"Catastrophe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... head of the State military department—in this most unenviable position, to know that the fatal moment was fast coming, when the infernal machinery was to be set in motion, and to make arrangements to avert the catastrophe so quietly as not to arrest attention, or excite the alarm of the leaders of the plot, which would have instantly been executed, had it become apparent that the movements of these traitors were watched; these considerations and the discharge of the fearful ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... it is all the same,) of young or old people of fashion: a gourmand peer, a titled demirep, a "desperate dandy," a black-leg, and a few such other respectable characters, are dialogued through the customary number of chapters, and conducted to the usual catastrophe: virtue is triumphant, vice abashed, towards the latter end of the last volume; and some low-born hero and heroine, introduced to exhibit, by contrast, the vices of the aristocracy, suddenly, and without ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... as a shadow, a thing to be guessed at rather than known, the man on the bridge sighted land. The word spread like lightning. The staggering workers in the fireroom heard and joined the cheer which Harrigan started. Then the catastrophe came. ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... themselves, as she had spoken, sent a wave of what was more than startled misery through her husband. He once more felt, although he felt it vaguely, the note of impending tragedy which she was so premonitarily sounding. It brought to him a dim and hurried vision of that far-off but inevitable catastrophe which lay, somewhere, at the end of the road they were traveling. Their only hope and solace, it seemed to him, must thereafter lie in feverish and sustained activity. They must lose themselves in the dash and whirl of daring moments. And it was not ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... right, we do not wish to assume the responsibility for such a catastrophe, we must have the courage to strive with every means to attain that increase of power which we are entitled to claim, even at the risk of a war with ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... not remarry; but although they strove zealously in some sections to enforce this rule, the rougher members of society easily evaded it by moving into another colony. Sewall makes mention of applications for divorce; but when such a catastrophe seemed imminent in his own family he ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... rock, and sank as an old shoe would sink in a small pool—sank with men and mice on board, as the saying is; and there certainly were mice, but only one man and a half—the skipper and the grave-digger's boy. None witnessed the catastrophe except the screaming sea-gulls and the fishes below; and even they did not see much of it, for they rushed aside in alarm when the water gushed thundering into the little vessel as it sank. Scarcely a fathom beneath the surface it stood; yet the two human ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... either never written or soon lost. Diodorus, who gives circumstantial details both of the coalition and the siege, dates it a century too early, changes all the names, and mixes up many fables with his recital (ii. 23-28). In forming a just idea of the catastrophe and of its date we have to depend chiefly upon the lost historians, such as Abydenus and Alexander Polyhistor, fragments of whose works have been preserved for us by Eusebius and Georgius Syncellus. See RAWLINSON, The Five Great Monarchies, ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... on the bitter anguish of the Beaumont family at the dreadful catastrophe of the long-imprisoned King. Its pious head added largely to his intercessory prayers, imploring heaven to avert its vengeance from all who had inadvertently been accessary to the fact, to forgive those who repented ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... saying that a balanitis is often the tiny match that lights the train that later explodes in an apoplectic attack or sudden heart-failure due to toxaemia; the organic and vascular systems being gradually undermined until, unannounced and unawares, the ground gives way and the final catastrophe occurs,—unfortunately, an occurrence or ending looked upon as unavoidable by the friends of the victim. They cannot see any danger; the idea that diseases have the road paved, not only for an easy entrance but an easy conquest, by the action of these toxic agents on the tissues, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... "I used to apprehend such a catastrophe, but God has made a providential opening, a merciful safety valve, and now I do not feel alarmed in the prospect of what is coming. 'What do you mean,' said Mr. Choules, 'by providence opening a merciful safety valve?' Why, said the gentleman, I will ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... who made the proposition that Derrick's plan be accepted unreservedly, and that the engineer himself should be requested to resume his position and undertake the management of the work. There was some slight demurring at first, but the catastrophe was so recent that its effect had not had time to wear away, and finally ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... catastrophe which fills us all with sorrow. It appears that the Quartermaster-General, Brigadier Airey, thinking that the light cavalry had not gone far enough in front when the enemy's horse had fled, gave an order in writing to Captain Nolan to take to Lord Lucan, directing his ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... the play is successful. With so great an element of chance in the schemes of the speculator, it would have been easy to transcend the limits of the probable. But the author is careful to maintain his balances. Situation succeeds plot, and catastrophe situation, until the final moment when the absconding partner actually arrives, to the astonishment of Mercadet more than all the rest. And with Mercadet's joyful exclamation, "I am a creditor!" the play has reached its ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... that the reason why Mr. Gilman obligingly remained in the vicinity was, lest I should be scalded or blown to atoms by a sudden freak of Kilauea, though I don't see that he was capable of preventing either catastrophe! A slight grass shed has been built over a sulphur steam crack, and within this there is a deep box with a sliding lid and a hole for the throat, and the victim is supposed to sit in this and be steamed. But on this occasion the temperature ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... woman's letter, as Mrs. Farron Saftleigh chose to rank a woman's thought and sympathy; nothing practical, nothing that had to do with coarse topics of bond and scrip; taking the common essentials of life for granted, referring to the inignorable catastrophe of the fire as a grand elemental phenomenon and spectacle, and soaring easily away and beyond all fact and literalness, into the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... envoys. It must have been an attractive house, surrounded by large grounds, and enjoying a superb view of the city and the Golden Horn. It was burnt[486] in the fire which devastated the district on the 25th June 1784, and since that catastrophe its grounds have been converted into market gardens or left waste, and its chapel has been a desecrated pile. But its proud name still haunts the site, calling to mind political relations which have long ceased to exist. The chapel stood at the north-western end of the residence and ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... all for Phillida's sake," Philip went on. "It can not be a happy marriage. Here they've gone and engaged themselves without reflection, and a catastrophe is sure to follow." ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... determines the catastrophe of the other stories. They almost invariably close in the sullen gloom of a wet March evening, when we wonder afresh if the Spring is ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... toward him showed an involuntary haughtiness and contempt; and upon the timid and alarmed widow, who dreaded lest he should interfere with her darling, though almost desperate projects for her boy. And, indeed, the major, unknown to himself, was the bearer of tidings which were to bring about a catastrophe in the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the light from which has probably occupied not much less than one hundred years in its passage hither. It has been suggested that the collision of two suns, or of two great masses of matter, would create such phenomena; but, apart from the improbability of such a catastrophe occurring among the celestial orbs, the rapid subsidence in the luminosity of the observed objects would indicate that the outburst was produced by causes of a more rapidly transitory nature than what would result from the collision of two condensed masses of matter. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... know whether any of my amorous young readers are much affected by the catastrophe I have just related. If not, I will just remind them that even Edward Dodd was prepared to oppose the marriage of Julia and Alfred, if any serious ill should befall his father at sea, owing to Alfred's imprudent interference in rescuing him ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the catastrophe happened which Lady Glencora had feared. A fly with a pair of horses from the Matching Road station was driven up to the door of the Priory, and Lady Hartletop was announced. "I knew it," said Lady Glencora, slapping her hand down on the table in the room in which she was sitting ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... resist—one of those weights beneath which all humanity bows shuddering; cast over him a stifling dream, where only the soul can act, and the limbs refuse their offices; have him pushed along by Fate to the lowering, ruinous catastrophe; and you see the dramatic chainwork of a part which he who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... filling from all sides. The Government was going out in disaster, and, instead of being able to stand by his colleagues and fight, and perhaps avert catastrophe by his brilliant speeches and biting wit, he was chained like a log to a sofa and was ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... could have made it, or that the situation gained in effectiveness from having the hero die in the very moment of his acceptance. In his supposition that the reader would care more for his hero simply because he had undergone that tremendous catastrophe, the writer had omitted to make him interesting ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... urgent can justify the employment of any evil means. (Ethics, c. iii., s. ii., nn. 3, 13, pp. 32, 36.) Suppose in the instance just given the quarryman saw that, unless that piece of rock where the visitor stood were blown up instantly, a catastrophe would happen elsewhere, which would be the death of many men, and there were no time to warn the visitor to clear off, who could blame him if he applied the explosive? The means of averting the catastrophe would be, not that visitor's death, but the blowing up of ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... knife into his breast; the blade broke; he shattered the bottle at his side and swallowed the fragments, and then fell bleeding and exhausted on the straw. If left long alone, life would have ebbed away; but, probably in anticipation of such a catastrophe, the officer ere many hours revisited the cell to put chains upon the prisoner. Discovering his condition, a surgeon was called, remedies were applied, and two Austrian sentinels carried Foresti into the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... new gospel had, as I have said already, been vouchsafed to me at Littlehampton by Mr. Philpot. I now saw what logically the new gospel implied. The sense of impending catastrophe became more and more acute. I felt like a man on a ship, who, having started his voyage in an estuary, and imagining that a deck is by nature as stable as dry land, becomes gradually conscious of the sway of the outer sea, until, when he nears the bar, showers of ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... proclaimed that a stupendous catastrophe was at hand. Opening the Book of the Revelation of St. John he read, pondered, and interpreted. A divine illumination opened out to him the dark things that were written in the sacred pages. The unenlightened could make nothing of "a time, ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... of the politics of the age in which Bert Smallways lived—the age that blundered at last into the catastrophe of the War in the Air—was a very simple one, if only people had had the intelligence to be simple about it. The development of Science had altered the scale of human affairs. By means of rapid mechanical traction, it had brought men nearer together, so much nearer ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Bethlem, the solitary residence of St. Jerom and his female converts, was crowded with illustrious beggars of either sex, and every age, who excited the public compassion by the remembrance of their past fortune. [114] This awful catastrophe of Rome filled the astonished empire with grief and terror. So interesting a contrast of greatness and ruin, disposed the fond credulity of the people to deplore, and even to exaggerate, the afflictions of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... through whose labors it may at last fix the date of invasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink and paper which has long been an innocent wrapping or stop-gap may at last be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have knowledge enough to turn it into the opening of a catastrophe. To Uriel watching the progress of planetary history from the sun, the one result would be just as much of a coincidence ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... it with astonished eyes. It was from the German Emperor, and expressed his grief at the catastrophe, and his sympathy with France, which he had directed his ambassador to call at once in ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... is not tragic: she is too rational. And in her career there is no progression, no decline or degeneration. Her condition is once and for always. There is and will be no catastrophe. ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... reputation does he gain to himself. Now, by forgiving our brother what he has unhappily committed, thou wilt preserve us all; for we cannot think of living if he be put to death, since we dare not show ourselves alive to our father without our brother, but here must we partake of one and the same catastrophe of his life. And so far we beg of thee, O governor, that if thou condemnest our brother to die, thou wilt punish us together with him, as partners of his crime,—for we shall not think it reasonable to be reserved to kill ourselves for grief of our brother's death, but so to die ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Yet it is not so. The conclusion is more weighty by far that all things bear their fruit: that the comprehender and the master of so much, the very mind, suffers to no purpose and in one moment a tragic, final, and unworthy catastrophe agrees with nothing other that we know. It is not thus of the good things of the earth that turn kindly into the earth again. It cannot be thus with that which makes of all the earth a subject thing for contemplation ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... like the fair flower in its lustre," are only equalled by its characteristic propriety and naivete. Polly describes her lover going to the gallows, with the same touching simplicity, and with all the natural fondness of a young girl in her circumstances, who sees in his approaching catastrophe nothing but the misfortunes and the personal accomplishments of the object of her affections. "I see him sweeter than the nosegay in his hand; the admiring crowd lament that so lovely a youth should come to an untimely ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... holidays, when sailors, watermen, shoemakers, butchers, and apprentices are at leisure, then it is good policy to amaze those violent spirits with some tearing tragedy full of fights and skirmishes ... the spectators frequently mounting the stage, and making a more bloody catastrophe among themselves than the players did." Occasionally, it appears, the audience compelled the actors to perform, not the drama their programmes had announced, but some other, such as "the major part of the company had a mind to: sometimes 'Tamerlane;' sometimes 'Jugurtha;' ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... mine, several years younger, terribly injured himself on the Fourth of July; and I sat all night in the room with him, helping his mother. Somehow he had learned that there was no hope of saving his sight; he was an imaginative child and realised the whole meaning of the catastrophe; the eternal darkness.... And he understood that the thing had been done, that there was no going back of it. This very certainty increased the intensity of his rebellion a thousandfold. "I WILL have my eyes!" he screamed. "I ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... intellectualist veto, so that we now join step with reality with a philosophical conscience never quite set free before. As a french disciple of his well expresses it: 'Bergson claims of us first of all a certain inner catastrophe, and not every one is capable of such a logical revolution. But those who have once found themselves flexible enough for the execution of such a psychological change of front, discover somehow that they can never return again to their ancient attitude of mind. They are now ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... supposed to have been killed during this catastrophe, but the full extent of the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the surrounding canoes. The interpreter was in the main-chains at the time of the explosion, and was thrown unhurt into the water, where he succeeded in getting into one of the canoes. According to his statement, the bay presented an awful spectacle after the catastrophe. The ship had disappeared, but the bay was covered with fragments of the wreck, with shattered canoes, and Indians swimming for their lives, or struggling in the agonies of death; while those who had escaped the danger remained ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... and many social convulsions, recorded in the annals of the six ages preceding our own, may be traced to it. The frightful French Revolution was certainly a result of it, although it must be granted that several secondary causes contributed to render the catastrophe more destructive, the chief among which was the spread of infidel doctrines among ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Missionary Wife's Experience in Oregon. All Alone with the Wolves. A Woman's Instinct in the Hour of Danger. Dr. White's Dilemma and its Solution. A Clean Pair of Heels and a Convenient Tree. A Perilous Voyage and its Consequences. A Heartrending Catastrophe. A Mother's Lost Treasure. A Savage Coterie and the White Stranger. Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding. A Murderous Suspicion. The Benefactress ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... O'Loghlen wrought a coup d'etat. On the last day of January, Victoria was amazed by the altogether unexpected news that the Ministry had advised, and the Governor granted, a dissolution. The morning papers had not contained even a hint of such a catastrophe, and the publication of the Government Gazette containing the proclamation was the first intimation of it which anybody outside the Cabinet received. The grounds upon which the request of the Ministry was granted were, that the House was so divided into sections of parties that it ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... meal he had told them of his chance discovery of the old church and graveyard and of the loss of the brown derby. Primmie plainly regarded the catastrophe to the hat ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... uninterested in that other kind of "makdom and fairnesse" which must be wooed with industrious thought and renunciation of small desires? In the story of this passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the glorious marriage, sometimes frustration and final parting. And not seldom the catastrophe is wound up with the other passion, sung by the Troubadours. For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... or in 'the dowie den in the Lawlands o' Balleichan.' In Gil Morice, that ballad which Gray thought 'divine,' it is 'Willie, the bonnie boy,' whom the hero trusted with his message, that in malice and wilfulness brings about the tremendous catastrophe of the tale. He calls aloud in hall the words he was bid whisper in the ear of Lord Barnard's lady—to meet Gil Morice in the forest, and 'speir ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... famous criticism of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister, says that the distinction between the two is the difference between sollen and wollen, that is, between must and would. He means that in the Greek drama the catastrophe is foreordained by an inexorable Destiny, while the element of Freewill, and consequently of choice, is the very axis of the modern. The definition is conveniently portable, but it has its limitations. Goethe's attention ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... of men ready to give them battle, than they turned to flight; and instantly Henry, on seeing them run, stopped the slaughter of the prisoners, and made it known to all that he had had recourse to the measure only in self-defence. Henry, in order to prevent the recurrence of such a dreadful catastrophe, sent forthwith a herald to those companies of the enemy who were still lingering very suspiciously through the field, and charged them either to come to battle at once, or to withdraw from his sight; adding, that, should they array themselves afterwards ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... I, a white man of blood untainted, must answer for this final tragic catastrophe! Without me, perhaps, the sachems of the three clans might submit to the will of the League, for even the surly Onondagas had now heeded the League-Call—yes, even the Tuscaroras, too. And as for those Delaware dogs, they had come, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... to his self-esteem and provided the evening of his life with material for talk. Unhappily, I have to confess, as even Boswell at times did, I took no notes, and cannot reproduce that which to me is of absorbing interest, the individual impressions of a vivid catastrophe. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... thrown into prison, where Faust and Mephistopheles find her. Faust urges her to fly with them, but she refuses, and places her reliance for salvation upon earnest prayer, and sorrow for the wrong she has done. Pleading for forgiveness, she expires; and as Mephistopheles exults at the catastrophe he has wrought, angels appear amid the music of the celestial choirs and bear ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... disdaining the construction of sentences,—the precise decorum of the cold grammarian,—she has caught the spirit of her author,—if, in every altered scene,—still adhering to the nice propriety of his meaning, and still keeping in view his great catastrophe,—she has agitated her audience with all the various passions he depicted, the rigid criticism of the closet will be but a slender abatement of the pleasure resulting from the sanction of ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... place, the national safety would be involved. Englishmen were at one time too fond of saying that the great Colonies might, if they chose, sever the link which binds them to the Mother Country. Happily, in their case, no such catastrophe need now be considered. But it would be folly to shut our eyes to the fact that to many Irishmen national independence appears to be the only goal worth striving for. If the concession of full responsible government should be followed (at whatever interval) by ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... my affection for Troy consider what my feelings were, the other day, when on my return from a brief jaunt to London I alighted at the railway station amid all the tokens of a severe and general catastrophe. The porter who opened the door for me had a bandaged head. George the 'bus driver carried his right arm in a sling, but professed himself able to guide his vehicle through our tortuous streets left-handed. I had declined ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... devastated buildings, up the little sandy hills, out of the park to the lonely temple. Already his self-reproach seemed trivial. He knew how little his concealed suspicions had to do with bringing about this catastrophe. That misunderstanding was but a drop in the stream of fate, which was all too swift for her strength. He paused at the last turn of the road and rested, settling his burden more closely in his arms, drawing her to him in the unavailing embrace of regret. Another kind of life, he said,—some average ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... would not be courteous to knock at Miss Gascoigne's door, and ask if she too were ready, when she heard a loud outcry in the nursery above. This, alas! was no novelty. More than once Christian had rushed wildly up stairs, expecting some dreadful catastrophe, but it was only the usual warfare between Phillis and the children, especially Arthur, who was no longer a baby to be petted and scolded, or a little girl to be cowed into obedience, but a big boy to be ruled, if at all, vi ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... earthquake occurring at night. We are told that "the usual means of escape by rushing into the open air was of no avail: the yawning earth swallowed up everybody: huge mountains sank down, level plains rose into hills, and lightning flashed throughout the catastrophe." Substitute "villages" for "famous cities," "hills" for "huge mountains," and we have, perhaps, as good an account as can be found in such few words of one of those dreadful calamities of nature,—though it happened not in the reign of Tiberius ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... that had crushed him down;—or the delicate and prettily dressed lady, who had been bred in affluence, but was suddenly thrown upon the perilous charities of the world by the death of an indulgent, but secretly insolvent father, or the commercial catastrophe and simultaneous suicide of the best of husbands;—or the gifted, but unsuccessful author, appealing to my fraternal sympathies, generously rejoicing in some small prosperities which he was kind enough to term my own triumphs in the field of letters, and claiming to have largely contributed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... became apparent that she was fast settling in the water, while with every roll her list to port became stronger, until at last I found myself holding my breath in momentary expectation to see her roll right over. The catastrophe was not long delayed. There came a moment when, having rolled heavily to port, she failed to lift again, but heeled steadily more and more until, watching her through my powerful glasses, I saw a number of ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... had but little influence upon the minds or the lives of the people. Nor can I find that at any period of the extraordinarily interesting economic and social revolution, which has been in progress in Ireland since the great catastrophe of the Famine period, Dublin University has departed from its academic isolation and its aloofness from the great national problems that were being worked out. The more one thinks of it, indeed, and the more one realises the opportunities of an institution like Trinity College ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... is the trivial, temporal accident of the wiping out of a planet and its inhabitants to the infinite catastrophe which shall establish a mighty world of eternal despair? And which is it most desirable for mankind to have disproved or weakened, the grounds of the threat of M. Babinet, or those of the other infinitely ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... would have made more frequent allusions than she did to the crisis which she thought was approaching. But she was restrained by the intuitive conviction that if her daughter became conscious of what was impending, and was made aware of Mrs. Gibson's cautious and quiet efforts to forward the catastrophe, the wilful girl would oppose herself to it with all her skill and power. As it was, Mrs. Gibson trusted that Cynthia's affections would become engaged before she knew where she was, and that in that case she would not attempt to frustrate her mother's ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to keen, thrilling divination. She grasped the relation between Monty's terrible cry and the strange hunched posture he had assumed. Stillwell's haste and silence, too, were pregnant of catastrophe. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... to live; it was all right and safe there, but the other part of the garret had only the joists of the floor, and the lath and plaster of the ceiling below, and if one stepped on this there would be a catastrophe. As it was half dark up above, perhaps one of the others had best go up first with a candle. Then there were more outcries and threatening, until at last Jurgis had a vision of a pair of elephantine legs disappearing through the trap door, and felt the house shake as Madame Haupt ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... it was either the natural affection of those about me, which I certainly had done nothing to deserve, or the fear of the law which, ages before my birth, was painfully built up by the society into which I intruded, that prevented that catastrophe. If I was nourished, cared for, taught, saved from the vagabondage of a wastrel, I certainly am not aware that I did anything to deserve those advantages. And, if I possess anything now, it strikes me that, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... blamed himself bitterly for the whole catastrophe on the grounds that, if he had only looked into the petrol-tank instead of taking a Kafir's word, the car would never have been held up or the encounter with the leopard occurred. It was no use Lundi Druro's telling him that such reasoning manifested an arrogant underrating ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... birth, but her solemn promise to de Gersay had stood in her way. She determined now to remedy the evil and she therefore applied to de Gersay to relieve her from her promise. De Gersay advised her to communicate the truth to her son as soon as possible to prevent a catastrophe which he prophesied was liable to happen when least expected. She accordingly wrote the Chevalier that at a certain time she would be at her house in the Saint Antoine suburb and prayed him to meet her there. The impassioned Chevalier, expecting nothing less than the gratification ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... than I received from this man's death. The circumstances of his fate presented themselves to my mind in their full complication of iniquity. From him, and the execrations with which I loaded the government that could be the instrument of his tragedy, I turned to myself. I beheld the catastrophe of Brightwel with envy. A thousand times I longed that my corse had lain in death, instead of his. I was only reserved, as I persuaded myself, for unutterable woe. In a few days he would have been acquitted; his liberty, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... activities, persons having dreams which directed group actions were no longer useful. Today, dreams appear to occur to a number of individuals, and those felt to be of social significance usually deal with catastrophe or other foreboding subjects. The following stories were told to me by the widow under the shadow of witchcraft. When I asked her if she thought any of her friends would tell me their dreams, she replied: "No I don't think no Washo would tell you their dreams. But I'm ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... mere "infidelity." All that, in his sore straits, Dr. Zockler is able to do, is to pronounce a faint commendation upon a particularly absurd attempt at reconciliation, which would make out the Noachian Deluge to be a catastrophe which occurred at the end of the Glacial Epoch. This hypothesis involves only the trifle of a physical revolution of which geology knows nothing; and which, if it secured the accuracy of the Pentateuchal writer about the fact of the Deluge, ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... accident having signalized the voyage. Fouquet hoped to be the first to arrive at Nantes; there he would see the notables and gain support among the principal members of the States; he would make himself a necessity, a thing very easy for a man of his merit, and would delay the catastrophe, if he did not succeed in avoiding it entirely. "Besides," said Gourville to him, "at Nantes, you will make out, or we will make out, the intentions of your enemies; we will have horses always ready to convey you to Poitou, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to find in any play a catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as this. This is indeed, according to Milton, to "describe high passions and high actions". The fortitude of the Spartan boy who let a beast gnaw out his bowels till he died without ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... could make out, the poor young man's grief and despair had been poured out to his mother, and she, unable to soothe, had come to try to extract some assurance that the catastrophe had been unconnected with his folly. A very slight foundation would have served her, but this Rachel would not give, honestly believing him the cause of the accident, and also that the shock to the sense of duty higher than he could understand had ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is seen in giving much food, or applying much warmth, to those who have been previously exposed to great hunger, or to great cold. The accumulated sensorial power is thrown into so violent exertion, that inflammations and mortifications supervene, and death closes the catastrophe. In many diseases this method is the most successful; hence the bark in agues produces more certain effect after the previous exhibition of emetics. In diseases attended with violent pain, opium has double the effect, if venesection and a cathartic have been previously used. On this seems ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... "I suppose the catastrophe will arrive, sooner or later, and it is more likely to occur to a girl of twenty than to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... relief corps. The brave spirit of self-reliance triumphed over the appalling calamity. Money for relief was sent to the city from many sources, and it is interesting to note that the citizens of Johnstown, who had suffered from the great catastrophe of the previous year, were among the first to offer help. They knew what ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... 22, 1622 that the great catastrophe struck Virginia in the form of the well planned and carefully executed massacre by the Indians under the crafty leadership of Opechancanough, successor to Powhatan. Although the consequences were not enough to threaten the survival of the Colony, they were deeply serious. At least a fourth, if not ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... From the snow drifted over a rock protruded a horse's hoof. Doug swept the body free of snow. It was old Buster, with his right fore leg broken and a bullet wound in his head. Hot tears scalded Doug's wind-tortured eyes. After a moment of search for further details of the catastrophe, he crawled up the wall again and, after a frantic hunt, found a blurred single horse trail leading on from the spot whence Buster had slipped. He went back for his own horses, mounted Tom ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... fishermen on the sands below, who had seen the impending catastrophe, rushed up the bank, headed the maddened horses ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... rushed at full speed past the temple of Mercury, which stood in a grove before the city. Evidently people knew of the catastrophe, for there was an uncommon movement in front of the temple. While passing, Vinicius saw crowds on the steps and between the columns. These people holding torches were hastening to put themselves under protection of the deity. Moreover the road was not so empty or free as beyond ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... existence—certainly not in this one. And now to shut myself up and write my memoranda- -for I must not lose a single detail of this singular Egyptian psychic problem. The whole thing I perceive is rounding itself towards completion and catastrophe—but in what way? How will it— how CAN ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... The catastrophe of having the mug drained dry at one pull by the stranger in cinder gray was effectually guarded against this time by Mrs. Fennel. She poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping the large one at a discreet distance from him. ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... poetry, had not caused him such misery as this. He had loved a young lady, and had been accepted;—and then the young lady had jilted him. At this time of his life he was about thirty; and as to the outside world, he was absolutely dumfounded by the catastrophe. Up to this period he had been a sportsman in a moderate degree, fishing a good deal, shooting a little, and devoted to hunting, to the extent of a single horse. But when the blow came, he never fished or shot, or hunted again. I think that the young lady would hardly ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... left out of sight of his memory. However, all the while the usual trivialities of his life and the lives of those who belonged to him went on with the same regularity and reality as tragedy, and with as certain a trend to a catastrophe of joy or misery. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of her fancies, nor follow the steps of her fury. The very glory of a mountain is in the revolutions which raised it into power, and the forces which are striking it into ruin. But we want no cold and careful imitation of catastrophe; no calculated mockery of convulsion; no delicate recommendation of ruin. We are to follow the labor of Nature, but not her disturbance; to imitate what she has deliberately ordained,[64] not what ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Bumpus, who seemed to be almost smothered under the folds of his blanket, which he must have had up over his head at the time the catastrophe came ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the Examiner, "has overthrown the Holy Alliance of Southern Germany. Lola Montez, whose affecting testimony during the trial of those who killed Dujarier in a duel cannot but be remembered, was driven by that catastrophe to seek her fortunes in other realms. Chance brought her to Munich, the Sovereign of which capital has divided his time between poetry and the arts, gallantry ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... and before he had moved two feet, that catastrophe seemed at least to have begun. The prop gave way: the light at the entrance was at once blotted out; the air was filled with terrifying roaring echoes. There followed a succession of crashes, the rolling of rocks over each other, the grinding ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... troubled the pit of his stomach. At seven he telephoned to Winifred by trunk call. No! Fleur had not been to Green Street. Then where was she? Visions of his beloved daughter rolled up in her pretty frills, all blood and dust-stained, in some hideous catastrophe, began to haunt him. He went to her room and spied among her things. She had taken nothing—no dressing-case, no Jewellery. And this, a relief in one sense, increased his fears of an accident. Terrible to be helpless when his loved one was missing, especially when he couldn't bear fuss or publicity ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... catastrophe, Great Britain was scarcely less disturbed by internal troubles and commotions. Much as he desired the happiness of the people, the jewels set in his majesty's crown were intermixed with sharp, piercing thorns. This ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... wishing to meet Captain Aylmer before she had reached the house. It was now nearly the middle of April, and the weather was soft and pleasant. It was almost summer again, and as she felt this, she thought of all the events which had occurred since the last summer of their agony of grief at the catastrophe which had closed her brother's life, of her aunt's death first, and then of her father's following so close upon the other, and of the two offers of marriage made to her as to which she was now aware that she had accepted the wrong ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... watched over the fortunes of the Nederlandters having unthinkingly left the field and stepped into a neighboring tavern to refresh themselves with a pot of beer, a direful catastrophe had well-nigh ensued. Scarce had the myrmidons of Michael Paw attained the front of battle, when the Swedes instructed by the cunning Risingh, levelled a shower of blows full at their tobacco-pipes. Astounded at this assault and dismayed at the havoc of their pipes, these ponderous warriors gave ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... least he would pretend he was going blind. To give a semblance of truth to this he would that day consult distinguished oculists and, in spite of their assurances, would tell them that slowly and surely his eyesight was failing him. He would declare to them, in the dread of such a catastrophe, he was of a mind to seek self-destruction. To others he would confide the secret of his blindness and his resolution not to survive it. And, later, all of these would ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... south-west end, narrowing to thirteen miles at the north-east; and it was here that the terrible earthquake occurred in the summer of 1883, by which so many thousands of lives were sacrificed in a moment, through the submerging of some of the adjacent islands in the sea, a catastrophe only second in the annals of history to the earthquake at Lisbon in the ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... remainder of the sentence in tones so low that not a mouse in the corner could have heard.) 'Well, the inventor of that explosive has naturally been wanted ever since by all the heads of police in Europe. But the most curious—or perhaps the most natural part of my story is, that our hero, after the catastrophe, grew disgusted with himself and his comrades, acquired, in a fit of revulsion, quite a conservative taste in politics, which was strengthened greatly by the news he indirectly received of the great wealth and respectability of his ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Derefd. febr. 29, 1703/4, in Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc., 1867, p. 478. This valuable document was found among the papers of Fitz-John Winthrop, governor of Connecticut. The authorities of that province, on hearing of the catastrophe at Deerfield, promptly sent an armed force to its relief, which, however, could not arrive till long after the enemy were gone. The paper in question seems to be the official report of one of the Connecticut officers. After recounting what had taken place, he gives a tabular list of the captives, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... turned combatants, striking or parrying with their heavy oaken blades; the sound of blows on breaking heads; plunges into the foaming brine; blood trickling down faces and necks, and reddening naked arms—such was the catastrophe seen in its details from the overhanging gunwale of the galley. And while it went on, the worse than confused mass drifted away from the ship's side, leaving a clear space through which, with the first shout heard from him during the race, the hamari ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... counted upon studying, if but for a few rapt moments, the vision of a land west of the sun, east of the moon—a novel territory, perhaps a vast playground for souls emancipated from the gyves of existence. But this!—he shuddered at the catastrophe: a very Pompeian calamity depriving him at a stroke of his wife, his orchestra—all, all had been engulfed. Forgetting his newly won crown, forgetting the tremendous import of his discovery to mankind, Pobloff began howling, "Luga, Luga, Akh! ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... trudged to the house with a goodly following, including Nancy herself, who soon found her feet when she heard that there was a cure for the catastrophe. ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... to the Squire, with a good deal more land besides in neighbouring parishes. Kencote House is a big, rather ugly structure, and was built early in the eighteenth century after the disastrous fire which destroyed the beautiful old Tudor hall and nearly all its hoarded treasures. This catastrophe is worth a brief notice, for nowadays an untitled family often enjoys some consideration from the possession of an old and beautiful house, and the Clintons of Kencote would be better known to the world at large if they did not live in a ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... Speech describes the catastrophe. How Pentheus, arrived within sight of the orderly Maenads, was not satisfied, but desired a higher station from which to view their unseemly life. Then a wonder: the stranger bent down an ash tree, and seating Pentheus in a fork of it let the ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... mentioned above, was ever made of the second expedition. We inherited from the first a plat of the river itself down to the mouth of the Paria, which, according to Professor Thompson, was fairly good, but we did not rely on it; from the mouth of the Paria to Catastrophe Rapid, the point below Diamond Creek where the Howlands and Dunn separated from the boat party, a plat that was broken in places. This was approximately correct as far as Kanab Canyon, though not so good as above the Paria. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Three years afterwards, the Duc d'Alencon (Lucon et Mindanao; Paris, 1870, S. 38) found the traces of the catastrophe everywhere. Three sides of the principal square of the city, in which formerly stood the government, or governor's, palace, the cathedral, and the townhouse, were lying like dust heaps overgrown with weeds. All the large public edifices were "temporarily" ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... was activity of the fiercest. Winton had raced back with his news of the catastrophe, and the camp was alive with men clustering like bees and swarming upon the flat-cars of the material-train to ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... about to fall beneath the united efforts of a squadron of workmen. Watch in hand, the great citizen was estimating the length of the resistance which that mass of freestone would present to the destructive labor of which it was the object. Precisely at the crucial moment of the impending catastrophe la Peyrade, lost in the tumult of his thoughts, was entering, heedless of the shouts addressed to him on all sides, the radius within which the stones would fall. Seen by Phellion (who, it must be said, would have done the same for a total stranger) ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... flower-pot greedily and appeared refreshed, Horace proceeded: "I have every hope, sir," he said, "that before many hours you will be smiling—pray don't prance like that, I mean what I say—smiling over what now seems to you, very justly, a most annoying and serious catastrophe. I shall speak seriously to Fakrash (the Jinnee, you know), and I am sure that, as soon as he realises what a frightful blunder he has made, he will be the first to offer you every reparation in his power. For, old foozle as he is, ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... the trials, the country was shocked by the assassination of the President on July 2, 1881, at the hands of a disappointed office seeker named Guiteau. Despite a strong constitution Garfield grew slowly weaker and died on September 19. The catastrophe affected the country the more profoundly because of its connection with the factional quarrel in the Republican party and because, following the recent murder of the Russian Czar, it seemed to show that democratic government was no guarantee ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... himself—I mean on her account than his. I have always thought sudden death to be the best of all for oneself, but under such circumstances it is terrible for those who are left. Arnold told me years ago that he had heart disease. I do not suppose there is any likelihood of an immediate catastrophe in my own case. I should not go abroad if there were. Imagine the horror of leaving one's wife to fight all the difficulties of sudden euthanasia in a Swiss hotel! I saw enough of that two ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... had an unhappier childhood than Anthony Trollope. Born in London on April 24, 1815, his home was made sordid by his father's misfortunes, and at Harrow and Winchester, where he was for nearly eleven years, his mean appearance subjected him to many dire humiliations. A final catastrophe in the fortunes of the elder Trollope drove the family to Belgium, where Anthony for a time acted as usher in a school at Brussels. But at the age of nineteen a Post-office appointment brought him back to London. The turning point in his career came in 1841, when he accepted the position of a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... occurred in it so many strange and horrible things, that the credulous Susanna, who during it had become ever paler and paler, might have been petrified with horror if, precisely at the most terrible part of the catastrophe, the suspicion had not suddenly occurred to her, that she was horrifying herself—at a mere fiction! And Harald's countenance, when she expressed her conjectures, made this certainty; and the hearty laughter ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... dark, cloudy, and windy night. We often looked out, but could see nothing, scarcely even the outline of the mountain. We listened, and our hearts beat thick, when there was no sound but the rising gust! I dwell on these circumstances too long, because I recoil from relating the catastrophe, as if it were but recent—as if my thoughts had not been familiarized with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... who had exiled himself to France, and had taken no share in the last catastrophe (which he foresaw), returned, he was in a position once more to conduct the government according to his old policy, only with greater independence. A Parliament was called which now for the first time confirmed the statutes ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... of mending in the family, which Wilmet replenished every Saturday; and though Mrs. Underwood's instinct for piecing and darning had revived as soon as she was taken out of bed, her work now always needed a certain revision to secure the boys from the catastrophe of which Wilmet often dreamt—appearing in public in ragged shirt-sleeves! Geraldine knew that every stitch she left undone would have to be put in by her sister in late evening or early morning, and therefore often wrenched herself from the pencil and paints that best beguiled her thoughts from ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... worst, too, the nation would not dock me of more than half my income, so I should still be as well off as before my investment, and in the meantime I shall be drawing a double income until the catastrophe arrives. A nation doesn't become bankrupt more than once in a century, so I shall have plenty of time to amass a little capital out ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Genis, "was churlish enough to refuse. I would not have come now only that I felt I might be in time to avert the most awful catastrophe that has yet ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... to only a few hundred yards. They pass through nearly the same point once in each of their periods of revolution round the Sun, and it has been suggested that they are fragments of a great globe rent asunder by some mighty catastrophe; over 400 of these little worlds have been discovered and have received names, or are known ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... Christian to be troubled by the disagreeable conviction that was in the minds of other members of my crew, namely, that our souls, unliberated by funeral rites from this world, would have to hover for ever over the Ogowe near the scene of our catastrophe. I own this idea was an unpleasant one—fancy having to pass the day in those caves with the bats, and then come out and wander all night in the cold mists! However, like a good many likely-looking prophecies, those of M'bo did not quite come off, and a miss is as good ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... first feeling of dismay at the discovery that the police were looking for him he had been overwhelmed by a sense of catastrophe. With the passing of that phase he was able to consider the situation with a cooler brain, and it now seemed to him that his position was not so precarious as he deemed it in the light of that shock. He knew London, and might be able ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... The catastrophe had several important compensations. The owner of the Dummer House decided that the boy was punished enough, and took no legal proceeding against him. On his part, Jim began to think much more seriously before giving reckless rein to ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Pierre Couttet had been whirled to death on the great peak, and his body, embedded and preserved in a glacier, was found nearly half a century afterward at its foot. And two other Couttets of past years escaped, by the merest hair of miraculous fortune, from a catastrophe on the same dreadful slopes in which three of their comrades were swallowed up. Yet the Ambroise Couttet of to-day is never so happy as when he is on the mountain. His eyes sparkle if he hears the thunder of an avalanche, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... iron door grew, with every roll of our wheels, louder and louder. But it was rather as though I had been lifted in a sheet from one life—a life of speculation, of viewing war from a superior and safe distance, of viewing indeed all catastrophe and reality from that same distance—into the other. I had been caught up, had hung for a moment in midair, had been "planted" in this new experience. For us all there must have been at this moment something of this passing from an old life into a new one, and yet I dare swear that not ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... has been made at times that the United States might develop a Caesarism, and certainly the position of president might easily become that of an imperator. No doubt in the event of an acute failure of the national system such a catastrophe might occur, but the more hopeful and probable line of development is one in which a conscious and powerful, if informal, aristocracy will play a large part. It may, indeed, never have any of the outward forms of an aristocracy or any definite ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... off than it really was because of the darkness, gave one a sense of wonderful security: to feel her so steady and still was like standing on a large rock in the middle of the ocean. But there were now more evidences of the coming catastrophe to the observer than had been apparent when on deck last: one was the roar and hiss of escaping steam from the boilers, issuing out of a large steam pipe reaching high up one of the funnels: a harsh, deafening boom that made conversation difficult and no doubt increased the apprehension ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... it had yet, as in its infancy, nothing of Manners. On which account, those, who could not penetrate into the ill constitution of its plan, yet grew disgusted at the dryness of the Conduct, and want of ease in the Catastrophe. ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... almost impalpable bar between them, which is the more remarkable because Williams appears to have seen with equanimity Froude's apparently more violent and dangerous outbreaks of paradox and antipathy. Possibly, after the catastrophe, he may, in looking back, have exaggerated his early alarms. But from the first he says he saw in Newman what he had learned to look upon as the gravest of dangers—the preponderance of intellect among ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... of the parish, the most remarkable generality (for we had no particular catastrophe) was a great death of old people in the spring. Among others, Miss Sabrina, the school mistress, paid the debt of nature, but we could now better spare her than we did her predecessor; for at Cayenneville there was a broken manufacturer's wife, an excellent teacher, ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... rested one thing more to make the catastrophe complete, and that also came to pass: Cecil was fully and entirely aware of his ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... not another word, but with an air of indescribable dignity adjusted the retort, took out a cork—and—but words fail me to describe the catastrophe! Before Dr. Mumbudget could rush forward to prevent it, the gas had come in contact with the air, become inflamed instantly, and sent Dr. Skihi whirling above the ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... parents and guardians, expect entertainment for themselves, as well as instruction for those who had rather it was out of sight,—look for antiques in carved cherry-stones,—and require plot, incident, and catastrophe in a chronicle ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The catastrophe was witnessed by the assembled family, who hastened to the bleeding victims of parental injustice, and endeavored to do all that was possible to restore life to the mangled forms of the two who loved when living, and in death ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... into the other room would be to drop the conversation. I was determined not to let that catastrophe happen. It was just possible that Mrs. Beauly's maid might have quitted her service, or might have been left behind in England. My information would not be complete until I knew what had become of the maid. I pushed my chair back a little ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... a little catastrophe. Miss Marchmont's pile overbalanced and fell into Jacob's compartment. Such things happened to Miss Marchmont. What was she seeking through millions of pages, in her old plush dress, and her wig of claret-coloured hair, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... circumstances would permit, for the delinquent "fine feathers" to blow in. By eight, he was a little more than uneasy, but it didn't help any. Suddenly, on the domestic horizon appeared a weird-looking creature! A human being, apparently in a state of frenzy over some terrible catastrophe. It was the tailor! "Here," he whispered, almost in tears, as he handed something to the outraged head of the State, "these ain't yours, but you'll have to wear 'em; yours ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... on the whole, we have no reason to be ashamed of the primaeval inhabitants of the land of our ancestry. They knew their rights, they prized them, they fought for them bravely and died for them nobly. More harmony among themselves might have delayed, but could not have prevented the final catastrophe. Rome in the age of Trajan was irresistible; and Britain became a Roman province. This portion of the Agricola of Tacitus, and the Germania of the same author, entitle him to the peculiar affection and lasting ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... of the Matutina felt that most hopeless of catastrophes—an inert catastrophe undermining them. The still and sinister certainty of their fate petrified them. No stir in the air, no movement on the sea. The motionless is the inexorable. Absorption was sucking them down silently. Through ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... With great diffidence we reply to the query of our learned friend. The force of tragedy consists in its depicting evil so ruinous as to involve even the innocent in the catastrophe; the pleasure is derived, we think, from the failure of the mischievous design, and the merited retribution which falls upon the head of the plotters. In Romeo, "a scourge is laid upon the hate of the Montagues and Capulets, by which all are punished;" Hamlet's wicked ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... a catastrophe, after all, and yet it called up a look of each unmistakable vexation to that naturally tranquil and abstracted countenance, that a spectator of the scene repressed a smile which had risen to his lips and ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the last man defending their gold, all well and good. But in case any of our men are still alive there, they'd be butchered. And then, the destruction of gold as a medium of exchange, by its gross plenty, would wreck the world with panics. And the greatest catastrophe of history would lie on our shoulders. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... sat down and thought the matter over. The financial catastrophe appalled her. She had grown so used to a life of luxury. And the threat? It seemed fantastic, impossible of fulfillment. Never in her life had she been coerced by force. There was one way out—Meredith's way. But she ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... steadily higher. Instead of abating, the wind seemed momentarily to increase in violence, and the balloon made increasingly heavier weather of it. It was only a matter of time when the wind would rip it to pieces, and this catastrophe was not long in coming. There was a sound of ripping cloth, and the next moment the balloon began to drop rapidly. This left its passengers no alternative but to take to their parachutes, as to remain longer with the balloon ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... she had done, but Stella's face, as she viewed the catastrophe, was so comical that Marjorie went off into peals of laughter. Molly joined in this, and the two girls ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... to the last quietude and desertion of the grave; in this dulness of the senses there is a gentle preparation for the final insensibility of death. And to him the idea of mortality comes in a shape less violent and harsh than is its wont, less as an abrupt catastrophe than as a thing of infinitesimal gradation, and the last step on a long decline of way. As we turn to and fro in bed, and every moment the movements grow feebler and smaller and the attitude more restful and easy, until sleep overtakes us at a stride and we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time of the battles of Salamis, Himera, and Cumae a furious war raged for many years, according to the accounts of the Roman annals, between Rome and Veii (271-280). The Romans suffered in its course severe defeats. Tradition especially preserved the memory of the catastrophe of the Fabii (277), who had in consequence of internal commotions voluntarily banished themselves from the capital(4) and had undertaken the defence of the frontier against Etruria, and who were slain to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... much easier it is to plan than to achieve,—nor had the voice of Burke carried terror throughout Europe. Even now, it is impossible to read the first acts of that drama without being moved to sympathetic enthusiasm. What emotions must it not have excited while the awful catastrophe was yet concealed! Tried by any received test, France, for centuries, had been the chief state in Europe,—inferior to none in the arts of war, superior to any in the arts of peace. Fashion and letters had given her an empire more permanent than that which the enterprise of Columbus and the fortune ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... suppose that, being conscious of his remarkable power in the representation of momentary action and of states of the soul, he thought that he could harmonise into a whole the continuous action of a number of persons, and of their passions in sword-play with one another; and then conduct to a catastrophe their interaction. But a man may be capable of writing dramatic lyrics and dramatic romances without being capable of writing a drama. Indeed, so different are the two capabilities that I think the true dramatist could not write such a lyric or romance ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... down on the porch, and I'll show you how to empty her lungs, Berry," said Adam, laying down his bundle and taking charge of the situation, as all the rest, even capable Aunt Mary, still stood helpless before the catastrophe. ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... without speaking, in acquiescence to the old hunter's verdict—as though in his own heart he could not determine, amidst such conflicting thoughts, whether he ought to rejoice, or to grieve over this unexpected catastrophe. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... from the flames. With a dignified step he advanced towards Jack, and presenting his war axe, he yielded himself up as a prisoner. No others came out, and the roof of the hut directly afterwards fell in. For a moment the seamen stopped, gazing at the catastrophe; then the impulse seized them to rush forward and attempt to rescue their fellow-creatures, but it was too late: for an instant a blackened head rose amidst the burning embers, and in another place an arm and shoulder appeared, but directly after sank ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... after position—fortress after fortress—city after city—declared impregnable by the Government up to the very last moment, fell suddenly and mysteriously; only to expose, when too late, the chain of grievous errors that inseparably linked the catastrophe ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... not left the baroness's side since the catastrophe. She could not see the unconscious face on the pillow for tears. Was there ever such barbarous, such gratuitous cruelty as young Treumann's? His mother had been in once or twice on tiptoe, the last ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... home, sounds uninterruptedly from The Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the earth and drowns his book. It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are those of my lords bishops ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... becoming tragical. Of course beautiful Lisa was now out of the question, but for this they found ample consolation in prophesying that Florent would bring about some frightful catastrophe. It was quite clear, they said, that he had got some base design in his head. When people like him escaped from gaol it was only to burn everything down; and if he had come to the markets it must assuredly be for some abominable purpose. Then they began to ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... A catastrophe was avoided, just in time, by Bob and Nellie appearing on the scene of action; when, catching hold of the end of Rover's chain, they bore him away captive again to where their aunt and the Captain were waiting and ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... prudence, and throw him upon his knees before her as a humiliated creature who had been pretending to love knowledge, philosophy, and science, but in reality had been loving beauty and riches. It was the fear of this catastrophe which had had a strong influence ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... sorrow for what had happened. They reproached and blamed him, saying that there was no truth in the story of treachery—all was quiet, and the people showed nothing but goodwill. Then Pizarro accused his treasurer and Father Valverde of having deceived him in the matter and brought about the catastrophe; and they in their turn exculpated themselves, and upbraided Pizarro as the only one responsible for the deed, and the quarrel was fierce between them. Meanwhile, the death of the Inca, whose power over his people had been so great, caused the breaking-up of all the ancient institutions. The ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... differ on this point. What she does not do is to let her mother into her confidence. She sees the man—runs upon him, if you will, in places or under circumstances she cannot avoid—till her judgment leaves her and the point of catastrophe is reached. Then, possibly, she awakens, or what is more probable, seeks to protect herself from the penetration and opposition of his friends by meetings less open than those in which they had lately indulged. She says ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... infection. Not to lie whole and decent in one's coffin! Oh, it was an indignity too terrible for contemplation; and every time they were away from Jerrem she would beset Reuben with entreaties and questions as to what could be done to avoid the catastrophe. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... a lighted lantern, on pain of being stopped by the sentinel and kept in custody until morning. Murder and villany are strongly depicted on the features of the slaves of that nation; and such of them as dared to speak of this dreadful catastrophe clearly appeared to approve ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... the beach, and in canoes and rafts, there were not less, altogether, in the immediate vicinity of the schooner, than ten thousand natives, besides the shoals of them who, laden with booty, were making their way inland and over to the neighbouring islands. We now anticipated a catastrophe, and were not disappointed. First of all there came a smart shock (which we felt as distinctly where we were as if we had been slightly galvanized), but unattended with any visible signs of an explosion. The savages were evidently startled, and paused ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... said, was not built in a day; the rule of Rome was not destroyed in a day. When we speak of the "fall" of Rome, we have in mind, not a violent catastrophe which suddenly plunged the civilized world into ruin, but rather the slow and gradual decay of ancient society throughout the basin of the Mediterranean. This decay set in long before the Germans and the Persians became a serious danger to the empire. It would have continued, doubtless, had ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... please to write me word at what time was it when isreal went to Jerico i am very anxious to hear for thare is a mighty host will pass over and you and i my brother will sing hally luja i shall notify you when the great catastrophe shal take place No more at the present ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... could be pitched upon. He wished Callista no harm, but, if a Christian must be found and held up in terrorem, he would rather it was a person like her, without connections and home, than the member of any decent family of Sicca, whose fair fame would be compromised by a catastrophe. However, she was not a Christian, and Agellius was, at least by profession; and his fear was lest Juba should be right in his estimate of his brother's character. Juba had said that Agellius could be as obstinate as he was ordinarily indolent and yielding, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Mrs. Weldon, "we shall never know the secret of this catastrophe. Meanwhile, it might be possible that some man of the crew is ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... was not likely to come to them, they dispatched a disinterested person to him, to notify him of their arrival, and the condition in which they found matters at the store-camp, left in his charge, and also of their wish that he would attend their proposed meeting, and account for the catastrophe which had so unexpectedly occurred. He pretended to know nothing of the affair, and feigned great surprise at the news; said he had left the camp and its stores, all safe, two days before the storm, to come to the settlement for more provisions; believing that his companions ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson |
