"Avalanche" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lines is commonly spoken of as the Isonzo Front. It is not like the Front in the higher Alps, where, as on the Adamello, trenches are cut in the solid ice, where the firing of a single gun may precipitate an avalanche, where more Italians are killed by avalanches than by Austrians, where guns have to be dragged up precipices and perched on ledges fit only, one might think, for an eagle's nest, where food, ammunition, reinforcements, wounded and sick have ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... destroyed me like an avalanche; One night turned all my summer back to snow: Next morning not a bird upon my branch, Not ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... The southern body was small, not more than a score, compact, riding smartly but with military order and precision. The man at their head, the officer in command, no doubt, spurred on and began to shout at the oncoming northerners. He might as well have spoken fair words to an avalanche, and the men behind him began to waver and most of them pulled up. It was useless. The torrent swept into them and bore them backward, tumbling some of them over, men and horses together, but incorporating ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... glowing centre of the fire, had a desolate look; but it was so quick to pass away that one might have thought oneself the victim of a fancy. His was the next chuckle, and "Do you remember that day when——?" and so forth, Mr. Fullerton's healthy roar following, avalanche-like, upon the reminiscence. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... Captain Nicholl, "on a flat ground, the projectile will remain motionless when it has once touched; whereas on a declivity it would roll like an avalanche, and not being squirrels we should not come out safe and sound. So it is all ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... burst upon the philosopher like an avalanche! He was so full of his subject that he could not let it out in prudent driblets. No, he went ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... this medium—their under parts dark and wild, the upper coloured with red tints, by that light which the reflecting powers of the waters doubled? We climbed rocks which fell directly after with gigantic bounds and the low growling of an avalanche. To right and left ran long, dark galleries, where sight was lost. Here opened vast glades which the hand of man seemed to have worked; and I sometimes asked myself if some inhabitant of these submarine regions would ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... underlies German movements. Luther, for good and for evil, is the most typical of Germans, and the Luther who made his mark in the world—the shrewd, coarse, superstitious peasant who blossomed into genius—was an avalanche of emotion, a great mass of natural human instincts irresistible in their impetuosity. When we bear in mind this general tendency to emotional expansiveness in the manifestations of the Teutonic soul we need feel no surprise that the present movement among German ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... Stephens at his side, was standing at the edge of the stockade. Not a sound came from the plateau, and not a glimmer of light appeared in the darkness. Then the great, wide, black night suddenly opened its jaws and launched forth an avalanche of blinding, white light. The two men bounded in their places; then came a roll of mighty thunder, as if it were moving on tremendous wheels and ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... They say, Padre, that a pebble set in motion at the summit of a mountain may gather other pebbles and increase in bulk and speed until, in the form of an avalanche, it overwhelms ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... binds as with a chain of iron. The small events of life, taken singly, may seem exceedingly unimportant, like snow that falls silently, flake by flake; yet accumulated, these snow-flakes form the avalanche. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... thaw, he had hurled the work they had finished with so much toil, a snow man, down the slope, rejoicing with his playfellows over its swift descent towards the valley, until they noticed with what frightful speed its bulk increased as it sped over its snowy road, till at last, like a terrible avalanche, it swept away a herdsman's hut—fortunately an empty one. Now, also, his heedlessness had set in motion a mass which constantly rolled onward, and how terrible might be the harm it ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to bring an avalanche upon himself which, if it wounded, isolated, even marooned him, would certainly bury Athalie out ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... invader comes, he moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his path. The peasantry sink before him. The country, too, is too poor for plunder, and too rough for a valuable conquest. Nature presents her eternal barrier on every side, to check the wantonness of ambition. And Switzerland remains with her simple ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... upset some of my arrangements," said Peter, "but in upsetting them, his own would be under the avalanche." ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... insinuation of arguments which ran drop by drop, but a furious rain, which threw itself like an avalanche on his soul. The storm, of which the wave of scruples was only the prelude, burst in its fulness; and in the panic of the first moment, in the violence of the tempest, the enemy unmasked his batteries, and struck him ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... crossing their faces. Suddenly the old Indian sprang up. He thrust his arms out, and made, as if unconsciously, some fantastic yet solemn motions. The player smiled in a far-off fashion, and presently ran the bow upon the strings in an exquisite cry; and then a beautiful avalanche of sound slid from a distance, growing nearer and nearer, till it swept through the room, and imbedded ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... afternoon Jean heard a distant sound of musketry; then, all in a moment, the door of his cell opened and he saw an avalanche of prisoners roll from one end of the corridor to the other. The gaoler had unlocked all the cells and shouted the words, "Every man for himself; run for it!" Jean himself was carried along, down stairs and passages, out into the prison ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... inspired in the youth beside her, and also that it would be most unworthy on her part to encourage it. She therefore took occasion now and then to give him a few repressive glances, which fell upon his heart like an avalanche of snow. The unfortunate young fellow turned on Felicite a look in which she could read the tears he was suppressing by superhuman efforts. She asked him in a friendly tone why he was eating nothing. The question piqued him, and he began to force himself to ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... apathetic. He lay two days on a couch with his hands beneath his head gazing vacantly at the ceiling. He did not wonder that his sacred father passed his time at the altars of the gods, but he could not understand how Herhor was able to manage the avalanche of business, which, like a storm, not only surpassed the strength of a man, but might ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast,— Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou That, as I raise my head, awhile bowed low In adoration, upward from thy base Slow ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... busy at the moment to notice him. One of the men had thrust a short tent pole between the bars. Bengal was upon it like an avalanche. ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... thoughts and his words were one. His looks, and all the expressions of his face, were but images of the love within. His denunciations against Pharisaical hypocrisy, cloaked under the guise of outward rectitude, were like an avalanche of snow and ice, unlocked by the rays of the Sun ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... States, if permitted, without further molestation on the part of the Federal authorities, and many Virginians in the field might abandon the Confederate States army. The State would be lost, and North Carolina and Tennessee would have an inevitable avalanche of invasion precipitated upon them. The only hope would be civil war in the North, a not improbable event. What could they do with four millions of negroes ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... her way to the spot where the pathway was suddenly cut short by the avalanche of rock and rubble and soil. It happened to be the exact spot where Colonel Gilbert's heavy horse had stumbled months before, where the footpath crossed the bed of a small mountain torrent. A few loosened stones had come bowling down the slope, set free by the landslip. These had ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... seemed, Copley had risen and kicked his own chair away, seized Ruth about her waist as he did so, and so dragged her out from under the avalanche. ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... of love,—surely these prevent the passion from constituting a happy state of mind; to me one knowledge alone seems sufficient to embitter all its enjoyments,—the knowledge that the object beloved must die. What a perpetuity of fear that knowledge creates! The avalanche that may crush us ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had fallen upon the packing-case. This had been already seriously undermined by the operations of Gideon; a few well-directed blows, and it already quaked and gaped; yet a few more, and it fell about Morris in a shower of boards followed by an avalanche of straw. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hands, and, in spite of the fury into which he had lashed himself, a great pity took hold of him. He felt as if everything were slipping away from him, and he was trying to stand on an avalanche. But he told himself that he would not waver, that he would hold to his purpose, that he would stand firm as a rock. Heaving a deep sigh, he walked to ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the Pharmaceutical across the way the words "what price?" would have precipitated a ready avalanche of figures. ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... brain, whose story fills the centuries with its glory, Moulding Gaul and Carthaginian into one all-conquering band, With his tusked monsters grumbling, 'mid the alien snow-drifts stumbling, Then, an avalanche of ruin, thundering from that frozen land Into vales their sons declare ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... things rather than in words, and so conditioned that no uncertain answer can be given. Nature says that all matter gravitates, not in words, but in the swing of planets around the sun, and in the leap of the avalanche. And men have devised ingenious machines through which Nature may tell us the invariable laws of gravitation, and give some hint as to why ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... truly a marvellous spectacle to observe the relentless stream of burning lava crushing irresistibly every opposing object in its fatal path. Onlookers at a distance could perceive the walls of houses bulging outward under pressure of the moving mass, until the roof collapsed in an avalanche of tiles upon the ground, whilst with a final crash the whole structure—cottage, farm, church or stately villa—succumbed to ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... what it was, but gazing at its surface more steadily, upon the face of a slope I caught sight of what seemed a larger stream than any of the rest; but it soon ceased to flow, and after came the thunder of its fall: it was a stream, but a solid one—an avalanche. Away up in the air the huge snow-summit glittered in the light of the Afternoon sun. I was gazing on the Maiden in one of her most savage moods—or to speak prose—I was regarding one of the wildest aspects of ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... and the sacrifices that she consented to make saved him from inevitable failure, but he had to endure an avalanche of reproaches. At the age of twenty-nine he withdrew from business, with debts amounting to ninety thousand francs, and how could he, rebellious son that he was, ever hope to clear himself, when he might by this time have been ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... Lady Swiggs!" exclaims a tall, well-proportioned and handsome-limbed man, to whose figure a fashionable claret-colored frock coat, white vest, neatly-fitting dark-brown trowsers, highly-polished boots, a cluster of diamonds set in an avalanche of corded shirt-bosom, and carelessly-tied green cravat, lend a respectability better imagined than described. A certain reckless dash about him, not common to a refined gentleman, forces us to set him down as one of ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... impressive and terrible about the strength of this beautiful, smiling creature's will, about its silence, its impassibility before obstacles, its persistency. It was as inevitable and unswervable as an avalanche or a cyclone. People might shriek out against it and struggle, but on it came, a mighty force, overwhelming petty things as well as great ones. It really seemed a pity, taking into consideration Ida's tremendous strength of character, that she had not some great national ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Burton with plans for a bear raid. Watch him. Send word of his first move. The time is ripe for an avalanche." ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... and pierced the bear's body just back of its powerful right shoulder. The great brute stopped dead in its tracks. It swayed for an instant, and then with a roar that drove the recoiling horse almost frantic with terror, it leaped sideways and plunged down the precipice, carrying with it a small avalanche of rocks, earth, and ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... to those who rushed towards the chance of salvation, not one among them could or would draw back. The overladen bridge gave way, and not only so, the impetus of the frantic living wave towards that fatal bank was such that a dense crowd of human beings was thrust into the water as if by an avalanche. The sound of a single human cry could not be distinguished; there was a dull crash as if an enormous stone had fallen into the water—and the Beresina was ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... Posidon gathered the clouds, and stirred the depths with his trident, as with a ladle, and roused the whirlwind, and a good deal more (enough to raise a storm of itself),—when suddenly there came a black squall which nearly capsized the boat. The poet was extremely ill, and disgorged such an avalanche of minstrelsy (Scylla, Charybdis, the Cyclops, all came up bodily), that I had no difficulty in preserving a few snatches. I should like to know, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... creaked and groaned in every part, and it seemed as if she must break in pieces. Sometimes the billows burst upon the deck with a thunder-crash, and, sweeping over it, poured in cataracts from her sides. Now a heavy cross-sea struck her beams with the jarring force of an avalanche of rocks, flinging more than one unlucky fellow clear from his berth. And now her bows went under, sunk by a weight of rolling water, from which it seemed for an instant impossible that she could ever emerge. But rise she did, each time, slowly, ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... impossible must be accepted for the sole reason that it did happen. The vicissitudes of social or private life are brought about by a crowd of little causes derived from a thousand conditions. The man of science is forced to clear away the avalanche under which whole villages lie buried, to show you the pebbles brought down from the summit which alone can determine the formation of the mountain. If the historian of human life were simply telling you of a suicide, five hundred of ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... night. Here the god of erosion works incessantly and rapidly, dissecting the earth and the rocks. During a single storm a hilltop may dissolve, a mountain-side be fluted with slides, a grove be overturned and swept away by an avalanche, or a lake be buried forever. This rapid erosion of slopes and summits causes many changes and much upbuilding upon their bases. Gulches are filled, water-courses invaded, rivers bent far to one side, and groves ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... to climb. The state of the ice and crevasses is always shifting, so that the next person who makes the ascent may find a comparatively easy path. We had other dangers too, such as this: twice the guides said to me, "Ne parlez pas ici, Monsieur, et allez vite," the fear being of an ice avalanche falling on us, and we heard the rocks and ice which are detached by the wet falling all about. The view from the top, if the day is fine, is about the most magnificent in the Alps; and as in that case I should have descended easily on the other side, the excursion would ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... final victory. The encouragement of intense and boundless hatred, the increasing crude brutality of the world all tended to create a situation making each individual like a small stone which, breaking away from an avalanche of stones, hurls itself downwards without a leader and without goal, and is no longer capable of ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... least until next morning. In the cool of the day they would see the cemetery; they would return, and eat the evening meal. It would then be time to sleep. And with a gesture he indicated the rugs and cushions, under which the beetles were now buried like mountain-dwellers beneath an avalanche. ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and which, with a few ignoble exceptions, I doubt not they will emulate, if again the necessity should exist. Yes, sir, if ever they hear that the invader's foot has been pressed upon our soil, they will descend to the plain like an avalanche, rushing to ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... in a shady nook, just off Katahdin's reflection in the river, while Iglesias sketched him. Meanwhile I, analyzing my view, presently discovered a droll image in the track of a land-avalanche down the front. It was a comical fellow, a little giant, a colossal dwarf, six hundred feet high, and should have been thrice as tall, had it had any proper development,—for out of his head grew two misdirected skeleton legs, "hanging down and dangling." The countenance was long, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... as if forcibly detaching itself, flown off from the avalanche and buried itself in the ground only a few feet beyond Harry and Pearl, and more than one uprooted tree lay near them. Death had missed them ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... no further. Phil was on him quick as an avalanche. The Mayor, in his haste to get out of the way, toppled backward against the anvil. Phil's left arm shot out and finished the job. He caught Brenchfield straight on the point of the chin, sending him hurtling head first ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... assent, though Abud seemed startled. Many times had Keston and I speculated on the danger of an avalanche at this point, and wondered why the Station had been built in such an exposed place. Once indeed we had ventured to suggest to the aristo Council the advisability of removing the Central Control to some other point, but the cold silence that greeted our ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... screamed. She herself was tempted to scream first, so as to see what would happen. She thought that all work would be instantly thrown down, and that everybody would answer her cry, and then begin noisily to sob. Even miserable as she was, the thought of this avalanche of feminine excitability made Sally snuffle with amusement. She pictured Gaga running out of his room, distraught, looking yellow and bilious, his eyes staring wildly out of his head, as do the eyes of prawns. And then? And then Rose Anstey would ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... lines of the assailing army, which, with one impulse, now threw itself forward towards the foe. And, unmoved by the tremendous but hasty and misdirected fire that every where met them on the way, they swept onward like an avalanche to the very foot of the tory intrenchments; when, pausing only to pour in their devouring volleys, they mounted the works, and raising their clubbed muskets, dashed down, with shouts of defiance, upon the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... stark and dumb at the foot of the steps. The whole situation had rushed upon him like an avalanche. Harbert had filed his charges and the hasty visit of the reporter proved that David Cable was an instrument in them. The blood surged to his head; he staggered under the shock of ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... extreme. He was abandoned by the Protestant league, hemmed in on every side by the imperial troops, and his hereditary domains of the Palatinate were overrun by twenty thousand Spaniards. His subjects, alarmed at his utter inefficiency, and terrified by the calamities which were falling, like avalanche after avalanche upon them, became dissatisfied with him, and despairing respecting their own fate. He was a Calvinist, and the Lutherans had never warmly received him. The impotent monarch, instead of establishing himself in the affections of his subjects, by vigorously driving the invaders ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... avalanche of good fortune, and the little candy merchant could hardly believe her senses. At this rate she would soon become a wholesale ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... he knows. He has heard the foehn sweep down from the hills and spin the great stones off the house-roofs. And one may look and see nothing, yet the stones go. It is the wind that runs before the avalanche that snaps the pine trees; and the wind is the spirit that calls down ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... slanderous statements about Colorado, together with a note asking each president to send one copy to the editor of the Ladies' Home Journal, in which Barry's article had appeared, with her own personal protest, and the other to the editor of some paper in her vicinity. The result was a perfect avalanche of protests to the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... of my one neck, when, goose as I was, I presented it where two seemed to be an essential by the sign of the habitation and the dangers of the gate,—I was aroused by a crash, something like the noise of the machine which accompanies the falling of an avalanche or a castle, or some such direful affair at "Astley's;" and starting up, I thought,—had the coach upset? but, much to my gratification, found myself a safe "inside." Still came crash after crash, until I thought it high time to see as well as ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers
... sober within three hours, but a punch or two would give a certain flaccidity to his legs, and when he reached his home the broad steps leading up to the vestibule seemed Alpine-like and perilous. He would almost say to himself, "Beware the pine-tree's withered branch, beware the awful avalanche." But after all it was not the danger of the ascent which really troubled him; it was what would assuredly happen after he had reached the summit. The disaster ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... as in ourselves, to the rapid passage of air over taut membranes (vocal cords) stretched in the larynx. It is an interesting fact that for millions of years there was upon the earth no sound of life at all, only the noise of wind and wave, thunder and avalanche. Apart from the instrumental music of some insects, perhaps beginning in the Carboniferous, the first vital sounds were due to Amphibians, and theirs certainly was the first voice—surely one of the great ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... columns tottering loosely on the brink of the precipice above our heads, threatening death and desolation at any moment. Mute and anxious, we crept along in breathless haste, scarcely venturing to raise our eyes, much less to give vent to the least expression of alarm, for fear of starting the avalanche of stone, of the impetuous force of which we could form some idea by the shattered rocks around us. The echo is very remarkable, and gives back the ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... even as they stood panting, the rent in the top of the embankment spread—deepened—yawned terrifically—and the pent-up lake plunged through, and sweeping away at once the center of the embankment, rushed, roaring and hissing, down the valley, an avalanche of water, whirling great trees up by the roots, and sweeping huge rocks away, and driving them, like corks, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... to the side of the ship, raised his hand to show that he wished to speak to the chief. But the island men rushed on like an avalanche and started to storm the ship. Snatching up arms, poles, rope-ends—whatever they could find—the men on board beat down upon the heads of the savages as they climbed up the ship's slippery side. One ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... was the scene at the front. There the third act of the drama was beginning. After half an hour of the heaviest cannonade ever known, Wellington's faithful troops were threatened by an avalanche of cavalry, and promptly fell into the "chequer" disposition previously arranged for the most exposed division, that of Alten. Napoleon certainly hoped either to crush Wellington outright by a mighty onset of horse, or to strip him bare for the coup de grace. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... we knew not. But we had not long to wait. Soon stragglers, few in numbers, began to appear, emerging from the woods into our clearing, and then more of them, these running, and then almost at once an avalanche of panic-stricken, flying men without arms, without knapsacks, many bareheaded, swearing, cursing, a wild, frenzied mob tearing to the rear. Instantly they began to appear, General Couch, commanding our corps, took in the situation ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... to this day the Icelanders designate their highest mountain peaks by the name of Jokul, a modification of the word "Joetun." In Switzerland, where the everlasting snows rest upon the lofty mountain tops, the people still relate old stories of the time when the giants roamed abroad; and when an avalanche came crashing down the mountain side, they say the giants have restlessly shaken off part of the icy burden ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... occurred a diversion. Virginia cast fifteen votes for Franklin Pierce. The schemers had launched their project. But it was not until the forty-ninth ballot that they started the avalanche. Pierce then received all but six votes. Two Ohio delegates clung to Douglas to the bitter end. With the frank manliness which made men forget his less admirable qualities, Douglas dictated this dispatch to ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... for the Imperial Shadow-huntings, and this rickety condition of the celestial Balance! Alas, the outer elements interfered with Queen Sophie in a singular manner. Huge foreign world-movements, springing from Vienna and a spectre-haunted Kaiser, and spreading like an avalanche over all the Earth, snatched up this little Double-Marriage question; tore it along with them, reeling over precipices, one knew not whitherward, at such a rate as was seldom seen before. Scarcely in the Minerva Press is there record of such surprising, infinite and inextricable ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... pistol shot. The wonder was that he had not loved her before; for he had known her since his father brought him home from Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died there. The passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... saw the traces of his fall. It seems impossible he could have uttered a sound. He had slipped eastward towards the unknown side of the mountain; far below he had struck a steep slope of snow, and ploughed his way down it in the midst of a snow avalanche. His track went straight to the edge of a frightful precipice, and beyond that everything was hidden. Far, far below, and hazy with distance, they could see trees rising out of a narrow, shut-in valley—the lost Country of the Blind. ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... as it were, and impart something of their own vastness to it. You feel yourself carried into the very presence of that Power which sank the foundations of the mountains in the depths of the earth, and built up their giant masses above the clouds; which hung the avalanche on their brow, clove their unfathomable abysses, poured the river at their feet, and taught the forked lightning to play around their awful icy steeps. You seem to hear the sound of the Almighty's ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... their lower parts dark and sullen, their upper parts tinted red in this light whose intensity was doubled by the reflecting power of the waters! We scaled rocks that crumbled behind us, collapsing in enormous sections with the hollow rumble of an avalanche. To our right and left there were carved gloomy galleries where the eye lost its way. Huge glades opened up, seemingly cleared by the hand of man, and I sometimes wondered whether some residents of these underwater regions would ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... Another avalanche of resolutions praising Gibson followed the publication of this statement. The mayor was hotly condemned for his failure to remove Chief Sweeney at Gibson's request and the commissioner was hailed as a man whose very name was enough to intimidate criminals and whose ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... crowd back under the bushes, and again Linda realized that she had no authority; as she had done from childhood when Katy was in earnest, Linda obeyed her. She had barely reached the overhanging bushes, crouched under them, and straightened herself, when a small avalanche came showering down, and a minute later a pair of feet were level with her head. Then screened by the bushes, she could have reached out and touched Oka Sayye. As his feet found a solid resting place on the ledge on which Linda and Katy stood, and while ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... hillsides deck themselves with grass, and the inaccessible ledges of black rock bear their tufts of crimson primroses and flaunting tiger-lilies? Why, morning after morning, does the red dawn flush the pinnacles of Monte Rosa above cloud and mist unheeded? Why does the torrent shout, the avalanche reply in thunder to the music of the sun, the trees and rocks and meadows cry their 'Holy, Holy, Holy'? Surely not for us. We are an accident here, and even the few men whose eyes are fixed habitually upon these things are dead to them—the peasants do not even know ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... the general-secretary to get elected to the place, and the secret opposition of the minister to this wish of a man who was one of his firmest supporters and most zealous workers. This, of course, brought down an avalanche of suppositions, flooded with the sapient arguments of the two officials, who sent back and forth to each other a wearisome flood of nonsense. Elisabeth quietly ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... apparently simple thing as how one knows anything—or of simple consciousness? Every philosopher that has attempted to explain consciousness or how we know, takes refuge in assumptions. At any Philosophical Society, if you ask for the explanation of simple Consciousness, the avalanche of answers, each differing from the other, will bewilder you. We know the outward appearance of an object, of which we say that we know it, but what is it in itself? Of that we are as much in the dark as ...
— Cobwebs of Thought • Arachne
... trembling with a strange excitement. I took my drills and my gun under my arm and set off with slack knees down the hillside. I took the shortest way, marking the smoking track left by my avalanche. Asop followed me, shaking his head all the time and sneezing at ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... her slender hand and tapped the pavement with her umbrella point, passing from each phase of expression to the next with a rapidity truly wonderful. Occasionally she went through with these strange grimaces all at once. She was indeed a whirlwind of language, an avalanche of emotion. ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... and piercing cold. When half-way up the summit, a rumbling noise was heard among the cliffs. The guides looked at each other in alarm; for they knew well what it meant. It grew louder and louder. "An avalanche! an avalanche!" they shrieked, and the next moment a field of ice and snow came leaping down the mountain, striking the line of march, and sweeping thirty dragoons in a wild plunge below. The black forms of the horses and their riders were seen ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... Cayuga Lake, between Auburn and Ithaca, was under water for a distance of nine miles south of Kings Ferry. No trains were running on that branch. A small bridge at Farley's Point, near the lower end of Cayuga Lake, was washed away. An avalanche of mud and stones buried the ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... his boat-boys, and before their master could interfere, beat at the delirious wretch with their oars. He hung on tenaciously, enduring a perfect avalanche of blows. But mere flesh and bone had to wither under that onslaught, and at last, by sheer weight of battering, he was driven from his hold, and the beer-colored river covered him then and ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Then the "awful avalanche" has not yet been dealt with. A few helpful words on the direction this is likely to take and the safest rock to make for when it begins to move might be welcomed by the PREMIER'S followers. He may argue that it is folly to meet trouble half-way, but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 17, 1920 • Various
... times when the herdsman's calling May vibrate thro' alpine ranch Till the pendent drop, by its falling, Sweeps down in an avalanche, Till the mountain trembles and totters 'Neath the mighty force of snow, And the lives and homes of the cotters Are lost in ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... blinded by fear and delusion were no longer accessible. Even had the sound sense of a single individual attempted resistance, it would have been useless; the giant avalanche could not be stayed. A diabolical plot was concocted, and it was the Prefect, Count d'Estournel, who perfected it in such wise that it promised the best success. Toward one o'clock at night a carriage drove into the castle ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... music breaks Against the mountain's base, While roars an avalanche and shakes The whole world ...
— Fleurs de lys and other poems • Arthur Weir
... I saw the lady Aurelia lying among the smashed up gear to leeward. She had been lying down, reading in a sort of bunk which had been rigged up for her on the locker-top. The shock had flung her clean out of the bunk on to the deck. At the same moment an avalanche of gear had fetched to leeward. A cask had rolled on to her left hand, pinning her down to the deck, while a box of bottles had cut the back of her head. A more complete picture of misery you could not hope to see. There was all the ill-smelling jumble of ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... however, it was possible to cut off long corners by scrambling over the steep black rock and smooth ice, and all the while the cold, soft mist wisped in and out around me. After a thousand feet of this I came to the top of the Grimsel, but not before I had passed a place where an avalanche had destroyed the road and where planks were laid. Also before one got to the very summit, no short cuts or climbing were possible. The road ran deep in a cutting like a Devonshire lane. Only here the high banks ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... have burst upon us like an avalanche. All the reserved seats were sold last evening before the performance commenced; and the house was filled by a fashionable audience,—one rarely seen at a minstrel entertainment. The troupe have made a decided hit, and their performances ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... the dam has given way! An avalanche of water God's hand alone can stay! Oh, leap, ye hills, before it and keep this torrent back, Or devastated towns and homes will ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... ceased, but had left a record of its intensity in nearly two feet of snow. For some moments the horses floundered and struggled on, in what the travelers believed to be some old forgotten drift or avalanche, until the extent and freshness of the fall became apparent. To add to their difficulties, the storm recommenced, and not comprehending its real character and limit, they did not dare to attempt to return the way they came. To go on, however, was impossible. In this quandary ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... normal average being 31.1) and with the left hand 28.0 (the normal being 30.0). There was, however, great variability in the individual pressures which sometimes equaled and even exceeded the subject's normal efforts. The voluntary muscles are thus in harmony with the approaching general sexual avalanche. (Vaschide and Vurpas, "Quelques Donnees Experimentales sur l'Influence de l'Excitation Sexuelle," Archivio di Psichiatria, 1903, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... smoke. As the air cleared, two thousand men were seen wading and fording below the falls. There was a rush of the tall grenadiers for the redoubt. The French retreated firing, and the cliff above poured down an avalanche of shots. At that moment Wolfe suffered a cruel and unforeseen check. A frightful thunderstorm burst on the river, lashing earth and air to darkness. It was impossible to see five paces ahead or to aim a shot. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... on the top of a bastion-like terrace, thrust avalanche-wise and immense between its pinnacled mountain walls; the site is not only of great beauty, but of great natural strength, like nearly all the other considerable settlements we saw on this journey. The ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... you are to the delicate shades of its meaning! How hidden is the song in the heart of the composer till he gives you the key! You hear as though you heard not. You hear the thunder, and the cataract, and the crash of the avalanche; but the song of the nightingale, the chirp of the katydid, the murmur of the waterfall never reach you. This cannot be the ultimatum. Music must hold in its own bosom its own interpretation, and man must have in his its ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... real hopper, for it kept constantly hopping to shake the corn down through a hole in the middle of the upper stone, which went round and round against the lower, so that between them they ground the corn to meal, which, in the story beneath, he saw pouring, a solid stream like an avalanche, from a wooden spout. But the best of it all was the wheel outside, and the busy rush of the water that made it go. So Willie would now ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... of ice-water had been thrown over Jean he could not have cooled off more suddenly. He was dazed. Another marquis? This was a complication he had never dreamed of. It overwhelmed him like an avalanche. He must have time to dig himself ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... steep face of the mountain, Barrent rolled boulders onto the machine, hoping he could start an avalanche. Max dodged most of the flying rocks, and let the rest bounce off him, with ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned eternity in icy halls Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The avalanche, the thunderbolt of snow! All that expands the spirit, yet appals, Gather around these summits, as to shew How Earth may pierce to Heaven, yet ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... parallels the story of the old campaigner, and may teach some of you caution in selecting your assistants. A chaplain told it to two of our officers personally known to myself. He overheard the examination of a man who wished to drive one of the "avalanche" wagons, as they call them. The man was asked if he knew how to deal with wounded men. "Oh yes," he answered; "if they're hit here," pointing to the abdomen, "knock 'em on the head,—they ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... had nearly fallen, and then the headlong pace again. And then, with the soft broad moon-light full upon his face, a man came darting round the corner of the lane. I strove to move aside, but before I could lift a foot he was upon me like an avalanche. I knew that we fell together, and that the man arose and resumed his headlong course. I tried to call after him, but found no voice. I tried to rise, but could not move a limb. Then a sickly shudder ran ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... shot from the crater of each volcano a thick and heavy cloud of incandescent ashes and steam, which rushed down the mountain side like an avalanche, red with glowing stones and scintillating with lightning flashes. Forests and buildings in its path were leveled as by a tornado, wood was charred and set on fire by the incandescent fragments, all vegetation was destroyed, and to breathe the steam and hot, suffocating dust ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... some cases nature does this on a large scale. Where mountains are sufficiently elevated to raise their heads above the snow line we know they are white all the year around with snow. What is not blown away, evaporated, or, as an avalanche, precipitated to lower heights, must accumulate from year to year. But the weight pressing on the lower portions of this snow-field must soon be considerable, and at length become so great, that the snow ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... their Western analogues, thanks to a continual struggle for existence against Nature and a tolerably frequent one against man. Against the latter foe they are at present guaranteed by the quiet of English rule, but the avalanche and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... bursting, and the spume towered on the gale like grey smoke. Out of the foam rose harsh rubble and screes to incline against broken precipices, and those stark walls were interrupted by mid-air slopes of grass which appeared ready to avalanche into the tumult below, but remained, livid areas of a dim mass which rose into dizzy pinnacles and domes, increasing the tumbling menace of the sky. A fleet of clouds of deep draught ran into Africa from the north; went aground on those ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... General is reported to have been overwhelmed by an avalanche of snow, and at Easter-time a number of patriotic English people were offering, in view of the usefulness of the stuff for military purposes, to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... from the left: Cavalry, Indian scouts, regular cavalry, cavalry militia, volunteer regiments, and behind them all the machine-guns and the field-artillery—a perfect avalanche of human beings and horses wrapped in thick clouds of smoke from which showers of ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... driving, stared fixedly over the wheel. The coach's voice was merely a series of profane roars. He had ample lungs, and the things he said seemed to echo far and wide. His stentorian anger afforded so material a contrast to the placid environment that Deacon stood dazed under the vocal avalanche, hearing but a blur ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... forming the Keene Pass. The views back over the Boquet Valley and toward the Green Mountains of Vermont are very lovely, and those obtained in descending the western slope of this, the Boquet range, are magnificent. Soon left behind are the high cliffs and the steep slide, where a gathering avalanche of rocks and earth swept through a forest, carrying off a great belt of timber, wherewith to strew the little valley, and block the road and stream below. The rugged mountains on either hand have been burnt ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... nature, elle devient un malheur reel quand ce plaisir se trouve remplace par des angoisses et de la frayeur. Un tableau d'un autre genre nouveau, et pour lequel les expressions manquent, est une foret rasee et abattue par une avalanche, il y a quelques annees, ces sapins de plus de cent pied de long, ont eu le tems de perdre leurs feuilles et de permettre a la vue de passer a travers cette enorme quantite de bois et de branches entre lacees de mille manieres bizarres, et d'apercevoir ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... rather difficult point in it, where there ought to be a quite imperceptible transition to something fresh, then a subdued gliding finale, a prolonged murmur, ending at last in a climax as bold and as startling as a shot, or the sound of a mountain avalanche—full stop. But the words would not come to me. I read over the whole piece from the commencement; read every sentence aloud, and yet failed absolutely to crystallize my thoughts, in order to produce this scintillating climax. And into the bargain, whilst I was standing labouring ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... it was coming, and he hardly felt able to go into the box himself to stem the rising tide; but anything was better than to have Frazer submerged under an avalanche of hits. "Big Ed" seemed to be getting better the longer he pitched, and just the reverse could be said of Frazer, who was on the verge of ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... overhead and entomb them forever. Great Britain, with her frightful debt, her terrible taxation, her dissatisfied, restless, beggared myriads of the lower working classes, her remorseless aristocracy, her bloated spirit of caste, her enforced but heartless religion, has hung a more terrible avalanche over her head than ever leaped down the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... ghost that loved it would haunt the place! But he could not surely be permitted! for it might postpone a thousand years his discovery of the emptiness of a universe of such treasures. Now he was moldering into the world of spirits in the heart of an avalanche of the dust of ages, dust material from his hoards, dust moral and spiritual ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... king of souls, but his royal dignity is marred, and is brought sometimes within an inch of the ridiculous, by the prosaic nature of his modern surroundings. He is harsh and cruel; he is liable to fits of anger before which the whole world trembles; and it is by an avalanche, brought down upon him by his own wrath, that he is finally buried in the ruins ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... said the elder, "is more freezing to me than the bitterness of the cold. The very snow-flakes are dumb; nothing makes discord but the avalanche; it is always twilight; men lie down in the snows to die, but they are numb and ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... peaceful solution. The classes are divided more and more sharply, the spirit of resistance penetrates the workers, the bitterness intensifies, the guerilla skirmishes become concentrated in more important battles, and soon a slight impulse will suffice to set the avalanche in motion. Then, indeed, will the war-cry resound through the land: "War to the palaces, peace to the cottages!"—but then it will be too late for the ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... a coward, it was not for myself this time. The avalanche of ill-words I knew must fall—but it should not fall on him, if ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... that he has it to hide.' Your first Military Escort has exploded self-destructive; and all Military Escorts, and a suspicious Country will now be up, explosive; comparable not to victorious thunder. Comparable, say rather, to the first stirring of an Alpine Avalanche; which, once stir it, as here at Sainte-Menehould, will spread,—all round, and on and on, as far as Stenai; thundering with wild ruin, till Patriot Villagers, Peasantry, Military Escorts, new Berline and Royalty are down,—jumbling in ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... softly in his helplessness. To him came the last terrible cries of the perishing animals. He saw head after head go under. Out of the white spume of a great rock against which the flood split itself with the force of an avalanche he saw one horse pitched bodily, as if thrown from a huge catapault. The last animal had disappeared when chance turned his eyes upstream and close in to shore. Here flowed a steady current free of rock, and down this—head and shoulders still high out of the water—came the colt! What ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... raised the long rifle, but each time he lowered it. Gale divined that the ranger's restraint was not on account of the Mexican, but for that valiant and faithful horse. Up and up he went, and the yellow dust clouds rose, and an avalanche rolled rattling and cracking down the slope. It was beyond belief that a horse, burdened or unburdened, could find footing and hold it upon that wall of narrow ledges and inverted, slanting gullies. But he climbed ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... at last hurls itself upon the track. Even the echoes of the locomotive whistle will in some states of the atmosphere bring disaster. Tiny snow crystals are jarred by the sound-waves; these start on a downward career, gathering volume and speed until a mighty avalanche has been developed. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... drink-mixer, had a busy half-hour of it. It was now about seven o'clock and we were again overtaken by the storm, which hurled itself upon us, fairly rocking the car in its violence. The train, which had been proceeding slowly and jerkily, now came to a full stop. An avalanche of snow, earth, and loose stones had fallen at the end of a deep cut. Had we been going at any speed an awful catastrophe would have resulted. As it was we were barely moving when we ran into the obstruction. It would be hours ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... puzzled glance filled the poor cripple with joy unspeakable. "She is not in love!" he whispered to himself, rubbing his hands till the skin was nearly peeled off. At this moment Exupere tore through the garden and the house, plunged into the salon like an avalanche, and said to Dumay in an audible whisper, "The young man is here!" Dumay sprang for his ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... darn and do patch—and he made no doubt the stuffing was nothing better than brown wool; and with that coarse taunt the coarser broker dug his clasp-knife into the cushion against which grandfatherly backs had leaned in happier days, and lo! an avalanche of banknotes fell out of the much-maligned horse-hair, and the family was lifted from penury to wealth. Nothing more simple—or more natural. A prudent but eccentric ancestor had chosen this mode of putting by his savings, assured that, whenever ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... mantle, and Jean could admire, in all its exquisite perfection, a figure marvellous for suppleness and grace. Miss Percival then removed her hat, but with a little too much haste, for this was the signal for a charming catastrophe. A whole avalanche descended in torrents, in long cascades, over Bettina's shoulders. She was standing before a window flooded by the rays of the sun, and this golden light, falling full on this golden hair, formed a delicious frame for the sparkling beauty of the young girl. Confused and blushing, Bettina ...
— L'Abbe Constantin, Complete • Ludovic Halevy
... "Ursus Major" lay ill, perhaps mortally hurt, the trampled prices of securities began to revive like dusty blossoms under a shower. Day long came damp extras from the press heralding a bull day almost as wild and swift in its price recovery as yesterday's bear day had been terrific in its avalanche. ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... laboring classes to frenzy. Its inevitable effect will be to give them a false and exaggerated idea of their wrongs and their rights, and to stimulate them to revolution. Oh! these men have much to answer for. They are drawing down an avalanche." ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... evidence in the official publications of diplomatic documents that at the last moment, when the spectre of a general war definitely arose, Austria hesitated and entered upon a hopeful negotiation with Russia. It was Germany's criminal ultimatum to Russia which set the avalanche on its terrible path. Now Germany is notoriously a land of religious criticism and Rationalism. Church-going in Berlin is far lower even than in London, where six out of seven millions do not attend places of worship. It is almost as low as at Paris, where hardly a tenth of the population ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... incidents of the story are employed to emphasise the distinctive features of each land. The explorers are almost frozen on the heights of the Andes, and almost drowned in the floods of the Patagonian Pampas. An avalanche sweeps some of them away; a condor carries off a lad. In Australia they are stopped by jungles and by quagmires; they hunt kangaroos. In New Zealand they take refuge amid hot sulphur springs and in a house "tabooed"; they escape by ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... Water, the cattleman thought of a short-cut, through a little used timber-trail, which would save him several miles; but it was crossed by a ravine cut by a winter avalanche like the slash of a gigantic knife. To descend into this ravine and ascend on the farther side would be a tortuous process, which would take more time than to continue by the longer route. But if the gelding could jump the narrow cleft in the trail, the distance ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... were told off for coke making, which, as we soon learned, was sheer unadulterated hell. I was selected for the coke mine and put in three days at it—three days of smarting eyes and burning lungs, of aching and weary muscles. Then my chum, Billy Flanagan, was buried under an avalanche of falling coal and killed. There were no safeguards in the mine and the same accident might occur again at ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... green baize cloth, that moved and floated at every motion of the air. I paid little attention to this, till suddenly turning my head, something gave way behind it. I felt myself struck upon the back of the neck, and fell forward into the room, covered by a perfect avalanche of fenders, fire-irons, frying-pans, and copper kettles, mingled with the lesser artillery of small nails, door keys, and holdfasts. There I lay amid the most vociferous mirth I ever listened to, under the confounded torrent ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... stocks and bonds he was as much of a novice in the presence of things electrical as were either his son or Walter King, and therefore to their avalanche of questions he added still others, gratefully accepting the information Bob offered with the eagerness of one who is not ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... Little Fuzzy could damage or on which he might hurt himself, took the manipulator up to the diggings. He worked all morning, cracking nearly a ton and a half of flint, and found nothing. Then he set off a string of shots, brought down an avalanche of sandstone and exposed more flint, and sat down under a pool-ball ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... his hand casually as if dismissing once and for all an avalanche of contradictions. Dorn hesitated. It was one of his days of disquiet; and he had left a note with Rachel saying he would be home at ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... over a flour bin nearly empty, slipped. Her feet flew up, her head went down, and she tripped the grocery clerk. His long pole crashed into the neat pile of boxes arranged on the shelves and a shower of oatmeal, cornstarch, macaroni and other cereals fell in an avalanche. ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... above my head to give the fatal blow, when I perceived the stern of the schooner swinging round. I dropped the axe, and called upon Bohun to lend me a hand to bear off. The schooner came down almost with the force of an avalanche, cleared the bowsprit, as I anticipated, but struck our larboard bow, swung alongside, caught by our chain-wale for a moment, was freed by a violent gust of wind, dropped astern, and was soon pounding upon ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... determine. It was not yet perceived that such clan-people were not Tribe-People, and thus could not know the meaning of Council, nor weigh consequence, nor realize in their new-found cleverness that a single arrogant act would trigger the first and final avalanche.... ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse
... syl.), sister of Gessler, the tyrannical governor of Switzerland, in love with Arnoldo, a Swiss, who saved her life when it was imperilled by an avalanche. After the death of Gessler she married the bold Swiss.—Rossini, Guglielmo ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... mustn't be in such a hurry. Why, you come down on a man like an avalanche. You must give me time to think it over—till to-morrow at least. And the papers—at any rate, I must have a ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... could hear; but until to-night it had always been like the fall of the snow flake. You could never be quite sure you heard, though there was no mistaking a mass of several million years of snow flakes when they thundered down in avalanche or broke a ledge with the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... whom it was inflicted merely grunted again and, under the avalanche of blows, managed to regain his balance and plunge back to the assault. A born fighter, he was now obsessed with but one idea, namely, to destroy this smaller and faster opponent who was hurting him so outrageously. As ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... High March after his gests of arms had been Goltres, for there he had believed to find Galors. But Galors was a man of affairs just now who had gone far since Isoult overheard his plans. His troop of some sixty spears had grown like the avalanche it resembled. For what the avalanche does not crush it turns to crushing. Galors harrying had won harriers. In fact, he headed within a fortnight of his coming into North Morgraunt a force which was the largest known since Earl Roger of Bellesme had made a quietness like death over those ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... weeks there had been accumulating evidence, which we could see pointed to a monumental success or an avalanche failure. The copper market was literally boiling, and investors from one end of America to the other and throughout Europe were on the qui vive for the anticipated announcement. At intervals in history ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... the first pebble of the avalanche, Malone knew suddenly—the avalanche that was somehow going to destroy him. "You forced your thoughts into my mind, then," he said as coolly as he could. "Just as you forced decision ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... break came. The losing team, accompanied by its host of volunteers, was dragged in a rush over the ground and disappeared under the avalanche of battling ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... be freed from a sentimental friendship not at all to his taste, prepared to carry out his long-contemplated design. In July of 1812, by way of Poland, he entered Russia with an army of over 678,000 souls. It was a human avalanche collected mainly from the people he had conquered, with which he intended to overwhelm the Russian Empire. It was of little consequence that thirty or forty thousand fell as this or that town was captured by the way. He had expected victory to be costly, and on he pressed with diminished numbers ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... this sight of sights. It was at the end of the wet season and the flow was at maximum strength. The mist was so great that at first I could scarcely see the Falls. Slowly but defiantly the foaming face broke through the veil. Niagara gives you a thrill but this toppling avalanche awes you ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... boulder was upon him. He dodged it by a hair's breadth and fell flat on his face, just as a stream of loose stone which the first flying rock had dislodged sent him rolling and tumbling down the slope in an avalanche of flying debris. For a minute he lay breathless while the waste rattled past him, and then he looked up the hill. No movement of his had started those great boulders. They had been launched by someone from above, and as he raised his ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... towering high above the adjacent banks, was sweeping by and onward, like the serried lines of an army advancing to the charge; while the broad valley around even back to the summits of the far-off hills, was resounding with the deafening din that rose from the extended line of the booming avalanche, with the deep rumblings of an earthquake mingled with the tumultuous roar of ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... instantly formed up, such as were left of them, for out of two companies of the Black Watch only fifty men escaped. A more tragic scene than that at the onset of the battle cannot be conceived. From all directions came an avalanche of lead, sweeping south and east and west in the gloaming, and flecking the whole visible universe with red. Cries and groans and curses and shouts intermingled with orders innumerable. "Advance," shouted some one; ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... test, in his view, for half an hour afterwards, on crossing a steep-sided ravine, my horse slipped and fell, and carried me down the almost vertical cliff face for 50 feet or more. The sand and stones poured down in an avalanche, but I kept my horse's head up, and we landed on the sandy bottom below, unscratched, in a normal position! "The senor has been saved because of the cross!" Jose and the arriero both averred, after congratulating me upon the almost ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... off, for Wladek had finished his song and the applause came roaring like an avalanche, so she pulled him by the hand and they walked to the front of the stage ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... sup—dinner. And Dorothy and Miss Meechim wuz almost speechless with awe and admiration, they said "Oh, how sublime! Oh! how grand!" as they see the enormous body of water sweepin' down that immense distance. The hull waters of the hull chain of Lakes, or inland Seas, sweepin' down in one great avalanche of water. ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... entirely without warning or intention that I find it impossible now to tell the order of its phases. What disturbed pebble started the avalanche I cannot trace. Perhaps it was simply that the barriers between us and this masked aspect of life ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... Pat Doolan, on seeing that worthy shivering while trying to re-light the fire—which an avalanche of snow, descending from a precipitous rise above the site of our tent, had suddenly buried, along with the cook's pots and pans, just as he was preparing our morning meal, on the fourth day of the storm—"how about that Manilla guernsey o' yourn now, old ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... round the left of the enemy's position. The Arabs retreated, and some of our young soldiers began to anticipate an easy victory. But the enemy showed that they too could manoeuvre; suddenly wheeling to the left, they came down like an avalanche on the rear of the square, bearing back the men composing it, and breaking in at one ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... reached the pretty face it was intended to mar. But when the observer had studied the eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was generally incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek was thought by some to add piquancy to her smile. The youthful editor of THE FIDDLETOWN AVALANCHE had said privately that it was "an exaggerated dimple." Colonel Starbottle was instantly "reminded of the beautifying patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more particularly, sir, of the blankest beautiful women that, blank you, you ever laid your two blank eyes upon—a Creole woman, sir, in ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... been fighting night and day," said a Sergeant. "For the whole of that time the only rest from fighting was when we were marching and retiring." He spoke of the German Army as an avalanche of armed men. "You can't mow that down," he said. "We kill them and kill them, and still they come on. They seem to have an inexhaustible supply of fresh troops. Directly we check them in one attack a fresh attack is developed. It is impossible to oppose such a ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... made the proper bow with deadly precision, there was not a smile or a sound. That ceremony over, they charged down upon me in an avalanche of gaiety. They waved their lanterns, they called banzai, they laughed and sung some of the old time foolish songs we used to sing. They promptly put to rout all legends of their excessive modesty and shyness. They were just young and girlish. Plain happy. Eager ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... years hustling to "make good" "over two thousand dollars." For the first time he questioned the wisdom of promoting himself. But he could n't back out now. He almost damned Honey's thrift. He would be piling up a debt which threatened to become an avalanche and swamp him, and for which he would get no equivalent but temporarily increased adulation. How could he nip this awful thing in the bud? He did n't see any way out of it unless it were to throw up ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge |
