"Vantage" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is displayed in the treatment of Burns as a man, which is broken, apologetical, and confused. The man here presented to us is not that Burns, teres atque rotundus—a burly figure in literature, as, from our present vantage of time, we have begun to see him. This, on the other hand, is Burns as he may have appeared to a contemporary clergyman, whom we shall conceive to have been a kind and indulgent but orderly and orthodox person, anxious ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of sunset burned through and across the water, they gathered on the piazza. It was that dreamy hour when women find it easy to be silent and men to talk. Madeline and her mother sat close, with hands restfully clasped in their joy at being together. Mr. Elton eyed the two young men from his vantage of years of shrewd wisdom. Both the boys were clean-shaven, after the manner of the day, a fashion that seems to become clean manliness, vigorous and self-controlled. Both were good to look at; but here the resemblance ended, for Dick's long ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... numerous episcopal sees; the foundation of new military orders, and the extension of the old ones; the creation of many titled lords, and appointment of viceroys for the conquered provinces. China, thus subdued, will be a vantage-ground from which Spain can control all Asia and a land-route to Europe. Chinese colonists can be imported into the Philippines, "and thus enrich themselves and this land." And, finally, the immediate occupation of China will forestall any advance into the far Orient by the French, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... that the value of neutral participation will come in. Whatever ambitions the neutral powers may have of their own, it may be said generally that they are keenly interested in preventing the settlement from degenerating into a deal in points of vantage for any further aggressions in any direction. Both the United States of America and China are traditionally and incurably pacific powers, professing and practicing an unaggressive policy, and the chief ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of vantage Darwin had reached by 1839. Here was the full outline of his theory; here were the ideas which afterwards came to be embalmed in familiar speech in the phrases "spontaneous variation," and the "survival of the fittest," ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... recruit their hosts. They could not call a whole population into the field, and when beaten in that field, carry on, as Britain would when invaded, a guerilla warfare from wood to wood, and hedge to hedge, as long as a coign of vantage-ground was left. They found themselves a small army of gentlemen, chivalrous and valiant, as slaveholders of our race have always been; but lessening day by day from battle and disease, with no means of recruiting their numbers; while below them and apart from them lay the great mass of ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... content with mediocrity, there is scarcely anything to be said where the conditions are so favorable. But suppose one is not content with mediocrity. Then this highly favored soil is but the vantage-ground from which skill enters on a course of thorough preparation and high culture. A man may plow, harrow, and set with strawberries the land that was planted the previous year in corn, and probably ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... like a log, almost dragging Wendot with him as he fell, and before the youth had had time to recover himself, he had received a deep gash in his sword arm from the foe who pressed on next, and who made a quick dash to try to get possession of the vantage ground of ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Illinois, under Colonel Pugh, made a desperate effort to maintain their position, but were ordered by General Hurlbut to fall back when Lauman retired. These two regiments fell back fighting, forming wherever the ground gave vantage, and turning upon their pursuers. In the little field they halted and replenished their cartridge-boxes. Here the Twenty-second Alabama attacked them, but was so roughly handled that it took no further part in the contest ...
— From Fort Henry to Corinth • Manning Ferguson Force
... politeness itself, and seemed not in the least damped by Mademoiselle Therese's evident gloom. He conducted her up to the gallery at one end of the school, and explained that she could watch every movement from that vantage-point. ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... on the porch of the temple at Li-chiang and from its vantage point could watch the festivities going on about us. The feasting continued until after dark and at daylight the kettles were again steaming to prepare ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... redoubles; cheers and cries Urge on the follower, and the wild acclaim Rolls up, and wakes the echoes of the skies. These scorn to lose their vantage, stung with shame, And life is wagered willingly for fame. Success inspires the hindmost; as they dare, They do; the thought of winning wins the game. With equal honours Chance had crowned the pair, But thus, with outspread hands, Cloanthus ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... individually. Although the cloud curtain still rested on the planet it was probable that the Martians would send some of their airships up to its surface in order to determine what our fate had been. From that point of vantage, with their exceedingly powerful glasses, we feared that they might be able to detect anything unusual upon or in the neighborhood ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putman Serviss
... said Ramon to himself. But aloud he proposed that they should drive to an adjacent hill-top from which the lights of the town could be seen. When he had parked the car on this vantage point and lit a cigarette, Dora began a narrative of a kind with which he was thoroughly familiar. She was of that well-known type of woman who is found in a dubious position, but explains that she has known ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... gravitation; and for the discovery of the different refrangibility of rays of light. His treatise on Optics and his Principia, in which he brought to light the new theory of the universe, place him at the head of modern philosophers—on a high vantage ground, to which none have been elevated, of his age, with the exception of Leibnitz and Galileo. But his greatest glory was his modesty, and the splendid tribute he rendered to the truths of Christianity, whose importance and sublime beauty he was ever most proud ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... automobiles joined in the procession. The subways and elevated roads were crowded to the doors, and at one o'clock, although the game did not begin till two, there was not a vacant seat in the vast stadium, while thousands of deadheads seized every point of vantage on the bluffs that surrounded the grounds. The stands were a perfect riot of beauty and color, and the stentorian voices of the rival rooters, to which was joined the treble of the girls made the air echo with songs and shouts ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... seat, his face red, his eyes blazing, and called Captain Jimmie an old blind mole and an ostrich and everything else in the world foolish and unthinking. Captain Jimmie shouted back with a right good Highland spirit, from his vantage point on the deck and all the Old Boys cheered joyously, declaring this was the one thing needful to make ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... of vantage he saw Cliges riding with three other striplings who were taking their pleasure, carrying lances and shields in order to tilt and to disport themselves. Now is the duke's nephew bent on attacking and injuring ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... Ney and marched for Miranda but, although Ney covered the movement with admirable skill, disputing every ridge and post of vantage, the British pressed forward so hotly that Massena was obliged to destroy all his baggage and ammunition. Ney rashly remained on the east side of the river Cerra, in front of the village of Foz d'Aronce and, ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... on life from the spiritual point of vantage, we may hopefully ask our how, and there will be an answer. To blessed Mary S. Gabriel replied: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."—An answer that ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... upon this scene of horror she perceived an officer, mounted upon a noble charger and followed by several horsemen, take a position upon a hillock not far from the spot where she and her companions were concealed. From this point of vantage the officer, who was evidently a general, could ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... Mussulman descendants were doing the same thing when we at length arrived at the same stage of enlightenment, and the Persian wielder of razor and tweezers to-day performs the same office as belonging to his profession. From my vantage point on the bala-khana of the Lasgird chapar station, I watch, with considerable interest, the process of bleeding a goodly share of the male population of the village; for it is spring-time, and in spring, every Persian, whether well or unwell, considers the spilling ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... in its rocky pit, was not yet buried under the snow, although the white masses came quite close to it, balked, however, of their prey by the pine woods which protected the hamlet. From his vantage point the low houses looked like paving-stones in a large meadow. Hauser's little daughter was there now in one of those gray-colored houses. In which? Ulrich Kunsi was too far away to be able to make them out separately. How he would ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... which after taking New Orleans Admiral Farragut had attacked in vain, down to Port Hudson, 120 miles further south, where the Confederate forces had since then seized and fortified another point of vantage. Vicksburg, it will be observed, lies 175 to 180 miles south of Memphis, or from Grand Junction, between Memphis and Corinth, the points in the occupation of the North which must serve Grant as a base. At Vicksburg itself, and for some distance south of it, a line ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... felt any particular interest in the Irish movement, or cared very much whether Ireland obtained her national independence or had to live without it. France, of course, was willing to make use of Ireland as a vantage-ground from which to harass Great Britain, and the Batavian Republic, which had for some time been lapsing out of European notice, was eager to distinguish herself and to play a conspicuous political part ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... aloud to ride at them, and spare no man. And, as he spoke, every golden fernbough, and every coigne of vantage among the rocks, began to blaze and crackle with gun and pistol shot. Jim's horse sprung aloft and fell, hurling him forcibly to the ground, and a tall young trooper, dropping his carbine, rolled heavily ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... went back to the vantage point among the rocks and waited until Will had thrown the rope with a stone tied to its end over an upper branch. Presently I saw Coutlass' dead body go clambering ungracefully up among the branches, looking so much less dead than alive that I thought at first Will ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... that! The inevitable hour arrived when she should be instructed on the piano, and the second time the music teacher came her pupil was discovered on the roof of the house, with the ladder drawn up after her. She did not wish to learn the piano, and from that point of vantage informed her family that it was a waste of money. She would hide in the hayloft with a novel; she would be off by herself in a canoe at six o'clock in the morning; she would go for walks in the rain of windy October ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... approaching? Five minutes later, Donald was sure they were, and with a few swift kicks scattered his fire. Then, he ran down to the water's edge, and removed his fish and home-made line, finally retreating up the bank to a vantage-point behind a bushy tree. Too many persons were anxious to lay hands on him for him to greet the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Before I went to Clifton, my mental life was all interior, a rack of baseless dream upon dream. But, now, I was eager to look out of the window, to go out in the streets; I was taken with a curiosity about human life. Even from my vantage of the window- pane, I watched boys and girls go by with an interest which began ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... their gait carried them swiftly to their vantage ground, and hope stirred Steve to give ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... point of vantage in the second story of the Jaffry Building, the candidate and his manager could see that each sheet bore that ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... nests had been planted in every conceivable point of vantage from a camouflaged bush on the hillside to the concealed "lookout" in the tallest treetop. Cannon of every caliber had been placed throughout the woods and under the lea of each protecting hill or cliff. A system of narrow-gauge railroads sent its ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... he loaded his rifle, and, from a convenient nook, he watched for the intruder. The tamaracks crooned in the wind, the Yuba mumbled in the canon, the Sierras lay in a line of white against the stars. As he crept along to a point of better vantage he came to a tree with something tacked on it—something that shone in the dark like a match. In its own light he read, "Notice! I, Thomas Bowers, claim this ground for placer mining." Raising his hand to tear off the paper, he was amazed to feel a thrill pass through it, and his ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... rode some distance, and then turned on another course, which brought them presently to a hill covered with ash and oak. They rode among the trees and from that point of vantage searched the whole horizon. Ned caught the glint of something in the south, and called Smith's ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and limped out into the middle of the dusty road. From this vantage point he slowly and conscientiously ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... his immortal "little speech." To a group of veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic he related, casually, what he saw while a college student at Gettysburg, after working his way through the crowd of fifteen thousand people to the front of the platform on that memorable day. From this point of vantage he saw and heard everything, and there is no gainsaying the vivid memories of his first impressions—how the President held the little pages in both hands straight down before him, swinging his tall form to right, to left and to the front again as he emphasized the now ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... interest through the extraordinary situation. Such an awakening assures a certain measure of interest remaining over for the detailed relation of the everyday activities of life, when removed from the exceptional situation. Upon this vantage ground the novel of everyday life was built. Near the mid-century comes another mighty influence from England, Richardson, who brings into the narration of middle-class, everyday existence, the intense analysis of human sensibilities. Richardson ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... to Duesseldorf in time for the performance, which was admirable, in spite of Barty. From his coign of vantage, amongst the second tenors, he could see Julia's head with its golden fleece; Julia, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Wild Duck. Chiappino is Browning's Werle; the reverse side of a type which he had drawn with so much indulgence in the Luigi of Pippa Passes. Plainly, it was a passing mood; as plainly, a mood which, from the high and luminous vantage-ground of 1846, he could look back upon with regret, almost with scorn. His intercourse with Elizabeth Barrett was far advanced before she was at length reluctantly allowed to see it. "For The Soul's ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... From this vantage-ground, Jackson issued his proclamation of December 10, in which he plainly told South Carolina that the federal laws would be enforced at the point of the bayonet, and that, furthermore, the Union was ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... fellow up on that tree so he can salute his majesty in true turkey fashion," shouted one man, and Jake, game as usual, tossed a big gobbler up in one of the mock Christmas-trees. From this point of vantage the bird made the jungle resound with its protests, while the troop screamed with laughter as Jake undertook to interpret ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... remonstrances, by sheer force? Yet we see no convulsion in the community. Nothing intimates that a great grief is fallen upon Israel. Everybody eats, drinks, and sleeps as usual. The pulpits still stand, and the law and the gospel are appealed to from that vantage ground. The sacramental cup is still raised to devout lips. The gray heads of the culprits still go in and out among the people with no diminishing of honor—no odium is attached to their persons; no stigmas to their names. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... equally at ease in the air, the earth, and the water. He makes himself at home in our beverages and our foods. Our mouths furnish desirable lurking places for him, our hair, and finger-nails are favorite posts of vantage; while he delights to disport himself in our blood. He is the active agent of decay, and the prime cause of disease. He is the most selfish of parasites. The world for a long time disregarded him, but now acknowledges him as one of the mightiest of conquerers; for while other devastators have ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... of Quebec stands on top of the steep hill that dominates the junction of the Saint Charles River with the Saint Lawrence. That is Cape Diamond—a natural stronghold. Indians and French, and British, and Americans have fought for that coign of vantage. For a century and a half the Union Jack has floated there, and under its fair protection the Province of Quebec, keeping its quaint old language and peasant customs, has become an important part of ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... just twenty years, marked by the opening Session, since I first had the opportunity of viewing the House of Commons from a coign of 'vantage behind the Speaker's Chair. It is more than twenty years since I looked on the place with opportunity for closely studying it. But, as I am reminded by an inscription in an old rare copy of "Dod," it was in February, 1873, that I was installed ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... dropped flat on their faces while F. and I crawled slowly and cautiously through the mud until we had gained the cover of a shallow ravine that ran in the beast's general direction. Noting carefully a certain small thicket as landmark, we stooped and moved as fast as we could down to that point of vantage. There we cautiously parted the grasses and looked. The sable had disappeared. The place where he had been lying was plainly to be identified, and there was no cover save a tiny bush between two and three feet high. We ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... flags, worn and green with age, but in some places there were stretches of trimly-kept grass. Two stone bridges arched and dipped from the terrace to the opposite bank of the stream. Wonderful vistas of the surrounding country were to be seen from the vantage ground of the terrace; here a peep through a sylvan glade to the blue haze of the hills beyond; there a glimpse of the roofs of the village of Aylingford, a mile away; and again a deep, downward view into dark woods, ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... above a country that looked as if it still hung upon the edge of chaos: wild, fertile, massive, barren, luxuriant, crouching on the ragged line of the Pacific. From his point of vantage he saw long ranges of stupendous mountains, some but masses of scowling crags, some green with forests of mammoth trees projecting their gaunt rigid arms above a carpet of violets; indolent valleys and swirling rivers; snow on the black peaks of the North; the riotous colour of eternal ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... admitting her adventure, and incurring great wrath at head-quarters, but that was a lesser evil than passing a night on the roof. She crawled to her old vantage-ground, and descended to the right, where a gable sloped steeply. At the bottom she passed along a wide gutter, and, rounding a corner, found that she could easily drop on to a lower portion of the roof. She was in a state of tense excitement. Where was she getting to? Would ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... change, I thought, had somehow come about in the arrangement of the landscape. It was not that my point of vantage gave me a different view, but that an alteration had apparently been effected in the relation of the tent to the willows, and of the willows to the tent. Surely the bushes now crowded much closer—unnecessarily, unpleasantly close. They ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... future safety, she would be ready to give the same proofs she had always given of her desire to restore peace; but it could not be expected she should listen to expedients of which the king of Prussia was to reap the whole ad vantage, after having begun the war, and wasted the dominions of a prince, who relied for his security upon the faith of treaties, and the appearance of harmony between them." Upon the receipt of this answer, the court of London made several proposals ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... all men are fashioned, even in the womb, with features that shall hereafter beautifully harmonise with the politics of the grown creature. Now WALL, being ordained a poor man and a Chartist, is endowed with a "laughing hyena" countenance. He even loses the vantage ground of our common humanity, and is sunk by his poverty and his politics to the condition of a beast, and of a most unamiable beast into the bargain. However, the vast enfolding iniquity is yet to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... could not be resisted I wheeled my horse and rode up the gravelled driveway to Judge Moran's door, but to my vigorous knocking there was no response. The shades were drawn at the windows, the house silent, and yet I felt convinced the old partisan was within, watching from some point of vantage. Yet if I believed this, the same silence and refusal to respond also served to convince me that Miss Hardy was no longer there. She was a vastly different type, and would exhibit interest even in the coming of the enemy. Ay! and ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... fifty miles of it: here, clear to your glass, has the head of Lacy visibly emerged on us, as if for survey of phenomena:—head of Lacy sure enough (body of him lying invisible in the heights, passes and points of vantage); and its NECK of fifty miles, like the neck of a war-horse clothed with thunder. On which (thinks Schmettau privately) you may, too late, make ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... cold is the comfort, small cause for singing it gives. Our own dear apostle seems to have dropped for a moment from his higher vantage-ground to the level of Solomon's wisdom when smarting under "oppression and the violent perverting of judgment," he cried to the high priest, "God [the higher than the highest] shall smite thee, thou whited wall." But we hear ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... window opening on to the veranda. It was his favorite vantage point in leisure. The after breakfast pipe usually found him there. His evening pipe, when the sun was dipping toward the glistening, fretted peaks of the hills, rarely found him elsewhere. It was the point from which, in a way, he was able to ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... assumed the volume and the tumult of a cascade. His voice rose to a shout, sank to a whisper, ran up and down the gamut of conversational melody.... In his own study or drawing-room, what he loved was to capture the visitor in a low arm-chair's "sofa-lap of leather", and from a most unfair vantage of height to tyrannize, to walk round the victim, in front, behind, on this side, on that, weaving magic circles, now with gesticulating arms thrown high, now grovelling on the floor to find some reference in a folio, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... Nona were picked up in those emaciated, powerful arms as easily as though they were children, and the unhuman creatures proceeded at a slow, awkward pace away from the hall, toward the outer edge of the island. From his uncomfortable vantage point, Pemberton noticed that they were passing clumps of intricate stone machinery. Dead-faced automatons, similar to their captors, were tending the whirring machinery with ordered, ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... learning. I do not know whether I have been what people call a great reader; I cannot claim even to have been a very wise reader; but I have always been conscious of a high purpose to read much more, and more discreetly, than I have ever really done, and probably it is from the vantage-ground of this good intention that I shall sometimes be found writing here rather than from the facts ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... skyey reaches find High vantage-points and view him from afar. How low he seems to the ascended mind, How brief he seems where all things endless are; This little playmate of the mighty wind This young ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... commonplace of each man's visage, with the perspiration and weary self-importance on it, and the very cut of his pantaloons, and the stiffness or laxity of his shirt-collar, and the dust on the back of his black coat. In order to become majestic, it should be viewed from some vantage point, as it rolls its slow and long array through the centre of a wide plain, or the stateliest public square of a city; for then, by its remoteness, it melts all the petty personalities, of which it is made up, into one broad mass of existence,—one great life,—one collected body of mankind, ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is the critic in this matter of fielding! and how delightfully simple the bowling looks from that admirably safe vantage-ground, the pavilion! Just as to a man comfortably stationed in the grand-stand at Aintree nothing looks easier than the way in which the best horses in the world flit over the five-foot fences, leaving them behind with scarcely ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... of the head saleswomen in the great dry-goods establishments, arrayed in black silk gowns, which they take off in the dressing-room when they go away at night—who stare with an imposing air, from the vantage-point of their mountains of curls, at the poor creatures who venture ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... lady who loves him bows low: He fears not the fight, for his racket is drawn, And he spurs his great steed as he charges the foe. And the sound of his war-cry is heard in the din, "Fifteen, thirty, forty, deuce, vantage, I win!" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various
... and, as regards the field of fire, it was the weakest point. In another respect, however, it was the strongest, for the defenders were screened by the trees from the enemy's artillery. The rocky hill on the left, facing north-east, was a point of vantage, for an open corn-field lay between it and Bull Run. Within the position, behind the copses and undulations, there was ample cover for all troops not employed on the fighting-line; and from the ridge in rear the general could view the field ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... parade we had a direct and unbroken view of the localities I have endeavoured to describe, and holding this vantage-ground, we should be enabled to ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... difficult and the wind had veered so far to the east as to give him a favourable opportunity, after making a short stretch to windward, of laying through in a single reach. But this stretch would bring him under the necessity of passing very near the "Rover," or of losing no small portion of his 'vantage ground. He did not hesitate. When the vessel was as nigh the weather shore as his busy lead told him was prudent the ship was tacked, and her head laid directly towards the still motionless and seemingly ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... moved forward again as silently as before. He reached the door and crouched beside it. A murmur of voices came to him from within. Jimmie Dale's lips parted in grim irony. The game was up, of course, but he was occupying precisely the same coign of vantage that, according to the Rat, the Rat had occupied that afternoon, and if the Rat had been able, undiscovered, to see and hear, then he, Jimmie Dale, could do the same. The slim, tapering, sensitive fingers closed on the doorknob—a thin ray of light began to steal through between the ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... discussing with animation—even levity—the likelihood of an engagement the next day. It was the general opinion that if Beauregard meant to fight he would have made a stand at some of the excellent points of vantage that had been encountered in the day's march. Jack smiled wisely over these amateur guesses, and quite abashed the ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... border town between England and Scotland; at any rate it was a vantage-ground in days gone by that was of a great value to one faction and a thorn in the side to the other. The conquering and unconquered Scots are the back-bone of Britain, there's no denying that; and Carlisle is near enough to the border ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... resentful because I'd been robbed of the normal kind of childhood that the other girls had had; but now, I don't feel that way in the least. I regard it as a very unusual adventure. It gives me a sort of vantage point from which to stand aside and look at life. Emerging full grown, I get a perspective on the world, that other people who have been brought up in the thick ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... motive of the tragedy; a bit of proof that Mr. Leavenworth threatened his niece with his displeasure, or Mr. Clavering with his revenge, would place me on the vantage-point at once; no arresting of Eleanore then! No, my lady! I would walk right into your own gilded parlors, and when you asked me if I had found the murderer yet, say 'yes,' and show you a bit of paper which would surprise you! But missing links are not so ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... is fair, the tide flood. Carry your craft further in-shore, Master Bridges, that we may parley with these pirates from the vantage ground of our own deck," ordered the captain, and was obeyed so fairly that the Little James presently lay hove-to within a biscuit-toss of the staging, where some fifteen or twenty men were diligently employed in curing a take ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... they had contrived a sheaf of pretty documents which did more honor to their astuteness than to their loyalty, and which, with the signature of the Queen, would put them in possession of all the strongholds on the coast and many positions of vantage throughout the island, including the splendid city of Nikosia—which had shown much dangerous friendliness for Queen Caterina. It was a marvellous bold scheme—a bloodless victory for Alfonso, Prince of Naples; and Rizzo grew grimly ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... sufficiently recruited to follow the flood of immigrating gold-seekers to the placers and valleys, there seemed no occasion for it. His fortune had been already found in the belt of arable slope behind the wooded defile, and in the miraculously located coign of vantage on what was now the great highway of travel and the only oasis and first relief of the weary journey; the breaking down of his own team at that spot had not only been the salvation of those who found at "Hays" the means of prosecuting the last part of their ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... you left, I said That correspondence was my rock ahead, Lest, when you found that ne'er an answer came To all your letters, you should call it shame. But where's my vantage if you won't agree To go by law, because the law's with me? Nay more, you say I'm faithless to my vow In sending you ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... one more thing to do. If I can but watch Long Robin, surely I shall learn somewhat from him. I vow that that is better far than prowling aimlessly about the dell. Let me spend my time and strength in building for myself some nook high up in one of yon trees, from which vantage ground I may spy upon his doings. If I can but get me up high enough, I can watch him from spot to spot. Sure I should be stupider than a daylight owl an I could not learn somewhat from his looks and actions on his next visit. And it will be safer for me to have ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... which there rose up a lofty flag-pole. It had been erected by some former proprietor, for the patriotic purpose of flying the American flag; but, to Colonel Witham's thrifty mind, it had offered an excellent vantage for displaying a dingy banner, with the advertisement of the Half Way House lettered thereon. This fluttered now in a mournful way, half way up the mast, as though it were a sign of mourning for the quality of food ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... from the Roman occupation of Gaul. The place commanded one of the great roads into Spain, and in the fourth century Romans and Franks ousted each other from such a point of vantage. In the year 436, Theodoric, King of the Visigoths, superseded both these parties; and it is during his occupation that the inner enceinte was raised upon the ruins of the Roman fortifications. Most of the Visigoth ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... every one, and to crowd together to see the spectacle which was preparing, so that I, really more to make room for the curious than out of curiosity on my part, climbed on a bench behind me which was carved in the entrance of the church. From this point of vantage I could see with perfect ease the two sovereigns and the old woman, who was sitting on the stool before them apparently scribbling something down. But hardly had I caught sight of them, when suddenly she got up, leaning on her crutches, and, gazing around at the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... linger; people have a relief against the sky, as they pass over it; artists look patiently thither; lovers, the sad, the humorous, and the meditative, stop there to observe and to muse; they lean over the parapet and watch the flowing tide; they look thence around as from a pleasant vantage-ground. The bridge, in populous old towns, is the rendezvous, the familiar landmark, the traditional nucleus of the place, and perhaps the only picturesque framework in all those marts and homes, more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... apparent that no one else had seen the accident. Orlando had been at a point of vantage on a lonely rise about eighty feet above the level of the prairie. Where horse and rider lay was a good two miles, but within seven minutes he had reached ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the wall to catch whatever breeze might stir, "composed myself for the night," as it used to be written, and lay looking out upon the quiet garden where a thin white haze was rising. If, in taking this coign of vantage, I had any subtler purpose than to seek a draught against the warmth of the night, it did not fail of its reward, for just as I had begun to drowse, the gallery steps creaked as if beneath some immoderate ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... way, unassisted except by his cane, toward the City Hall, carrying the first edition of a great metropolitan daily of the flaming variety; in the evening, at the station once more. He had made these two posts of vantage his own, as unfortunates in the Old World take possession of sunny corners beside cathedral doors, and no one ventured to trespass within ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... to think that observation has on most points of general applicability said its last word, and he who has mounted the tower of Plato to look abroad from it will never hope to climb another with so lofty a vantage of speculation. Where it is so simple if not so easy a thing to hold one's peace, why add to the general confusion of tongues? There is something disheartening, too, in being expected to fill up not less than a certain measure of time, as if the mind were an hour-glass, that need only be shaken and ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... know. Enough that my whole thought was centered on the lookout I was keeping and it was with a shock of surprise I suddenly saw the whole scene blotted from my view by the passing by of some one on my own side of the gallery. This must have been the Englishman who found his vantage-point from behind the other pedestal. He went by quickly, and as the opening cleared once more, I beheld the woman for whom I was waiting appear in the spot selected. For an instant I was dazzled. I had not expected ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... France. I am not going to say that we have not just as good in Australia, but the wonderful greenness and the trees were such a change to us after Egypt that the boys just hung from the carriage-windows, and as there was a good number that could not get these vantage-points, they scrambled onto the roofs of the carriages, so as not to miss any of that ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... decided to go on board the Red Cross steamer State of Texas, which was lying off the government wharf, nearly opposite the custom-house, and within one hundred yards of the two big monitors Puritan and Miantonomoh. I made the change just in time to see, from the best possible point of vantage, the great event of the week—the arrival of the two powerful fleets commanded respectively by Admiral Sampson and Commodore Schley. Early Wednesday morning the graceful, black, schooner-rigged despatch-boat ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... With this vantage ground beneath his feet Cardan raised the study of Algebra to a point it had never reached before, and climbed himself to a height of fame to which Medicine had not yet brought him. His name as a mathematician was known throughout Europe, and the success of his book was remarkable. ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... were eager to pursue him, but Wallace checked the motion. "Let us not hunt the lion till he stand at bay!" cried he. "He will retire far enough from the Scottish borders, without our leaving this vantage ground ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... Canadians at Chateauguay. Wilkinson did little better. British troops, among them Nairne's regiment, were hurried down the river under Colonel Morrison to harass, if possible, Wilkinson's rear and to fire upon his 300 boats from the points of vantage on the shore. After a slow descent, day after day, on the night of November 10th the rear of the American force, under General Boyd, landed and encamped near Crysler's farm, a short distance above the beginning of the Long Sault Rapids on the St. Lawrence, to descend which ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... vantage on Lake Michigan, the village of Milwaukee, a center for lumber and grain transport and a place of entry for Eastern goods, grew into a thriving city. It claimed twenty thousand inhabitants, when in 1848 Congress admitted Wisconsin to ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... God only knew, but hiding they were with cocked weapons, firmly gripped knives at some point of vantage that had been carefully chosen—as they expected nothing less than half our crew. I could almost feel their nearness; so alert were my senses that I fancied I could smell ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... shall have nothing to fear. The moment that this mass is impressed with the belief that we wish to govern India only for ourselves, or as the French govern Algiers, from that moment we must lose our vantage ground and decline. We may war against the native chiefs of India, but we cannot war against the people—we need not fear what may be called political dangers, but we must guard carefully against those of a social character which would unite ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... fighting and hostile patrols, endeavoring to get in touch with the enemy's main force. Other patrols are sometimes sent out to prevent hostile detachments from approaching the outposts; they endeavor to locate the hostile patrols, drive them back, preventing them from gaining any vantage point from which they can observe the outpost line. These are called combat patrols and have an entirely different ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... hill was made for the very purpose," said General Dix; and no doubt he thought so. Generals, when they have fine positions and big guns and prostrate people lying under their thumbs, are inclined to think that God's providence has specially ordained them and their points of vantage. It is a good thing in the mind of a general so circumstanced that 200,000 men should be made subject to a dozen big guns. I confess that to me, having had no military education, the matter appeared in a different light, and I could not work up ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... had told me that from fear they had always complied with the manners of the court. I felt that if I did not stand up for my social position at once, I should be treated with contempt during the remainder of my visit, and thus lose the vantage-ground I had assumed of appearing rather as a prince than a trader, for the purpose of better gaining the confidence of the king. To avert over-hastiness, however—for my servants began to be alarmed as I demurred ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... promise of a safe survey of the Indian camp, where doubtless such prisoners as there were would be held, I felt sure would be found amid the shadows of the west bank of that southerly stream along which the lodges were set up. From that vantage point, if from any, I should be able to judge how best to proceed on the perilous ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... been removed, and Burnside, taking command, led his army to the riverside before Fredericksburg. Carleton was witness of the bombardment of the city by the Federal artillery. From his coign of vantage at General Sumner's headquarters, on the piazza of an elegant mansion, one hundred feet above the Rappahannock, and about three-quarters of a mile from it, he could see, as though it were a great cartoon and he a weaver of the Gobelins tapestry of history, the awful pattern ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... of the destroyers was a spectacle that brought thousands of men, women, and children of Newport to the points of vantage along the shore or to small craft of all sorts in which they kept as close to the destroyers, preparing for their seaward flight, as they could. It was Sunday, a day when crowds were at leisure, but it was also a day when many of the officers and crew of the flotilla ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... ago quite unexpectedly and suddenly. One morning there was no dove; on the following morning, having fluttered hither from I know not what remote and solitary region, it had perched on the branch of a poplar set close to the house. There it remained while we breakfasted, and from that point of vantage it broke out into a long series of loud and melodious cooings that sounded like nothing so much as a gurgling stream of benedictions poured out over the house and those who dwelt in it by one who plainly proposed to be a grateful though not a paying guest. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 5, 1916 • Various
... leave of Cecily by Regent's Park, set out to walk homewards. He was heavy-hearted, and occasionally a fit of savage feeling against Elgar took hold of him, but his mood remained that of one who watches life's drama from a point of vantage. Sitting close by Cecily's side, he had been made only more conscious of their real remoteness from each other—of his inability to give her any kind of help. He wished she had not come to him, for he saw she had hoped to meet with warmer sympathy, and perhaps she was now more than ever oppressed ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... luck, for I got three men within very few minutes of one another; and then when I was fondly imagining that I might pick off dozens more from my coign of vantage, I was swept back into our lines under such a storm of fire as I have never experienced before. I should tell you that there are practically only two shooting-grounds where this curious sport may be had; there are only two areas of brick and ruins ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... are no longer fought only with books and dogmas, opinions and theories. Everything may serve nowadays, from money, which is the fuel of nations, to wit, which is the weapon of the individual; and the man who would lose no possible vantage must have both a heavy hand and ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... easy. He watched the door of the hotel, himself unseen, from the windows of a billiard saloon opposite, which he had frequented in former days. Yet he was surprised the same afternoon to see her, from his coigne of vantage, reentering the hotel, where he was sure he had left her a few moments ago. Had she gone out by some other exit,—or had she been disguised? But on entering his room that evening he was confounded by an incident that seemed to him as convincing of her identity as it was audacious. Lying ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... interested in efforts for the betterment of the community; and especially in the last years of his active life the social situation in Montreal weighed heavily on his heart and conscience. He beheld the city from his uptown coign of vantage and the vision troubled him. The social evils of this great commercial centre challenged him to do something for the alleviation of distress, the improvement of housing conditions, the prevention of such slums as ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... as should be a theatre for any show, with heights around it insignificant, but offering a vantage ground whence could be watched the struggle in the midst. There was a sacred centre—an island and a mount—and, within the lines, so great a concourse of gladiatorial souls as befits the greatest of spectacles. I ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... Magna. An elderly porter, putting on his coat as he came, issued, with the dogged aid of one bound by custom to perform a hopeless mission, from the small, redbrick lamp room. The station master, occupying a position of vantage in front of the shed which enclosed the booking office, looked up and down the lifeless row of closed and streaming windows, with an expectancy dulled by daily disappointment, for the passengers who seldom alighted. On this occasion no records were broken. ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... discussed, and an infinite variety of opinions are expressed in relation to them. Some suppose the mission grows out of foreign complications, of which, as yet, we can have no knowledge, and that, to maintain the vantage ground of France or England, or both, Mr. Seward may have a scheme of recognition and alliance, etc., looking to the control of affairs on this continent by the United States and Confederate States in conjunction, with commercial arrangements, etc. Both Seward and Benjamin are regarded by their ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... often mentioned in old French romances, were either window-balconies or architectural points of vantage commanding some pleasing prospect. The conventional translation in the ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... From this coign of vantage he had studied her sweet, serious, oval face as she sat placidly reading a little volume in her lap, only once in a while raising a pair of very dark, very beautiful, very heavily browed and lashed brown eyes for brief survey of the forbidding landscape; then, with ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... Lively from her vantage-ground. "You were called up last night to see that child on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... front line between the "A" and "B" trenches, the left of our new sector. The ridge, called Observatory, on account of its numerous O.P.'s, was sacred to the Gunners, and no one was allowed to linger there, for fear of betraying these points of vantage. Beyond it was a valley, and beyond that again some high ground N.E. of the hill, afterwards known as Mountsorrel, on account of Colonel Martin's Headquarters, which were on it. The line ran over the top of this high ground, which was the meeting place of the old winter trenches ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... out-breaking, all at once, Left the man whole and sound of body indeed,— But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too wide, Making a clear house of it too suddenly, The first conceit that entered might inscribe Whatever it was minded on the wall {90} So plainly at that vantage, as it were (First come, first served), that nothing subsequent Attaineth to erase those fancy-scrawls The just-returned and new-established soul Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart That henceforth she will read or these or none. And first—the man's ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... being yet on the Lobau, some entirely over on the left bank, but a large portion still on the right bank. His cavalry was again sent to clear the Marchfeld of the Austrian light horse, who were coursing from one vantage-point to another; and he himself, in order to survey the country, advanced to the first slight rise beyond the low meadows which border the river. Near where he stood was the comfortable hamlet of Aspern, composed like the others round about of one-story stone houses and high stone barns, some ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... misses the specifically dramatic effect of the scenes. The author invites it to play at blind-man's-buff with the characters, instead of unsealing its eyes and enabling it to watch the game from its Olympian coign of vantage. ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... paused for the fifth time. The crowd—knotty Spartans, keen Athenians, perfumed Sicilians—pressed his pulpit closer, elbowing for the place of vantage. Amid a lull in their clamour ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... of vantage I have watched our beach for some time, but as our services are not likely to be much needed here I must return to our Ambulance which lies to the east of the rock, and we must follow our Brigade (86) ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... then, and believe still, were the flappings of their tails! And don't I recall you again, sitting on the tip-top stone of the cradle-turret over the highest battlement of the castle of St. Michael's Mount, with not a ledge or coigne of vantage 'twixt you and the fathomless ocean under you, distant three thousand feet? Last, do I forget you clambering up the goat-path to King Arthur's castle of Tintagel, when, in my vain wish to follow, I grovelled and clung to the soil like a ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... swords with blood were gilt; But the rampart is won, and the spoil begun, And all but the after carnage done, Shriller shrieks now mingling come From within the plundered dome: Hark to the haste of flying feet That splash in the blood of the slippery street; But here and there, where 'vantage ground Against the foe may still be found, Desperate groups, of twelve or ten, Make a pause, and turn again— With banded backs against the wall, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... supper. Afterward they went out again to view an elaborate display of fireworks given under the auspices of the town. Everywhere were hilarious cowboys, who as soon as they recognized Bert crowded about the party and made progress difficult. At last they struggled to a point of vantage where they could see everything going on, and spent ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... when I returned to Richmond, I was the owner of a control of the little West Virginia and Wyanoke Railroad. It was a long distance from the presidency of the Great South Midland and Atlantic, but I watched still from some vantage ground in my imagination, the gleaming tracks of the big road sweeping straight on ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... although "purged" in 1559, was not injured, and was used in 1567 for the coronation of James VI., then but thirteen months old. When General Monk in 1651 was besieging the castle, the church tower was one of the points of vantage seized by his soldiers, and the little bullet pits all over it indicate how hot must have been the fire directed against them. It was held by the Highlanders in 1746, and its bells pealed in honour of ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... commence." The mutual enemy of the "high contracting parties" first opened his book, and then his mouth, and in such solemn tones, that it was enough to frighten even a widow, much less a bachelor. As the ceremony verged to a conclusion, Tom Loftus and Dick the Devil edged up towards their 'vantage-ground on either side of the blooming widow, now nearly finished into a wife, and stood like greyhounds in the slip, ready to start after puss (only puss ought to be spelt here with a B). The widow, having been married before, was less nervous than Durfy, and, suspecting the intended ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... wound, even lightly, with any wound but the really "faithful" one of a loving caution or reproof in Christ. No one is to be so independent in one aspect as the Christian man, and particularly the Christian Minister. Few men have so strong a vantage-ground for independence as the Clergyman of the English national Church. But it is the sort of independence which carries also the deepest obligation, the strongest sort of noblesse oblige. It is "for their sakes." And so the same man ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... both in the square and in the nave of the cathedral. Peasants from the countryside come in in bands, and before the hour of noon every vantage place is occupied, and the square and the streets commanding it are filled with a ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... scene of action. There were buildings on Sagres headland as old as the eleventh century; Greek geography had made this the starting-point of its shorter and continental measurements for the length of the habitable world, and the Genoese, whose policy was to buy up points of vantage on every coast, were eager to plant a colony there, but Portugal was not ready to become like the Byzantine Empire, a depot for Italian commerce, and Henry had his own reasons for ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... vast specimen of Episcopalianism in architecture. Miltonic in its grandeur and proportions, and Miltonic in its prosiness and mongrel classicism also, yet its power and effectiveness are unmistakable. The beholder has no vantage-ground from which to view it, or to take in its total effect, on account of its being so closely beset by such a mob of shops and buildings; yet the glimpses he does get here and there through the opening made by some street, ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... be no reason of our republic. Let us renounce and throw off forever the yoke of a tyranny more oppressive than any in the annals of the world. As those standing on the mountain tops first discern the coming beams of morning, let us, from the vantage-ground of liberal institutions, first recognize the ascending sun of a new era. Lift high, the gates and let the King of glory in—the King of true glory, of peace. I catch the last words of music from the lips of ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck |
