"Swoop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sea-gulls' screaming As they swoop so bold and free! Oh! for the fragrant commons, And ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... like Spartacus in chains, or Catiline listening to Cicero. The banker, summoned by a sweet voice whose silvery tone recalled a boudoir not unknown to me, laid his violin on the window-sill and made off like a swallow who rejoins his companion by a rapid level swoop. The great monkey, whose chain was sufficiently long, approached the window and gravely took in hand the violin. I don't know whether you have ever had as I have the pleasure of seeing a monkey try to learn music, but at the present ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... was, Lady Dunstable's exacting ways, her swoop, straight and fierce, on the social morsel she desired, like that of an eagle on the sheepfold, had made her, in Doris's sore consciousness, the representative of thousands more; all greedy, able, domineering, inevitably getting what they wanted, and more than they deserved; against ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... the mighty grey eagle ruffles its angry feathers, shakes out its vast wings, and screams invective in answer to this loud-voiced boast of wingless creatures. Then, in proud disdain, it launches itself out upon the air, and with a mighty swoop downwards, screaming defiance as its outstretched pinions brush the sleek coat of the mountain lion, it passes on over the creaking tree-tops to learn the real cause ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... naturally have attempted to improve his family; but the Almighty Father either was too indifferent to do so, or was too well aware of the impossibility of reforming his own wretched offspring; and therefore he determined to drown them all at one fell swoop, just as cat-loving old ladies dispose of a too numerous and embarrassing feline progeny. Bethinking him, however, God resolved to save alive one family to perpetuate the race: he was willing to give his creatures another chance, and then, if they persisted in going the wrong way, it ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... Mr Bickersdyke's memory poised motionless, like a hawk about to swoop. Then it darted at the mark. Everything came to him in a flash. The hands of the clock whizzed back. He was no longer Mr John Bickersdyke, manager of the London branch of the New Asiatic Bank, lying on a sofa in the Cumberland Street Turkish ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... its usual eccentric way, having taken all this time to make the first part of the journey, finished the rest of it with one lightning swoop, and ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... want to be left alone in this benighted land, with a couple of million Austrians likely to swoop down on it at any minute? I guess not. The air may not be safe, but it can't be any worse than I would have been if I were left behind to await the arrival of the invader. ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... No, Rufio, no. Eat, my son. Eat. (He takes another turn, Rufio chewing dates meanwhile.) The Egyptians cannot be such fools as not to storm the barricade and swoop down on us here before it is finished. It is the first time I have ever run an avoidable risk. I should ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... it would even now take of courage and resolution to save Quebec and the colony. They will not listen—they will not hear. They are flying like chaff before the wind. They are leaving everything behind in their mad haste to be gone! And the Indians will swoop down directly the camp is empty, and take everything. Oh, it is a disgrace, a disgrace! Not even to take a night to think it over. If the English did but know, and sent out a few hundred soldiers upon them, they might cut the whole army to pieces ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... on, not breathing. The momentary flutter and hover of the machine was over. It was dropping down again in a wild, sliding swoop — yet Hal made no move to stop it even when it half ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... earth lest he should be seized with giddiness. So that, Sancho, it will not do for us to uncover ourselves, for he who has us in charge will be responsible for us; and perhaps we are gaining an altitude and mounting up to enable us to descend at one swoop on the Kingdom of Kandy, as the saker or falcon does on the heron, so as to seize it however high it may soar; and though it seems to us not half an hour since we left the garden, believe me we must have travelled ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Mr. Burleson takes millions of dollars' worth a day out of the convenience, out of the profit and out of the efficiency of business in America and then with a huge national swoop of compliment to himself points out to people how he has saved ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... like a live thing under the terrific strain. At each downward swoop, before the upswing began, there was ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... a full determination to overwhelm and engulf the already stricken and helpless fabric that lay prone and waterlogged at their mercy; while we, from the superior elevation of our buoyant deck, could look over and beyond the nearly submerged hull, and watch with breathless anxiety the swoop of every giant wave as it surged down upon the wreck and buried her in a blinding smother of seething, milk-white foam. But, beaten down, inert, and waterlogged as was the brig, her cargo was evidently of such a character as to impart a considerable measure of buoyancy to her; for though every ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... comfortably for you, and you cannot even look satisfied; while if a train is late, or a hotel proprietor overcharges, you come and bully me about it. If I see after you, you mutter that I am officious; and if I leave you alone, you grumble that I am neglectful. You swoop down in your hundreds upon a tiny village like Ober-Ammergau without ever letting us know even that you are coming, and then threaten to write to the Times because there is not a suite of apartments and a hot dinner waiting ready for each ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... all attention instantly, and, after waiting till the sparrow had moved a little out of the thick of the branches, down he pounced. He missed his aim, or the sparrow was too quick for him, and although he made a second swoop, and followed that by a hot chase, he speedily came back without his prey. This little exertion, however, seemed to have provoked his appetite; for, instead of resuming his coffee-tree perch, he went into the hawthorn, and began to feed ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... round her magic pathway swoop— Admiral, captain, commodore, in gunboat, frigate, sloop. Save to snatch a prize, or a foe chastise, as their feeble art she foils, She will scorn a point from her course to veer, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... look down upon it from the gallery, resembled a nice new billiard ball, but as he warmed up and became more thoroughly stirred, his intellectual dome changed to a delicate pink. Then, when he rose to the full height of his eloquent flight, and prepared to swoop down upon his adversaries and carry them into camp, it is said that his smooth intellectual rink was as red as the flush of rosy dawn on the 5th day ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the forest people and the savage Kara Mojas to the north. Neither side could ever tell when a band of the foe would swoop down upon them, killing the men, stealing the sheep and seizing the women. Only a few months before one of the Kara Mojas had come in and stolen some sheep and in return our Wanderobo friend had sallied forth, killed ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... a wise and practical use of the forests that are left, to so husband them as to take regular harvests from them as the farmer regularly harvests his fields or selects the fatlings from his flocks. He does not gather in all these at one fell swoop, taking the fat and the lean and the young and the old, as the fisherman gathers all into his nets, and as the lumberman has felled the woods, but he selects those that are ripe and carefully rears the rest until they ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... quick succession, and the jarring thunder, loud and terrible, broke, peal after peal, on the ear! Then the howling wind, like ten thousand furies, came crashing and roaring through the forest, bearing whole trees on its driving wings, while others bent low before the blasting swoop of its ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... chance to redd up this, either," poor John Upham whispered in his ear, and gathered up with a furtive swoop ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... gather his people together an' swoop down with them on the murderin' convicts. He found out from signs, that I couldn't make nothin' of, that his tribe had divided into two parties, one going towards a hunting-ground called Big Cypress, an' the other to another place where deer an' bear are thick. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... suspicions aroused, the airman would have risked the anti-aircraft guns and dropped a few hundred feet and narrowly searched each hillside and wood for the telltale gray against the green. Then the wireless would commence to talk, or the 'plane swoop round and drive headlong for ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... dearest. And this bridal! Listen May, before that happen the eagle will swoop down and bear thee away to his free mountains, amid their sunny glens and bosky woods, to love thee darling as no other mortal, and certainly none of the Clan-'ic-Rathmhearlaich has heart ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1875 • Various
... fatal stoop, As ever monarch made; And, for that rash—that cruel swoop, He soon most ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... colloquial remarks delivered in his ordinary voice? The man who expected to get attention should claim it by the strident shrillness of his tones, should be able to bend his two knees in eloquent unison, and send one clenched hand with a driving swoop into the palm of the other—and repeat as often as necessary. Abner questioned as well his mental powers, his quality of brain-fibre, his breadth of view. The feeble creature rested in no degree upon the great, broad, fundamental principles—principles whose adoption and enforcement ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... enough, my life for yours. You talk of making three bites of a cherry! God send fools more wit and us more money! May I be doomed to fast a whole day if I don't verily believe he would not make above two bites of a shoulder of mutton and one swoop of a whole pottle of wine. Zoons, do but see how down o' the mouth the cur looks! He's nothing but skin and bones; he has ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... lounging-room. But at one corner he never glanced. For here was a framed picture of the forgotten Hawk Ericson, landing on Governor's Island, winner of the flight from Chicago to New York.... Such a beautiful swoop!... ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... was winking through the froth of a pint of porter at the canteen sergeant's daughter, who was in fits of laughing, when the pewter was knocked out of his grasp, and the big Highlander's hand was laid on his shoulder and bore him twenty or thirty yards from the place in one swoop. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... and swoop On the air, or loop Through the trees, and then go soaring, O: To group with a troop On the gusty poop While the wind behind is roaring, O: I skim and swim By a cloud's red rim And up to the azure flooring, O: And my wide wings drip As I slip, slip, slip Down through the rain-drops, Back where Peg ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... minutes the boar was found in his lair. They could have killed him at once, or at least shot at him, but that would have ended the hunt too quickly. The huntsmen launched the whole pack at the animal, which, seeing this troop of pygmies swoop down upon him, started off at a slow trot. He crossed the road, Roland giving the view-halloo, and headed in the direction of the Chartreuse of Seillon, the three riders following the path which led through the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... nag, loosen her bridle bit, and follow into the meeting-house—a lofty building unplastered at the roof, whose open eaves and shingles give place in summer to nests of wasps, and in the winter to audacious birds, some of which swoop screaming to the pulpit, and beat the window panes in futile flight. Two uncarpeted aisles lead respectively to the men's side and the women's side—for, far be it from us, primitive Methodists, to improve upon the discipline of Wesley—and midway of ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... presence and the fury of ferocious pagans; they armed for the defence of all that is dear to man; and though, perhaps, at first beaten and driven back, they mustered in force at a distance to fall on the victors with a swoop of noble birds who fly to the ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... cruel old lady. She sports with her victims like a cat with a mouse. And just when the poor scared things, having escaped one terrible swoop of her hand, take breath, she comes down remorselessly with the other hand, and dashes away hope ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... resented the invasion of their hunting ground by the English. The French-Indians incited by the French settlers in the Mississippi Valley who wanted the wealth of fur-bearing animals for themselves, began to swoop down on the settlements of the English-speaking people along the frontier, massacring them by ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... a bucket to go to the river for water. As she bent over to fill the vessel a roaring noise like thunder filled the air, and one of the birds darted down and seized her in its talons. The villagers saw the bird swoop down, and they wailed aloud in sorrow and terror as they watched her being carried through the air ...
— A Treasury of Eskimo Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss
... rather an unparagoned strategist who, having at last "lured the presumptuous foe" into his toils, was now, with Beauregard, notwithstanding Beauregard's protracted illness, about to make the "one fell swoop" of our complete deliverance? And after the swoop and its joy and its glory, when Johnnie should come marching home, whose Johnnies, and how many, would never return? As to your ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... first sudden swoop of the tempest arrived. The tall elms writhed as though taken with St. Vitus's dance. The hens began to screech and run to cover. ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... Like the swoop of heated play to a goal burst a human wave upon the steps. Oppner and Martin were swept irresistibly upward and inward. They were surrounded, penned ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... other side from the south. Davout's rear-guard was steadily disintegrating under hardships and before the harassing attacks of the Russian riders under Platoff. Partizan warfare was assuming alarming dimensions. In a single swoop two thousand French recruits under Baraguey d'Hilliers had been made prisoners, and similar events were growing all too frequent. In consequence of these crushing discouragements the whole army was rearrayed. "We must march as we did in Egypt," ran the order: ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... Ingred gasped with amazed indignation. One at a time was the usual forfeit, but to lose five "at one fell swoop" seemed excessive, and would make a considerable difference to her weekly record. She blazed against the injustice. No girl in the form had ever had ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... them a supply of buffalo meat, together with leather for moccasins, of which the party were greatly in need. The most valuable prize obtained from them, however, was a horse. It was a sorry old animal in truth, and it was the only one which remained to the poor fellows, after the fell swoop of the Crows. They were prevailed upon to part with it to their guests for a pistol, an axe, a knife, and ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... understanding his words, would not be driven off, and came back in greater numbers than before. This put the little man in a great passion, and, snatching up in his anger a bag of cloth, he brought it down with a merciless swoop upon them. When he raised it again he counted as many as seven lying dead before him with outstretched legs. "What a fellow you are!" said he to himself, astonished at his own bravery. "The whole town must hear of this." In great ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... meat, and throw them among the pointed rocks, where no man can go, and the meat, falling upon the diamonds, they become attached to it. Now, among these mountains live a number of white eagles, who hunt the serpents, and when they see the meat at the foot of the precipices they swoop down and carry it away. At the moment the men who have been following the eagles' movements see them alight to eat the meat, they raise fearful cries, the meat is dropped and the eagles take to flight, and thus the men have no ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... voulez qu'en vrai dieu de la machine, "You will have me as theatre-god, then, "J'arrive pour te denouement? "Swoop in, and produce the catastrophe? "Qu'aux Anglais, aux Pandours, a ce peuple insolent, "J'aille donner la discipline?— "Tame to sobriety those English, those Pandours, and obstreperous people? "Mais examinez mieux ma mine; "Examine the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... either side of my mouth and roared an answering hail to him up the wind. We were a bare twenty yards apart, but if he had not chanced at that moment to look in my direction, I doubt if he would have been aware of me, for all my efforts. The wind, in a fresh swoop, snatched the sound from my lips and ranged through the house with a turmoil of banging doors, falling crockery, and wildly fluttering draperies. As it was, he caught sight of me, shouted something unintelligible, and gesticulated toward a formless ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... dozen kites of various kinds were soaring in the air, some quite steadily and others darting angrily from side to side. One went up with a swoop, to come down with a bang on the rocks, thus knocking itself ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... watched her hand travelling across the sheet of note-paper, and returning at regular intervals, with a sure swoop, to begin a fresh line. There was no sound except the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... motions—To-night they sleep in the convent of Saint Wittol, or Withold, or whatever they call that churl of a Saxon Saint at Burton-on-Trent. Next day's march brings them within our reach, and, falcon-ways, we swoop on them at once. Presently after I will appear in mine own shape, play the courteous knight, rescue the unfortunate and afflicted fair one from the hands of the rude ravishers, conduct her to Front-de-Boeuf's Castle, or to Normandy, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... they made a dash westwards and seized Exeter. Here Alfred blockaded them, and a relieving fleet having been scattered by a storm, the Danes had to submit and withdrew to Mercia. But in January 878 they made a sudden swoop on Chippenham, a royal vill in which Alfred had been keeping his Christmas, "and most of the people they reduced, except the King Alfred, and he with a little band made his way . . . by wood and swamp, and after Easter he . . . made a fort at ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... scaled my salary down to one thousand and eighty dollars at one swoop. Then we had to save out at least five dollars a week to pay on the furniture. This left eight hundred and twenty, or fifteen dollars and seventy-five cents a week, to cover running expenses. We paid cash for everything and though we never had much left over at the end of the week ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... helped. Some of the seed, sown broadcast, of course falls there, and lies where it falls, having no power to penetrate the hard surface. As in our own English cornfields, a flock of bold, hungry birds watch the sower; and, as soon as his back is turned, they are down with a swift-winged swoop, and away goes the exposed grain. So there is an end of it; and the path is as bare as ever, five minutes after it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... of its velocity and weight. Its momentum, calculated in foot-tons, was something incredible. It had been seen to destroy a four year old bull by a single impact upon that animal's gnarly forehead. No stone wall had ever been known to resist its downward swoop; there were no trees tough enough to stay it; it would splinter them into matchwood and defile their leafy honors in the dust. This irascible and implacable brute—this incarnate thunderbolt—this monster ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... Hop. I saw her swoop down like a mother bird to her young. (Winthrop tries to speak; his voice fails; he sinks limply back on the blanket). Steve! Only fainted. Ah! (he rises and goes slowly to Fair; when he speaks, his voice is very soft). Won't you speak to ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... hiding place was in sight. The lawn stretched smooth on all sides except for a scattering of trees—poor enough cover. The Mercutians were almost directly overhead now, preparing to swoop. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... of ink over a toilet cover and the bedroom carpet, his cousin took him for a walk and pointed out the superior advantages of apartments in London from which to swoop upon ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... already disordered. The sleet must have been falling for hours to have weighed them down this way and that. A peculiarity of the night was the wind, which increased constantly, but with fitful violence, giving no warning of its high swoop, seizure, and wrench. ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... ones? Did you say all?—O hell kite! All? What! all my pretty chickens, and their dam, At one fell swoop! ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... principles in our universe, the sun-principle and the moon-principle. And these principles are known to us in immediate contact as fire and water. The sun is not fire. But the principle of fire is the sun-principle. That is, fire is the sudden swoop towards the sun, of matter which is suddenly sun-polarized. Fire is the sudden sun-assertion, the release towards the one pole only. It is the sudden revelation of the ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... went on. It was now a brutal scene. The blind man could not defend himself from the other's terrible punishment. His whole face was so swollen and distorted, that not a feature was recognisable. But he evidently had his design. Each time Sayers struck him and ducked, Heenan made a swoop with his long arms, and at last he caught his enemy. With gigantic force he got Sayers' head down, and heedless of his captive's pounding, backed step by step to the ring. When there, he forced Sayers' neck on to the rope, and, with all his weight, leant upon the Englishman's shoulders. In a few ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Suddenly he saw the raven, and at the same moment it rose, croaking the alarm. Up through a near thicket floundered a cloud of black birds, flapping their wings. They were ravens, too, all croaking and flapping through the rain-soaked branches, mounting higher, higher, only to wheel and sail and swoop in circles, round and round in the gray sky above his head. He shivered and hesitated, knowing that the dead lay there in the thicket. And he was right; but when he saw the thing he covered his eyes with both hands and his heart rose in his throat. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... intolerable. When, at last, I thought I should go mad, in a moment we took a surging swoop, shot down ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... are thinking I lie. There's two of them, my lad, and one's as good a leg as ever stepped; but as for the other, it's years ago now, when I was with Julius, and I got a swoop from a Gallic sword; the savage ducked down as I struck at him, and brought his blade round to catch me just above the heel. But he never made another blow," continued the old man, grimly. "My short, ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... see if when we get to the top here, it don't all go down full swoop like a house wall ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... his aim sure. Quick as thought he has seized his victim and is back to his perch. There is no strife, no pursuit,—one fell swoop and the matter is ended. That little sparrow, as you will observe, is less skilled. It is the Socialis, and he finds his subsistence properly in various seeds and the larvae of insects, though he occasionally has higher aspirations, and seeks to emulate ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... aery morrice Circle and swoop and close . . . Fuller and ever fuller The rose of the ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... sepulchre, for I have ceased To justify my deeds unto myself— The last infirmity of evil. Aye, Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister, 30 [An Eagle passes. Whose happy flight is highest into heaven, Well may'st thou swoop so near me—I should be Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine Yet pierces downward, onward, or above, With a pervading vision.—Beautiful! How beautiful is all this visible world![120] How glorious ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... support of its officers both at the Convent and in the various European countries. The Knights were never seriously threatened financially till the French Revolution wiped out half their revenues at one fell swoop. Emergencies were always successfully met by an appeal to the self-denial of the members of the Order and the generosity ...
— Knights of Malta, 1523-1798 • R. Cohen
... dashed Swoop of the Vulture business," he grumbled, as he paced before his tent, ever and anon pausing to sweep the city below him with his glasses. "I should like to find the fellow who started the idea! Making me look a fool! Still, ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... movable little horns; so, when it wants to feed, it hides under leaves all of its body except these little horns which, as they move, seem to the birds to be some small worms at play. Then they immediately swoop down to pick them and the Cerastes suddenly twines round them and encircles and devours ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... no more, but that was enough to reveal the black, seething hell the Rebellion has brewed. Can there be any peace with miscreants who thus deliberately plan the murder, at one swoop, of hundreds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... libraries, pictures and artistic objects accumulated for centuries.—Remark, again, the seizure of specie and all other articles of gold and silver; in the months alone of November and December, 1793, this swoop puts into our coffers three or four hundred millions,[2108] not assignats, but ringing coin. In short, whatever the form of established capital may be we take all we can get hold of, probably more than three-fourths of it.—There remains the portion which is ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... does, she may exclaim with the Churchmen, "Yet are my years but labour and sorrow." The little chaps who have their birthday parties among sub-Arctic reeds are surrounded with enemies from the first day they crack their baby shells. Lynx and raccoon prey upon them by land, eagles and owls swoop upon them as they swim; and as with one eye they scan the sky above them, a greedy pike is apt to snap their web-feet from under them and draw them ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... no time to lose. Every hour for us meant so much more of that precious pay-dirt that lay under the frozen surface. The Winter leapt on us with a swoop, a harsh, unconciliating Winter, that made out-door work an unmitigated hardship. But there was the hope of fortune nerving and bracing us, till we lost in it all thought of self. Nothing short of desperate sickness, death even, would drive us from our posts. It was with this dauntless ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... such a swoop Will raise an obstacle to their retreat And refuge in the fastness of the isle; And show this victory-gorged adventurer That striking with a river in his rear Is not the safest tactic to be played Against an Austrian front ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... acquainted. A mediatised Prince is an unhappy victim of those Congresses which, among other good and evil, purged with great effect the ancient German political system. By the regulations then determined on, that country was freed at one fell swoop from the vexatious and harassing dominion of the various petty Princes who exercised absolute sovereignties over little nations of fifty thousand souls. These independent sovereigns became subjects; and either swelled, ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... more and more distinct as it drew nearer. It circled, turning first to the right and then to the left, rising and descending, as if responding willingly to the touch of its unseen pilot, until with a majestic swoop it hovered like a great bird exactly over the cradle, ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... first slowly, then glidingly, and when the impetus was gained, with darting, bounding, almost savage swiftness—sweeping round corners, cutting the hard snow-path with keen runners, avoiding the deep ruts, trusting to chance, taking advantage of smooth places, till the rush and swing and downward swoop became mechanical. Space was devoured. Into the massy shadows of the forest, where the pines joined overhead, we pierced without a sound, and felt far more than saw the great rocks with their icicles; and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... cramped at the knees; and the flight of Domenichino's angels is a sprawl paralyzed. The authority of Tintoret over movement is, on the other hand, too unlimited; the descent of his angels is the swoop of a whirlwind or the fall of a thunderbolt; his mortal impulses are oftener impetuous than pathetic, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... bringing a rush of rain with it. But the equinoctial gales were blowing out at sea, and the impartial south-west wind, in its flight, would not neglect even the narrow Marshalsea. While it roared through the steeple of St George's Church, and twirled all the cowls in the neighbourhood, it made a swoop to beat the Southwark smoke into the jail; and, plunging down the chimneys of the few early collegians who were yet lighting their fires, half suffocated them. Arthur Clennam would have been little disposed to linger in bed, though ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... the victim writhing between the tips of the mandibles. But the prey is not secured yet. On each pelican attends a number of predatory gulls, wheeling over it in flight, and watching its every movement with a foregone and well-studied intent. For as soon as the fish is brought up, they swoop at it from all points with wild screams and flapping wings; and as the pelican cannot swallow the fish without first tossing it upward, the toss often proves fatal to its purpose. The prey let go, instead of falling back into ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... said the Doctor. They could see the figure of the Banker towering in the air a thousand feet above the ring, and then with a swoop of his enormous face come down to them as he knelt upon ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... He gripped the gunwale as the current lifted and swept the canoe down at a pace past control; as it sped straight for the point of the smooth water, and so, seeming to be warned by the roar it met, balanced itself fore-and-aft for one swift instant and plunged with a swoop that ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "No, I'd swoop along over the forests up here until I picked out all the camps of the Indians and Tories. I'd pick out the Butlers and Braxton Wyatt and Coleman, and see what mischief they were planning. Then I'd fly away to ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... or the other. So also with Hawes, never yet pardoned by the financiering economist of "cheese parings and candle ends" for the splendid Thames tunnel job, and L200,000 of the public money at one fell swoop. These people range under the generic head Charlatanerie, as of the distinct species classified as farceurs according to the French nomenclature. For other species, and diversities of species, of a lower ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... us in the face. Were our cherished plans to be frustrated by a marauding cow, who little realised that she was imperilling her own means of existence? Were we to turn away three, five, nine thirsty customers at one fell swoop? Never! None of these people ever saw me before, nor would ever see me again. What was to prevent my serving them with tea? I had on a pink cotton gown,—that was well enough; I hastily buttoned on a clean painting apron, and seizing a freshly laundered ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ship stooped lower, just skimming the tops of strange trees, the most horrible vegetable forms that I have ever beheld. And then, without warning, we were seized and pushed overboard, while the vessel, making a broad swoop, quickly disappeared. Henry alone uttered a loud cry as ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... darkness had seemed to swoop in upon them like the clutching hand of death. Instinctively they had huddled together in the center of the room. But when the second look, and the third, gave them reassurance that the effect was really ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn
... I went back I should hear the sea calling me day and night; I should feel the breath of the southwest trades in every wind that blew over that tight little island yonder; I should be always scenting the old trail, lad, the trail that leads straight out of the Gate to swoop down to the South Seas. Do you think a man who has felt his ship's bows heave and plunge under him in the long Pacific swell—just ahead of him a reef breaking white into the lagoon, and beyond a fence of feathery palms—cares to follow hounds over gray hedges ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... It is foolish to set up a partnership in the dark. Is there anyone, Evelyn, who may swoop down upon us at a moment's notice, and carry you ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the afternoon, and alongside my road runs a bit of civilization in the shape of the splendid iron poles of the Indo-European Telegraph Company. Half a dozen times this afternoon I become the imaginary enemy of a couple of cavalrymen travelling in the same direction as myself; they swoop down upon me from the rear at a charging gallop, valiantly whooping and brandishing their Martini-Henrys; when they arrive within a few yards of my rear wheel they swerve off on either side and rein their fiery chargers up, allowing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... already enriched by the spoils of their neighbours, and supported by a warlike youth, eager to enlist under their banner at the first call,** must have been often tempted to quit their barren domains and to swoop down on the rich country which lay at their feet. We are ignorant of the course of events which, towards the close of the XVIIIth century B.C., led to their gaining possession of it. The Cossaean king who seized on Babylon was named Gandish, and the few inscriptions ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the deep-piled dais, Wrought in hallowed looms of Sais, O'er the impetuous torrent's swoop, Stands the ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... circle formation, with a view to surrounding it, each a little higher than the other. With a lightning-like swoop the British bird, getting right in front of it and turning sharply, let fly his machine gun in rapid fire, Fritz answering energetically. In less than three minutes' time, a distinct wabbling was noticeable ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... of an eye, in the twinkling of an eye, in a trice; in one's tracks; right away; toute a l'heure [Fr.]; at one jump, in the same breath, per saltum [Lat.], uno saltu [Lat.]; at once, all at once; plump, slap; at one fell swoop; at the same instant &c n.; immediately &c (early) 132; extempore, on the moment, on the spot, on the spur of the moment; no sooner said than done; just then; slap-dash &c (haste) 684. Phr. touch and go; no sooner ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the fish stopped biting, as they 'most always do, by spells, and the Deep Woods people leaned back and looked out over the Wide Blue Water, and away out there saw Mr. Eagle swoop down and pick up something which looked at first like a shoe-string; then they saw it wriggle, and knew it was a small water-snake, which was going to be Mr. Eagle's dinner; and they talked about it and wondered how he could enjoy ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... wildly, as I entered the room. "Your estate—mine—Mabel's—all swept away with one fell swoop, Miriam! The Bank of Pennsylvania has failed; it is discovered that Mr. Biddle has proved defaulter, and we ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... words were completely drowned, and he received a sudden shock when the brilliant beam of a searchlight flashed up from the ground, and, after a circling swoop, found them and held them in its fierce eye. Every stay and rivet was as clearly visible to him as though it had been noonday, and it was a ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... desecrated with the marks of your irreverential contempt for all things human and divine. Would that—(and the wish is expressed more in sorrow than in anger)—would that your entire species were condensed into one enormous bluebottle, that we might crush you all at a single swoop! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... Shields," said Mr. Spence. "He might be posing for a statue to be called 'Despair!' He reminds me of Macduff. Macbeth, Act iv., somewhere near the end. 'What, all my pretty chickens, at one fell swoop?' That's what ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... up astern with obvious intentions. As the two men watched—and as a score of other eyes, from other galleries and ports likewise observed—the lean wasp carried out her driver's plan. With a sudden, plunging swoop, she dived at the Eagle of the Sky for all the world like a hawk ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England |
