"Torrent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... springing up, the gardens of the Villa Carlotta, and so forth. Evelyn had carelessly asked the old man whether he had been in any of the fighting of '59, and in an instant, under her eyes, he became another being. Out rolled a torrent of speech; the oars lay idly on the water; and through the man's gnarled and wrinkled face there blazed a high and illumining passion. Novara and its beaten king, in '49; the ten years of waiting, when a whole people bode its time, in a gay, grim silence; the grudging victory of Magenta; the ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... He was swept along as by a torrent. Fixed on him were the small bead eyes of the priest, darting a light, like a flame on oil. And when the Emperor gasped quickly and sprang to his feet with hands clenched in the manner of a strong man, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... his teeth. "And woe unto you too, race of vipers, bladders of wind! As the fire devours the stubble, and the flame consumes the chaff, so your root will be rottenness and your seed go up as dust. Fear will engulf you like a torrent. The high peaks will be broken, the mountains will sever, and night be upon all. The valleys and hills will be strewn with your corpses, the rocks will run with your blood, the plain will drink it, and the vultures feast on your flesh. Woe unto you all, I say, that ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... therefore chiefly that which I am best able to teach: and the rather, that it is only in this school that you can follow out the study either of natural history or landscape. The form of a wild animal, or the wrath of a mountain torrent, would both be revolting (or in a certain sense invisible) to the calm fantasy of a painter in the schools of crystal. He must lay his lion asleep in St. Jerome's study beside his tame partridge and easy slippers; lead the ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... America is so associated with the idea of emigration, that to announce an intention of crossing the Atlantic, rouses the interfering propensity of friends and acquaintances, and produces such a torrent of queries and remonstrances, as will require a considerable share of moral courage to listen to and resist. All are on the tiptoe of expectation, to hear what the inducements can possibly be for travelling ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... more furiously, with lines of emphasis, and capitals, and exclamation-marks more and more thickly interspersed, so that the signs of his living passion are still visible to the inquirer of today on those thin sheets of mediocre paper and in the torrent of the ink. But he was a man of elastic temperament; he could not remain forever upon the stretch; he sought, and he found, relaxation in extraneous matters—in metaphysical digressions, or in satirical outbursts, or in the small details of his daily life. It amused him ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... possibility of pursuit by Tseng Kwofan at the head of the warlike levies of Hoonan, where each brave is considered equal to two from another province, was still present to their minds. But he unfortunately rested content with his laurels, while the Taepings swept like an irresistible wave or torrent down the ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... return home oppressed with a wealth which life proves not long enough to spend, notwithstanding the aid of dissolute and spendthrift sons. Here have we a single source of evil equal to the ruin of any people. The morals of no community could be protected against such odds. It is a mountain torrent tearing its way through the fields of the husbandman, whose trees and plants possess no strength of branch or root to resist ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... made to fear for their safety by a mighty torrent of yellow mud surging athwart the blue current of the Mississippi, sweeping down logs and uprooting trees, and dashing their light canoes like leaves on an angry brook. They were passing the mouth of the Missouri. A few days later they crossed ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... autumn, the fall of rain had been unusually great and continuous. There were frequent thunderstorms; and, on one occasion, the quantity of rain that fell was so great, as to cause a land-slip in Pizzifalcone, by which several houses were overwhelmed; and, on another occasion, the torrent of rain was so violent, that the Riviera di Chiaja was covered, to the depth of half a metre, with mud, and stones brought down by the water from the heights above. This enormous quantity of water pouring on the slopes of Vesuvius, ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... road. The trees crowded so close to the edge of it that he walked in their shade, with his hat in his hand. Squirrels ran playfully upon the old rail fence at his right. Quails were calling to their young broods in the wheat stubble. The low sun sent a torrent of pale gold up the ravine that opened to the west. Early September!—it was within a few days only of the ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... Attic prose; and, studied him I had, more than any other prose writer whatever. Paripassu, I had become sensible that others had not studied him. One monotonous song of applause I found raised on every side; something about being "like a torrent, that carries everything before it." This original image is all we get in the shape of criticism; and never any attempt even at illustrating what is greatest in him, or characterizing what is most peculiar. The same persons who discovered that Lord Brougham was the modern Bacon have also complimented ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... is raised, and you taste all life in the moment before you go. If a man achieves not that, then struggle with earth or air or the waves of the sea is desirable. Driving sleet, armies of the snow, night and trackless mountains, the leap of the torrent, swollen lakes where kelpies lie in wait, wind on the sea with the black reef and the charging breakers,—it is well to dash one's force against the force of these, and to die after fighting. But ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... A torrent of rain was swept against the streaming window pane, and a gust of wind shook the frame in its sockets. The watcher turned away from the window with a mute gesture of despair. No eye could pierce that black chaos. He sank again into his seat, and looked ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... blunder, defeat on defeat. On April 24, 1779, Horace Walpole says that Lord Lyttelton 'has again turned against the Court on obtaining the Seals'* November 25, 1779, saw Lyttelton go boldly into Opposition. He reviewed the whole state of the empire. He poured out a torrent of invective. As to his sinecure, he said, 'Perhaps he might not keep it long.' 'The noble Lords smile at ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... had been carried down the hill with the torrent of Wendovers, 'all the way from Norway. ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... earthly paradise; on the other, a narrower private one, a mere cart track, grass-grown, cool, and shady, leading down to the mill stream that ran behind the grounds, brawling and seething and swelled by the spring rains into quite a respectable torrent. Down this path Dora always took me to walk when she wanted me to say anything uncommonly foolish, which could serve her as food for laughter, and down this path again we must always go when that villain Hayes was of the party, and she wanted to play me off against him, or him against me, or both ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to men Lofty as a god To those beneath him, Who has taken sins and sorrows And whose deathless spirit leaps Beneath them like a golden carp in the torrent. ...
— Japanese Prints • John Gould Fletcher
... an equal tone with his own; and there was besides in his bosom that strong passion in its strongest form which gives to everything it mingles with its own depth, and intensity, and power—which, like a mountain torrent, suddenly poured into the bed of some summer rivulet, changes it at once in force, in speed, in depth—that passion which has made dumb ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... Floweret was unlike them, one adored of dead and living, one to be cherished even in her dreams, one whom "Heaven Above," together with those who had "gone below," built round with a wall of spells?—and more of such talk, which Thomas thought so horrible and blasphemous that he fled before its torrent. ...
— Smith and the Pharaohs, and Other Tales • Henry Rider Haggard
... they stopped at the edge of a raging torrent and strained their eyes to see what lay on the other side. While they looked, a light twinkled out from among the tree-tops. Thurston caught his ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... sleepy German waiter first came up and glanced sullenly at the mud-tracks we left upon the floor; then he allowed his insulting gaze to trail our progress to the lunch counter by means of a perfect torrent of rain-water drippings. He went out of the room grumbling, to return a moment later with a huge mop. Thereupon he ordered us out of the place, standing ready with the mop to begin the cleansing process the instant we ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... the rivulets from the distant hills, the foaming current threatened to overflow its banks. Already the rising waters touched the flimsy wooden structure that spanned the torrent. Contemplatively he regarded it, and then placing his hand for a moment on ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... difficult to conceive of making free with Beth as with the person of the Metropolitan of Moscow, or with that of the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad. She had her dignity. It was undeniable. He imagined the surprise in her large blue eyes and the torrent of ridicule of which her tongue could be capable. He had felt the sting of its humor at their first meeting. He had no wish to test ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... tossing billows. Now before us ran a strange wild river of seething white, lashing among great, gray-capped, dark greenish boulders that blocked the way. High rocky banks standing close together squeezed the mighty river into a tumult of fury. Swiftly we glide down the racing torrent and plunge through the boiling waters. Sharp rocks rear above the flying spray while others are barely covered by the foaming flood. It is dangerous work. We midmen paddle hard to force the canoe ahead of the current. ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... was broken by the rushing music of the birds—a careless, cheery torrent of song poured forth from bramble and woodland. Distant and nearer cockcrows rang out above the melodious tumult, through which a low, confused undertone, scarcely apparent at first, was growing louder—the dull sound of the ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... looked speechlessly into the other's heart, seeing the passions, the contradictions, the shortcomings that went to the making of both. In that silence they drew closer together than they could have done through a torrent of words. There was no asking of forgiveness, no elaborate confession on either side; in the deep, eloquent pause they mutually saw and ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... after it. But short and sudden as it was, it served to show Charlton that the sheet of water before him was not a pool or a pond, but a brook or a creek over all its banks, swollen to a river, and sweeping on, a wild torrent. At the side on which Charlion was, the water was comparatively still; the stream curved in such a way as to make the current dash ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... by half-ashamed memories of that dance, Sadie spoiled a good bit of her work on Monday morning. The forewoman descended on her with a torrent of coarse abuse, whereupon Sadie rose suddenly from her machine, and in a burst of hysterical profanity and tears rushed out of the factory, vowing never to return. There was only one course, she decided, for her to ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... appreciate the sublime in art will fail to bow down before it as embodied in this wonderful statue? The majestic character of the head, the prodigious muscles of the chest and arms, and the beard that flows like a torrent to the waist, represent a being of more than mortal port and power, speaking with the authority, and frowning with the sanctions of incarnate law. The drapery of the lower part of the figure is inferior to the anatomy of the upper part. Remarkable ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... came out from an inner room, and seeing the Italian standing there, broke into a passionate torrent of speech, ...
— The Boy With the U.S. Census • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... insults, like a man who is thoroughly persuaded that between arresting him and scaling Heaven there is no difference. As may well be imagined, such astounding remarks were not uttered without interruption, and warm altercations from the Cardinal de Bissy, who, nevertheless, could not stop the torrent. At last, carried away by anger and vexation, Bissy seized the Marechal by the arm and the shoulder, and hurried him to the door, which he opened, and then pushed him out, and followed at his heels. Dubois, more dead than alive, followed also, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... she murmured, bursting into a torrent of tears. "How you must have suffered to feel so great a relief!" Then she was still, very still, and waited for ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... discovered the object of his visit. The ascent to this lake, through the famous Buam Defile, or Happy Pass, afforded some of the grandest scenery on our route through Asia. Its seething, foaming, irresistible torrent needs only a large volume to make it the equal of ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... the face of her Moxy who died in the dark, she threw herself in a passion of tears and cries upon her dead. But the man knelt upon his knees, and when Hester turned in pain from the agony of the mother, she saw him with lifted hands of supplication at her feet. A torrent of divine love and passionate pity filled her heart, breaking from its deepest God-haunted caves. She stooped and kissed the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... strait itself of the Euripus does not ebb and flow seven times a day at stated times, as is reported, but the current changing irregularly, like the wind, now this way now that, is hurried along like a torrent rolling headlong down a steep mountain, so that no quiet is given to vessels there day or night. But not only did so perilous a station receive his ships, but the town was strong and impregnable, covered on one side by the sea, and very well fortified on the other towards the ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... regiments at Versailles that she treated all the reports from Paris with contempt. Nothing was apprehended from that quarter, and no preparations were consequently made for resistance or protection. She was at Little Trianon when the news of the approach of the desolating torrent arrived. The King was hunting. I presented to her the commandant of the troops at Versailles, who assured Her Majesty that a murderous faction, too powerful, perhaps, for resistance, was marching principally against her royal person, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... fashionable spirit of that age—there would be little in Voltaire's huge shelf of volumes, little except stray flashes of his irrepressible gaiety, to arrest and to hold us. But into the pages of "Candide" he poured the full bright torrent of his immortal wit, and with this book in our hands we can feel him and savour him ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... even the nobility and sweetness of his pretty fiancee, enhanced by the surrounding glamour of heiresship, failed to touch the flood gates of tender love that a pauper's hand had suddenly unloosed, to sweep as a destroying torrent through the fair garden of his most cherished hopes. What was the spell exerted by the young convict when she grappled his heart, and in the havoc of her own life carried down all the possibilities of his future peace? Personal ambition, calculating mercenary selfishness ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... she dances! How she sings! And the way she embroiders with gold—marvellous! Not even a Turkish Padishah [13] has had a wife like her!... Shall I? Wait for me to-morrow night, yonder, in the gorge where the torrent flows; I will go by with her to the neighbouring village—and she is yours. Surely Bela ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... It was absolutely necessary for her to get in at once if she did not mean to stay at El-Akbara. She tried to pass the grovelling Arab, but as she did so he suddenly sprang up, jumped on to the step of the carriage, and, thrusting his body half through the doorway, began to address a torrent of Arabic to the passenger within. The horn sounded again, and the carriage jerked backwards preparatory to starting ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... we reached the ford, which was generally passable by foot passengers, Terence was obliged to swim his horse across, and to dismount on the opposite side, in order to assist the animal up a steep clayey bank which had been formed by the torrent undermining and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... then in the light of early dawn, in single file they climbed the ladder, up through the scuttle. And straddling the ridgepole with daggers between their teeth, alas, they became dizzy and toppled down the steep shingles to the gutter, to be whirled away in the torrent of an April shower. Ah me! Had only the roof been flat! Then it would have been for them a reservation where they might have lived on and waited for the sound of children's feet to come again. Then when those feet had come and the old ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... quagmire; and the volume of water passing under the road bridge was so great that many people thought this ancient structure to be in danger of collapsing. Over at Otterford Mill, the stream swept like a torrent through a chain of wide lakes; Mr. Bates' cottage was cut off from the highroad, and the meadows behind the neighboring Foxhound Kennels were ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... through these places and lived are a handful to those who went in and were never seen again. The white bones of some have been found on the shores; but most were drowned; and in this water no bodies ever rise, because the thick sand that its torrent churns ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... and it so happened, that in some way or other, the means which the engineer had relied upon for controlling it were insufficient, and when the gates were opened every thing suddenly gave way. The water rushed out in an overwhelming torrent, as in an inundation—and undermined and carried away the platforms and stagings which had been erected for the seats of the spectators. A scene of indescribable tumult and confusion ensued. The emperor and empress, with the guests and spectators, fled precipitously together, and all narrowly escaped ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... silently and without complaint, even when her bare feet slipped into the deep ruts in the trail, or were painfully bruised and cut by the sharp stones and bits of wood that lay in the narrow path. Once she fell. The man addressed as Julio assisted her to her feet. The other broke into a torrent of profane abuse. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... metaphor to picture our position, and I recall a canoe-trip in the wilds of Ontario, hundreds of miles down a long swift river. You sit in the bow of the canoe, your partner in the stern, watching ahead; and there comes a slide of smooth green water, and you go over it, and into a torrent of foaming white, which seizes you and rushes you along with the speed of ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... to their work, he resolved to bring about the destruction of the Voreux pit, by weakening the timbers which kept out a vast accumulation of water. He accomplished that work of madness in a fury of destruction in which he twenty times risked his life. And when the torrent had invaded the mine, imprisoning the unfortunate workers, Souvarine went calmly away into the unknown without ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... her a long, loose wrapper, and her lustrous hair tumbled like a brown-black torrent down over her shoulders and back. Steadfastly the brown eyes followed ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... proper that I should ascertain the truth by going thither. I went. On my way my mind was full of these ideas which related to my intellectual condition. In the torrent of fervid conceptions, I lost sight of my purpose. Some times I stood still; some times I wandered from my path, and experienced some difficulty, on recovering from my fit of musing, to ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... Administration? Little did they think that if his Lordship did not come in upon express terms, which however is doubted by some, yet without a Greatness of mind equal, perhaps superior to his Goodness, it will be impossible for him singly to stem the Torrent of Corruption. This requires much more Fortitude than I yet believe he is possesd of. Fain would I have him treated with great Decency & Respect, both for the Station he is in and the Character he sustains; but ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... but was again driven backwards by the terrific flame, and perceived that the fiery current had reached Judith, who was writhing and shrieking in its embrace. Before Chowles could again stir, it was upon him. With a yell of anguish, he fell forward, and was instantly stifled in the glowing torrent, which in a short time flooded the whole chamber, burying the two partners in iniquity, and the whole of their ill-gotten ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... almost midnight when our hearts were made to beat in our throats by such an uproar in the scullery, as seemed to cleave the darkness like a thunderbolt. Giftie appeared to be choking in her effort to unloose, all at once, a torrent of ferocious barks. A window shook, glass broke, a shutter slammed. Then followed a moment of awful silence before she settled down to a methodical yapping. We heard Mary Ellen run ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... was taken up with these thoughts and reflections when his mother came to see him. She found him so much altered and emaciated that she shed a torrent of tears; in the midst of which she saluted him as she used to do, and he returned her salutation, which he had never done before since he had been in the hospital. This she looked upon to be a good sign. "Well, my son," said she, wiping her tears, "how do you do, and how do you find ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... mistook for inspiration, the speaker was silent. Her voice was succeeded by the hysteric shrieks of several women, but the feelings of the audience generally had not been drawn onward in the current with her own. They remained stupefied, stranded, as it were, in the midst of a torrent which deafened them by its roaring, but might not move them by its violence. The clergyman, who could not hitherto have ejected the usurper of his pulpit otherwise than by bodily force, now addressed her in the tone of just indignation and ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... room, locked herself in, and falling on her knees by the side of her bed, "My God!" cried she, with a torrent of burning tears, "you will not leave this young man to die who has done no wrong, and who is so loved in this world. Oh! save him, that I may see a God of mercy, and not of vengeance." Her strength gave way, and she fell senseless on the floor. When ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... bondage of strong drink, could be produced indefinitely. There are Officers marching in our ranks to-day, who where once gripped by this fiendish fascination, who have had their fetters broken, and are now free men in the Army. Still the mighty torrent of Alcohol, fed by ten thousand manufactories, sweeps on, bearing with it, I have no hesitation in saying, the foulest, bloodiest tide that ever flowed from earth to eternity. The Church of the living God ought not—and to say nothing about religion, the people who have any humanity ought ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... our work a calamity occurred, which was very nearly becoming a catastrophe. By the giving way of a dam, after some heavy rains, the little stream which threaded its silvery way past Spring Hill swelled without any warning into a torrent, which, sweeping through my temporary hut, very nearly carried us all away, and destroyed stores of between one and two hundred pounds in value. This calamity might have had a tragical issue for me, for seeing a little box which contained some things, ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... departure had occasioned that first sorrowful evening. He gently, and as soon as he could, drew her to a retired part of the deck, where they were comparatively free from other people's eyes and ears; then, taking her in his arms he endeavoured by many kind and soothing words to stay the torrent of her grief. This fit of weeping did Ellen more good than the former one; that only exhausted, this in some ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a minister's wife who never pays the slightest attention to anything that is being said to her, being engrossed in a torrent of explanation regarding her children's education and minor diseases. Once a bored companion in a momentary pause fixed her sternly with his eye and said distinctly: "But I don't give a —- about your children!" At which the lady smiled brightly ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... cheeks, and his eyes streamed with a flood of tears. As when a resistless river sweeps down the valley when the chill snows have melted and the languid south wind thaws the earth and suffers not the ice to remain, even so his face streamed with a torrent of weeping and his breast groaned loud with a ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... they were unanimous in urging her to reconsider what they called her Quixotic fancy. Lady Ludlow was greatly concerned at losing her friend for an indefinite period; she pointed out the uselessness of the proceeding; she endeavoured to overwhelm Mavis's obstinacy in the matter with a torrent of argument. She may as well have talked to the Jersey cows which grazed about Mavis's house, for any impression she produced. After a while, Mavis's friends, seeing, that she was determined, went their several ways, leaving her to make her seemingly ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... was a roarin' torrent coming down from the mountains that cut us off. It's only last night that ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... a torrent that would sweep thee, with thee strongest war-horse, to perdition," muttered Nathan: "does thee not hear how it roars among the rocks and cliffs? It is here deep, narrow, and rocky; and, though, in the season of drought, a child might step across ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... and Percy stepped out and closed the door. The shouting from the Barracouta kept on with undiminished vigor. Appeals and threats jostled one another in the verbal torrent. ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... torrent against the window, and casually glancing outside at the tossing gardens ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... considerable distance, the water was not much cooled; and though the stream's descent was so slight that on earth its current would have been very slow, here it rushed along like a mountain torrent, the reason, of course, being that a given amount of water on Jupiter would depress a spring balance 2.55 times as ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... the rest, as the Southern torrent, irresistible now, flowed toward Gettysburg, while Ewell and Hill led their men. The town was filled with the retreating Union troops and the cannon and rifles thundered incessantly in the rear, driving them on. ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... kept up without intermission, the rain coming down in a perfect torrent, and the wind blowing in fitful gusts from the east. It was raw and depressing, and our hero could not help but shiver as he looked out on the turbulent waters ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... away at a rattling pace, with four or five couple of hounds on his traces. In an instant all was confusion, cigars were thrown away, hats pressed firmly down upon the brow, and, with a rush like the outburst of some mighty torrent, the whole field to a man swept ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... fell into it. The top of the Steenkampsberg was reached at about 1 a.m., after a steep climb over a rough track. The difficulty of the march was increased by a thick fog. On the far side a steep cliff, at the bottom of which was a deep donga and a mountain torrent, was encountered, and this had to be negotiated on hands and knees. Slipping and sliding down, the bottom of the donga was reached and the mountain torrent waded, and then after a steep ascent the top ...
— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson
... beyond Kathlyn turned to see the flames leaping along the grass. Rajah, getting a whiff of the acrid smoke, quickened his stride. The fire followed with amazing rapidity and stopped only when it reached the bed of a trickling stream, no doubt a torrent during the big rains. A great pall of smoke blotted out everything in the rear; blotted out hope, for Bruce could never pick ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... first because he was overwhelmed by this sudden torrent of questions, and secondly because he rarely spoke without thinking; therefore, finding him silent, she questioned ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... ready the troops embarked, the damn was knocked away, the Otsego poured out its torrent, and the boats went merrily down ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... made in estimating life. A few centuries ago, a torrent of enthusiasm set in the direction of bearing the cross into Asia, to fight for glory, and the propagation of Christianity, on the fields of Palestine. Already the old Roman military character was greatly improved on. Virtue, (manliness, ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... the sound of running water was plainly heard, and the boys understood that the convulsion of nature had opened a reservoir somewhere in the glacier, and that the long chasm would soon become a rushing torrent. The prospect ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... of flower-houses and vineries that ran out from the conservatory in a continuous chain—each link with its own temperature and its individual scent—and not a pane but rattled and streamed beneath the timely torrent. It was in a fernery where a playing fountain added its tuneful drop to the noisy deluge that the voices of the drawing-room sounded suddenly at my elbow, and I was introduced to Miss Belsize before I could recover ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... year. To gain a little time he walked swiftly on, pretending not to have noticed them: but oh! his eyes roved wildly to each side of the road for a chance of escape. He saw none. To his right was a precipitous rock; to his left a profound ravine with a torrent below, and the sides scantily clothed with fir-trees and bushes: he was, in fact, near the top of a long rising ground called "La Mauvaise Cote," on account of a murder committed there two hundred ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... herd of these animals when thoroughly aroused by terror. They care not for their necks. All danger in front is forgotten, or not seen, in the terror of that from which they fly. No thundering cataract is more tremendously irresistible than the black bellowing torrent which sometimes pours through the narrow defiles of the Rocky Mountains, or sweeps like a roaring ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... many brooks plunging down and down, rolling the rocks, to pour their volume into the growing turbid streams on the slopes. It was the voice of all that widely separated water spilled suddenly with magical power into the desert river to make it a mighty, thundering torrent, red and defiled, terrible in its increasing onslaught into the canyon, deep, ponderous, but swift—the Colorado ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... substance as through a furious torrent all bodies are carried, being by their nature united with and co-operating with the whole, as the parts of our body with one another. How many a Chrysippus, how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus has ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... new trick, and an extremely difficult one to boot; for, to be properly performed, it required not only that the glottis should remain immovable during the passage of the vinous torrent down the throat, but also that the throat should give forth at the same time a clear, uninterrupted voice. Yet Michael Kis performed this feat with masterly dexterity, to the general astonishment, and gave back the bowl for the ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... find became noised abroad, and now the Tarn is as a Pactolus flowing over golden sands—a mine of wealth to the simple country folk around. The river, springing from a cleft in the Lozere chain, winding its impetuous way, enriched by many a mountain torrent, through the Aveyron, Tarn, and Garonne, finally disemboguing into the Garonne, has lavished all its witchery ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... touches upon several modern and very difficult problems. I have not in the remotest degree attempted to solve them, but rather have sought to direct attention to them. In our society public opinion is exceedingly powerful. It is the torrent that sweeps away obstructing evils. The cleansing tide is composed originally of many rills and streamlets, and it is my hope that this volume may add a little to that which at last ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... advocate would have lasted more than two hours if the court had not silenced him. He indulged in a torrent of abuse against the other barrister, the experts in hand-writing, and the peasant, whom he threatened with a speedy consignment ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... just now—" I began, seeking to stop him, feeling as though I was face to face with a madman. But he instantly overbore me with his torrent that ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... his oratorical gifts, the like of which has never before nor since been witnessed in Italy. He was a born orator; as vehement as Demosthenes, as passionate as Chrysostom, as electrical as Bernard. Nothing could withstand him; he was a torrent that bore everything before him. His voice was musical, his attitude commanding, his gestures superb. He was all alive with his subject. He was terribly in earnest, as if he believed everything he said, and that what he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... thee, poor poet! in the race that they are running, When the jar of stormy passions makes thy temples wildly beat; Can'st thou wrestle with the torrent, can'st thou stand against their cunning, Who will crush thee without mercy, like a ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... sane judgment, however, her genuine humanity, and the moderating influence of her father, saved her from being swept away, like Madame Roland and most of the disciples of Rousseau, by the sanguinary torrent of revolutionary enthusiasm; and in times of wild passion and exaggeration she usually exhibited a singular soundness and sobriety of political judgment. She was sometimes mistaken, but on the whole it may well be doubted whether there is any other French writer or politician of the period of ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... to be met with here, especially among the more affluent classes, exceeds any moderate calculation. Nothing can more clearly manifest the necessity of erecting some dike against the torrent of immorality, which has almost inundated this capital, and threatens to spread over all ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... immovably before him,—a long perspective of gray uniforms and glistening white belts. The fateful book is closed with a snap, and the echoing walls ring to the quick commands of the first sergeants, at which the bayonets are struck from the rifle-barrels, and the long line bursts into a living torrent sweeping into the hall-ways ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... town lay northeast of the sleepy little Lobos River, which cut Santa Paloma in two. It was a pretty river, a boiling yellow torrent in winter, but low enough in the summer-time for the children to wade across the shallows, and shaded all along its course by overhanging maples, and willows, and oaktrees, and an undergrowth of wild currant and hazel bushes and blackberry vines. Across the river was Old Paloma, where dust from ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... was above my reach, where efficiency in driving oxen was one of the most valued of accomplishments. I keenly felt my inability to acquire even respectable mediocrity in this branch of the agricultural profession. It was mortifying to watch the dexterous motions of the whip and listen to the torrent of imperatives with which a young farmer would set a team of these stolid animals in motion after they had failed to respond to my gentle requests, though conveyed in the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... land. Then commenced a terrible war of extermination. This whole continent was drenched with blood. We fought to save our homes and our country, they to gain the supremacy. It was not a battle of a year or of half a century. As many years as I have seen, the torrent was never stayed, and when an advantage was gained, on either side, life was never spared. By slow degrees, they possessed themselves of fortress after fortress, and city after city: we, the while, growing weaker, they stronger, until we were compelled ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... cried, shaking his fist at the infuriate officer, and pouring out upon him a torrent of loyal abuse which I ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... the neck of her mamma, and fixing her lips to her cheeks, kept kissing her, till a torrent of tears gave ease to her heart. As soon as she was able to speak, "My dear mamma," said she, "I stopped to look at a pretty little chaise drawn by six dogs, and in the mean time I lost you. I looked for you, and called for you, but I ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... immediately afterwards broke out into taught me that this time too, as always, he had seen me through and through. I bit my lip, and durst not speak a word, for I knew very well that it would only be the signal for the old gentleman to overwhelm me beneath the torrent of teasing which was already hovering on the ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the barrow and the burial, Back like a bursting torrent all men fled Back to the city and the sacred wall. But Paris stood, and lifted not his head. Alone he stood, and brooded o'er the dead, As broods a lion, when a shaft hath flown, And through the strong ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... arrived home he found his mother clamoring. Maggie had returned. She stood shivering beneath the torrent of her mother's wrath. ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... young face looked monstrous wicked in the moonlight, and his eyes rolled curiously as he beheld me. Stepping up to him I freed him of his gag—an act which I had almost regretted a moment later, for he cleared his throat with so lusty a torrent of profanity that methought the heavens must have fallen on us. At last when he was done with that—"Before you leave me in this plight, M. de St. Auban," quoth he, "perchance you will satisfy me with an explanation of your unfathomable deeds and of ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... for rest that I feel—a hunger and thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts leading nowhere, spinning ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells |
