"Black hole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... spun around and flattened out on the floor with arms and legs flung wide. A tiny black hole was visible through his shirt. He had been last, and the Hawk had struck him less accurately than ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... the castle. Then he was obliged to submit; and the suba, or viceroy, promised on the word of a soldier, that no injury should be done to him or his garrison. Nevertheless, they were all driven, to the number of one hundred and forty-six persons of both sexes, into a place called the Black Hole Prison, a cube of about eighteen feet, walled up to the eastward and southward, the only quarters from which they could expect the least refreshing air, and open to the westward by two windows strongly barred with iron, through ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... this space ought to communicate freely with the external atmosphere by means of direct or indirect channels. Hence, a sleeping-room for one adult person should not be less than nine by ten feet in breadth and length and nine feet in height. What occurred in the Black Hole at Calcutta is an excellent illustration of the effect of vitiated air. One hundred and forty-six Englishmen were confined in a room eighteen feet square, with two small windows on one side to admit air. Ten hours after their ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... schooner recovered, and invited them to drink and eat. They followed him along the deck, and fell down a square black hole into ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Think I killed one guard and beat the other till I'd broke every bone in his body to come here and listen to such guff? You've been having a high old time, eh, and you never give a thought to me up there! I might 'a' rotted in that black hole for all you'd ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... spread itself into a long, black gulf with eyes, a voice, and clammy hands, she grabbed up the still lighted lantern and cried aloud in a frenzy of fear. The door slowly sank out of sight and the way was open but her courage was gone. What was beyond that black hole? Could she live in the foul air that poured forth from that dismal mouth? Trembling like a leaf, she lifted the lantern and peered into the aperture, standing quite ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... lay-figures, animated by strings of which the ends opposite from men were lost in infinite distance? To dance, or not to dance, was all the choice men had, and rather than play a part in such a show as fell to his lot, it seemed better to break the strings and let the miserable marionette fall into the black hole ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... in her arms, as though she feared to see him disappear down the black hole, and, in ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... pair of the general's cast-off breeches, which he held up with one hand while he grasped his firelock with the other. The rest were accoutred in similar style, excepting three ragamuffins without shirts, and with but a pair and a half of breeches between them; wherefore they were sent to the black hole, to keep them out of sight, that they might not disgrace ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... opened a lattice door of heavy iron, bidding us enter. I knew then that we were going into a dungeon, deep under the walls of a British fort somewhere on the frontier. A thought stung me as D'ri and I entered this black hole and sat upon a heap of straw. Was this to be the end of ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... over in one corner. Then, shading a very modern flash-light with a fold of his robe, he showed me one of the square flags lifted, and a black hole yawning in the floor. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... night I never wish to spend. I never felt the curse of sickness so keenly in my life. If I could only have been on deck with the rest, where something was to be done, and seen, and heard; where there were fellow-beings for companions in duty and danger—but to be cooped up alone in a black hole, in equal danger, but without the power to do, was the hardest trial. Several times, in the course of the night, I got up, determined to go on deck; but the silence which showed that there was nothing doing, and the knowledge that I might make myself seriously ill, for nothing, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... of the dungeon, hewn in the rock at the foot of the temple, on the summit of the Acropolis, had just opened; and a man was standing on the threshold of this black hole. ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... have yellow eyes, all right," complained the dejected Davy; "and as it stuck there in that black hole, how was I to know it was only a harmless old owl, a ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... a pallet where lay a face like a girl's, Young, and pathetic with dying,—a deep black hole in the curls. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... falls the Aire Saint-Mittre loses its animation, and looks like some great black hole. At the far end one may just espy the dying embers of the gipsies' fires, and at times shadows slink noiselessly into the dense darkness. The place becomes quite sinister, particularly ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... Rochechouart, and the house Fremin had described to him. It was there: an old weather-beaten house, with a narrow entrance and a corridor, in the middle of which flowed a dirty, foul-smelling stream of water; the room of the concierge looked like a black hole at the foot of the staircase, the balusters and walls of which were wet with moisture and streaked with dirt; a house of poor working-people, many stories high, and built in the time when this quarter of Paris ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... lies between the Long Pool and the Rock Pool; it is a circular, deep, black hole, in which the waters collect before dashing and roaring down between the great gray boulders; and to fish it you must get out on certain knife-like ledges that seem to offer anything but a secure ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... Too ill to protect her helpless brood, my mother saw us carried away from her for hours at a time, on the crests of waves of panic that sometimes approached her and sometimes receded, as they swept through the black hole in which we found ourselves when the hatches were nailed down. No madhouse, I am sure, could throw more hideous pictures on the screen of life than those which met our childish eyes during the appalling ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... was a crash and an unearthly scream, then a thud that sounded as if it had happened in the middle of the earth. Father Donovan and I looked around in alarm, but Paddy was nowhere to be seen. Toward the wall there was a square black hole, and, rushing up to it, we knew at once what had happened. Paddy had danced a bit too heavy on an old trap-door, and the rusty bolts had broken. It had let him down into a dungeon that had no other entrance; and indeed this was a queer house entirely, with many odd ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... hastily. "Please, PLEASE don't do that. It's bad enough to choke slowly, like this, in the gloom. But to die in the dark—that would be ten times more terrible. Why, it's a perfect Black Hole of Calcutta, even now. If you were to turn out the lights I could never ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... morning and split kindling wood, having had none of the feast, was not very sleepy, and woke up when he heard footsteps near him. The magicians asked him if he could show them to the lowest part of the castle. "All right," said he; "this way;" and he led them to where there was a great black hole, with a windlass over it. "Get in the bucket," said he, "and I ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... because Western men never argue a point when that little black hole is staring them in the face, partly because he remembered with a rush that the last time he had fully possessed his consciousness he had been lying in the snow with the cross gripped hard and the toppling mass of the landslide above him. All that had happened between was blotted ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... the folding-doors into the wings. The O.P. corner was packed—standing room only—and the overflow reached nearly to the doors. The Black Hole of Calcutta was roomy compared with the wings on the night of a new song. Everybody who had the least excuse for being out of his or her dressing-room at that moment was peering through odd chinks in the scenery. Chorus-girls, show-girls, chorus-men, ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... he was endeavouring to carry it off," said Jack; "it would be a very good ornament to the black hole at Calcutta." ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... door slowly slid back, and when Reddy turned to speak to her again, for he had had his back to her, she was nowhere to be seen. Reddy just gaped and gaped foolishly. There was no Granny Fox, but there was a black hole where she had been working, and from it came the most delicious smell,—the smell of fat hens! It seemed to Reddy that his stomach fairly flopped over with longing. He rubbed his eyes to be sure that he was awake. Then in a twinkling he was inside ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... the hole at the bottom of the flower-pot.] Could I see you! Yonder stump of red cone has exactly the black hole to let through my yellow bill. Apologies,—but it was too tempting! A ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... frequently faint away, while many persons avoid going there entirely through dread of the discomfort and fear of its effects. So, too, the theatres show a shameful negligence of the health and comfort of the audiences as to this particular, the Royal Theatre especially becoming almost a "Black Hole of Calcutta" by the end of a six hours' Wagner opera. The close air of the crowded lecture-rooms of the Polytechnic School is a source of positive injury to the students, and the same may be said of the halls appropriated to pupils in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... finally it was daylight, and the train was puffing into a tunnel. He could see the engine dive into the black hole, dragging the coaches after it like the tail of a snake. When they emerged, Jack looked down upon a green-and-white-scurrying river; away down—so far that it startled him a little. And he looked up steep pine-clad slopes to the rugged ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... Bobolink as he found himself looking into what seemed to be a very deep and black hole; "wasn't it lucky we got the glim going when we did? I guess I'd dropped into that pit if we'd held off any longer. My good little angel must have ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... best thing for us to do would be to hide the book and the money where you found it. All these months it's stayed in that black hole safe, and it can stand ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... do," returned the man. "Sometimes you have it quite chilly after a hot day. Other times you have it suffocatin'—like the Black Hole ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... weeds. It was old and rusted by [-man-] {many} rains. We pulled with all our strength, but we could not move it. So we called International [-4-8818,-] {4-8818} and together we scraped the earth around the bar. Of a sudden the earth fell in before us, and we saw an old iron grill over a black hole. ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... the narrow little windows set high in the walls of the cellar, well over the head of the tallest of the Crows; but Tug said that these windows were necessary for ventilation, and History was reminded of the Black Hole of Calcutta, so it was decided to leave the windows open for the sake of the air, even if it did give the Crows a loophole of ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... encouraged me greatly. It was very friable and so shallow that my scissors'-point picked it at once. In five minutes' time the brick was clear, so that I easily lifted it out and set it on the floor. The small black hole which was left was large enough to admit my hand. I wasted no time thrusting it in, expecting to feel the box at once and draw it out. But it was farther back than I expected, and while I was feeling about something gave way and fell with a slight, rustling noise down ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... own chamber, where I had never been before, and showed me how, in the chimney-neuk, was a way into a certain black hole of little ease, wherein, if any came in search for me, I might lie hidden. And, fetching me a cold fish (Lenten cheer), a loaf, and a stoup of wine, whereof I was glad enough, he left me, groaning the while at his ill-fortune, but laden with such thanks as I might give for all ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... "it was as bad for him as the 'Black Hole of Calcutta.'" I did n't know what that meant then; I know now, but haven't time to tell you. Besides it is n't a pleasant story. Then papa added, "Perhaps, after all, it is only a case of suspended animation. ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... Drawing Room, 154which conveniently holds ten persons, is to be the black hole for thirty—My study, dear beloved retreat, where sonnets have been composed and novels written—this spot which just holds me and my cat, is to be the scene of bagatelle, commerce, or any thing else that a parcel of giggling girls ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... was a place, perhaps sixty feet long by less than twenty-five wide. Into this "black hole," where the upright space between decks was less than seven feet, were crowded one hundred and seventy naked creatures, like hogs ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... high. But there's one place—I missed it before, when I was just looking for deer—where the cliff—How can I describe it? It sinks in, and there's a slope up to it, solid rock. And at the top of the slope I saw a black hole, and got off my pony to look in. The slope is easy to climb. Tuesday climbed it with me. The mouth of the cave is partly hidden by a rock that sticks out so that you can see the opening only from one side. The entrance is no bigger than the door of your ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... exercise—one, two"—and so on. And then he would yell: "No, Chalmers, don't punch out with your arms—swing up your gun! Swing it up from the bottom! That's the way! Poke 'em! Poke 'em! Put the punch into 'em!" And over Jimmie stole a cold horror. There was nothing on the end of those guns but a little black hole, but Jimmie knew what was supposed to be there—what would some day be there; the exercise meant that these affable young Leesville store-clerks were getting ready to drive a sharp, gleaming blade into the bowels ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... doesn't beat my time!" the latter exclaimed. "And to think that while you and I talked back there, our chum was lying down in some old black hole. What if he's broken his leg, or even sprained an ankle,—-Riverport will miss a good man in ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... don't you say you are going to have him locked up in the black hole. Murray, I'm ashamed of you. It's bile, sir, bile, and I ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... them began. He stopped when he saw that he was addressing a round, black hole that was only a fraction more than a third of an inch in diameter but looked much, much larger ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Koko popped out of the black hole. He was dressed in a fur suit and mittens just ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... ladder into a loft where he had his straw-bed, while his son slept below-stairs at the end of a kind of niche near the chimney-piece and the servant shut herself up in a kind of cave, a black hole which was formerly used to store ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... it up hastily, and it went out. His perception of possibilities enlarged, and he felt for and replaced the candle in its candlestick. "Here! you be lit," said Mr. Fotheringay, and forthwith the candle was flaring, and he saw a little black hole in the toilet-cover, with a wisp of smoke rising from it. For a time he stared from this to the little flame and back, and then looked up and met his own gaze in the looking-glass. By this help he communed with himself in ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... small room, in the hottest time of the year, and they were so crushed together and suffocated by the heat that, when the morning came, there were only twenty-three of them alive. This dreadful place was known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. The next year Calcutta was won back again; and the English, under Colonel Clive, gained so much ground that the French had no power left in India, and the English could go on obtaining more and ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is many a young breast with a hole through it; The little black hole that is death ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... WISDOM?'. . . 'Your whole life, character and conduct' have been spotted with deeds that causes a blush upon the face of a virtuous patriot; so you must be contented with your lot, while crime, cowardice, cupidity or low cunning have handed you down from the high tower of a statesman to the black hole of a gambler . . . . Crape the heavens with weeds of woe; gird the earth with sackcloth, and let hell mutter one melody in commemoration of fallen splendor! For the glory of America has departed, ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... him. Just before them the trees fell back a little to left and right, and the road swept downwards across a clear, moonlit valley, till it dived again like a rabbit into the wall of another wood. The entrance to the farther forest looked small and round, like the black hole of a remote railway tunnel. But it was within some hundred yards, and gaped like a cavern before ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... do people mean by going there? What is done there, that everybody throngs into those three little rooms? Was the Black Hole considered to be an agreeable REUNION, that Britons in the dog-days here seek to imitate it? After being rammed to a jelly in a door-way (where you feel your feet going through Lady Barbara Macbeth's lace flounces, and get a look ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... his first little book of rhymes, that may be had for twopence now, we shall find the pictures of the life that was lived under Protection—the sort of life the landlords and their theorists invite us to enact again. From his "Black Hole of ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... opened his eyes at the grave, when a cord was put into his hand, and then he wept passionately, and on his way back to Monypenny, whether his eyes were open or shut, what he saw was his mother being shut up in a black hole and trying for ever and ever to get out. He ran to Elspeth for comfort, but in the meantime she had learned from Blinder's niece that graves are dark and cold, and so he found her sobbing even like himself. Tommy could never bear to see Elspeth ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... madness done And saner souls rise with the morrow's sun. But this incarnate hell that yawns before Your bright, brave soul keyed to the fighter's clench— This purgatory that men call the "trench"— This modern "Black Hole" of a modern war! Yea, Love! yet naught I say can save you, so I lay my heart in yours ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... perforated with numerous holes. In this way, a free circulation was secured, and so arranged, that the nurses could not control it; for some of the old-fashioned nurses would not have opened a window in the Black Hole at Calcutta, for fear the inmates ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... seemed to her blameworthy; all that change in her life had come as of itself and in spite of herself; and really, after all, there was no harm in it. She prayed for that good man, who certainly needed her spiritual aid: he went so seldom to church and lived in such a dreary black hole. Her prayers and interest would for sure bring him to a better frame of mind. And yet she must watch, keep strong, avoid the dangers: her honour was a tender thing; and people were wicked. She stayed longer than usual in the confessional and offered special prayers ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... carefully as I did and here you will find a cave." With that she disappeared into the yawning black hole, leading both burros. Barbara and Anne stared at each other in amazement, and the latter said: "Come carefully! Anything is better than ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... having me with him, but still he's as gloomy and as dull as can be. 'T was only yesterday he took me to the works, and you'd ha' thought us two Quakers as the spirit hadn't moved, all the way down we were so mum. It's a place to craze a man, certainly; such a noisy black hole! There were one or two things worth looking at, the bellows for instance, or the gale they called a bellows. I could ha' stood near it a whole day; and if I'd a berth in that place, I should like to be bellows-man, if there is such a one. But ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... towards the hill crest in front. Scattered about behind the guns, covered with beautiful green turf, shadowed by growing trees, are the dwelling-places of the gunners, deep 'dug-outs,' with no visible sign of their existence except the square, black hole of the doorway. Out in the open a man sits with a pair of field-glasses, sweeping the sky. He is the aeroplane look-out, and at the first sign of a distant speck in the sky or the drone of an engine ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... was the reply. "I took leave, and, as I had seen enough of the black hole already, I took good care to give the provost-marshal no notice on the subject. A fortnight's march brought me within sight of the towers of Notre-Dame. But as I was resting myself on the roadside, our adjutant, as ill luck would have it, came by in the coupe of the diligence. He jumped out. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... he merely slid from its position a thin slab, pushing it half way off of its square base. Instantly the sound of rushing water filled the ear, and the unaccountable, muffled roar that had puzzled them was half explained. The block was hollow, revealing a deep, black hole, out of which poured the sound of the hidden stream. The mystified observers could plainly see the water some ten feet below the surface of the earth, gliding swiftly off through a subterranean passage. The chief made them understand that this well was for the ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... longer?—how many months?' 'Behold my fingers,' said the one who had abused me; 'I put these into those, and then you know. It would have been already, except for the business that you have been employed upon in this black hole. Hippolyte, you have done well, though crookedly; but all is straight for the native land. You have made this Government appear more treacherous in the eyes of France and Europe than our own is, and you have given a good jump to his instep ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... and spectators, in their preoccupation with the relief and elation of a drama finished, had their first warning of what was to come in a voice that did not seem like the voice of the tenderfoot as they had heard it, but of another man. And Leddy was looking at a black hole in a rim of steel which, though twenty yards away, seemed hot against his forehead, while he ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... Later, in his sleepless bed he lay, saying now and then: "To die at home! Surely I may be granted at least this." And he listened for the inner voices. But they were not speaking any more, and the black hole of silence grew more dreadful to him than their arguments. Then the dawn came in at his window, and he lay watching its gray grow warm into color, until suddenly he sprang from his bed and looked at the sea. Blue it lay, sapphire-hued and dancing with points of gold, lovely and luring as a charm; ...
— Padre Ignacio - Or The Song of Temptation • Owen Wister
... lodge in the Lorenzer wall. Now when matters took so ill a turn, he pledged himself to get her safe away from the dungeon cell. To this end he feigned that he would ride into the town, after possessing himself of the key of the black hole and after stowing a suit of his man's apparel and a loaf of bread into his saddle-poke. Then he wandered about the wood for some time, and as soon as it fell dark he stole back to the house again ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... fate not only of that native state, but of all India. Moved by jealousy of the growing power of the English, and encouraged by the French, the Nabob attacked and captured the English post at Calcutta. His one hundred and forty-six prisoners he crowded into a close dungeon, called the Black Hole. In the course of a sultry night the larger part of the ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... fellow's straw sombrero and tossed it into the street. The wind caught it and the hat sailed for some distance. With a quick movement the Spanish captain drew a pistol from his belt and fired. With a sharp report, a round, black hole appeared in the ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... ever get out of there? he wondered. The machine men of Zor might never find him. What would happen to him, then? He would remain in this deathless, monotonous state forever in the black hole of the volcano's interior unable to move. What a horrible thought! He could not starve to death; eating was unknown among the Zoromes, the machines requiring no food. He could not even commit suicide. The only way for him to die would be to ...
— The Jameson Satellite • Neil Ronald Jones
... marched off to the "Black Hole." It was a large camp with large frame buildings, which had been erected especially for the purpose. There was one building for the French prisoners, one for the Russians, and one for the British and Canadian contingent. Barbed wire entanglements surrounded the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... side, was listening during a part of this same week to a second confession of that poor fellow whose tongue had outmeasured his discretion. It was listening with reviving dread to the wild and incoherent disclosures of this man, whom it had flung into the black hole of the workhouse. There, crazed by misery and fear of death, he raved about a plot among the blacks to massacre the whites and to put the town to fire and pillage. This second installment of William Paul's excited disclosures, while it increased the sense of impending peril, did ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... in a dark, draughty passage, with a bench on each side. "But where is the waiting-room?" I ask an attendant. "This is the waiting-room," he replies. More like the Black Hole. Was it wise of me to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... unbearable. As soon as she could get about, Mrs. Judson built herself a small bamboo hut by the gate of the prison, and lived there, to be as near as possible to her husband. After he had been a month in this black hole Mr. Judson was taken ill with fever, and after much entreaty she was permitted to move him to a little bamboo cell by himself, and to go in daily to feed him and ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... second man back out of the trees, still facing whatever pursued him. He caught the glint of sun on what must be a ray tube. Leaves crisped into a black hole, curls of smoke arose along the path of ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... that he is mistaken asks with an air of a Socrates putting his last question: "You say that 'heaven is above us.' But if one dies at noon and another at midnight, one goes toward Orion and the other toward Hercules; or an Eskimo goes toward Polaris and a Patagonian toward the coal-black hole in the sky near the south pole. Where is your heaven anyhow?" O sapient, sapient questioner! Heaven is above us, you especially; but going in different directions from such a little world as this is no more than a bee's leaving different sides of ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... enterprise and wealth of the English traders; and, roused at this moment by the instigation of the French, he appeared before Fort William, seized its settlers, and thrust a hundred and fifty of them into a small prison called the Black Hole of Calcutta. The heat of an Indian summer did its work of death. The wretched prisoners trampled each other under foot in the madness of thirst, and in the morning only twenty-three remained alive. Clive sailed at ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... feebleness but rather a fullness of life, like that of a child half awake; she seemed to stretch herself and enjoy everything without noticing anything. She passed the wood, into the gray huddle of which a single white path vanished through a black hole. Along this part of the terrace ran something like a low rampart or balustrade, embowered with flowers at intervals; and she leaned over it, looking down at another glimpse of the glowing sea behind the clump of trees, and on another irregular path tumbling down to the pier ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... made little headway, though a few minutes more would have given it a dangerous start. The flames hissed and died out as Gussie threw on the water, and in a few seconds only a small black hole in the shingles remained. Gussie slid down the ladder. She trembled in every limb, but she put out her wet hand to me with a faint, triumphant smile. We shook hands across the ladder with a cordiality ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... level piece of turf close to school, beside a stream, which, at that place, was formed into a deep pool by means of a mill-dam. We had named the pool the black hole. It was the scene of all our school fights. In class that day I was unusually quiet, for I could not help thinking of the impending fight. I felt that it would be a hard one, though I never for a moment doubted the result. To ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... child all the way over to Portsmouth by himself!" exclaimed good Mrs Driscoll, the Doctor's wife, on hearing the contents of this epistle. "Why, he might be spirited off to the Plantations or the Black Hole of Calcutta, and we never hear any more about him. What could Mr O'Flaherty ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... he said, moved to smiles by the humor of it. "But to understand what I mean by hardship you must know how I've struggled in the ruts and narrow traditions of my profession, and fought, hoped, and starved. Why, I tell you that black hole over there looks like an open door with a light inside of it compared to some of the things I've gone through in the seven years that I've been trying to get a start. Money? I'll tell you how that is, Miss Horton; I've thought ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... indifference to life, and a love of cruelty for cruelty's sake, are common characteristics of most of the Orientals, and are chiefly conspicuous in the ruling classes. The reader of Indian history sickens over details compared with which all that is told of the horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta is tame and common-place. The English have prevented repetitions of those outrages on humanity, wherever it has been in their power to coerce the princes. They have pared the claws and drawn the teeth of these human tigers. They have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... in this line at Calcutta. St. Paul's Cathedral—English—was interesting on account of the many memorials and statues, one of Bishop Heber having much merit. Fort William and the grounds of the Government House, the Dalhousie Club, the Black Hole, and other points ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... burden. At the end of summer Pitt sent a great expedition to attack Rochefort; the military and naval commanders disagreed, and the consequence was failure. There was no light except from far-off India, where Clive won the great victory of Plassey, avenged the Black Hole of Calcutta, and prepared the ruin of the French power and the undisputed ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... see me at first; but her air was exultant and satisfied. There was no face on board so elated and flushed. I kept out of her way as long as I could without consigning myself to the black hole of the cabin; but at last she caught sight of me, and came down to the forecastle to claim me ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... Peveril directly away from the trail he had been following to a place in the woods known only to Rothsky. Close to where they finally halted and began preparations for the punishment of the prisoner, who was also expected to afford them infinite amusement by his sufferings, yawned a great black hole. It was of unknown depth, and was nearly concealed by a tangle of vines and bushes. Rothsky had stumbled upon it by accident only a few days before, and now conceived that it would be a good place in which ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... Already a great, round black hole had opened in the very middle of the map of England, and the sides of the map were tilting themselves up, so that the rain ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... you do with it?" Will you throw its contents on the sand, and go away satisfied with these imperfect glimpses of sea-life? Will you take them home indeed, but consign them to a crowded bowl, to die like the prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta? Or will you give to each a roomy basin with water, and plants to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... numerous the grim host of cruel fears that pressed upon him. Ruth—God! What would happen to Ruth, what had happened to her, what was happening to her even now, while he sat mooning, cooped and helpless in this black hole? It was unendurable! He ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... the room, but his eyes ran swiftly to the visiphone. With careful precision Roger Strang brought the heat-pistol to eye level, and pulled the trigger. Farrel Strang crumpled slowly from the knees, a black hole scorched ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... considered egotistical, therefore, when I say that the house was crowded; from pit to roof rose tier on tier one dark unbroken mass; I do not think there were twenty females in the dress circle; all men, and enduring, I should imagine, the heat of the black hole at Calcutta. I at the time regretted the absence of the ladies, when, had I been less selfish, I ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... windlass one of the chains had been unwound. Cunningham was so astonished that he could not believe what he saw. He had been there the night before; everything had been in order, the shaft closed, and the trap-door locked. He leaned over the grating and looked down; he could see nothing but a black hole without any bottom. The man did not look long, for it made him dizzy. He turned and ran out of the house to call ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... himself upon having borne the air of that city—in fact, upon having survived such a collision with the local remembrances of the poor historian, very much in those terms which Mr. Governor Holwell might have used on finding himself 'pretty bobbish' on the morning after the memorable night in the Black Hole of Calcutta: he could hardly believe that he still lived. [Footnote 1] And yet, how had the eloquent historian trespassed on his patience and his weak powers of toleration? Livy was certainly not very learned in ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... leads me to the conclusion that in all likelihood we should never have been rulers in India had we not been grievously injured as traders, in violation of rights accorded to us by the native powers. All know the story of the black hole of Calcutta, which led to our waging war on the Nawab. We had previously fought with the French and French allies in the south, we had contended with other European rivals, but our rule began with the victory ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... in his cage, was put on board a ship. He was stowed away down in a deep, black hole, deeper and blacker than the jungle pit into which he had fallen, and ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... not already gone. It will take me two days to reach Baltimore, another day to get to her convent, and it will altogether be five or six days before I can get back here. Good-by, Thurston! Heaven keep you, and give you a speedy deliverance from this black hole!" ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... as a hole. That was all I saw at first—a great black hole in the dark brown earth of the mountain-side, from which ran down a still darker streak into the waste places far below it. But as I looked longer I saw that it was faced by a ledge cut out of the friable soil, on which I was now able to descry the pronounced white of two or three tent-tops and ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... there was nothing of which a boy of spirit need be afraid. The shaft was choked with dirt a few feet below their landing-planks, and there was no spot in which a mystery might lurk; but it was very different now with that black hole leading Heaven knew into what awesome depths, harbouring goodness knew what horrors. Ted's defection had suddenly become the sentiment of the majority. At that moment Dick could have counted on Peterson alone had ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... of us, with our names painted on a door-post in right of one black hole called a set of chambers,' said Eugene; 'and each of us has the fourth of a clerk—Cassim Baba, in the robber's cave—and Cassim is the only respectable ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... present, and I then endeavoured to raise the stone by pulling on the cravat. I could only move it slightly, and it was with the aid of one of the constables that I succeeded at last in carrying it to one side. A black hole yawned beneath, into which we all peered, while Musgrave, kneeling at the side, pushed down ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... does not lie in the system itself, but in its application. It is a humane idea carried out inhumanely, so inhumanely that when the Black Hole of Calcutta is forgotten Englishmen will still hang their heads for shame at the mention ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... towards her right shoulder, the corner of her mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower part of her face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her hands; a kind of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to disappear in that viscous pallor that looks like a thin web, as if spiders had spun it over. The sheet sunk in from her breast to her ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... embraces cases not found in either of the foregoing classes, but where there is something in common between the pairs, as (Church, Temple.) (Pocket, Black Hole.) ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... simultaneously with the old Faust-books, and there is even the trace of one before the oldest Faust-book; at least in the archives of the University of Tuebingen an entry has been unearthed in which in 1587 two students were condemned to the 'Karzer,' or 'Black hole,' for composing a 'Puppenspiel' on the ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... convert it into a public library and reading-room worthy of the capital of India; and also the country-house of Warren Hastings at Alipur, for the entertainment of Indian princes. Lord Curzon restored, at his own cost, the monument which formerly commemorated the massacre of the Black Hole, and a tablet let into the wall of the general post office indicates the position of the Black Hole in the north-east bastion of Fort William, now occupied by the roadway. Government House, which is situated near the Maidan and Eden Gardens, is the residence ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... a mouse in a glass receiver, and it will gradually die by rebreathing its own breath. Shut up a man in a confined space, and he will die in the same way. The English soldiers expired in the Black Hole of Calcutta because they wanted pure air. Thus about half the children born in some manufacturing towns die, before they are five years old, principally because they want pure air. Humboldt tells of a sailor who was dying of fever in the close hold of a ship. His comrades brought him out of ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... found that there was no water, only a great hole, and then he had run to tell Maka, and when Maka had gone back with him, so greatly surprised that he had deserted his post without thinking about it, he found that what Mok had said was true, and that there was nothing there but a great black hole. Mok must have been asleep when the water went away, but it was gone, and that was all he knew ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... cold and hungry—'twasn't to be expected he'd do more nor he could help for a stranger. Aye indeed, he was a great ould villain! To think of him with lashin's and lavin's of everything an' money untold laid by, an' his only son's widdy livin' down there with a half-witted lodger in a little black hole of a place that was not fit for a pig, let alone a Christian, an' the beautiful little cratur', his grandchild, Roseen, runnin' about barefut, with her dotey little hands an' feet black an' blue wid the cowld—sure what sort of a heart had the man ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... stirring pen-pictures of events in the history of the United States during a critical period of its history. Its description of the principal incidents in the late war, and the suffering of the author and others in that detestable "Black Hole of Calcutta"—the Libby Prison—are most graphic. Willard Glazier's life was not confined to warfare, though he saw service in nearly all the great battles between the North and South. A few years ago he rode on horseback from ocean ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... a temple of Proserpine, or Apollo, or any god or goddess you please. We were so absurd as to pay a scudo to be taken through a vile tunnel, accompanied by two torch-bearers, and two other dirty wretches, who often carry us pick-a-back through one black hole into another, splashing us through dark pools, putting us down here and there as they pleased, picking us up again, grinning like demons, and by dint of shaking their torches above, and disturbing the water below, raising foul smells enough to intoxicate fifty Sybils. At length, half suffocated ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... have the slightest chance of deceiving the distant observer into the belief that it is a legitimate blind. This keeps off the sun, and allows a free circulation of air, which is the great object. When it is absent, the window becomes a mere black hole, having much the same relation to a glazed window that the hollow of a skull has to a bright eye; not unexpressive, but frowning and ghastly, and giving a disagreeable impression of utter emptiness and desolation within. Yet there is character in them: the black dots tell agreeably ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... again. My nurse was crying, and, taking me in her arms, she opened the window, saying to me, "Don't cry, Milk Blossom. Look at your pretty aunt; she will come back again, and then you can go away with her." Great tears rolled down her calm, round, handsome face. I could see nothing but the dark, black hole which remained there immutable behind me, and in a fit of despair I rushed out to my aunt, who was just getting into a carriage. After that I knew nothing more; everything seemed dark, there was a noise in the distance. I could hear voices far, far away. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... boomed across the sunny, blue expanse of water, driving a white puff of smoke before it. The shell disappeared in the waves about one hundred yards ahead of the Japanese steamer. The next shot struck the ship, leaving in her side a black hole with jagged edges just above ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... in the command of the camp. The old General was superseded by a man whose name will never be forgotten by the British prisoners of Sennelager Camp. They will ever couple him with the infamous instigator of the "Black Hole of Calcutta." ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... black hole, for it had those words painted on the door, was very dark, and having recently accommodated a drunken deserter, by no means clean. Barnaby felt his way to some straw at the farther end, and looking towards the door, tried to accustom ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... in the minutes that followed that there were thousands of black demons in that black hole. At the first rushing impact I shouted to Harry: "Keep your back to the wall," and for response I got a high, ringing laugh that breathed the joy ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... village the waggons stopped by a well with a crane. Letting his pail down into the well, black-bearded Kiruha lay on his stomach on the framework and thrust his shaggy head, his shoulders, and part of his chest into the black hole, so that Yegorushka could see nothing but his short legs, which scarcely touched the ground. Seeing the reflection of his head far down at the bottom of the well, he was delighted and went off into his deep bass stupid laugh, and the echo from the well answered him. When he got ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the City rushed impetuously out of a black hole and pulled up with a discordant, grinding racket in the smirched twilight of a West-End station. A line of doors flew open and a lot of men stepped out headlong. They had high hats, healthy pale faces, dark ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... Black Hole. There we found nine others who were to suffer the same fate in the morning. I was too tired to do anything but throw myself on a filthy mattress, and in a few minutes I was sleeping what I thought was my last sleep on earth. I was roused at daybreak by a tremendous ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... got nothin' at all new to tell you. But I'd just like to know—in this black hole I've got into—I'd just like to know that there's one human being who means well with me—I'd like to know that there's one man in the world who ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... as fast as he could. Carlo followed a short distance, and then got stuck. The black hole grew smaller at the other end, and Bumper felt that he was ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... suffocating atmosphere, I am resolved not to close my eyes. I will keep awake till daylight, and there will be no daylight for me till it is let into my prison from the outside. Perhaps even if the door were open it would not penetrate to this black hole, and I shall probably not see it again until I am taken ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... to be built outside the cabin, against the backlogs, the door would have to be left open anyway, to admit the heat. With a few strokes of his sharp little camp ax he cut away the planks, leaving a black hole in the door. He lighted a match and ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... to buy, and there they delayed for a term of two months until they had finished their business and they had purchased them what sufficed of provaunt. All this while the Prince lay bound in the black hole deep down in the ship's hold, nor did anyone go near him save a Jew, a man of a certain age.[FN533] And whenever he entered that dismal place he heard the youth reciting from the Koran and he would stand to hearken until his heart was softened to the speaker and he ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... of his age. Wherever he moved, he was followed by a host of the fair and fashionable. The showy equipages of the nobility were in perpetual motion. The parks were a whirlwind of horsemen and horsewomen. The streets were a levy en masse of the peerage. The opera-house was a gilded "black hole of Calcutta." The front of Buckingham palace was a scene of loyalty, dangerous to life and limb; men, careful of either, gave their shillings for a glimpse through a telescope; and shortsighted ladies fainted, that they might be carried into houses which gave then a full ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... their foreign excellencies on the left—were the long-robed, ermined judges, laying their wigs together and shaking hands, their wigs' many-curled tails shaking on their backs. And the wigs jointly and severally looked like so many vast white and gray birds'-nests from Brobdingnag, with a black hole at the top of each, for the birds to creep out or in. More and more scarlet-ermined dignitaries and nobles swarmed into the hall, and then, in at the scarlet door, came, with white ribbon shoulder-knots ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... fighting with his horse;—but the farmer had turned away. He thought that Chiltern nodded to him, as much as to tell him to go on. On he went at any rate. The brook, when he came to it, seemed to be a huge black hole, yawning beneath him. The banks were quite steep, and just where he was to take off there was an ugly stump. It was too late to think of anything. He stuck his knees against his saddle,—and in a moment was on the other ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... cowering and shivering, while a tiny puppy, who had hardly any brains at all, was eager to go on. She patted the dog, and "taking herself by both ears," as she expressed it afterwards, walked steadily forward, pushed aside the dense tangle of vines and bushes, and stooped down to enter the black hole which led into ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... was filled with horror at the history of the one hundred and twenty unfortunate Englishmen that were suffocated in the black hole of Calcutta. Little was it thought that an English nobleman (lord Rawdon) would so soon have repeated that crime, by crowding one hundred and sixty-four unfortunate Americans into a small prison in Camden, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... little attentions for the two women, particularly for Madame Raquin, whom he overwhelmed with delicate attention. Little by little he made himself indispensable in the shop; it was him alone who brought a little gaiety into this black hole. When he did not happen to be there of an evening, the old mercer searched round her, ill at ease, as if she missed something, being almost afraid to find herself face to face with ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... summoned to be present, and I then endeavored to raise the stone by pulling on the cravat. I could only move it slightly, and it was with the aid of one of the constables that I succeeded at last in carrying it to one side. A black hole yawned beneath into which we all peered, while Musgrave, kneeling at the side, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... to meet him in a snug quartett party, and hear his manner of playing his own music. If you can bring about such a thing while I am in town, either at Chelsea, or at Mr. Burney's, or at Mr. Salomon's, or I care not where—if it were even in the Black Hole at Calcutta (if it is a good hole for music)—I say, if by hook or crook you could manage such a thing, you should be my Magnus Apollo for the rest of your life. I mention Salomon because we are a little acquainted. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... and black," answered the other lad, after a moment's hesitation. "Why, it's a big black hole!" he added. ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... off than if she were in the Black Hole of Calcutta; but that doesn't make either her or us cool," said Emma Lascelles, an elder girl. "Don't preach, Peony; lessons are bad enough in ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... there came a spasmodic movement of the victim, and immediately above the middle of his forehead, a black hole marred the whiteness of the figure-head. A dreadful pause; then again the report, and the solid sound and jar of the bullet in the wood; and this time the captain had felt the wind of it along his cheek. A third shot, and he was bleeding from one ear; and ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Priestesses). Thy way? poor worm, crawl down thine own black hole To the lowest Hell. Antonius, is he there? I meant thee to have follow'd—better thus. Nay, if my people must be thralls of Rome, He is gentle, tho' a Roman. [Sinks back into the ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson |
