hereafter the one sure way to succeed will lead through the door of brotherly understanding of the other fellow, into the common heart of mankind. Only salesmanship can open that door ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... are found—on bowlders fashioned by the waves of the sea, scattered by river floods, or polished by glacial ice; on stones buried in graves and mounds; on faces of rock that appear in ledges by the streams; on canon walls and towering cliffs; on mountain crags and the ceilings of caves—wherever smooth surfaces of rock are to be found in North America, there we may expect to find pictographs. So widely distributed and so vast in number, it is well ...
— On Limitations To The Use Of Some Anthropologic Data - (1881 N 01 / 1879-1880 (pages 73-86)) • J. W. Powell
... works as you, uncanny Phantom, wist!... Whose is that towering form That tears across the mist To where the shocks are sorest?—his with arm Outstretched, and grimy face, and bloodshot eye, Like one who, having done ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... CLARK: (Towering angrily above the preacher) Now, wait a minute, Simms. Don't you reckon the man who knows how to start a town knows how to run it? I paid two hundred dollars out of this right hand for this land and walked out here and started this town befo' you was born. I ain't like some of you new niggers, ...
— The Mule-Bone: - A Comedy of Negro Life in Three Acts • Zora Hurston and Langston Hughes
... they drove into the Upper Town, has been demolished since the summer of last year. Swiftly whirled along the steep winding road, by those Quebec horses which expect to gallop up hill whatever they do going down, they turned a corner of the towering weed-grown rock, and shot in under the low arch of the gate, pierced with smaller doorways for the foot- passengers. The gloomy masonry dripped with damp, the doors were thickly studded with heavy iron spikes; old cannon, thrust endwise into the ground at the sides of the gate, protected it against ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... that evening, and by the time the bells struck the vessel was running along to the westward under royals, with the southerly breeze freshening on her beam. She was a handsome ship. Her long, tapering spars rose towering into the semi-gloom overhead, and the great fabric of stretched canvas seemed like a huge cloud resting upon a dark, floating object on the surface of the sea, which was carried along rapidly with it, brushing the foam to either side with a roaring, rattling, seething, musical noise. At least, ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... spoke, the whole party walked out; but they had not gone very far before they caught sight of a majestic summer house, towering high peak-like, and of a structure rising loftily with storey upon storey; and completely locked in as they were on every side they were as beautiful as the Jade palace. Far and wide, road upon road coiled and wound; while the green pines ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... river; so crisply white were the spanning highways that the eye grew quickly dim with looking; the brisk channel breeze which moved with rough gaiety through the trees in the gardens of the Tuileries, had, long hours before, blown away the storm. Bright sunshine, expanses of deep cerulean blue, towering banks of pleasant clouds, these made ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... cut through the high bluff, just across the "Jeems" river bridge, Richmond burst beautifully into view; spreading panorama-like over her swelling hills, with the evening sun gilding simple houses and towering spires alike into a glory. The city follows the curve of the river, seated on amphitheatric hills, retreating from its banks; fringes of dense woods shading their slopes, or making blue background against the sky. No city of the South has grander or more ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... profane person and a despiser of the gods. On one occasion he presumed to violate with the axe a grove sacred to Ceres. There stood in this grove a venerable oak so large that it seemed a wood in itself, its ancient trunk towering aloft, whereon votive garlands were often hung and inscriptions carved expressing the gratitude of suppliants to the nymph of the tree. Often had the Dryads danced round it hand in hand. Its trunk measured fifteen cubits round, and it overtopped the other trees as they overtopped ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... her yet seemed to grow no shorter ahead, and the dark line of cloud mystery, with the towering mountains beyond, were no nearer than when she first started. It seemed much like riding on a rocking-horse, one never got anywhere, only no rocking-horse flew ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... can be called easy under the best of circumstances; but easy it was as compared with what lay beyond and above it. Nevertheless, many Argonauts had never penetrated even thus far, and of those who had, a considerable proportion had turned back at the giant pit three miles above. One look at the towering barrier had been enough for them. The Chilkoot was more than a mountain, more than an obstacle of nature; it was a Presence, a tremendous and a terrifying Personality which overshadowed the minds of men and could neither be ignored ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... to build a wall about his idol, that he may enjoy his moments of expansion unseen and unmolested. This square of earth, for instance, was not much larger than the space covered by the chamber roof above us; and yet, with the high walls towering over the rose-stalks, it was as secluded as a monk's cloister. We found it, indeed, on later acquaintance, as poetic and delicately sensuous a retreat as the romance-writers would wish us to believe ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... gone a few paces, she turned round to look at her cabin, which appeared very small and very gray under the shadow of the towering snow-clad fir trees. She glanced at her humble home with an affectionate gaze. "Many a happy day have I spent in that little old hut!" she mused solemnly. "Ah me! The Lord giveth, and ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... of so peculiarly diversified a formation, that, within the compass of ten miles, every possible variety of scenery existed— from the level stretch of prairie to the towering snow-peaks of the mountains; from the brake-encompassed swamp, in which frogs, ducks, geese, plover, and other denizens of the marshes maintained perpetual jubilee, to the dry bush-dotted mounds and undulating ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... a sense——" began the Earl, but Vassilan grasped his arm, and evidently besought him to come away without another word. Though Valletort was in a towering rage, he obviously thought fit to fall in ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Mount Chappell is five or six hundred feet above the water, a very conspicuous object until, by the clearing away of the haze the high mountains of the great island behind it became visible: their white, towering peaks, bathed in the late showers, reflected the gleaming sunshine with great splendour, and presented a spectacle so magnificent, that the circular, gently sloping Mount Chappell no longer ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis • Matthew Flinders
... the two ships, then passed briefly along a towering range of volcanos on the other side of the lake, and lifted to the cloudless blue sky. His eyes probed on, searching the sunlit, empty vault above him. If a ship ever came again, it would come from there, the two wrecks by the lake arm already fixed in its detectors; it would not come gliding along ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... the boat and Stephen Smith, and saw, towering still higher than themselves, the vertical face of the hill on the right, which did not project seaward so far as the bed of the valley, but formed the back of a small cove, and so was visible like a concave wall, bending round from their ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... click resounded from behind an eight-foot partition; the telephone girl seemed to be engaged conjointly on a novel and a dozen plugs; the office boys were diligent with their chewing gum; all was activity. Mary felt at a loss, but the great McEwan, towering over the switchboard like a Juggernaut, instantly compelled the operator's eyes from their multiple distractions. "Good morning, Mr. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... want you to be glad of that, I only want you to be glad he is not sitting here towering over us.' Guy smiled, ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... almost square house, rises three stories in a stately pile of soft red brick, flanked by two ancient tulip trees towering twenty-five feet above the pavilion roof, while a great box hedge partially hides the front facade and large garden. Five generations of the same family have ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... serious confusion. With these recent assistances, therefore, we propose to say something of the nature of this extraordinary book—a book of which it is to say little to call it unequalled of its kind, and which will, one day, perhaps, when it is allowed to stand on its own merits, be seen towering up alone, far away above all the poetry of the world. How it found its way into the Canon, smiting as it does through and through the most deeply-seated Jewish prejudices, is the chief difficulty about it now; to be explained ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Franklin bequeathing money to the poor of Chelsea. At the south end is an old public-house, with overhanging story and red-tiled roof; it is called the Royal Hospital, and contrasts quaintly with its towering modern red-brick neighbours. ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... the vast distance of the pillars from whence they turn the cupula, on which, they say, is a spire to be erected three hundred feet in height, whose towering pinnacle will stand with such stupendous loftiness above Bow Steeple dragon or the Monument's flaming urn, that it will appear to the rest of the Holy Temples like a cedar of Lebanon, among ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... left-handed swordsman dreads to cross with a man who fights with the left hand. And Harrington, hoary, seamed, scarred, maimed in onslaughts of long forgotten battles, looked long and hard upon this weird of his own dead youth which now rose towering to confront him, menacing him with the armed point of the same shield behind which he himself had so ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... afternoon, we inspanned the oxen and trekked in a north-easterly direction, with the range of hills cut through by the curious gorge about a quarter of a mile on our left and the Drakensberg range of mountains towering aloft on our right some fifty miles distant. We trekked until within half an hour of sunset, by which time we had rounded the north-eastern spur of the range of hills, passed the northern extremity of the gorge, and "struck" another river, about one hundred ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... a summer camp of city-tired people, pitched in a grove of towering redwoods through whose lofty boughs the sunshine trickled down, broken and subdued to soft light and cool shadow. Apart from the main camp were the kitchen and the servants' tents; and midway between was the great dining hall, walled by the living redwood columns, where fresh whispers ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... marks of honour long before the introduction of Heraldry. The helmets and crests of the Greek and Trojan warriors are beautifully described by Homer. The German heralds pay great attention to crests, and depict them as towering to a great height above the helmet. Knights who were desirous of concealing their rank, or wished particularly to distinguish themselves either in the battle field or tourney, frequently decorated their helmets with ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... the new order it was seen that they were not fit dwelling-places for men, either in the complicated and luxurious palaces where the rich fenced themselves from their kind, or in the vast tenements, towering height upon height, ten and twelve stories up, where the swarming poor festered in vice and sickness and famine. If I were to tell you of the fashion of those cities of our egoistic epoch, how the construction was one error ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... of birds were sounding from the countless clumps which skirt this retreat. Within that solitude had I enjoyed the society of a brother, alas, now no more! and yet the landscape wore the same sunny smile as when I carved his name on the towering obelisk before him. I felt that sorrow ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... now abreast of some of the most stupendous heights of this magnificent range; Chimborazo, with its broad round summit, towering like the dome of the Andes, and Cotopaxi, with its dazzling cone of silvery white, that knows no change except from the action of its own volcanic fires; for this mountain is the most terrible ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... towering height beams with a light— The wondrous blaze of Glory's orb; Still those who gaze feel most the rays, While they ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... musically welled into "Casabianca" which, in turn, had merged into "The Queen o' the May," and presently before he realized it Freedom was ringing in the closing notes of "America," and everybody was standing up, pupils filing out, guests shaking hands, babel reigning, and he had seen only a single, towering, handsome ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... has taken measures to curb violent crime and to spur economic activity and trade. The economy is bolstered by annual remittances from abroad of $600-$800 million, mostly from Greece and Italy; this helps offset the towering trade deficit. Agriculture, which accounts for about one-half of GDP, is held back because of frequent drought and the need to modernize equipment, to clarify property rights, and to consolidate small plots of land. Energy ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... she interrupted, with an intensity of indignant emphasis that seemed adequate to smite to the ground the towering figure that faced her. Then, clasping her hands, and in a voice of yearning, ineffable tenderness, she added, "Oh, I have prayed for you, and wept for you, and loved you so! For your own sake, my darling, do not use such words to me!" Here ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... a vast mysterious forest, without village, path, or white inhabitant, stretches inland far and away beyond the utmost ken of man. There the towering pines range themselves in ever-receding colonnades upon a carpet smooth and soft as ever hushed the tread of Sultan's foot. Dripping from their topmost boughs the sunlight's splendor flickers on the floor, as if ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... spake, a great wave came up from the windward, and brake over us, and half filled the craft, and lifted her bows up towering, and then down we went into the trough; and I sat cowed and quaking, and spake never ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... of them as they would look. Vere stretched at full length, flat on her back, on that horrid-looking chair, and Mr Carstairs towering above her, with his face a-quiver with grief and pity, as I had seen it several times during the last week. If it had been me, I should have hated appearing before a lover in such a guise, and I am only an ordinary-looking ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... had summoned the old seer Teiresias, but the seer for some reason is unwilling to appear. When at last he confronts the King, he craves permission to depart with his secret unsaid. Oedipus at once flies into a towering passion, finally accusing him without any justification of accepting bribes from Creon. With equal heat Teiresias more and more clearly indicates in every speech the real murderer, though his words are dark to him who ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... the smoking-room were not lonely. They talked of many of the events he had suggested, and of more. Two of the windows looked out upon the town instead of the river, but they could see little there save the towering spire of the cathedral and the blank and ruined walls. The snow was already very deep, but the fall was not diminishing. The gray gloom of coming twilight, however, was beginning to show through ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and hopelessly involved in a situation for which I could predict no possible relief. I was able to understand now the beauty as well as the madness of Keredec's plan; and I had told him so (after the departure of the Quesnay party), asking his pardon for my brusquerie of the morning. But the towering edifice his hopes had erected was now tumbled about his ears: he had failed to elude the Mursiana. There could be no doubt of her absolute control of the situation. THAT was evident in the every step of the youth now confidently parading ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Kings, heroes, towering spirits among men, Rush to their aim on wild and stormy wings, And far beneath them view the world, whose form For ever varies on from hour to hour. What would they ask of love? That, volatile, In changeful ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... raised to the towering face, and his eyes fell. Every trace of fight, of effrontery, had left him, and he dropped ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... genius, courage, and patience, invigorated and embellished by all those social and domestic virtues, without which the loftiest talents stand isolated in the moral waste around them, like the pillars of Palmyra towering in a wilderness!—when I reflected on all this, it not only disheartened me for the mission of discord which I had undertaken, but made me secretly hope that it might be rendered unnecessary; and that a country which could produce such men and achieve such a revolution, might yet—in spite ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... bands were given butter-milk, and the younger women with babes went cooing and clucking to the hedge where the little ones lay nuzzled up and unattended, some asleep in shawls, some awake on their backs and grabbing at the wondrous forests of marguerites towering up beside them, and all crying with one voice at sight of the breast, which the mothers were as glad to give as they ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... birds had again become masters of the situation, while the cradle had fallen to decay. Walter gave us an awful description of the danger of the fowler's occupation, especially in the Foula Island, where the rocks rose towering a thousand feet above the sea. The top of the cliffs there often projected over their base, so that the fowler had to be suspended on a rope fastened to the top of the cliff, swinging himself backwards ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... tall factory chimneys, towering above that sea of clustered roofs, began with one accord to exhale their quivering vapor, with the energy of a steamer about to sail. Life was beginning anew. Forward, ye wheels of time! And so much the worse for ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... any of ours are of an equal extent; nor can you well conceive a more noble object than this, when seen at a distance: and it is only then that the eye can comprehend the vast expanse and strength of the external wall, with the noble keep towering high ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... ago. Hawking consists in the training and flying of hawks for the purpose of catching other birds. Kings and noblemen, barons and ladies of feudal times, used to delight in following the sport on horseback, and to watch their favourite birds towering high to gain the upward flights in order to swoop down upon some heron, crane, or wild duck, and bear it to the ground. Persons of high rank always carried their hawks with them wherever they went, and in old paintings the hawk upon the wrist of a portrait was the ...
— Old English Sports • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... observance of the day. It was a great contrast to the prayers on the poop which we had on the previous Sunday, when the ship, in all the glory of her fine proportions, with her lofty masts towering into the skies, was rolling on the calm bosom of the ocean, with her idle sails spread vainly to the breeze that would not come; now, she was but a battered and dismantled hulk. The breeze we had wished for had come at last and waxed into a strong wind, which had ultimately developed into ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... hoofs at once stampeded the deer, and then the chase began. The hawks, in turn towering and stooping, showed the line to take, for the deer was invisible to the dogs, and generally to the riders. But the dogs had learnt to work by the hawks, and cutting a corner here, or favoured by a jink there, gradually closed up, the ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... of the Alps, three days' journey from Venice, lies the little town of Cadore on the Pieve, and here it was that Titian was born. On every side rise great masses of rugged mountains towering up to the sky, with jagged peaks and curious fantastic shapes. Clouds float around their summits, and the mist will often wrap them in gloom and give them a strange and awesome look. At the foot of the craggy pass the mountain-torrent of the Pieve roars and tumbles on its way. Far-reaching forests ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... Criswell. That Bondsman should know, miles from the town, that his master had returned was a mystery to her. She had read of such happenings; her father had written of them. But to know them for the very truth! That was, indeed, the magic, and her mountains were towering ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... then turned to the east, through the fine straits that lie between Luzon to the north and the Bisayan islands to the south. As the sun rose, a beautiful spectacle presented itself. To the north was the peak of the Taal volcano, towering above the flat plains of Batangas; and to the south the thickly-wooded, but rock-bound coast of Mindoro, the iron line of which was broken by the harbor of Porto Galera, protected from the fury of the waves by a small islet lying immediately before it. The waters around us were thickly studded with ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... joy to see it ending, not as it began, but "more nearly to the heart's desire." Slowly the mobile blur moved away from the town, and presently the gray half of it dissolved into its elemental units, all in slow recession. The retaken guns in the embrasures pushed up towering clouds of white smoke; to east and to west along the reoccupied parapet ran a line of misty red till the spitfire crest was without a break from flank to flank. Probably there was some Yankee cheering, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... were the famed Basins of Venus, shimmering in the sunlight, flanked by trees and banks of the softest green. On their surface swam the great black swans he had heard so much about. Through a wide rift in the trees he could see the great, grey Castle, half a mile away, towering against the dense greens of the nearby mountain. The picture took his breath away. He forgot Hobbs. He forgot that he was; trespassing. Here, at last, was the Graustark he had seen in his dreams, had come to feel ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... centre of this scene of utter misery the Cathedral and the Cloth Hall, still towering above the general desolation, sublime even in their ruin, the roofs gone, the interiors a heap of rubbish—the rubbish of priceless things—the outer walls battered and broken, but standing as they have stood for ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... hills.' And the hills on Dartmoor are not even very high. Yes Tor, till lately thought to be the highest point, is only a little over two thousand feet; and High Willhayes, its superior, cannot claim to be more than a few feet higher. So there are no towering heights or tremendous precipices to explain its peculiar spell. Sir Frederick Pollock, in paying true homage to the moor, gives the reason that accounts for Dartmoor's dominion—its individuality. 'The reader may think fit to observe, and with undisputable truth, that there are many other ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... traders of Hudson Bay, and so inferred there must be a Northeast Passage. By April, Cook's ships were once more afloat, {321} gliding among the sylvan channels of countless wooded islands up past Sitka harbor, where the Russians later built their fort, round westward beneath the towering opal dome of Mount St. Elias, which Bering had named, to the waters bordering Alaska; but, as the world knows, though the ships penetrated up the channels of many roily waters, they found no open passage. Cook comes down to the Sandwich Islands, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... built houses thereon, the children were born to him on it, and that he would defend it with his life. Continuing, he charged the general with inciting his employes to depredate on the fences and fields. It was natural that this should arouse the mettle of the modern Mars. He flew into a towering rage, and applied many epithets to Mr. Dixon that are not warranted by the Ten Commandments. He even went so far as to raise his riding-whip and to threaten personal violence. Mr. Dixon is a man of few words, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... this son of Anak, approaching from the corridor? Towering a full head above the throng, a figure of superb strength and perfect symmetry, we give him that hearty admiration which is due to a man who illustrates and embellishes manhood. In this case we can give it freely: for that finely balanced head holds a clear, vigorous brain,—those ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... in a most attractive spot, high above the roaring river. It was on the sloping side of the towering border. A natural pathway lead to the plateau above, while a spring of clear water was conveniently ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... north-western Europe. A continent stretched from Ireland to Scandinavia and North Russia, while most of the rest of Europe, except large areas of Russia, France, Germany, and Turkey, was under the sea. Where we now find our Alps and Pyrenees towering up to the snow-line there were then level stretches of ocean. Even the north-western continent was scooped into great inland seas or lagoons, which stretched from Ireland to Scandinavia, and, as we saw, fostered ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... Ragusa fades away, and now the approaching mountains grow higher and wilder. Those lofty peaks, towering above the others, black and forbidding, are Nature's bulwarks of the land which we are visiting. It is from a distance that the name "Black Mountain" seems so aptly given to this fierce little state, though some historians wish to explain the ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon |
