"Sinking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their wonted channels, and the sea-gods and the nymphs wandered home reluctantly with the sinking seas. The sun came out; and they hastened more eagerly to find cool depths. Little by little the forest trees rose from the shallows as if they were growing anew. At last the surface of the world lay clear to see, but sodden and deserted, the fair fields covered with ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... are crowded with storm-staid travellers, and I had a weary tramp from one to another, almost sinking from pain, pressed upon by an immense crowd, and frequently bothered by a policeman, who followed me from one place to the other, making wholly unrighteous demands for my passport at that most inopportune ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... the room. Larry was invisible. A forlornness came over her, a despair such as she had never experienced even in that dreadful time after the wreck when she realized she had forgotten everything. She felt as if she were sinking down, down in a fearful black sea and that there was no help for her anywhere. Larry had deserted her. Would he ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... distance from the house, and Selwyn, protesting that he wanted no dinner, established himself on the protruding roots of a great beech-tree that, like gigantic, knuckled, gnarled fingers, visibly took a great grasp of the earth before sinking their tips far out of sight beneath. The shade was dense; the sound of water trickling into the rude horse-trough on the opposite side of the path that was to be a road was delicious in its cool suggestion, for the landscape, far, far to see, blazed as with the refulgence of ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... Lambton!—I take too much ardent spirits! I certainly am not of that opinion, Mister Lambton, and if you are I can only say you are very much mistaken. You shall see yourself,' said I, 'how much ballast an old Kentuckian can take in without sinking under it: devil a diving duck ever swallowed more water than a Kentucky man ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... that Mrs. Martin knew her own situation but too well; she appeared gradually, though slowly sinking. One evening, she asked her husband to raise her up a little; and then, desiring Helen to bring her pen and ink, she insisted on being allowed to write a few lines. "I shall write very little," said she, "but it is a duty that must not be longer ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... falls; her breath, her color flies. Her hair's fair ornaments, the braids that bound, The net that held them, and the wreath that crown'd, The veil and diadem flew far away (The gift of Venus on her bridal day). Around a train of weeping sisters stands To raise her sinking ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... near one, in the world. Hence the pieces of personal property that had continued in the possession of various branches of the family after land and money, through fault or misfortune, were gone, had mostly drifted into the small pool of Miss Tempest's life now slowly sinking in the sands of time, there to gleam and sparkle out their tale of its old splendour. She did not think often of their money-worth: had she done so, she would have kept them at her banker's; but she valued them ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... wore on and the young moon was sinking to the west before they began to knock the ashes out of their pipes, preparatory to adjourning the open-air parliament until the following day. One man was still pouring out his views and opinions and the others ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... sinking into a quiescence like sleep, were taken up into heaven in respect to the interiors of their minds; for before their interiors are opened spirits can be taken up into heaven and be taught about the happiness of those there. I saw them in the quiescent state for ...
— Heaven and its Wonders and Hell • Emanuel Swedenborg
... curtain covered the whole valley, and the rain fell in torrents. The Baron put spurs to his horse, crossed the bridge and, entering the sycamore avenue, was soon out of sight. Without paying any attention to Lambernier, who was uttering imprecations at the bottom of the ditch, into which he was sinking deeper and deeper, the stranger went to seek a less illusive shelter than the trees under which he had taken his position; but at this moment his attention was attracted to one side of the castle. A window, or rather a glass ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... she had been incapable of for some time, and reached forward from her pillow, saying, "Who is that at the door?" The nurse was with her alone, and at her side, the family being at the table. Coming to her room, we found that she was apparently sinking into a deep sleep, as though it were only a sleep, profound ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... sinking back. "Make it easier for her—Russ, you're a damned schemer. You have given me the double-cross. You have and she's ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... traveller lost in the snow, who begins to get stiff and to sink down while the snowflakes cover him. In fact, I am gradually losing interest in politics, but the feeling, like that of the traveller sinking under the snow, is a pleasant one."—Prince Bismarck to the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, February 6, 1892 • Various
... still but a sleeper who tosses in his sleep. In the two Sicilies, the arrogance and perfidy of the government gave a few martyrs to the cause, and in Bologna there was a brief revolutionary outbreak; but for the most part the Italian states were sinking into inanition. Venice, by recalling her fleet from Greece, let fall the dominion of the sea. Twenty years earlier Genoa had basely yielded Corsica to France. The Pope condemned the French for their outrages on religion, and his subjects murdered Basseville, the agent of the new republic. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... frustrate, life hangs above us, Cruel, dark unexplained; Yet still the immortal through mortal incessantly pierces With calls, with appeals, and with lures. Lure of the sinking sun, into undreamed islands, Fortunate, far in the West; Lure of the star, with speechless news o'er brimming, With language of darted light; Of the sea-glory of opening lids of Aurora, Ushering eyes of the dawn; Of the ...
— A Cluster of Grapes - A Book of Twentieth Century Poetry • Various
... natural here to compare the latter of them, that, in it, in ver. 13, Israel, at the time of the appearing of the Messianic Kingdom, is represented as a felled tree,—a fact which has for its ground the sinking of the [Pg 104] Davidic race which is here announced. We farther direct attention to the circumstance that in our prophecy itself, Israel's being carried away into all the countries of the earth is foreseen as future,—a circumstance which is so much the more analogous, that ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... the solid Earth, upon which they stood, was alone immovable and at rest. Day after day they observed the Sun pursue his steadfast course with unerring regularity: his rising in the east, accompanied by the rosy hues of morn; his meridian splendour, and his sinking in the west, tinting in colours of purple and gold inimitable the fleecy clouds floating in the azure sky, as he bids farewell for a time to scenes of life and happiness, rejoicing in the light and warmth of his ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... softened features of the scenery. The deceived but delighted eye sought vainly to discern, in the broad masses of shade, the separating line between the land and water, or to distinguish the fading objects that seemed sinking into chaos. Now did the busy fancy supply the feebleness of vision, producing with industrious craft a fairy creation of her own. Under her plastic wand the barren rocks frowned upon the watery waste, in the semblance of lofty towers, and high embattled castles; trees assumed the direful ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... confederate that the police are hurrying up the street. There is not an instant to be lost. He rushes to some secret hoard, where he has accumulated the fruits of his beggary, and he stuffs all the coins upon which he can lay his hands into the pockets to make sure of the coat's sinking. He throws it out, and would have done the same with the other garments had not he heard the rush of steps below, and only just had time to close the window ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... prudence in her fear, "quick —they are coming—I hear some one upon the stair. Oh, you are too late!" and, sinking upon her knees, she covered her face with her hands. Without more ado I swung myself up, and clambered over the sill into the room beside her. I was looking round for something that might serve me for a weapon, when my eye encountered a tall oak press, a heavy, cumbersome affair, but, save the ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... sinking where the western hills The vision bounds with rugged summits old, And with his latest beam he brightly gilds And crowns with ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... congenial to Tintoret, and he has certainly revelled in the sumptuousness of the mighty Eastern tyrant, in royal mantle and ermine tippet, seated on his throne, and stretching his jewelled sceptre to Esther, who is in the rich costume of a Venetian lady of the period, and sinking into the arms of her watchful maids, with a fair baby face, and little helpless hands, having dainty frills round the wrists, which scarcely answer to our notion of the attributes of the magnanimous, if ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as though to shut out from her eyes the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... about the sad diminution of the afternoon. The parallel does not hold; though, if we consult appearance and sense alone, it seems to hold only too well. For, sadder than the setting of the suns, which rise again to-morrow, is the sinking into darkness of death, from which there seems to be no emerging. But my second text comes in to tell us that death is but as the shadow of eclipse which passes, and with it pass obscuring clouds and envious mists, and 'then shall ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... makes for tranquillity. Before long he felt merely an injured martyr. His brain cleared. He stood deep in thought before the only other picture that the bare room boasted—the Demeter of Cnidus. Outside the sun was sinking, and its last rays fell upon the immortal features and the shattered knees. Sweet-peas offered their fragrance, and with it there entered those more mysterious scents that come from no one flower or clod of earth, but from the whole ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... and land-fights, grim and great, Fought to make and to save the State: Weary marches and sinking ships; Cheers of victory on ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... there and fire the bridge or will the French get within grapeshot range and wipe them out?" These were the questions each man of the troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily asked himself with a sinking heart—watching the bridge and the hussars in the bright evening light and the blue tunics advancing from the other side with ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... to about six hundred and fifty. These were the tools in the hands of the others; they ran all the risk, and received but a small portion of the money; they were in the power of the leaders of the gang, who would sacrifice them at any time by handing them over to justice, or sinking their bodies in the Mississippi. The general rendezvous of this gang of miscreants was on the Arkansas side of the river, where they concealed their negroes ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... from the general, whereby a few escaped, while others had recourse to our own small boat. Thus eight or ten of them contrived to escape, without waiting for anything else. A little before this, they addressed the general, Antonio de Morga, saying: "Escape, your Grace, for the ship is sinking." He answered that it was not suitable to his reputation to leave his ship and not die with all the others, from which answer it was understood that, in case the ship went down, he was confident of his ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... me against my will without coming in," said Mr. Heard. "Now we can tell 'er you dived in off the quay and got me just as I was sinking for the last time. You'll be ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... consuming desire remained. He wanted to see Julia once before he went away; and that one desire it seemed impossible to gratify. When he learned of the failure of Jonas to get any message to Julia through Cynthy, he had felt the keenest disappointment, and had evidently been sinking since the hope that kept him up had ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... peace of the place sinking into the soul, the solitude was full of companionship; the very silence seemed to give Nature a tone more commanding, an accent more thrilling. At intervals the gusts of wind reaching the borders of the wood filled the ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... her husband had at least one attack of delirium tremens; and she herself was fast giving way to intemperance. The end was rapid. Coupeau died in the asylum of Sainte-Anne after an illness the description of which is for pure horror unparalleled in fiction; while Gervaise, after sinking to the lowest depths of degradation and poverty, died miserably in a garret. The tragedy of it all is that Gervaise, despite her early lapse with Lantier, was a good and naturally virtuous woman, whose ruin was wrought by circumstances ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... seen her dressed in that fashion before, and, after the years that he had spent in lonely bush and noisy railroad camp, her beauty and daintiness had an almost disconcerting effect on him. She drew a low chair a little nearer the hearth, and, sinking into it, motioned to him to ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... mood changed, and, when Mr. Hazel ventured upon deck again, he found her with her forehead sinking on her extended arm, and the lax hand of that same arm holding the letter. She ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... expression and the temptation to hurl it forth was almost irresistible. Linton, however, prided himself upon his self- restraint, and accordingly he swallowed his words. He clicked his teeth, he gritted them—he would have enjoyed sinking them into his partner's throat, as a matter of fact—then he growled, "Let ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... up in the middle of the night feeling decidedly uncomfortable. She was nearly baked with the heat that was being applied on all sides. She turned off the heating pad and threw back one of the covers, and as she grew more comfortable sleep began to hover near. She was just sinking off into a doze when she suddenly started up in terror. There was a presence in the room—something white was moving silently toward the bed. Aunt Phoebe was terribly superstitious and believed in ghosts as firmly as ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... rear of the small canoe, as I told you, with Mrs. Ripley and her two children seated inside and balancing themselves with great care to prevent the heavily loaded craft from sinking or overturning. ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... he stopped pulling on the stick Sue held, "I guess you will. But oh, Sue! You'll have to help me! I'm sinking down ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... Wright slipped back and returned to the wedding reception, from which he had stolen away. Ahab was obviously embarrassed at being caught in the conference with Sands and Van Dorn, but Daniel Sands as he climbed into the car, sinking cautiously among the cushions and being swathed in robes by the chauffeur, was garrulous. He kept carping at Amos Adams who stood by with his son and the Bowmans, waiting ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... on the platform who did not evince some degree of pleasure at the approach of the new-comer. The last warm rays of the sun, already sinking behind the mountains, seemed rather to take pride in showing what a debonair young fellow he was, in glowing kindly upon his handsome face and strong, graceful figure, and touching up to greater brightness his ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... in a jumbled throng after her to the clover-field, Joseph sinking down in the midst when about half-way, like an individual withering in a world which was more and more insupportable. Having once received the stimulus that her presence always gave them they went round among the sheep with ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the redemption was made obligatory for both parties, so that all Communes are now proprietors of the land previously held in perpetual usufruct; and in 1932 the debt will have been extinguished by the sinking fund, and all redemption payments will ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... she had reached the now sinking secretary's side. Slipping her left hand under Marcia's chin, she managed to keep her head above water and support her with her left arm while she struck out strongly for shore with her right. The water was very cold, but the distance was short, and Marjorie felt ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... Mrs. Lorimer, rising silently from a chair by the bedside, made room for him. He sat down, sinking as it were into a great abyss of silence, listening tensely, but hearing not so ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... unction," he said. "The likes of yerself always kapes a clane breast; and the knife that went into yer heart found nothing that ye need have been ashamed of! Sorrow come over me, but yer lass is as great a one to meself, as if I had tidings of the sinking of ould Ireland into the salt say, itself; a thing that niver can happen, and niver will happen; no, not even at the last day; as all agree the wor-r-ld is to be burned and not drowned. And who'll ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... silent, imperious, but very beautiful. People said that she became more handsome from day to day, and she did so, in spite of her agony. Hers was a face which could stand such condition of the heart without fading or sinking under it. She did not weep, or lose her colour, or become thin. The pretty softness of a girl,—delicate feminine weakness, or laughing eyes and pouting lips, no one expected from her. Sir Griffin, in the early days of their acquaintance, had found her to be a woman with ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... and, lifting up her folded hands, and charming eyes swimming in tears, O my father, said the inimitable creature, you might have spared your heavy curse, had you known how I have been punished ever since my swerving feet led me out of your garden-doors to meet this man!—Then, sinking into her chair, a burst of passionate tears forced their way ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... father, I consider that it is to this inequality that society owes its firmest cementation—that we are enabled to live in peace and happiness, protected by just laws, each doing his duty in that state of life to which he is called, rising above or sinking in the scale of society according as he has been entrusted with the five talents or the one. Equality can and does exist nowhere. We are told that it does not exist in heaven itself—how can ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... quoth Jacopo Niccolini, "will saddle for you, without delay, two horses of part Arabian blood, swift of foot, and easy, and which will travel day and night without sinking." ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... crisis approached he desired to return to his own home in Brantford. After he reached there, Ven. Archdeacon Nelles visited him, and in a note to Dr. Ryerson, dated 25th June, said:—Mr. Jones has been gradually sinking ever since his return from Toronto. He enjoys great peace of mind, and I believe truly trusts on that Saviour whom he has so often pointed out to others as the only refuge and hope of poor sinners. May my ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... the house on a run. But the man was no longer in the town. Nobody knew where he belonged or whither he had gone. Hawkins came slowly back, watching wistfully but hopelessly for the stranger, and lowering his price steadily with his sinking heart. And when his foot finally pressed his own threshold, the value he held the entire Tennessee property at was five hundred dollars—two hundred down and the rest in three equal ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... now sinking down to the heated street, unmindful whether he was "tony" enough for the Athenian Building or not. Mrs. Ducharme had whispered over the telephone: "He's gone. Come quick. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... subjects, and kept him from wandering so frequently into the low and disgusting purlieus of vice. But this moral and tasteful discrimination seems to have been wholly wanting," &c. The 'forties were the days when critics still talked learnedly of the "noble style," &c., "the vulgar," of "sinking" or "rising" with "the subject," the days when Books of Beauty were in fashion, and Rembrandt's choice of beggars, wrinkled faces and grey hairs, for his favourite subjects seemed a low and reprehensible taste in "high ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... a cushion by the crystal in the middle, and signed to King to imitate her. They stood facing. She seemed to pray, for her eyes were hidden under the long lashes. Then she knelt, and King did the same, his knees sinking deep into another cushion. So they knelt eye to eye above the crystal for many minutes without either saying a word. It was Yasmini ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... Wordsworth's sonnet; for the old pagan held to the poetical view that a star was the chariot of a deity. The poor deity, however, had, in fact, a duty as monotonous as that of a driver in the Underground Railway. To us a star is a signal of a new world; it suggests universe beyond universe; sinking into the infinite abysses of space; we see worlds forming or decaying and raising at every moment problems of a strange fascination. The prosaic truth is really more poetical than the old figment of the childish imagination. The first great discovery ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... spring day was fading into evening. High overhead in the clear heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be sinking ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... weather. The city stands on an island of the same name, formed of coral, very low and narrow, and scarcely one mile and a half in length. The streets in the city are narrow, although the houses are mostly lofty and well constructed; but the place in itself is fast sinking into insignificance, and its finest buildings falling rapidly into decay. Mozambique, like many other cities of the world, is now reduced from its ancient wealth and vice-regal splendor, to the almost forgotten seat of ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... completely ruined by the disgusting tenderness of the glances he bent on Bernice. He even told her the story of the two-by-four and the dressing-room to show her how frightfully mistaken he and every one else had been in their first judgment of her. Bernice laughed off that incident with a slight sinking sensation. ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... assistance in getting out of a serious scrape; Stone did not tell me and I didn't ask. But, at any rate, the pair had become very friendly there and at subsequent meetings in the Mediterranean ports. The captain asked all sorts of questions about Father, his life, his family and his death aboard the sinking "Monarch of the Seas." Hephzibah furnished most of the ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... voice sinking almost to a whisper, yet lacking nothing in distinctness, "are like wine. They mount to the head, they intoxicate, they tempt! And yet all the time one knows that it is not possible. Surely you yourself—in ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... matter that they are not sinking in the gulf of inconsideration, and plagued with an indifferency in these matters, but are made to value Christ and an interest in him at such ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... her gaze, and his hands trembled nervously in her grasp, so that she began to think that he was yielding, whereas he was in reality making a supreme effort to concentrate his courage and to keep the mastery of himself. While he seemed to be sinking to her will, he was gathering his strength, saying in his heart that if he lost this battle he should never hold ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... sum of L4,750,000 had been allotted to the Sinking Fund for the payment of the National Debt; and a further sum of L674,592, accruing from the interest of stock and expired annuities, had gone towards the same object—a crushing retort to the taunts of Fox and Sheridan, that the Sinking ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... half his own length, and set his weight against the weight of the steer. The flexible riata straightened as a rod of iron, the steer's head jerked sideways; his horns buried themselves in the ground; he fell, almost at her feet. And then, as the cowboy leaped from his horse, Helen felt herself sinking into a soft, thick darkness that, try as she might, she ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... rakes, one eel spear and a landing-net, and at last ('horresco referens') pulled out—his own publisher. The unfortunate man was gone for ever, and so was a large quarto wherewith he had taken the leap, which proved, on inquiry, to have been Mr. Southey's last work. Its 'alacrity of sinking' was so great, that it has never since been heard of; though some maintain that it is at this moment concealed at Alderman Birch's pastry-premises, Cornhill. Be this as it may, the coroner's inquest brought in a verdict of ''Felo de Bibliopola'' against a quarto unknown,' and circumstantial ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... sat down; Mrs Delvile preserving an air the most formal and distant, and Cecilia half sinking ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... fought aboard ship. For a long moment he stood thus, staring back ever and anon across Deliverance, and so comes creeping into the shadow of the cliff, and I saw the moon glint on the barrel of the long pistol he clutched, as, sinking down behind a great boulder, he ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... other feelings, and I spent two or three hours in gratifying it. I did not cut myself, and none of the ordinary symptoms of dissection-poison supervened, but poisoned I was somehow, and I remember sinking into a strange state of apathy. By way of a last chance, I was sent to the care of some good, kind people, friends of my father's, who lived in a farmhouse in the heart of Warwickshire. I remember staggering from my bed to the window on ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... was returning home, I accidentally strayed into a place I did not know. The sun was already sinking, and the shades of evening lay across the flowering rye. Two rows of old, closely planted, very tall fir-trees stood like two dense walls forming a picturesque, gloomy avenue. I easily climbed over the fence and walked ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... confirmed rite or ceremony, this mode of disposing of the dead has never been followed by any of our North American Indians, although occasionally the dead have been disposed of by sinking in springs or water-courses, by throwing into the sea, or by setting afloat in canoes. Among the nations of antiquity the practice was not uncommon, for we are informed that the Ichthyophagi, or fish-eaters, mentioned by Ptolemy, living ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... represented a female Centaur, nursing a pair of infant Centaur twins. There is a copy of the picture now at Athens, taken exactly from the original. The latter is said to have been put on ship—board for Italy with the rest of Sulla's art treasures, and to have been lost with them by the sinking of the ship, off Malea, I think it was. The picture of the picture I have seen, and the best word-picture I can manage of that I am now to give you; I am no connoisseur, you must understand, but I have a vivid recollection of it as I saw ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... to him and saw a large number of little figures in blue flitting through the trees; now and again he caught a flash of steel as some naked dah glittered in the rays of the sinking sun. Buck had come too, and was looking ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... the neighborhood we are describing. From this summit, the country, he says, appears an indescribable chaos; the tops of the hills exhibit the same strata as far as the eye can reach; and appear to have once formed the level of the country; and the valleys to be formed by the sinking of the earth, rather than the rising of the hills. Through the deep cracks and chasms thus formed, the rivers and brooks make their way, which renders it difficult to follow them. All these basaltic channels are called cut rocks by the ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... may, by listening minutely, with undefiled ear and careful attention, to a certain degree be aroused to a sense of understanding; and what is more, possibly find the means of escaping the anguish of sinking down ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... could she do? All about her, people were coming and going. She watched them dizzily. There was not one of them who seemed to be alone. The heat and glare was intense. The clatter of wheels sounded in her ears like the roar of great waters. She felt as if she were sinking down, down through endless ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... is, in a storm at sea. But we are in no more danger than hundreds of others. This is a wooden ship, and it will be a long time sinking, even if it gets to that point, which is far off. We haven't leaked a drop yet, and we're running before the storm nicely. You ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... the police detailed to co-operate with the soldiers, and, with their officers, waited impatiently and vainly for the company promised by Sanford. Meanwhile the mob was strengthening its defences with breathless energy, and the sun was sinking in the west. As the difficult and dangerous work to be done required daylight it was at last resolved to ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... proposed that a vessel should be fitted out immediately, and sent off to search for his father's brig. Mr Singleton smiled at the request, and pointed out the utter impossibility of his agreeing to it; but he revived Fred's sinking hopes by saying that, he was about to send out a whaler to the northern seas at any rate, and that he would give orders to the captain to devote a portion of his time to the search, and, moreover, agreed to let Fred go as a passenger in company with ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... kitchen window open, he gave one bound and jumped through. But, horrors, what had he landed on? Not the kitchen floor, as he thought he would, but on something soft and squashy. Not a pillow either, for it was all soft and gooey, and he was sinking into the soft, white stuff deeper and deeper every second! He tried to jump out, but could not. The stuff was spongy and sticky and clingy, and he had now sunk deep into ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... the flag of the UK in the upper hoist-side quadrant and the Bermudian coat of arms (white and green shield with a red lion holding a scrolled shield showing the sinking of the ship Sea Venture off Bermuda in 1609) centered on the outer ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... a cab and for a priest; send for the curate of Saint-Sulpice!" answered the old dragoon, sinking down ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... intensely gay, and his tastes were sufficiently simple for him to find enjoyment everywhere. He loved all beautiful things, and, though he had seen everything, the gleam of the sinking sun through the pine aisles at his Pyrford cottage would hold him spellbound; and in summer he would spend hours trying to distinguish the bird notes, naming the river flora, or watching the creature life ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... the tired wanderers at rest beneath the uptilted canoes that night wondered whither their quest would lead them over the fire-dyed horizon where the sun was sinking as over a sea. The Cree chiefs told them of other lands and other peoples to the south, "who trade with a people who dwelt on the great waters beyond the mountains ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... the blood grows stagnant, habit dulls the edge of appetite, a weariness of the mind and of the body makes one cease to taste well-used delights; a strong new stimulus is required to revive the emotional life that is sinking to decay. Such a stimulus must not only be strong and new, it must be light, delicate, altogether strange. The effect it produces is due to charm and spell as much ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... injury. When once well fixed, it has no tendency to move. I would, therefore, advocate cast iron in lieu of lead soilpipes. In fixing the soilpipe which is to receive a water-closet, the trap should form part of the fixed pipe; so that if there is any sinking the down pipe will not sink away from the trap. It is, however, not sufficient to provide good material. There is nothing which is more important in a sanitary point of view than good workmanship in house drainage. In this matter, it is on details that all depends. Just consider; ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... as it may, the water was too clear for any hope of sinking tubs deeper than Preventive eyes could go; and the very honest fellows who were laboring here had not brought any tubs to sink. All such coarse gear was shipped off inland, as they vigorously expressed it; and what they were concerned ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... she still retained her former vivacity; and it was only in the conversations these two had toge whenever they could separate from the others, that Louisa found any cordial to revive her now almost sinking spirits. ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... himself to the side of a pond, that he might drink some water and rest awhile; so he laid the stone carefully by his side on the bank: but as he stooped down to drink, he forgot it, pushed it a little, and down it went plump into the pond. For a while he watched it sinking in the deep, clear water, then sprang up for joy, and again fell upon his knees, and thanked heaven with tears in his eyes for its kindness in taking away his only plague, the ugly heavy stone. "How happy ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... just about five minutes!" said the commander aloud but to himself. "Well—the bargain's made, so it can't be helped. That boat's sinking! Throw 'em ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... "Nonsense!" he said, sinking back with a sigh, "I want you to believe me, Kathleen, it is anything but nonsense. My ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... form! Perfect lightness, perfect symmetry!" said Claude. "Curve sweeping over curve, peak towering over peak, to the highest point, and then sinking down again as gracefully as they rose. One can hardly help fancying that the mountain moves; that those dancing lines are not instinct ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... the period, not far distant, when a sinking fund will no longer be required, the duties on those articles of importation which can not come in competition with our own productions are the first that should engage the attention of Congress in the modification of the tariff. Of these, tea and coffee are the most prominent. They enter ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... swung round into a side road, and we curved upward through deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side, heavy with dripping moss and fleshy hart's-tongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun. Still steadily rising, we passed over a narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and roaring amid the gray boulders. Both road and stream wound up through a valley ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... my word for it that it is, and far more," said Major Waring, sinking his voice. "Come; it won't do you any harm to make an appointment to meet your conscience now and then. You will never be ruled by reason, and your feelings have to teach you what you learn. At any rate, it's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Watercourses." This is caused by the superincumbent soil not being more than from one to three feet thick, in some places more, but varying exceedingly. Beneath this there is a bed of shingle of vast thickness, through which the water percolates; it is this that renders the sinking of wells so difficult in the Deyrah Dhoon, and which has tended so much to retard individuals from becoming permanent residents; at present there are many tracts of several thousand acres in that valley unoccupied from want of drinking water, as for ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... millions to live and die without a care, without a pang, without an anxiety. They will have a pleasant passage and plenty of brilliant conversation. They will wonder that men ever believed at all in clanging fights and blazing towns and sinking ships and praying hands; and, when they come to the end of their course, they will go their way, and the place thereof will know them no more. But it seems unlikely that they will have such a knowledge of the great ocean on which they sail, with its storms and wrecks, its ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... had fallen on Barney's arm with a grip of iron, and the fingers were sinking deeper and deeper into the Irish lad's flesh as these words ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... it. We have a more flattened mass, No. 2.... Apply this to squeezed rocks, to those, for example, which form the base of an obelisk like the Matterhorn,—the conclusion seems inevitable that the mountain is sinking by its own weight," etc., etc. Similarly the Nelson statue must be gradually flattening the Nelson column, and in time Cleopatra's needle will be ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... criticism on the style of his book his disregard for truth and justice his motives for writing his book his vanity published his book in hopes of being bribed to silence nature and tendency of his work his ridicule of Christianity his work "a twig for sinking libertines to catch at" Tisdal, Dr., his tract on "The Sacramental Test" Tithes their application to the maintenance of monasteries, a scandal Tofts, Mrs. Catherine Toland, John Tom's coffee-house Toricellius ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... the things to make you remember the Witch-hazel; its forked twig was used—nay, still is used—as a magic rod to show where there is running water underground; that is, where it is possible to find water by sinking a well. Its nuts are explosive, and go off with a snap, shooting the seeds that are inside, ten or twenty feet away, when the cold dry days of autumn come. Third, its curious golden-thread ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... safely used in fiery mines, neither fine dust nor gases being ignited by it. The action is rending and not pulverising. Compared to gunpowder, it is more powerful in a ratio ranging from 2-1/2 to 4 to 1, according to the substance acted upon. It is largely used in blasting, pit sinking, quarrying, &c., but especially in coal mining. According to Dr Roth, the following is ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... by cooling mercury under its freezing-point in a thermometer of sufficient length divided into degrees under 0 deg.. The freezing of mercury[259] takes place from below upwards, the frozen metal as being heavier sinking down in that portion which is still fluid. If when it is half frozen the fluid be poured away from the frozen portion, we obtain groups of crystals, composed of small octohedrons, grouped together by the edges of the cube. None of our mercurial ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... much longer time. The Shenandoah was burning Northern whalers in Bering Sea at the end of the war. The Sumter and the Florida cut a wide swath under instructions which "left much to discretion and more to the torch." The famous Alabama only succumbed to the U.S.S. Kearsarge after sinking the Hatteras man-of-war and raiding seventy other vessels. Yet still the South, in spite of her ironclads, raiders, and rams, in spite of her river craft, of the home ships or foreigners that ran the blockade, and of all her other efforts, was a landsman's country that could make no real headway ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... growing dim and indistinct, the sun was sinking, and the cloud, that had at first shown only a golden border, was lifting tall perpendicular masses, while the tossing of the little boat became more and more distressing. Anxiety and sense of responsibility kept ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... him it seized the kayak and tore a large hole in it. Down went the bow, as a matter of course, and up went the stern. Norrak hastily disengaged himself, so as to be ready to spring clear of the sinking wreck, and was on the point of jumping out when his brother's kayak shot past him, and Ermigit sent a spear deep into the vitals of the seal—so deep, indeed, that it turned over ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne |
