"Downhill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the gallant Montcalm. The first volley from the English line had mowed his soldiers down like ripe wheat. At the second volley the ranks broke and the ground was thick strewn with the dead. When the English charged, the French fled in wildest panic downhill for the St. Charles. Wounded and faint, Montcalm on his black charger was swept swiftly along St. Louis road in the blind stampede of retreat. Near the walls a ball passed through his groins. Two soldiers caught him from falling, and steadied him on either side of his horse ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... over several years; they were much like these first ones. I soon learned, however, that life in the Methodist Church was all uphill or downhill at a smart spiritual canter. In these days it is nearly as easy to be a Methodist as it is to be ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... we went downhill and still downhill through openings among batches of great forest trees. The new leaves were just coming out in pinks and russets, so that the effect at a little distance was almost precisely that of our ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... Eleanor cried, as we paused to gain breath at the bottom. "Now you've come there'll be four of us to run downhill. We shall ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... downhill way in those days, and almost at the bottom of the decline. It was considered a post of penance by enlisted men and officers alike, nested up there in the high plateau against the mountains in its place of wild ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... when finished, would cross the muskeg with a slight ascent; but the bank sank as they worked at it, and the track now led downhill toward its end. The foreman failed to remember this ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... light. It seemed as light as day, only soft, mellow, and the air held a transparent sheen. He ran up the bare ridges and down the smooth slopes, and, like a goat, jumped from rock to rock. In this light he knew his way and lost no time looking for a trail. He crossed the divide and then had all downhill before him. Swiftly he descended, almost always sure of his memory of the landmarks. He did not remember having studied them in the ascent, yet here they were, even in changed light, familiar to his sight. What he had once seen was pictured on his ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... They were flying downhill now, and the giant's weight was telling. On the opposite side of the valley was another pinewood. If he could only reach that, between the good going and the up-gradient Anthony felt that there was a bare chance. The thing ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... London; at night the streets were infested with brutal ruffians, and, as late as Queen Anne's time, by bands of "fine gentlemen" not less brutal, who amused themselves by overturning sedan chairs, rolling women downhill in barrels, and compelling men to dance jigs, under the stimulus of repeated pricks from a circle of sword points, until the victims fell fainting from exhaustion. Duels were frequent, on the slightest provocation. Highwaymen ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... learned nothing. How wondrous is this! Now, that I'm no longer young, that my hair is already half gray, that my strength is fading, now I'm starting again at the beginning and as a child! Again, he had to smile. Yes, his fate had been strange! Things were going downhill with him, and now he was again facing the world void and naked and stupid. But he could not feed sad about this, no, he even felt a great urge to laugh, to laugh about himself, to laugh about this strange, ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... breezy miles a day were written in his very whiskers. His manners were a canter; his conversation a round trot. He was a fast coach upon a downhill turnpike road; he was all pace. A wagon couldn't have moved slowly, with that guard and his key ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... things had gone downhill with me for a long time, till, in the end, I was so curiously bared of every conceivable thing. I had not even a comb left, not even a book to read, when things grew all too sad with me. All through the summer, up in the churchyards or parks, where I used to sit and write my ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... presently turn left into a still narrower street, with tailors and boot-makers and smiths all at work in the open air; and pass through the Piazzetta Mondragone, and turn again to the left, but this time downhill; then lose yourself amid filthy little alleys, where the scent of oil and chestnuts and pine-cones is stronger than ever; then emerge on a little terrace where there is a noble view of the bay and of Capri; ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... he will put a worse man in my place." "That may well be true," said he, and gave me his hand. "Better the devil we know than the devil we know not, till we can pack you Normans home." And so, too, said his Saxons; and they laughed as we drove the pigs downhill. But I think some of them, even then, ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... healthy, happy man is hampered and thwarted in a great work by annoyances and disasters, he behaves like an Arab horse on a heavy march. At first it moves at a brisk trot, uphill and downhill, and it goes faster and faster as its strength begins to flag. And when at last it is thoroughly out of breath and ready to drop, it breaks ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... new topic to carry with him, a topic of such fertile resources that it went far to pay his board and lodging. He made a snowball out of the clean reputations of Charity and Jim and started it downhill, gathering dirt and momentum as it rolled. It was bound to roll before long into the ken of Peter Cheever, and he was not the man to tolerate any levity in a wife. Cheever might be as wicked as Caesar, but his ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... found him unengaging. With all his attainments he had preserved unspoiled a certain natural modesty, which led him to attribute his advancement to accident or fate. He once told me that he owed all his success in life to the fact that, as a country boy in Ohio, while driving his father's cart downhill at daybreak, he fell asleep and was jolted off his seat, breaking his leg. During the weeks of enforced seclusion that followed he taught himself to read, and developed a studious turn of mind, which, his leg having been permanently weakened by the accident, led him to seek a situation ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... planned the conquest of the air. His practical experiments began when, at the age of thirteen, he and his brother Gustav made wings consisting of wooden framework covered with linen, which Otto attached to his arms, and then ran downhill flapping them. In consequence of possible derision on the part of other boys, Otto confined these experiments for the most part to moonlit nights, and gained from them some idea of the resistance offered by flat surfaces to the air. It was in ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... happened. It required, however, only a few more minutes of reflection, and a few more minutes of the grating, bumping, trembling of my house, to enable me to make up my mind what was happening. My house was sliding downhill! ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... to go, li'l' hawss," he chatted on. "Downhill all the way soon an' then a drink to wash out yore mouth an' the best feed in Caroca ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... did not know about gravitation that they laughed at Columbus when he said the earth was round. "Why, if the earth were round," they argued, "the water would all flow off on the other side." They did not know that water flows downhill because the earth is pulling it toward its center by gravitation, and that it does not make the slightest difference on which side of the earth water is, since it is still pulled ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne
... of progress, during which the road seemed better, and they appeared to get along some distance before there was another jerk up and another jerk down, and then a series of jumps as if they were going downhill; and then the cart gave a big bump ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... the old man, "This house here belonged to the same family at one time; though when I was born it was another branch of the family, second cousins or something, that lived in it. But even then it was something on to the downhill ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... of fairly level road through open forest along the rim, and then we struck such a rocky jumble of downhill grade that the bundles fell off the wagon. They had to be tied on. When we came to a long slow slant uphill, a road of loose rocks, we made about one mile an hour. This slow travel worked havoc upon my mind. I wanted to hurry. I wanted to get out of the wilds. That awful rumor about influenza ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... surprise, at your feet nestles the loveliest of smiling canyon-like valleys, filled with trees, aspen, oak, and pine, with here and there a tent or red roof gleaming through the green, and a noisy brook hurrying on its way downhill. By a steep scramble you reach the lower level, birds singing, flowers tempting on every side, and the picturesque, narrow trail leading you on, around the ledge of rock, over the rustic bridge, till you reach the back entrance of the camp. ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... thick nose, humour in the eyes, though they so often watered; the face had gone to flabbiness at last, but not without some lines and dents, as if the head had resisted the body for a space before the whole man rolled contentedly downhill. ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... in her hand a small key which hung at the end of her watch-chain, and moved to a small door, low down, round the corner, and a little downhill from the edge of the Brow. Oolanga, in obedience to her gesture, went back to the iron door. Adam looked carefully at the mongoose box as the African went by, and was glad to see that it was intact. Unconsciously, ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... to bring before the House, but that propriety cannot be contingent upon some other proceeding of another person, quite unconnected with it. It was a poor tu quoque which has got him into a scrape, and will contribute to the downhill impulsion of the Government; it is a fresh bit of discredit thrown upon them. John Russell too has been a personal antagonist of the Bishop of Exeter, and should have been the last man to attack him in this irregular way. Out of all this ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... use to give you false hopes, young one," said Cecil gently. "I can do nothing. If the money were mine it should be yours at a word. But I am all downhill, and my bills may be called in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... old wommen on the out journey," declared Mr. Crows passionately. "That's because it's all up-hill. But they walk in downhill to save a shellen. I know them." He brooded darkly. "It's all part of the plan," he went on. Then, as though feeling that this latter statement, in itself, erred on the side of vagueness, ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... downhill of life, when I find I'm declining, May my lot no less fortunate be Than a snug elbow-chair can afford for reclining, And a cot that o'erlooks the wide sea; With an ambling pad-pony to pace o'er the lawn, While I ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... Row at right angles, only a few paces prom No. 17. It dips sharply downhill toward the Water of Leith, and Mifflin and I used to stand at the corner and wonder just where took place the adventure with the lame boy which R.L.S. once described when setting down ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... the trail we made," remarked Ted. "It wound around and then climbth the hill. We could thee about where the cabin lay, and I made a bee line downhill for ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... cavortin' up the trail this mornin', just afore daylight. Nobody sent 'em no invite, but they sorter conceived they had a mission in ther wilderness. I wa'nt nowise favorable ter organizin' a reception committee, an' voted fer shovin' 'em back downhill, bein' a bit skeery o' that sex, but it seems that, all unbeknownst ter me, Stutter, yere, hed bin gittin' broke ter harness. An' what did he do but come prancin' inter the argument with a gun, cussin' an' swearin', and insistin' they be received yere as honored guests. Oh, ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... over the landscape, to attract enemies from afar, and be quickly shot by a man or torn to pieces by wolves? Not he! With the keen intelligence of the wounded wild ruminant, he chose the line of least resistance, and on three legs fled downhill. He went on down, and kept going, until he reached the bottom of the biggest and most tortuous coulee in his neighborhood. And then what? Instead of coming to rest in a reposeful little valley a hundred feet wide, he chose the most rugged branch he could ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... cart along a country road. You turn to the city, and see children, dwarfed by distance into pigmies, at play about suburban doorsteps; you have a glimpse upon a thoroughfare where people are densely moving; you note ridge after ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one behind another, and church spires rising bravely from the sea of roofs. At one of the innumerable windows you watch a figure moving; on one of the multitude of roofs you watch clambering chimney-sweeps. The wind takes a run and scatters the smoke; bells are heard, far and near, faint ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... by," grunted Dick, "though enough. I have done twenty and one score once, but that was somewhat downhill." ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... man of Vic. Three thousand dollars ought to be ample to put the ranch on a paying basis. And don't blame your dad for collecting it now, when it will do the most good. I could see no benefit in waiting and suffering, and letting you get farther downhill all the while, making it that much harder to climb back. Go at once to your claim, and do your best—that is what will make your dad happiest. You will get well, and you will make a home for you and Vic, and be independent and happy. In doing this you will fulfill the last, ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... LENGTH of Bogoyavlensky Street. At last the road began to go downhill; his feet slipped in the mud and suddenly there lay open before him a wide, misty, as it were empty expanse—the river. The houses were replaced by hovels; the street was lost in a multitude of ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... realized that it was getting too dark even to distinguish the path at all. They stumbled blindly on through the heather, conscious only that they were going downhill, but whether they were really retracing their steps or not, it was impossible to tell. Spot, whose spirits had failed him, followed at their heels. Faster and faster fell the darkness; the girls linked arms to avoid getting separated. They ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... was starting on his long walk downhill a motor car passed him. Only one motor car that season had climbed the precipitous road from the plains. It must be Yae Smith's. Just as it was passing the girl leaned out of the carriage and blew ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... good. I had to show your father and you that I had not thrown away all your kindness. So I quit travelling that downhill road on which I ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... I went now downhill into an overgrown water-course (very much like the one in which I used to sleep and eat away back by the artillery big gun). Here were willows and brambles with ripe blackberries, and wild-rose bushes with scarlet hips. "Just like England!" ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... had thus little save hunger to fear so long as they were in the open country. They marched on, breaking into a trot whenever their course led downhill, during the whole of the day on which their retreat began. Each man still had a small supply of meat left, and portions of this they ate raw as they proceeded. At dusk the foremost of the Balotsi were some distance ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... party of phantom men and girls sliding downhill on their derrieres and ending in a heap at the bottom. A nice change from traveling under their own power. Their maximum speed while swift and incomprehensible to mortals, seemed relatively slow to one of Hell's old timers. Only Nick and his best scout, Cletus, ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... creature indeed for anyone to meet. But he had lost now all feeling, save the will to get there. A flock of sheep came out of a field into the lane. He pushed through them somehow, but they lost him several seconds. More than a mile still; and he was blown, and his legs beginning to give! Downhill indeed they went of their own accord, but there was the long run-in, quite level; and he could hear the train, now slowly puffing its way along the valley. Then, in spite of exhaustion, his spirit rose. He would not go in looking like a scarecrow, utterly ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... already. The Red Cross men were kept busy, staggering away downhill with stretchers laden with the wounded. There was no possibility of returning the enemy's fire, and in the darkness the ships could not help. All the Colonials could do was to crouch as low as possible, flattening themselves against ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... to Calmenare in the Duke's presence; and I would have pressed a gold piece into his hand for "opening my prison door," but he would not have it. Afterwards, while we followed the grey car on the downhill road to Madrid, Pilar told the whole story with dramatic ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... up uncertainly, with the disappearance of the focus for its concerted bloodlust. The police asked many questions but none of the right ones. Finally, Cam, Ev, and Curt escaped to the waiting limo and started the long slow crawl downhill. ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... Now The god is breasting the hill-brow. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Pan is near: Joy runs trembling back to fear. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! All my blood Knocks through the heart whose every thud Chokes me, blinds me, drains my madness. As one half-drowned, I feel life's gladness Ooze from each pore. Towards the sun Downhill I reel that fain would run. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Thornless seem Briars that part as in a dream. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Hazel-boughs Hurt not ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... was unlike any that I had ever witnessed in the pulpit, and appeared to me to resemble rather that of a very earnest speaker at the hustings than the usual pulpit style. His sentences seemed to run downhill, with continually increasing speed till they came to a full stop at the bottom. It was, I think, the only sermon I ever heard which I wished longer. He carried me with him completely, for the century was in those days, like me, young. But if I were to hear a similarly ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... all this, when, nearly at the top, I was thrown up the hill of the stairs as if it had suddenly become downhill. My feet flew from stair to stair to escape falling, and I flew, or fell, apparently upward, until, at the top, I hung on for dear life while the stern of the Elsinore flung skyward ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... being separated. Though they had some general idea of their direction, they did not really know where they were walking, and stumbled blindly on through heather and bilberry bushes, over stones and rocks, only feeling that they were going downhill. It was very slow progress. Ralph stopped continually to consult his compass, and occasionally gave a loud "cooee", in case they might find some wandering shepherd or countryman who would be able to help them. There was no ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... of the perambulator, and looked at that other fellow's baby. In the shade of the hood, with the frilly clothes, it seemed to him lying with its head downhill. It had scratched its snub nose and bumpy forehead, and it stared up at its mother with blue eyes, which seemed to have no underlids so fat were ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he said, with a heavy sigh. "I've kind of gone downhill, that's a fact. The old farm has to go, Ben—I'm sorry for that—I'd have liked to have ended my days here, but it's not to be. I don't want to complain. The Lord does all things well. I haven't a doubt but that it all fits ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... heart shortens the longest road, and Joan, whose return journey from the holy well was for the most part downhill, soon found herself back again in Penzance. The fire of devotion still actuated her movements, and she walked fearlessly, doubting nothing, to the post-office. There would be a letter to-day; she knew it; she felt it in her consciousness, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... said with a shrug. "You can't get lost. If you should lose your bearings, just walk downhill and you'll come to food and water. Follow the shore line until you get back, either direction. And, I reckon, the way things go now, you ain't goin' to hurt yourself. We won't worry about you none. We're all gettin' along all right, so you needn't ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... spirited face on the operations of private cupidity. This is not the first time nor the second that I have had to urge that the greatest danger to us in the sphere of foreign politics is the tendency of capital to run away from civilization: the one running downhill to hell as naturally as the other struggles uphill to the Celestial City. The Englishman is allowed to produce the subsistence of himself and his family only on condition that he produces the subsistence of the capitalist and his retainers as well; and lo! he finds more and ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... heard that, although you were a wild and irresponsible youth, people generally expected that as you grew older you would gradually accumulate ballast; but instead of that you had steadily gone downhill from ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... to him, telling him they would see the moon-path. They must set off downhill. He felt her arm clasped firmly, joyously, round his waist. Therein was his stability and warm support. Siegmund felt a keen flush of pitiful tenderness for her as she walked with buoyant feet beside him, clasping him so happily, all unconscious. This pity for ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... It's because we 're going uphill, and at the other locks, when we were going downhill, ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... love is an intense realisation of the "separateness" of all our souls. The most heroic and human love-poetry of the world is never mere passion; precisely because mere passion really is a melting back into Nature, a meeting of the waters. And water is plunging and powerful; but it is only powerful downhill. The high and human love-poetry is all about division rather than identity; and in the great love-poems even the man as he embraces the woman sees her, in the same instant, afar off; a virgin ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... I would like your temperate drinker to pause, and reflect upon the fact, that the quantity of brandy or rum that he took at a drink, when he commenced this downhill course, has been gradually increased; so that in the second year, what had been quite sufficient to please his palate and produce all the desired effects in the first, was then insipidly small; and more so in the third year, if, mayhap, he could with any decency lay claim ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... air—this time flying only about a hundred yards before he alighted. Basil was soon up to him with his fleet horse; but the gobbler was now unable to fly any farther. He could run, however, at a good rate; and where there was an uphill in the prairie he ran faster than the horse. Downhill, the latter gained upon him; and thus they went, until the bird began to double and circle about, showing all the symptoms of weariness. Several times the horse ran over him, the turkey on these occasions turning ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... forth all his energies. Beds, furniture, cooking utensils—first the stores of the Dobryna, then the cargo of the tartan—all were carried down with the greatest alacrity, and the diminished weight combined with the downhill route to make the ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Rivers. My first impressions of her were of a rather ugly and ungainly, extraordinarily interesting schoolgirl with a beautiful quick flush under her warm brown skin, who said and did amusing and surprising things. When first I saw her she was riding a very old bicycle downhill with her feet on the fork of the frame—it seemed to me to the public danger, but afterwards I came to understand the quality of her nerve better—and on the third occasion she was for her own private satisfaction climbing a tree. On the intervening occasion we had what seems now ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... their thirst with any convenience at a cavernous spring such as he describes. Caverns, moreover, are not always near the summits of hills; they may be at the foot of them; and water, even the Thames at London Bridge, always leaps downhill—more or less. Of more importance is old Chaupy's discovery of the northerly aspect of one of these springs—"thee the fierce season of the blazing dog-star cannot touch." There may have been a cave at the back of the "Fontana del Fico"; the ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... It went downhill under the archway when you did go in, and you came to a step. If you did not tumble owing to the suddenness and depth of this step, you came to another; and were stupefied by reaching the ground four inches sooner than you ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... scrambling back up the steep height he had so swiftly descended, and raced after the guide. He came upon the goat at last, but winded as he was, and with the sweat in his eyes, he shot too high, cutting the skin above the spine. The goat plunged downhill and the hunters plunged after him, pursuing the elusive animal until darkness covered ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... on till they came to the top of a high mountain, where there lay a very great round rock, or a mighty boulder. And being full of fun, they turned it over with great sticks, saying to it, "Now let us run a race!" Then it rolled downhill till it stopped at the foot, they rushing along by it all the time. And when it rested they jeered it, and bade it race with them ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... drive. Breed too was thrown, but the deer was turned again and running with less than half his former speed, one hind leg powerless. Peg was angling across to turn him still another time but Breed overhauled him first and slashed at the other leg, and as the deer rolled downhill the three-legged coyote dodged the churning hoofs ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... again. The men, their feet slipping in the clayey mud, went downhill with long strides, the straps of their packs ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... of the hillside until hunger drove him back to camp. And, as it sometimes happens that what a man fails to come upon when he seeks with method and intent he stumbles upon by accident, so now Hollister, coming heedlessly downhill, found the corner stake he was seeking. With his belt-axe he blazed a trail from this point to the flat below, so that he could ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the path runs downhill. Consequently we soon find ourselves tramping along below the ground-level, with a stout parapet of clay on either side of us. Overhead there is nothing—nothing but the blue sky, with the larks singing, quite regardless ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... even at church. The first year of Anders' marriage the only cow he owned was found dead beyond the north side of the house, where it was tethered, and no one could find out what had killed it. Several misfortunes followed, and he kept going downhill; but the worst of all was when his barn, with all that it contained, burned down in the middle of the winter; no one knew ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... evening party. You had better come. You will be delighted. It will be so very pretty." I thought of Dr. Johnson and the herdsman with his "See, such pretty goats." [See Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, Sept. 1 1773. "The Doctor was prevailed with to mount one of Vass's grays. As he rode upon it downhill, it did not go well, and he grumbled. I walked on a little before, but was excessively entertained with the method taken to keep him in good humour. Hay led the horse's head, talking to Dr. Johnson as much as he could and, (having heard him, in the ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... was right: it was like walking with a dumb man. They left the wood and walked downhill beside a ploughed field, and in the shelter of a high wall. An open lane brought them to a gate, the gate opened on a rough road through yet another wood of larch and spruce and fir. The road was deeply rutted and they walked in single file until Charles turned, saying, 'This is what I've ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... dropping into a chair. "After the war is over I shall repent and take up godly ways. For the present I am a lost soul, and given over to Satan. Andy, the lie I told yesterday about the river road was the beginning of my downfall. How easily we glide downhill." ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... moment my mind was made up; and, leaving the gasping young groom to look after the horse and cart, I set off to run too. It was only a chance, of course; but in this weather the train might be late. It was all the way downhill. I thought I could do it, and I did. My feet were balled with snow; I was hotter than I had been for years; I was completely out of breath; but when I puffed into the little road-side station, five minutes after the train was due, I could see ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... deer usually works downhill, a hunted Grizzly climbs. Jack knew nothing of the country, but he did know that he wanted to get away from that mob, so he sought the roughest ground, ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... rush of the fire and the direction of the wind that fanned it. He learned that all Genessee was out, fighting to keep the flames from sweeping down across the valley. Three hundred men were fighting it, the supervisor told him. They would check it on the downhill slope, where it would burn more slowly; and if the wind did not change in the night it would probably be brought under control by morning. After that the supervisor very discreetly inquired after the welfare of the young lady who had telephoned. ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... time the cause of tariff reform was going rapidly downhill. Austen Chamberlain, the son of Joseph Chamberlain, strove hard to keep it to the fore, and frequently at intervals in the House of Commons the protectionist proposals were brought forward. Lloyd George had a characteristic word to say ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... mine, possessed myself of the valise, and walked him off unresisting. Presently we came to an open piece of country lying a thought downhill. The road was smooth and free of ice, the moonshine thin and bright over the meadows and the leafless trees. I was now honestly done with the purgatory of the covered cart; I was close to my great-uncle's; I had no more fear ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in perfect order, to refrain from attacking an army drawn up in calm and confident array:—this is the art of studying circumstances. 33. It is a military axiom not to advance uphill against the enemy, nor to oppose him when he comes downhill. 34. Do not pursue an enemy who simulates flight; do not attack soldiers whose temper is keen. 35. Do not swallow ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... Pennington's camp, the locomotive uncoupled and backed in on the siding for the purpose of kicking the caboose, in which Shirley and Colonel Pennington had ridden to the woods, out onto the main line again—where, owing to a slight downhill grade, the caboose, controlled by the brakeman, could coast gently forward and be hooked on to the end of the log-train for the return journey ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... was our conclusion, from the absence of any subsequent motion or movement on board, the deck being as steady now as any platform on dry land, although rather downhill on one side, from the vessel heeling as ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a little figuring on the margin of his map, "we're going downhill pretty fast, it seems to me, as we go north. The Grand Rapids drop only fifty-five feet. From Athabasca Landing to McMurray there is a drop of eight hundred and sixty feet in the two hundred and fifty-two miles. ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... never back-trailed yet. Poor time to commence, now when I got the world by the tail and a downhill pull. We'll make out, all right—can't be so terrible boggy with a short rain like that there. I bet," he continued optimistically to the Ford, which was the nearest he had to human companionship, "I bet we make ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... own mare took fright; we were abruptly swung forward, and, had I not—mindful of the Colonel's warning—been "sitting tight," I should undoubtedly have been thrown out. We dashed downhill at a terrific rate, our mare mad with terror, and on peering over my shoulder I saw, to my horror, the white steed tearing along not fifty yards behind us. I was now able to get a vivid impression of the monstrous beast. Although the ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... done good service and all that sort of thing, but when a fellow of his age gets going downhill with debts and drinking and cards—well, you know how it has been in your ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... father struck spur and rode forward, in time to catch at and check the leader of two horses slithering downhill tandem-fashion before the weight of a heavy cart. "Confound you, sir! What the devil d'you mean by flinging stones in this manner across the middle of ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... discouraged, and I remember a classmate of mine saying, "Why, man, can't you let anything alone?" I said, "I let everything alone that you can show me is not itself moving in the wrong direction, but I am not going to let those things alone that I see are going downhill"; and I borrowed this illustration from an ingenious writer. He says, "If you have a post that is painted white and want to keep it white, you cannot let it alone; and if anybody says to you, 'Why don't you let that post ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... going up will want a lock full, and that water too. And that's why an empty boat going downhill takes more water than a loaded one, and less ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... an hour," answered Grandpa Ford. "We'll be there before you know it. It's downhill, and the horses are anxious to ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... blossom and bear fruit no more. Faith had sunk into superstition; duty had died into routine; and the monks, whose technical discipline was forgotten, and who were set free by their position from the discipline of ordinary duty, had travelled swiftly on the downhill road of human corruption. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... not feel the impact. He was drinking a cup of coffee and thinking about his own problems. But a delicately balanced rock a hundred yards below his camp site toppled over and slid downhill. It started a miniature avalanche of stones and rocks. The loose stuff did not travel far, but the original balanced rock bounced and rolled for some distance ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... stomach next to Rhes, looking through a screen of leaves, downhill towards the perimeter. They were both wrapped in heavy furs, in spite of the midday heat, with thick leggings and leather gauntlets to protect their hands. The gravity and the heat were already making Jason dizzy, but he forced ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... had settled himself firmly on the throne he found that the confused, almost anarchic, state which Germany had drifted into could mean many advantages to Bohemia, if the situation were properly handled. The House of Hohenstaufen began to go downhill after the death of Henry VI, and we find a lusty Welf, Otto, clamouring for the imperial diadem, assisted by a number of German Electors. This gave the ruler of Bohemia his opportunity, and Ottokar took it. His son Wenceslaus I and grandson Ottokar II followed the same line of ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... from the pole down to the equator as the season advances. This it does then irrespective of gravity. No natural force propels it, and the inference is forthright and inevitable that it is artificially helped to its end. There seems to be no escape from this deduction. Water only flows downhill, and there is no such thing as downhill on a surface already in fluid equilibrium. A few canals might presumably be so situated that their flow could, by inequality of terrane, lie equatorward, but not all....Now it is not in particular but by general consent that the canal-system of ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... over the bald top of his head, the spots on his waistcoat, the mud on his boots, and again as she watched Grace make this summary, love and protection for that unhappy man filled her heart. For unhappy he was! She saw at once that he had had a long slide downhill since his last visit to her. He was frightened—frightened immediately now of Grace and the room and the physical world—but frightened also behind these things at some spectre all his own. Grace sat down and tried to recover herself. She began to talk in her society ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... been nowise to blame for that, and the shock it gave her had even done something to check the rate of her downhill progress. It let her see, with a lightning flash from the pit, how wide the rent now yawned between her and her former respectability. She continued, as we know, to drink whisky, and was not unfrequently overcome by it; ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... cried the driver, as he tried to put on the brake. "The lion's cage is running away downhill! Look out, everybody! Look out behind there, Bill on ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... other day I went for an afternoon's rest into the cottage of one of our country people of old statesman class; cottage lying nearly midway between two village churches, but more conveniently for downhill walk towards one than the other. I found, as the good housewife made tea for me, that nevertheless she went up the hill to church. 'Why do not you go to the nearer church?' I asked. 'Don't you like the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... Mavis carried a prayer-book and a little ivory cross, Merle grasped a poker, and Clive was armed with the hatchet from the wood-pile. So long as they were on the uplands and could see the stars they marched along tolerably bravely, but presently Tinkers' Lane turned downhill, and, like most of its kind in Devon, ran between high fern-grown banks, on the tops of which grew trees whose boughs almost met overhead and made an archway. To plunge down here was like taking a dip into Dante's 'Inferno,' it looked so particularly dark and ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... goes to our brushwood-pile," said his companion; and all his trouble was at an end. He took a pony, because he understood that this was the Thirty-Mile Ride and he must ride swiftly, and raced through the clattering tunnels and round the curves, always downhill, till he heard the sea to his left, and saw it raging under a full moon, against sandy cliffs. It was heavy going, but he recognised the nature of the country, the dark-purple downs inland, and the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... that!" exclaimed both the Englishmen together. "Always going downhill, and always merry; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... good look round where the lane curved away now, and ran downhill past the big sand-pit at the dip; and then on away down to where the little river gurgled along, sending flashes of sunshine in all directions, while the country rose on the other side in a beautiful slope of furzy common, hanging wood, and closely-cut ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... breadth and 8 feet deep. It is self-evident that a person following up the course of a stream will always ascend at a greater or less inclination. Mr. Gill therefore, was much astonished when walking up the bed of this ancient river, to find himself suddenly going downhill. He imagined that the downward slope had a fall of about 40 or 50 feet perpendicular. We here have unequivocal evidence that a ridge had been uplifted right across the old bed of a stream. From the moment the river course was thus arched, the water must necessarily have ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... patch left by the fire, which had come from a ruin above, had spread downhill on the opposite side of the valley. Charred posts still stood like lone teeth in a skull to mark what must have once been one of the stockade walls of a post. But all they now guarded was a desolation from which came that ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... Elma reached the station. Her pony had jibbed on the way downhill, and the train was just on the point of moving off as she hurried upon the platform. Old Matthews, the stout and chubby-cheeked station-master, seized her most unceremoniously by the left arm, and bundled her into a carriage. He had known her ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... to be feared that Aubrey would have badly flunked any quizzing on the chapters of Somebody's Luggage which the bookseller had read aloud. His mind was swimming rapidly in the agreeable, unfettered fashion of a stream rippling downhill. As O. Henry puts it in one of his most delightful stories: "He was outwardly decent and managed to preserve his aquarium, but inside he was impromptu and full of unexpectedness." To say that he was thinking of Miss Chapman would imply ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... night before his toil was rewarded and he issued at last out of the forest on the firm white high-road. It lay downhill before him, with a sweeping eastward trend, faintly bright between the thickets; and Otto paused and gazed upon it. So it ran, league after league, still joining others, to the farthest ends of Europe, there skirting ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a terror at her heart, and a nameless dread as if a phantom of evil were pursuing her, Bryda fled downhill with a speed which surprised herself, and reached the ferry just as the Bristol ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... little and putting his feet down unsteadily, Mr. Trimm left the clearing, heading as well as he could tell eastward, away from the railroad. After a mile or two he came to a dusty wood road winding downhill. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... "It's downhill here, gen'lemen, all the way to the shaft, and even if we could face it, the water must be five-foot deep in another ten minutes, and round the next turn it'll be six, and beyond that the passage must ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... "It's terrible the way she's gone downhill the last three months. I never pass almost but I see her going in ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... only a small rise at Sherman," he rises to explain, " and another still smaller at the Alleghanies; all the balance is downhill to the Atlantic. Of course you'll have to 'boat it' across the Frogpond; then there's Europe - mostly level; so is Asia, except the Himalayas - and you can soon cross them; then you're all 'hunky,' for there's no mountains ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... ran at the foot of the street on which the Bobbsey house stood. The street went downhill to the tracks, and the railroad passed through what Charley had called ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... it is easier to go downhill than to go up. This is not true. I say it with the deepest earnestness. After the first five hundred feet of descent, progress down became agonizing. The something that had gone wrong with my knees became terribly wrong; ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... where he had run so often before, but over the ridge he turned abruptly downhill and Billy refused to follow. Wunpost certainly had taken the upper trail, for there were his tracks leading on; and the dog, after all, had no notion of leading her to his master. He was still young and inexperienced, though with that thoroughbred smartness which set him apart from the ordinary ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... enough men did know about it in those dear, damp days beyond recall to make me independent of the pawnshop, to say the least. And, having cleaned up a good pot with whisky running down men's gullets, I reckoned I'd see what I could do with water running downhill. Do you get me at all ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... moved, ejected the pebble. Their four empty water bulbs were in the front of his blanket tunic, pressing against his ribs. It was now—or die, because soon he would be too weak to make the attempt at all. He darted for the first stand of bush downhill. ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... that Boers must have been lying there almost under the feet of our men, if they did not actually join the ranks for a time to escape detection. But a sound greeted their ears at that moment, and knowing what it meant, they scampered downhill without waiting to hear more. It was a ringing British cheer followed by strident commands to "Fix bayonets and give the devils cold steel." Begun by Major Karri Davis, the order ran along from Imperial ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... giving mother a ride on it, and she's too heavy— especially going downhill. She thought we were holding it, but it got away. We yelled to her to put on the brake, but she didn't, and it went ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... downhill. I'm a passenger in a car of that kind. Near to the top, but not reaching it. So I get out to ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... was absent, and there were but few "soldiers," a sort of Indian police, who among their other functions usually assumed the direction of a buffalo hunt. No man turned to the right hand or to the left. We rode at a swift canter straight forward, uphill and downhill, and through the stiff, obstinate growth of the endless wild-sage bushes. For an hour and a half the same red shoulders, the same long black hair rose and fell with the motion of the horses before me. Very little was said, though once I observed an old ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... downhill from the Huns, and they kept sending over and down a continuous stream of "pip-squeaks", "whiz-bangs", and "minnies." The "pip-squeak" is a shell that starts with a silly "pip", goes on with a sillier "squeeeeee", and goes off with a ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... fringe of toothed rocks lying parallel with the shore and half a mile distant from it. This reef forms a breakwater for a small inlet where the coombe which runs below Lansulyan meets the sea. Follow the road downhill from the church-town and along the coombe, and you come to a white-washed fishing haven, with a life-boat house and short sea-wall. The Porth is its only name. On the whole, if one has to live ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... banana patch and by a second bifurcation over the left branch of the stream to the plateau and the right hand of the gorges. In short, it leads to all sorts of good, and is, besides, in itself a pretty winding path, bound downhill among big woods to the margin of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of morning still was over all the high country when they got astir and began to care for the horses on their picket ropes and to finish the cooking of their remaining food. Then, each now leading his horse, they began to thread their way downhill. Over country where now they had established the general courses, it was easier for such good mountain travelers to pick out a feasible way down. They crossed the canyon at about the same place, ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... Tom, because we have no means of knowing how they got the money. Some of them are often supplied with larger amounts than seem to be good for them. Unless you know positively, don't start the snowball rolling downhill, because it keeps on growing larger every time some ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren |
