"Freshet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... canary, sometimes, when another strikes up. The Professor says he knows he can lecture, and thinks he can write verses. At any rate, he has often tried, and now he was determined to try again. So when some professional friends of his called him up, one day, after a feast of reason and a regular "freshet" of soul which had lasted two or three hours, he read them these verses. He introduced them with a few remarks, he told me, of which the only one he remembered was this: that he had rather write a single line which one among them should think worth remembering than set them all laughing with ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... is myself) triumphs in the end, for I privately reconstruct and march them all up in detachments of one. I look after the little trees, the unbent twigs; they are more interesting to me than your monsters. This nursery of saplings sprang up in a night after a freshet: here are quivering aspens trembling forever in penance for that one sin. They once were gravely pointed out by the guide of a party of tourists as "shuddering asps." He is doubtless the same who, being asked "what that was," (pointing to ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... what the trouble was. Brother Bear, living on the uplands, wanted a big rain; Brother Coon, who lived in the low grounds, wanted a little rain; Brother Fox wanted a tolerably heavy shower; and Brother Mink just wanted a cloudy night to coax the frogs out. Some wanted a freshet, some wanted a drizzle, and ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... enough I found him, he'd been killed dead, and floated down the crick, and then the stream had washed him up into a heap of broken sticks and briers, and when the waters fell, for there had been a little freshet, they left him there breast uppermost—and I was glad to find him—for I think, Archer, as that shot was the nicest, prettiest, etarnal, darndest, long good shot, I iver did make, anyhow; and it was so dark ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... black charger, and his armor glittered through the green. And, as he rode beneath the leafy arches of the wood, he lifted up his voice, and sang, and the song was mournful, and of a plaintive seeming, and rang loud behind his visor-bars; therefore, as I sat beside the freshet, I hearkened to ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Saviour lifting up his eyes beheld In ample space under the broadest shade A Table richly spred, in regal mode, 340 With dishes pil'd, and meats of noblest sort And savour, Beasts of chase, or Fowl of game, In pastry built, or from the spit, or boyl'd, Gris-amber-steam'd; all Fish from Sea or Shore, Freshet, or purling Brook, of shell or fin, And exquisitest name, for which was drain'd Pontus and Lucrine Bay, and Afric Coast. Alas how simple, to these Cates compar'd, Was that crude Apple that diverted Eve! And at a stately side-board by the wine 350 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Judah demonstrated the existence of a route by the South Yuba River and the Donner Pass greatly superior to all other projected lines, with no insuperable engineering difficulties, and capable of defence against all interruption by freshet or snow. In the mean while the State Legislature had granted a charter to the incorporators in July; and at the first stockholders' meeting Stanford was elected president and Huntington vice-president of the company. It was evident, however, that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... between. He saw Xaraya's diamond banks unfold, And Paraguay's deep channel paved with gold, Saw proud Potosi lift his glittering head, And pour down Plata thro his tinctured bed. Rich with the spoils of many a distant mine, In his broad silver sea their floods combine; Wide over earth his annual freshet strays, And highland drains with lowland drench repays; Her thirsty regions wait his glad return, And drink their future ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... his clean-cut face, and the look in his eyes—so vastly superior to any look that ever came into the eyes of Bream Mortimer. She was telling herself that her relations with Sam were an idyll; for, being young and romantic, she enjoyed this freshet of surreptitious meetings which had come to enliven the stream of her life. It was pleasant to go warily into deep lanes where forbidden love lurked. She cast a swift side-glance at her father—the unconscious ogre in her fairy-story. ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... man by the name of Thomas Galbraith, undertook to build a mill upon Cove Creek. They had nearly completed it, having expended all their slender means in its construction, when there came a terrible freshet, and all their works were swept away. The flood even inundated Crockett's cabin, and the family was compelled to fly to a neighboring ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... opinion that the danger was not so great as might be supposed. There would be no pollution from those bodies taken from the river before decomposition set in, and the force of the freshet would tend to clear the river bed of any impurities in it rather than make new deposits. The argument which had the most weight, however, with the President was the efficiency of the local authorities. Pennsylvania has a State Board of Health and is a State with ample means at her disposal, both ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... him most, as a mark of engineering skill and sound calculation on the part of the pond-people, was the direction in which the dam was laid. At either end, where the water was shoal, and comparatively dead even in time of freshet, the dam ran straight, taking the shortest way. But where it crossed the main channel of the brook, and required the greatest strength, it had a pronounced upward curve to help it resist the thrust of the current. He ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... blow from the ram, and the door fell to finders. They leaped in over the table like a freshet over a dam. I darted to the window. M. Etienne was in the garret, helping hold the ladder for me. I flung myself upon it all too eagerly. Like ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... asleep. An hour or two passed, and then he came slowly to consciousness with a confusion of mysterious and augmenting sounds hammering at the gates of his brain for admission; the next moment he was sharply awake, and those sounds burst with the rush and roar and boom of an undammed freshet into his ears. Banging and slamming of shutters; smashing of windows and the ringing clash of falling glass; clatter of flying feet along the halls; shrieks, supplications, dumb moanings of despair, within, hoarse shouts of command outside; cracklings ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... high. Observe two men arguing in conversation where there is no thought of art or oratory. Where the remarks are of an explanatory nature the words come slowly and carefully. When persuasion becomes the object, deliberation is thrown aside and words begin to flow like a mountain freshet, and if the speaker has natural capacity he concludes his point with a grand rush ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... huge carcass down the river to a point below Rainbow Falls, within sight of his mother's home, where she could view daily the evidence that none might threaten her and live. And there the ungainly form lies today—a long, black-rock island known as Moo Kuna, between the rapids—where every freshet, every heavy rain, beats upon it as though in everlasting punishment for plotting the death of Hawaii's beloved ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai
... And beetling o'er the seas— O Ship, how brave and fair, That fought so oft and well, On open decks you manned the gun Armorial.[4] What cheering did you share, Impulsive in the van, When down upon leagued France and Spain We English ran— The freshet at your bowsprit Like the foam upon the can. Bickering, your colors Licked up the Spanish air, You flapped with flames of battle-flags— Your challenge, Temeraire! The rear ones of our fleet They yearned to share your place, Still vying with the Victory Throughout that ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... North Tyne, lying near the river where it was crossed by the Roman Wall. From the bridge which spans the Tyne at Chollerford one of the finest views of the river, both up and down the stream, is to be seen; and to watch the swift brown stream, after a flood or a freshet, foaming through the arches is an exhilarating sight. The bridge itself is a modern one, for we know that all the bridges on the Tyne, except that of Corbridge, were swept away by the great flood ...
— Northumberland Yesterday and To-day • Jean F. Terry
... squirrel, Drew his arms back, like a cricket. "Once he leaped," said old Iagoo, "Once he leaped, and lo! above him Bent the sky, as ice in rivers When the waters rise beneath it; Twice he leaped, and lo! above him Cracked the sky, as ice in rivers When the freshet is at highest! Thrice he leaped, and lo! above him Broke the shattered sky asunder, And he disappeared within it, And Ojeeg, the Fisher Weasel, With a bound went in behind him!" "Hark you!" shouted Pau-Puk-Keewis As he entered at the doorway; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... this was a particularly messy mess. A considerable portion of the floor was a sea of red paint. The can from which it had flowed was lying on its side—near the wall. He had noticed that the smell of paint had seemed particularly pungent, but had attributed this to a new freshet of energy on the part of Lord Emsworth. He had not perceived that ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... ground here is very shaky, and the swamp beneath the shores of the trees is softer than porridge. A long time ago, during a heavy spring freshet, the river became dammed about a quarter of a mile from the lake, and the whole body of water was turned in another direction. But instead of flowing over the land, it sank into the great mass of soft bog below, and forced ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... ready adaptability to novel emergencies. An invaluable pioneer trait is curiosity; the settler in a new country, like Moses in the wilderness of Arabia, must "turn aside to see"; he must look into things, learn to read signs,—or else the Indians or frost or freshet will soon put an end to his pioneering. That curiosity concerning strangers which so much irritated Dickens and Mrs. Trollope was natural to the children of Western emigrants to whom the difference between Sioux and Pawnee had once meant life or death. "What's your ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Illinois. Now, though the county is named Fulton, none of the inhabitants knew anything about the inventor of steam navigation, and doubted that a steamboat existed near them. Hence the snorting, puffing, and clangor of the vessel as she surged against the freshet, alarmed all the population in hearing when ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... For three days now the Democratic party, in national convention assembled at Chicago, had been in the throes of labor. It had been expected—in fact had been as good as promised—that by ten o'clock that evening the deadlock would melt before a sweetly gushing freshet of party harmony and the head of the presidential ticket would be named, wherefore in the Evening Press shop a late shift had stayed on duty to get out an extra. Back in the press-room the press was dressed. A front page form was made ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... that bright hour? Was not the world before us, the awakening glory of Ken's Island at our feet? Just as in the dark days all Nature had withered and bent before the death-giving vapours, so now did Nature answer the sun's appeal; and every freshet bubbling over, every wood alive with the music of the birds, the meadows green and golden, the hills all capped with their summer glory, she proclaimed the reign of Nature's God. No sight more splendid ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... seems to me," Joyce's eyes grew dreamy, "that every one in St. Ange has something to keep still about. Every one seems to be here because he has to, not because he wants to. People seem to drift in here like logs after a spring freshet—and they get jammed." ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... well built house that sheltered him from storm and cold, and defied even the wolverine to dig its owner out, is deserted for any otter's den or chance hole in the bank where he may sleep away the sunlight in peace. The great dam, upon which he toiled so many nights, is left to the mercy of the freshet or the canoeman's axe; and no plash of falling water through a break—that sound which in autumn or winter brings the beaver like a flash—will trouble his wise little head for ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... were organized to ascend the river and discover the place and circumstances of its origin. Along the banks, at intervals, whole fleets of boats and fragments had gone ashore, and were piled up in bays, like the driftwood of a subsided freshet. Efforts were made to dislodge these from time to time and set them afloat again, newly christened, with fresh paint and sails, as if they stood a better chance of the voyage than any new ones. Indeed, I ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... off and lived in state, and from far and near gay parties were drawn at Easter and Christmas to dance under their roof. Now they are run out. This boy and his mother are the last of the line. Archie's father was drowned in the ford when we had the freshet last spring. The Ramapo, that looks so peaceful now, overflowed its banks then, and ran like a mill-race. I don't know how they manage, but Archie is kept at school, and his mother does everything from ironing white frocks for summer boarders to making jellies ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... But the Judge was not going to sit down—no! At the gate he encountered a momentary obstruction, in the shape of the usher who looked after the orchestra tickets; but he swept him away as a spring freshet might carry away a bundle of obstructing sedge, by a majestic wave of the hand and the information that he was merely going down there for ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... for them to start off on the upper trail," he declared. "I went over it but a few days ago, and at Brown's Crossing the road is all torn up by a freshet. Besides that, ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... no livestock at all. They just did manage to save themselves. They had a hard time getting the slaves to the mainland. Mrs. Sallie Henderson, her step-son, Jack and her son, Jim, and daughter, Lyde were in the Henderson house when the freshet came down upon them. They had to go up on the second floor of their house but the ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... circumstances—both those in our favour and against us. The water-way taken by the canoe was far from being direct. Both the creek and the larger stream curved repeatedly in their courses; and in ordinary times were of sluggish current. The freshet, however, produced by the late rain-storm, had rendered it swifter than common; and we knew that the canoe would be carried down with considerable rapidity—faster than we were travelling on horseback. On such roads, for so great ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... well. But the sea had burst his waterjars, and the torments of drought had been added to his toil. He had been driven south almost to Scyros, but had found no harbour. Then a weary day with the oars had brought him close to the Euboean shore, when a freshet of storm drove him seaward again. Now at last in this northerly creek of Sciathos he had found shelter and a spring. But it was a perilous place, for there were robbers in the bushy hills-mainland men who loved above all things to rob an islander: and out at sea, as he looked towards ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Kars' outfit at the landing a number of canoes were moored along the river bank under the shadow of the gracious, dipping willows, which had survived years of the break up of the spring ice and the accompanying freshet. Indians and half-breeds lounged and smoked, squatting around regardless of the hours which had small enough meaning for them at any time. Just now contentment reigned in their savage hearts. Each hour of their lives contained only ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... such great quantities of water that they overflow their banks, and destroy much valuable property. This is called a freshet ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... it in for me so serious as he has now. I guess the whole show would breathe easier if I should fall off the train some dark night, when it was stormy, and we were crossing a high bridge over a stream that was out of its banks on account of a freshet. ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... remained longer than usual at the Brooklyn slip, and received therefore an immense load of passengers, probably over a thousand. At this time in the morning, it being flood tide, a strong current sets up the East river from Governor's Island, which is just now further strengthened by the freshet on the Hudson. The Hamilton, therefore, after being carried up on the Brooklyn side, and turning in the centre of the river, steamed down some distance below the New York slip, as usual, in order not to be carried beyond by the upward tide. Turning, she ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... for two days at Smaldeel, the Guards set out for Kroonstad on the Valsch or False River, so called because in some parts it so frequently changes its channel that after a heavy freshet one can seldom be quite sure where to find it. This march of sixty-five miles was covered in three days and a half; Smaldeel seeing the last of us on Wednesday and Kroonstad seeing the first of us about noon on Saturday. In the course of this ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... "A freshet, Son, is when a stream rises suddenly and overflows its natural course," explained his daddy. "In spring, freshets are often caused by the ice and snow melting too rapidly and draining down into the brooks and rivers. Then the stream ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... ever hear of those wise people who, after every freshet, shipped the surplus water down the river in boats? Well, it strikes me this air-pumping is just about as useless labour. Help me pull in the bulkhead and I will show ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... According to the enactment whereby the States of Arkansas and Mississippi were created, the river boundary of the former extends to mid-stream; that of the latter to mid-channel. Herein is the difficulty. A dissipated freshet turned the current against the Mississippi bank, and shifted the former position of mid-channel many rods to the eastward, so that the fortunate or unfortunate owner found his possessions lying beyond both the mid-river point ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various
... his eyes, beheld, In ample space under the broadest shade, A table richly spread in regal mode, 340 With dishes piled and meats of noblest sort And savour—beasts of chase, or fowl of game, In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, Grisamber-steamed; all fish, from sea or shore, Freshet or purling brook, of shell or fin, And exquisitest name, for which was drained Pontus, and Lucrine bay, and Afric coast. Alas! how simple, to these cates compared, Was that crude Apple that diverted Eve! And at a stately sideboard, by the wine, ...
— Paradise Regained • John Milton
... Nassau Street was like a canyon. The pavements were wet, for folks had just finished washing windows, though it was eight o'clock in the forenoon. Bicycles zipped past and from somewhere north a freshet of people flooded the ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... little chickens, Born in a shoe, When the freshet came, Didn't know what to do: One went on deck, Just to watch the weather, While down below ...
— The Nursery, March 1878, Vol. XXIII. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... animal creation, as if to revenge herself on us for our sarcasms, plunged into the river, then very high by the freshet, and was wafted down the current like a bag of oats! I could hardly sit on my horse for laughter. I am apt to laugh at the vexations of my friends. The fellow, who was of my own age, and my room-mate, half checked the current by oaths as big as lobsters, and the old Rosinante, who was ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... is supposed by high military authority that but for the providential freshet, Sheridan would have succeeded in crossing the James River, and cutting the Danville Railroad, which would have deprived Lee's army of supplies. The freshet rendered his pontoon bridge too short, etc. This may be claimed as a ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... him freely with provisions and everything necessary to carry on his timber-making—whilst Stephen worked hard and lived poor, he enjoyed long intervals of ease and fared luxuriantly. But a change came: one spring the water was too low to get his timber down, the next the freshet burst at once and swept away the labour of two seasons, and ere he got another raft to market, the price had fallen so low that it was nearly valueless. He returned dispirited to his home and tried to conceal himself ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... decisive of the fate of my young friend Ben Mayberry. It gave me an appreciation of the tremendous irresistibility of the freshet, which must have ended the lives of the hapless party almost on the instant. The bravest swimmer would be absolutely helpless in the grasp of such a terrific current, and in a night of pitchy darkness would be unable to make the first intelligent ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... conditions, although everybody granted they were abnormal. Of course, there was more ice in the river than there had been for many years. Even Grandfather Fernald, who had lived in the vicinity for close on to half a century, could not recall ever having witnessed such a spring freshet; nor did he deny that the weight of ice and water against the dam must be tremendous. However, the structure was strong and there was no question of its ability to hold, even though this chaos of grinding ice-cakes boomed against it with ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... guide was in; they said they thought so, and some went up into the hillside with the boy to fetch him, others remained with me, looking at the river-bed and at Fornovo beyond, shaking their heads, and saying it had not been done for days. But I did not understand whether the rain-freshet had passed and was draining away, or whether it had not yet come down from beyond, and I ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... was long before the time when Mr. M—— made his famous gammon speeches; but the people had a presentiment of what was coming, and to crown the eventful anticipations of the season, there was quite a freshet in Salt river. The signs were all and everywhere favorable. Speculation was beginning to chink his money-bags; three hundred new banks, as many railways, were about to be established; old things were about to fleet and disappear; all things were becoming new; and ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... buds confer. This noonday they've had news of her; The south bank has had views of her; The thorn shall exact his dues of her; The willows adream By the freshet stream Shall ask what boon they ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... his men in motion in pursuit of Doyle. In crossing the swamp of Lynch's Creek, during the night, several of the soldiers lost their arms, in consequence of the freshet. The swamp was inundated, and it required all their dexterity and promptitude to save themselves. Snatching a hasty breakfast, the pursuit was continued all day, and resumed the next morning until ten o'clock, when they found such signs of the superior speed and ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... busted," he was informed. "I been a-lookin' fer it this many a year, an' this here freshet done it. You see the holler there? Well, they's ten foot o' water in it, an' it had ort to be stone dry. The bridge is tore out behind us, an' we're stuck here till that water runs out. We can't git away ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... Cameron was done with the Service for ever. An accumulating current of events had swept him from his place in the Force, as an unheeding traveler crossing a mountain torrent is swept from his feet by a raging freshet. The sudden blazing of his smoldering love into a consuming flame for the clumsy country girl, for whom two years ago he had cherished a pitying affection, threw up upon the horizon of his life and into startling clearness a new and absorbing objective. In one brief quarter of an hour his ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... this day, not a drop shall flow there. Both sides belong to me, and I will build a dam solid enough and high enough to stop the freshet. Instead of a valley yielding nothing, I will have a lake twenty, thirty, forty feet deep over an extent of three or four miles,—an immense reservoir, which shall supply the flow of irrigation with which I will ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... but she talked saucily to him. So Aiai called upon the names of his ancestors. Immediately a dark and lowering cloud drew near and poured out a flood of water upon the stream, and in a short time the dam was broken by the freshet and all the oopu and opae, together with the child, were swept toward the sea. But the woman was not taken by the flood. Aiai then rose up and departed, without thought ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... shining fern. Upon the boulders in midstream subaqueous mosses, now revealed and starved by the drought, died hard, and the seeds of grasses, figworts, and persicarias thrust up flower and foliage, flourishing in unwonted spots from which the next freshet would rudely tear them. Insect life did not abundantly manifest itself, for the day was sunless; but now and again, with crisp rattle of his gauze wings, a dragon-fly flashed along the river. Through these scenes the ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... but a creek when the freshet's over, they tell me,' says he. 'And me and the boss have forded four foot of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... him if he asked me. It would be like marrying a tree that the freshet was rolling about. I'm not going to seek and hide with ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... sense exterior and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the Jeroboam's whaling voyage. They engaged him; .. but straightway upon the ship's getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in a freshet. He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded the captain to jump overboard. He published his manifesto, whereby he set himself forth as the deliverer of the isles of the sea and vicar-general of all Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness with which he declared these things; ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... table richly spread in regal mode, With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort And savour; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, Gris-amber-steamed; all fish from sea or shore, Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained Pontus, and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... out in peaceful glory through the plains toward Columbia and the distant sea. The muffled roar of these falls, rising softly through the trees on its wooded cliff, held the daily life of the people in the spell of distant music. In fair weather it soothed and charmed, and in storm and freshet rose to the deep solemn ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... of a sea gull to Zoe—no containing her. Little snatches of song bubbled. She was a freshet ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... sat in the kitchen waiting for the cookies to bake or the taffy to cool, Nina used to coax Antonia to tell her stories—about the calf that broke its leg, or how Yulka saved her little turkeys from drowning in the freshet, or about old Christmases and weddings in Bohemia. Nina interpreted the stories about the creche fancifully, and in spite of our derision she cherished a belief that Christ was born in Bohemia a short time before the Shimerdas ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... girls; the playing of camp charades; and the singing of war, home, and love songs around the late camp fire, timed to the antic banjo or the sentimental guitar. Drolly, yet with tenderness for others, it portrayed mountain storm, valley freshet, and heart-breaking night marches beside tottering guns in the straining, sucking, leaden-heavy, red clay, and then, raptly, the glories of sunrise and sunset over the contours of the Blue Ridge. And it explained the countless things which happily enable a commander to keep himself ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... when she dropped them in the dust and lint which rolled about in the corners like feathers. Her corset was thrown down in a corner; shoes and stockings littered the floor; her comb was clogged with red hair like a wire fence with dead grass after a freshet; dingy, grimy underclothing lay about. I peered into a closet, in which there were more garments on the floor than on the nails. The other bedroom was quite as unkempt; looking as if the occupant must always do his chamber work at the last moment ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... coming of the spring thaw, the river bed is filled with a freshet of water which seizes and carries the logs down stream. Many on the banks, however, have to be started on their way, and this is called "breaking out the roll ways." They often start on their water journey with a ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... themselves in time of torrent are both steep-banked and deep. They are therefore among those accidents of the ground which, duly improved, can seriously affect military operations. The destruction of a bridge impedes the transport of troops and supplies; a sudden freshet, occurring in the midst of an extensive movement, may imperil an army by sundering its forces; while of the utility of such natural trenches to the purposes of shelter and of defence, of awaiting attack, or resisting an advance, ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... situated in the township of Leicester. It was built in 1864, has a water-shed of 1,870 acres, and a storage capacity of 681,000,000 gallons, and an elevation of 481 feet above the City Hall. The dam of this reservoir gave way in February, 1876, during a freshet, and the immense mass of water was precipitated, with an unearthly roar, into the valley below, destroying everything in its path, and carrying rocks, earth, trees, and debris to a distance of several miles. The other, called the Holden Reservoir, ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... neither this particular brook nor any other water-brook, stream or freshet, that ever sang, or sighed, or murmured among the reeds, could ever hope to catch all the thrilling tenderness of the sweet soft tones of ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... could not travel further by water. He would walk the woods, but sail on streams no more. So they told him where they meant to camp that night. He started over mountains and through woods and up rocks, a far, round-about journey. And the man and his wife went down the river in a spring freshet, headlong with the rapids. [Footnote: One should be familiar with the almost impassable forests of Maine and Canada, even as they are at the present day, to properly appreciate the Chenook's journey. As for the speed of the canoe, I have myself ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... rivers good sections of the formation may be seen in their deeply-cleft banks, broad, light- coloured bands of pumice, with a few inches of rich, black, vegetable soil above, and several feet of black sea-sand below. During a freshet which occurred the first night I was at Shiraoi, a single stream covered a piece of land with pumice to the depth of nine inches, being the wash from the hills of the interior, in a course ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... and the Yokul lifts on high his glittering shield, Far and wide in sunny splendor gleams the ice-engirded field, And the swelling freshet murmurs gay spring-ditties as it flows, Till its noisy life it mingles in the ocean's grand repose; And in silence, Dream-fraught silence, O'er its course ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... a big freshet the next autumn, the water covering the meadows on both sides of the river, and creeping into cellars and yards and houses. It came unexpectedly, early one morning, into the enclosure where Dick, ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... bold zigzags across the face of the steep in a way to daunt assailants. Down the hillside, past the cathedral and the college, through the heart of the city, clattered a noisy brook, which in time of freshet flooded the neighbouring streets. Part of the city was within walls, part without. Most of the houses were low, one-story buildings, with large expanse of steep roof, and high dormer windows. Along the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... deep planting sufficient moisture is insured to mature the crop. In a few sections small farming is conducted by means of irrigation. In Canon de Chelly, which may be termed the garden spot of the reservation, there are diminutive farms and splendid peach orchards irrigated with freshet water. The canon drains an extensive region, and even a light rain causes the stream which flows at the base of its lofty walls to become swollen. This water the natives divert to their miniature cornfields and orchards, one or ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... FRESHET. A word long used for pools or ponds, when swollen after rain or temporary inundations. It is also applied to a pond supplied ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... unusual quantity of snow had lately fallen, which, having been succeeded by heavy rains, had swollen the stream to more than double its ordinary size. It was evident that, what in the language of the country is called a freshet was commencing. Such is the name given to those swellings of the water, the most formidable of which commonly occur in the month of February, or early in the Spring, when the overcharged rivers, bursting their boundaries and overflowing the neighboring lowlands, sometimes occasion great damage ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... employ of the American Fur Company, making their way on foot with their blankets and light camp equipage on their backs. Two months previously they had started from the mouth of the Laramie River in boats loaded with furs destined for the St. Louis market. They had taken advantage of the June freshet, and were rapidly carried down as far as Scott's Bluffs. There the water spread out into the valley, and the stream was so shallow they were compelled to unload the principal part of their cargo. This they secured as well as possible, and left a few of their men to guard it. ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... worry about me!" Timothy Turtle sneered. "I'll right myself as soon as there's a freshet. If there's a big enough rain the creek will rise as high as I am now. And nobody could keep me on my back in ...
— The Tale of Timothy Turtle • Arthur Scott Bailey
... go on now," he says, "it wouldn't better us a bit. All we'd gain by it would be the league or so from this to the river. Once there, and attempting to travel up its bank, we'd find scores of little creeks that run into it, in full freshet, and have to swim our horses across them. That would only lose time, instead of gaining it. Now, by daybreak, they'll all be down again, when we can travel straight on without being delayed by so many stoppages. I tell you, Senor ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... spot that they thought would be all right for Mary, and not close enough to disturb the Bass and the Kingfisher, rolled two logs, and fished a board that had been carried by a freshet from the water and laid it across them, and decided that would have to serve until ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... lively stream when there happens to be a freshet and both forks are pouring a flood down into it. We will try to bed down near the river and you boys can have some sport swimming. Do all of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... and the rest of the English settlement, it being a very good way by land and not above thirty-six miles."*4* After this, our author gives a long description of his difficulty and danger in crossing the Santee in a small canoe, in time of a freshet. He then goes on as follows:—"We intended for Mons. Galliar's jun. but were lost *************. When we got to the house we found several of the French inhabitants, who treated us very courteously; wondering about our undertaking such a voyage through a country inhabited by none but ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... courses, and if the finite mind of man could imagine anything to be desired as an addition to his present possessions on the River, he at least knows nothing of it. Already he commands ten miles of water—swift, clear water—running over stone, through a freshet bed so many hundreds of feet wide that he has forgotten what it means to guard his back cast. It is to be waded in the riffles, so that he can cross from one shore to the other as the mood suits him. One bank is apt to be precipitous, the other to stretch away in a mile or ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... thorough religious humbug, for they do really pray by a machine. They set up a little mill to go by water or wind, which turns a cylinder. On this cylinder is written a prayer, and every time the barrel goes round once, it counts, they say, for one prayer. It may be imagined how piety intensifies in a freshet, or in a heavy gale of wind! And there is a ludicrous notion of economy, as well as a pitiable folly in the conception of profiting by such windy supplications, and of saving all one's time and thoughts for business, while the prayers rattle out by the hundred at home. Only imagine the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... drifting on to her doom. Half a mile below was the fall, and at the side of the fall, went ever and ever around with tremendous violence, the rending fans of the water-mill. Annette knew full well that any drift boat, or log, or raft, carried down the river at freshet-flow, was always swept into the toils of the inexorable wheels. Yet, if she were reckless and without heed a few minutes before, I am told that now she was calm. Violette gave the alarm that Annette ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... commit the additional transgression of poaching, and to give you a few extracts from a sermon a friend of mine once delivered. [It was addressed to a small congregation of Monothelites in a village "out West," just after the annual spring freshet, when half the inhabitants of the place were down with the chills and fever. It was his maiden effort,—he having just left the Seminary,—and did not "take" at all, as he learned the next day, when Deacon Jenners (the pious philanthropist of the place) called to tell him ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the bed of the crick that used to run through here 'fore it was dammed a little ways up to make the ice-pond 'tween here an' Spanish Falls," supplied Peter. "Makes a durned good road, 'cept when there's a freshet. It would cost a hull lot o' money to build a road as good ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... pavilion. We women are sitting there, on one side, behind a screen. Triumphant shouts of Bande Mataram come nearer: and to them I am thrilling through and through. Suddenly a stream of barefooted youths in turbans, clad in ascetic ochre, rushes into the quadrangle, like a silt-reddened freshet into a dry river-bed at the first burst of the rains. The whole place is filled with an immense crowd, through which Sandip Babu is borne, seated in a big chair hoisted on the shoulders of ten or ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... swamp land, giving rank growth to an almost continuous forest of sycamore, cottonwood, and other trees which love a damp, alluvial soil, whose massive trunks were yet foul and unsightly with filth and scum deposited by the receding waters at the subsidence of the river's great spring freshet a month before. Stagnant ponds and mimic lagoons lay all about us and in our very pathway, some of the deeper ones, however, rudely bridged. Very rapid progress was impossible. It had already been found necessary to send our artillery back to Savannah, whence it would ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of the country this was the only outlet for the country produce, which was transported in rude boats or vessels called arks, built during the winter season to await the spring freshet; then they loaded them with wheat or other produce, and sent them to Baltimore or elsewhere. They used also to obtain great quantities of fine lumber, and floated it through the same rivers every spring; but it was attended with great loss of life ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... lightships fire guns to attract the attention of the lifeboat crew when shipwrecks take place in sight of the ships, but out of sight of the boats; and guns are used as signals of approaching floods at freshet times in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, Jan. 3, 1885 • Various
... constructed and would no doubt have answered the purpose intended had it not been constructed of clayey soil that disintegrated and floated away with the muddy current the first freshet. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... a block and sold 'em to a man dat had come in on a steamboat, and he took dem off on it when de freshet come down and de boat could go back to Fort Smith. It was tied up at de dock at Webber's Falls about a week and we went down and talked to my aunt and brothers and sister. De brothers was Sam and Eli. Old Mistress cried jest like any of de rest of us when de boat pull out with ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... even through the deep snow, packing the compressible stuff in one passage as hard as ice. Nan followed in this narrow track to the very bank of the river where the logs were heaped in long windrows, ready to be launched into the stream when the waters should rise at the time of the spring freshet. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... Lynch's creek, though swimming deep, and after a long time spent in plunging and splashing through the dark floods, we got over, at least about two-thirds of us. The rest, driven down by the force of the current, were cast ashore on hills and high banks, which by the freshet were converted into islands; and there they continued whooping and hallooing to each other all night. When the welcome light returned, they plunged again into the furious stream, and though swept down a good way by the force of the current, arrived safely on our side where we had prepared some ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... never sleeps was tonight a human spill-way, churning in freshet. Between its walls went up the clamor of human throats raised in talk, in shouts, in song, in laughter and in contest with the blaring of toy horns, the racket of rattlers and all those discordances that seek to swell pandemonium ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... facts of the picturesque life of the river Won their way to our consciousness as without help of our senses. It was along about the beginning of March, but already In the sleepy sunshine the budding maples and willows, Where they waded out in the shallow wash of the freshet, Showed the dull red and the yellow green of their blossoms and catkins, And in their tops the foremost flocks of blackbirds debated As to which they should colonize first. The indolent house-boats Loafing along the shore, sent up in silvery ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... like a cricket. "Once he leaped," said old Iagoo, "Once he leaped, and lo! above him 45 Bent the sky, as ice in rivers When the waters rise beneath it; Twice he leaped, and lo! above him Cracked the sky, as ice in rivers When the freshet is at highest! 50 Thrice he leaped, and lo! above him Broke the shattered sky asunder, And he disappeared within it, And Ojeeg, the Fisher Weasel, With a bound went in behind him!" 55 "Hark you!" shouted Pau-Puk-Keewis As he entered at the doorway; ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... freshet in the Sabine; but they swam across it, as they had done other rivers, and halted to encamp upon its western bank. It was still only a little after noon, but as they had wet their baggage in crossing, they resolved to remain ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... the heavy pail and balanced it on her head. But alas! in going up the smooth, slippery, treacherous rock, the encumbrance of her cloak—it might be such a trifle as her slung hat—something at any rate, took away her evenness of poise; the freshet had frozen on the slanting stone, and was one coat of ice; poor Nest fell, and put out her hip. No more flushing rosy color on that sweet face—no more look of beaming innocent happiness;—instead, there was deadly pallor, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... bridges had been swept away by the freshet, and, in trying to cross, he missed the ford. The horse must have been frightened and unmanageable, the buggy was overturned in the creek, and your cousin, stunned by the fall, drowned instantly; life was just extinct ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Thomas or Mrs. Lasette tell you of it? They knew it, but it is one of the saddest passages of my life, to which I scarcely ever refer. She, my wife, drifted from me, and was drowned in a freshet near Orleans." ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... after this that D'Entremont was drawn even nearer to this simple Methodist life, which had already made such an impression on his imagination, by an incident which would make a chapter if this story were intended for the New York Weekly Dexter. Indeed, the story of his peril in a storm and freshet on Indian Creek, and of his deliverance by the courage of Henry Stevens, is so well suited to that periodical and others of its class, that I am almost sorry that Mrs. Eden, or Cobb, Jr., is not the author of this story. Either of ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... my heart rose like a freshet, And it swept me on before, Giddy as a whirling stick, Till I felt ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... was creeping along foot by foot, impeded by a freshet of vehicles that filled the street. In the car was a chauffeur and an old gentleman with snowy side whiskers and a Scotch plaid cap which could not be worn while automobiling except by a personage. Not even a wine ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... from a hard day, on which he had not only ridden his fire patrol, but had also spent a couple of hours rolling big rocks into a creek to keep it from washing out a trail should a freshet come, he found a large party of people at his camp. There was an ex-professor of social science of the old regime, his wife and little daughter, a guide, and a lavish outfit. Although the gate of Wilbur's corral was padlocked and had "Property of the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... he answered (so the reader will perceive that I had been quite correct in my understanding of the law); and when I went on to explain my object in visiting his cane-swamp (for such it was, he said, but an unexpected freshet had ruined the crop when it was barely out of the ground), he assured me that I was welcome to visit it as often as I wished. He himself was very fond of natural history, and often regretted that ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... Wheeling Creek; and a fourth at the mouth of the Muskingum, where half a century later it was found protruding from the river bank by a party of boys while bathing. Yet another was unearthed at the mouth of the Great Kanawha by a freshet, and was likewise found by a boy while playing at the water's edge. The last plate was hidden where the Great Miami joins the Ohio; and this done, Celoron crossed Ohio to Lake Erie ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... land about the house is such that it resembles a relief map of the Finger Lake country after each heavy rain or spring freshet. Subsurface drainage is the answer. In other words, a line of land tile like the fields of the septic tank. Through it this mislocated water may drain into a dry well, open ditch, or ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... encountered, were much broken by the undulations of the waves, and seldom exceeded a quarter of a mile in diameter; while thousands of them were no larger than the ordinary drift ice of our own principal rivers in the time of a freshet. Their vicinity to the track of the schooners, indeed, was first ascertained by the noise they produced in grinding against each other, which soon made itself audible even above the ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... ducked out across country the night of the punkin freshet, when I was mud bound and the elephant was afraid of the bridges. You and your dancin' turkey and infant anaconda and a cage of monkeys that wasn't yours and—Her!" He shouted the word. "What become of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... The freshet had swept away all the boats, but to Aunt Nancy this was a trifling matter. She found a few logs, tied them together with grapevines, and on this raft made the voyage across the river. She gathered the necessary information, ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... instant later, she would have picked him off, as a bat picks a moth from a lighted window-pane, and he would never have reached the down-stream shallow. At that time the water, clearing after a summer freshet, was fairly low. Brighteye's danger in some wild winter flood would, therefore, be far greater; so, timorous from his recent experiences, and sufficiently intelligent to devise and carry out plans by which he would secure greater safety, he occupied ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... man clears to earn his living in. It has been pleasant to trace upon the map the great arteries of intercommunication, flowing east and west, churned by countless paddle-wheels, as they force a vast freight of wealth, material, social, intellectual, to and fro, a freshet of fertilizing life to swell every stream. We love to repeat the names which self-taught men have hewn out in rude places, with the only advantage of being members of Mankind, holding their own share in the great heart and soul ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... the presence of Father B., a young Methodist was worrying about Fox River, and expressing fears that he should be prevented from fulfilling some of his appointments by a freshet in the river. ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... after they made their lease with the Cherokees the men of the Watauga were not troubled by their Indian neighbors. They had to fear nothing more than a drought, a freshet, a forest fire, or an unusually deep snow-fall if hunting on the mountains in mid-winter. They lived in peace, hunting and farming, marrying, giving in marriage, and rearing many healthy children. By degrees they wrought out of the stubborn wilderness ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... by means of a long rope to a tree a considerable distance from the water, so that in case of one of those sudden rises that sometimes took place, it would not be carried away by the freshet. The boat was quickly launched, and a few strokes of the paddle carried the two to the opposite ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... raged was a great barn with mighty walls and vaulted cellars. Meanwhile the Emperor was calling in his troops as fast as possible from behind, but at three in the afternoon his main bridge over the chief arm of the Danube gave way before masses of rubbish brought down from the hill-country by a freshet, which was hourly increasing in volume. The Austrians were from first to last superior in numbers on the battle-field; their enfilading batteries were able to sweep the French lines for several hours, and the carnage was dreadful. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... trappin' furs, and fishing through the ice for pickerel that he sold in town. Then in the spring the floods came and the whole little family was wiped out; though the cabin, bein' built so strong, held out against the freshet, and ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... end was one seething storm of heated, typically "Southern" argument and prophecy. Friendships were being made and broken, over questions as to whether the river had risen four inches the past hour, or only one, and as to whether this freshet were more important than the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... wonder of her freshet laughter. Because to Marylin a police officer was not merely a uniformed mentor of the law, designed chiefly to hold up traffic for her passing, and with his night stick strike security into her heart as she hurried ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... early times of Texas. Stealing off at the commencement of the massacre, he succeeded in making his way down the valley of the San Saba, to its confluence with the Colorado. But to reach an asylum of safety it was necessary for him to cross the latter stream; in which unfortunately there was a freshet, its current so swollen that neither man nor horse ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... throat tremulous, like that of a bird that sings. How significant the laugh was! the music of how pure a freshet of life! ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... hooted, and the big dog outside was a needful defender, even in summer time, and in winter the cold was piteous, the wet even worse, and they often lost some of their precious animals—chickens died of cold, and once three lambs had been carried away in a sudden freshet. Yet Patience, when she saw Steadfast convinced, made up her mind to stand by him, and defended him ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and hurried into the open country, we perceived that he had only too great reason to be an alarmist. Every little rill was risen, and boiling over with the pride of harm, and the broad fields lay hid under the yellow waters that here and there washed over the road. Yet the freshet only presented itself to us as a pleasant excitement; and even when we came to a place where the road itself was covered for a quarter of a mile, we scarcely looked outside the diligence to see how deep the water was. We were surprised when our horses were brought ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... wrote in a preface to "Catriona":—"I see like a vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and the whole stream of lives flowing down there far in the north, with the sound of laughter and tears, to cast me out in the end, as by a sudden freshet, on these ultimate islands. And I admire and bow my head before the romance of destiny." Does not this sentence read as if it were written in stress of some effusive febrile emotion, as if he wrote while still pursuing his idea? And so it reminds ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... "'Twas freshet time, 'way back, as long as sixty-six or eight, An' I was comin' to the Post that year a kind of late, For beaver had been plentiful, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... one of them would strike the wooden casing of a pier, and then the whole bridge jarred and quivered, and the cake of ice, breaking and splintering, would heap itself on a long white spit that pushed up-stream through the rushing current. The river was yellow with mud torn up by a freshet back among the hills, but the last rays of the sun,—a disk of copper sinking into the brown haze behind the hills,—caught on the broken edges of the icy snow, and made a sudden white glitter ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... laughed Holcomb. "You fellows must have been drowned out last night; the log over the South Branch is gone in the freshet; we had to get round the best way we could. Step up, Freme," he said. "I want you to know Mr. Thayor. This is Freme Skinner, Mr. Thayor, and this is Hite Holt, and there's ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... the man. "That was the time of the big freshet. Yes, I do remember it faintly. It's the freshet I remember most though. Enough timber floated by here to build a barn. See that old shed yonder?" and he pointed to a low structure. "Well, I built that out of timber I fished ashore. Lumber yard beyond Wilmer ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... states adjacent, rivers remain low in winter and a "spring freshet" follows the melting of the winter's snows. A "June rise" is produced by the heavy rains of early summer. Low water follows in July and August, and streams are again swollen to a moderate degree under ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... of the names of the three worst gulches, that the older men tried to dissuade us from going; but Deborah, who was very anxious to be at home by Sunday, said that the verdict was that if we started at once for our ride of twenty-three miles we might reach Onomea before the freshet came on. This might have been the case had it not been for Kaluna. Not only was his horse worn out, but nothing would induce him to lead the mule, and she went off on foraging expeditions continually, ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... strange place in which to stand and to think of all that has happened since the man of our thoughts looked forth from these windows, a common little boy. The world is very much alive in the Vico Dritto di Ponticello; the little freshet of life that flows there flows loud and incessant; and yet into what oceans of death and silence has it not poured since it carried forth Christopher on its stream! One thinks of the continent of that New World that he discovered, and all the teeming millions ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... saying Friar Martin set off among the trees, and Beltane, beckoning to the others, followed close. Fast strode the friar, his white robe fluttering on before, through moonlight and shadow, until they reached a brook or freshet that ran bubbling betwixt flowery banks; beside this strode the tall friar, following its winding course, until before them, amid the shadow—yet darker than the shadow —loomed high an embattled flanking tower of the walls of Belsaye town; ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may; Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow, Like matrons heavy-bosomed and aglow With the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay, What makes this insolent and comely stream Of appetence, this freshet of desire (Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!), Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre? Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churn The wealth of her enchanted urn Till, over-billowing all between Her cheerful margents grey ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... encamped here on a narrow beach, which, however, sheered up high enough to offer them security against any rise in the stream. They were careful to pull up the boats high and dry, and to secure them in case of any freshet. Used as they were by this time to camp life, it now took them but a few minutes to complete their simple operations in making any camp. As all the boys had taken a turn at paddling this day, and as the exciting scenes of the past ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... east an open grove intervened between the dormitories and the meadows along the Remona River where bog hay was cut, and which were sometimes flooded in the freshet season. ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... tree in the valley of the Upper Missouri, is supposed to possess an intelligence which, if properly approached, may help the Indians in certain undertakings; but the shades of shrubs and grasses are of little account. When the Missouri, swollen by a freshet in spring, carries away part of its banks and sweeps some tall tree into its current, it is said that the spirit of the tree cries, while the roots still cling to the land and until the trunk falls with a splash into the stream. Formerly the Indians considered it wrong to fell one of these ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... such the antecedents of the man who, on the 15th of March, 1856, found himself adrift in a swollen tributary of the Minyo. A spring freshet of unusual volume had flooded the adjacent river until, bursting its bounds, it escaped through the narrow, wedge-shaped valley that held Redwood Camp. For a day and night the surcharged river poured half its waters through the straggling ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... multifidus, and very likely others, spread over the mud by producing runners, much after the manner of a strawberry plant. If, as in case of a freshet, the plants should be covered with water, they show their enterprise by taking advantage of the "tide"; some of the runners are quickly severed, and are then at liberty to ...
— Seed Dispersal • William J. Beal
... after this encounter that I had two traveling experiences which nearly cost me my life. One of them occurred in Ohio at the time of a spring freshet. I know of no state that can cover itself with water as completely as Ohio can, and for no apparent reason. On this occasion it was breaking its own record. We had driven twenty miles across country in a buggy which was barely out of the water, and behind horses that at times were almost forced ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... 110 feet in height, ninety feet thick at the base, and twenty-five feet wide at the top, which was used as a driveway. For ten years or more this dam was believed to be a standing menace to the Conemaugh valley in times of freshet, though fully equal to all ordinary emergencies. With a dam which was admitted to be structurally weak and with insufficient means of discharging a surplus volume, it was feared that it was only a matter of time before such a reservoir, ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... of Bishop St. Vallier coming down the St. John river was expeditious, the water being then at freshet height. At the mouth of the Madawaska, which he named St. Francois de Sales, he met a small band of savages, who pleaded for a missionary. The day following, May 17th, he came to the Grand Falls, or as he calls it "le grand Sault Saint Jean-Baptiste." His book ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... encampment; passed under the Pacific Railroad; and then for twelve miles followed the windings of the Truckee River, a clear, rushing, mountain stream, in which immense pine logs had gone aground not to be floated off till the next freshet, a loud-tongued, rollicking stream of ice-cold water, on whose banks no ferns or trailers hang, and which leaves no ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... night; but, if it does, I think it would be better to go down to the brook and see the freshet, than to go ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... were bounded on one side by a river which yearly encroached some feet on its bank, leaving the field a little smaller after each freshet; or if, every spring, some rods square of its surface were sure to be covered three feet deep with stones and sand, so that the actual value of the property became every year less, the purchaser would compare the yearly value of the crops, not only with the interest on the price, ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... winds blow high and leaves begin to fall, And the wan sunlight flits before the blast; When fields are brown and crops are garnered all, And rooks, like mastered ships, drift wide and fast; Maid Artemis, that feeleth her young blood Leap like a freshet river for the sea, Speedeth abroad with hair blown in a flood To snuff the salt west wind ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... second beat of my thumping heart, I went through an amazing variety of complex, shifting and lucid thinking. And my thinking, multifold and effective as it was, was but as a chip on the surface of a freshet in a mountain gorge amid the torrent of emotions which ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... truth—of which he was ignorant—was, that the remainder of the flotilla, borne along by the strong and deep current of the Waal, then in a state of freshet, had shot past the landing place, and had ever since been vainly struggling against wind and tide to force their way back ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... were on the move, and headed for home. It was encouraging to learn that the water seemed to be already lowering, as the worst of the freshet had spent its force, and the promised storm had been shunted off in another direction by a ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... roads paralyzed both armies, which lay opposite each other upon the crests of Big Sewell separated by a deep gorge. On the 5th of October the condition of the Kanawha valley had become such that Rosecrans felt compelled to withdraw his forces to the vicinity of Gauley Bridge. The freshet had been an extraordinary one. At Charleston the Kanawha River usually flows in a bed forty or fifty feet below the plateau on which the town is built; but the waters now rose above these high banks and flooded the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... in common; and as the men of the settlement were not particularly busy during the freshet season, we could easily persuade or hire them to load our skiffs on their wagons, and haul us eight or ten miles up the Sioux or Ocheyedan, for half a day's run down home, in which scarcely the stroke of an oar was necessary, after getting ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... rocky walls, opening out at intervals into pocket-like valleys, such as the broad and fertile flat which lay below Hidden Water. On either side of the stream the banks rise in benches, each a little higher and broader and more heavily covered: the first pure sand, laid on by the last freshet; the next grown over with grass and weeds; the next bushed up with baby willows and arrow weed; and then, the high bench, studded with mesquite and palo verdes; and at the base of the solid rim perhaps ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Maisonneuve, dearest, climbing in midwinter to the top of the mountain there, under a heavy cross set with the bones of saints, and planting it on the summit, in fulfillment of a vow to do so if Villemarie were saved from the freshet; and then of Madame de la Peltrie romantically receiving the sacrament there, while all Villemarie fell down adoring! Ah, that was a picturesque people! When did ever a Boston governor climb to the top of Beacon hill in fulfillment of ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... from the shock of the invasion. Her people, relieved to find that the enemy did not mean to mistreat noncombatants who obeyed his code of laws, were going about their affairs in such odd hours as they could spare from watching the unending gray freshet that roared and pounded through their streets. The flags were down and the counterfeit light-heartedness was gone; but essentially ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... 17,000,000 square miles; that is to say, they cover an area, in round numbers, seven times that of the snow-cap. Only one-seventh of a foot of water, accordingly, could possibly be made available for their fertilisation, supposing them to get the entire advantage of the spring freshet. Upon a stint of less than two inches of water these fertile lands are expected to flourish and bear abundant crops; and since they completely enclose the polar area they are necessarily served first. The great emissaries for carrying off the surplus of their aqueous riches, would then appear ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... be, or close at hand, or at some middle point, among them she lies ensconced. At times, with an effort taxing all her strength, she will spring across to where some jutting point or clinging undergrowth on sea or freshet ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... man and all the baggage were drenched with water. Morgan and Arnold, with the first and second divisions had gone ahead, and we followed. One night, we landed at a rather late hour, and were trying to get a little rest, when we were awaked by the freshet, which came down upon us in a torrent; O'Brien waked Johnson and myself just in time to allow us to get out of the way. The water arose to a great height, covering the low grounds on each side of the river, ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... change and in a few days the spring thaw began in earnest, flooding the banks of the creeks and rivers and causing not a little damage to such buildings as were located close to the water's edge. The forest in that vicinity was still heavy, so that the freshet was not as severe as it is in these days, when there remains but little timber to break the rush of snow and ice and water down the sides of ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... would that be? That would be the difference. Do you understand, or do you not understand? If you do not understand, I can do nothing. But I will not marry you. Have you ever seen a mule go down to the ford in spring, too heavily laden, when there is freshet? He drowns, if he is driven in, because the burden is too heavy. I will not be the burden; but I should be, if I were your wife, because I am not a real signora. Now ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... rose. It reached and passed the highest mark that it had attained for many years. And then came the big freshet. The streams became torrents, hurling great masses of driftwood and even trees before them. Constant vigilance on the part of the beavers was required to keep the dam from washing away. When a drifting ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... reader, too long snow-bound, must be liberated also. After the winters of deepest drifts the spring often comes most suddenly; there is little frost in the ground, and the liberated waters, free without the expected freshet, are filtered into the earth, or climb on ladders of sunbeams to the sky. The beautiful crystals all melt away, and the places where they lay are silently made ready to be submerged in new drifts of summer verdure. These also will be transmuted in their turn, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various |
