"Climax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a Climax; and how Tita tells Maurice many Things that sting him sharply; and how he lays Hands upon her; and how the last Adieux ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... remark set forth "Uncle Benjamin's" views exactly. He really supposed that no improvement could be made in the method of lighting houses and shops by candles. That was the opinion of all the Franklins. To them a tallow-candle was the climax of advancement on that line. If a prophet had arisen, and foretold the coming of gas and electricity for the lighting of both houses and streets, in the next century, he would have been regarded as insane—too crazy even to make candles. Progress was not a prevailing ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... with France; but he never wished that Henry VIII. should set the Holy See at defiance, or that England should be separated from the Catholic Church. To the Pope and to Henry he had addressed his remonstrances and petitions in turn, but events had reached such a climax that mediation was almost an impossibility. The interview arranged between the Pope and Francis I. took place at Marseilles in October 1533. Regardless of all the rules of diplomatic courtesy and of good manners, Henry's ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... which are the crown of human nature. The recognition of the extension of infancy as the source from which in our slow evolution comes the brightest thing in the universe belongs to our own time. It is perhaps the climax of our philosophic speculation. What more feeble than the snowflakes! But accumulated and compressed they become the glacier which may carapace an entire zone and determine its configuration into mountain and valley. What ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... mightiest intellect cannot go beyond its depths. It is so essentially rich that it turns every language into which it is translated into a classic. At one moment it is plain narration; at another, it is all drama and tragedy, in which cataclysmic climax crashes against climax. ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... thought of that period, and point out the way which led from the Christianity of the Fathers of the Church and scholasticism to the religion of unhistorical Christianity, the so-called mysticism. Scholasticism had reached its climax in the thirteenth century; universities were founded in Paris, Oxford and Padua, and he who aspired to the full dignity of learning had to take his degrees there; even Eckhart did not neglect to obtain ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... a quicker tempo and had a better climax. 'Twas the great occasion of the annual military reviews. He graphically described boys driving colts hardly broken; mothers nursing babies, very squally; girls and their beaux sitting in the best wagon holding ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... of confession; the brutal anathema; the ludicrous change of sex and sentiment—all marked this record as the work of one who must have been at least as much demented as bereaved. I felt that any further disclosure would be a paltry anti-climax, and with an unconscious regard for dramatic effect turned squarely about and walked away. Nor did I return to that part of the ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... insensible again for a while, then lay dull and inert for hours. She had a passive longing for death. After the suffering and the hideous mortification of that day there seemed no other climax. The cavalcade rode beneath her windows once more, with their untired laughter, their splendid vitality. They scattered to their rooms to don their bright evening gowns, then went to the dining room ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... reached the bank of the river; and now the astonishment of the botanists reached its climax, when they saw this man let down the huge animal from his shoulders, embrace it with his arms, place it before him in the water, and then mount astride upon its back! In a moment more he was out in the stream, and his buffalo swimming under ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... and turning my head around he kissed my lips in the most passionate manner. The pony really seemed to have some idea of what was being transacted on his back, for he set off in a gallop which soon brought a climax to our pleasure, for we both ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival
... was evident to me that he was terribly perturbed about something and that his fears and suspicions were reaching a climax. "Whatever can be the matter?" I asked myself as I hammered away at my form. ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... his chest, and conveyed in the utterance a distinct notion that death was what was meant. Hearing him repeat the command, it was easy to believe that the miscreant dared not do more than hesitate in his obedience. After a moment's silence—which was the climax to his rendering ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... like that, you see," Mary went on; "set for the climax, like the springs in a French play, when I came along at just the moment and with just the word, to topple it over. Being Paula, she couldn't help doing exactly what she did. So, however it comes out, I shall be the one person she won't be able ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... individual being, created in the eternal Science of being—to be conscious of aught but good. God's image and likeness can never be less than a good man; and for man to be more than God's likeness is impossible. Man is the climax of creation; and God is not without an ever-present witness, testifying of Himself. Matter, or any mode of mortal mind, is neither part nor parcel of divine consciousness and ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... it is unchangeable; the allegory, subtle and profound and yet simple, is cast into the form of a dramatic narrative, which moves with unconventional freedom to a finely impressive climax; and the reader, who began in idle curiosity, finds his intelligence more and more engaged until, when he turns the last page, he has the feeling of one who has been moving in worlds not realized, and communing with great ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... secretly married, but did not long succeed in keeping the knowledge of their union from their relatives. Tartini's family, enraged at his conduct, withdrew at once the support they had hitherto given him, and to cap the climax, the bishop accused him of seduction and theft. Warned in time, Tartini fled to Rome, leaving his young wife in Padua without confiding to her the direction of ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... there," went on Professor Wright. "The point of the matter is that I had to discharge the leader of my uneducated helpers because he persisted in trying to find out what we were after. He took some of the men with him, necessitating the hiring of others. Then the climax came this afternoon, when, unexpectedly, we were attacked. In my wanderings I had seen your ranch buildings, and I ventured to hope you would send us help when I dispatched my ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... streets, houses from which balls had been fired into the crowd were set in flames, which spread to other houses, churches were burned, and the whole city dominated by mobs that were finally suppressed by the State militia. It was an appropriate climax to the ten years of ecclesiastical ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... The customer soon becomes bewildered, and, unless he has a decided taste of his own, is apt to get something which will prove a white elephant on his hands. One must have some standard of comparison, and the best and simplest way is to study the great work of the past. To study its rise and climax rather than the decline; to know the laws of its perfection so that one can recognize the exaggeration which leads to degeneracy. This ebb and flow is most interesting: the feeling the way at the beginning, ever growing surer and surer until the high level of perfection ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... conceivable what he could do, except annoy her, until she arrived at Pine. Her uncle was to meet her or send for her at Snowdrop, which place, Helen knew, was distant a good long ride by stage from Magdalena. This stage-ride was the climax and the dread of all the long journey, ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... in churches) and with a most satisfactory air warmed his hands by the stove, keeping the skirts of his great-coat carefully between his knees, we could stand it no longer but dropped invisible behind the breastwork. But the climax of the whole was (as the Cleveland man says) when Mrs. Peck went out in the middle of the service. It was, however, the means of reconciling the whole society; for after that first day we heard no more opposition to the warm stove in ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... and it was impossible for him to tell where he was going. His one great desire was to escape the pursuing dog or other animal close behind him. Consequently, he was unprepared for the sudden climax of his adventure. ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... climax, in the middle of the level men call the Ladies' Mile the Horror was awaiting me. No other 'rickshaw was in sight—only the four black and white jhampanies, the yellow-paneled carriage, and the golden head of the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... make a fine remark on the beauties of nature, "Week!" echoed the turkeys. Did Kate praise some tint or shape by the way, "Week! week!" was the feeble response. Did we get deep in poetry, romance, or metaphysics, through the most brilliant quotation, the sublimest climax, the most acute distinction, came in "Week! week! week!" I began to feel as if the old story of transmigration were true, and the souls of half a dozen quaint and ancient satirists had got into the turkeys. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... waiting little by little to arrive at. The day came when the girl caught a glimpse of what was still wanting to make her friend feel strong; which was nothing less than the prospect of being able to announce the climax of sundry private dreams. The associate of the aristocracy had personal calculations—matter for brooding and dreaming, even for peeping out not quite hopelessly from behind the window-curtains of lonely lodgings. If she did the flowers for the bachelors, in short, didn't ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... charge, laid on ministering souls in the Intermediate Life, help to solve another mystery—the mystery of many an early and, as we might think, untimely death? How often do we see a life cut short at the very climax of its best powers, in the very midst of its noblest service! All the earlier days had been directed, and had contributed to the perfection of the instrument, and then, just when its work was doing, came the sudden end. Was it not so to our Blessed Lord Himself? May it not be ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... that these moves in the game were all part of a definite purpose. Never for one moment did he doubt that the Invisibles behind the veil were slowly and surely arranging the details of it all so as to lead up suitably to the climax demanded by justice, a climax in which himself and the Manager would play the ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... to say that anything more disgraceful than your own conduct within the last twenty-four hours I have never witnessed. You have joined your nephew in a plot to disgrace an innocent boy, declining to do justice, and now you have capped the climax by censuring me for stopping an act of brutality, merely because your nephew ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... are rather heavy diet for the young, immature minds growing quickly tired in the efforts to digest them—Damaris, having reached this happy, if partially erroneous, climax of emancipation, ceased to philosophize either consciously or unconsciously. The russet moorland and spacious landscape shut the door on her, had no more to tell her, no more to say. Or, to be strictly accurate, was it not rather perhaps that her power of response, power to interpret ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... great revival at the Methodist church. Caesar had been under conviction again and again; but, as old Nan said pathetically to her minister, there didn't seem to be "nothin' to ketch hold by in Caesar." By the time his emotions had worked up to the proper climax for a successful result, he was "done tired out," and would "jest give right up" and "let go," and "there he was as bad's ever, if not wuss." Poor old Nan was a very ardent and sincere Christian, spite of her infirmities of temper, and she would wrestle in prayer with and for her husband till ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... to be writing sermons," was his only answer, and I guessed that his rage had reached its climax. I tried to lower the flood on his table by means of my ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... "The climax came at Pier No. 9, and it was here that all energies were focused. A large tug from Mare Island, two fire patrol boats, the Spreckels tugs and ten or twelve more, had lines of hose laid into the heart of the roaring ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... Jack Needham, and other Beggars' Opera heroes, were familiar in our mouths as household words. At such tales, like children closing their circle round the fire when the ghost story draws to its climax, the riders drew near to each other, looked before and behind them, examined the priming of their pistols, and vowed to stand by each other in case of danger; an engagement which, like other offensive and defensive alliances, sometimes ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... hill. All that dream was now over. He did not speak of it—nor I. He seemed contented—or, at least, thoroughly calmed down; except that the sweet composure of his mien had settled into the harder gravity of manhood. The crisis and climax of youth had been gone through—he never ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... horse, with his own hands?" This query seemed to be the climax of Mr. Gale's strange hunger for truth. He had raised his head a little higher, and his ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... story is, invariably, the dessert of this story meal. Through its brevity, humor, tenderness, or sharply contrasting treatment of the program theme, it supplies the necessary relaxation, the fitting climax for the program. ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... backing; but this obstacle, too, was surmounted, and eventually L200,000 was subscribed as a guarantee fund. The enormous glass edifice rose higher and higher, covering acres and enclosing towering elm trees beneath its roof: and then the fury of its enemies reached a climax. The fashionable, the cautious, the Protectionists, the pious, all joined in the hue and cry. It was pointed out that the Exhibition would serve as a rallying point for all the ruffians in England, for all the malcontents in Europe; and that on the ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... your innings, then. I understand, by way of Ramsdell, that the Methodist incumbent lately preached a sermon upon resignation, and did me the honour of taking me, quite specifically, to illustrate his climax. That is what I call fame, Brenton, a greater fame than any I ever could have garnered in by way ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... "As dinner progressed I thought it wise to use it to keep Mrs. Innitt from weakening; so when the salad was passed I managed, without anybody's observing it, to drop the automobile nut into the bowl. The Duke of Snarleyow got it and the climax was capped. Mrs. Innitt burst into a flood of tears and—well, to-morrow, Bunny, Norah leaves. You will take her this ten-dollar bill from me, and tell her that I am sorry she got into so much trouble on my account. Say that if I can be of any assistance to ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... the door. He came back for his handkerchief. He dropped his snuff-box, leaving the contents scattered on the carpet; he stumbled out. Tartar lay outside across the mat; Mr. Sympson almost fell over him. In the climax of his exasperation he hurled an oath at the dog and a coarse ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... men who were scarcely more than children in their estimates of affairs; they muttered among themselves and scowled on this stranger who had brought their troubles to a climax. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... unreal seemed to grow the world in which Sir Denis Jocelyn Cathley passed that day. Time after time, the great hall in which he had played when a boy, draughty now but still moderately weather-tight, had echoed to the roars of welcome from old associates. But the climax of it all came later on, when he sat at the head of the long, black oak table, presiding over what was surely the strangest feast ever prepared and given to the strangest gathering of guests. The tablecloth of fine linen was patched and mended—here and ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... new world, a world newly beautiful but newly perilous, and a changed self,—the self of boyhood, renewed yet transformed, through whose joy ran the reactionary melancholy that, in a happiness attained, glances at fear, and at a climax of life, is aware of gulfs of sorrow as yet unsounded. More than his lover's passion was a tenderness for her and for her unquestioning acceptances that seemed near tears. Karen was in character so wrought and in nature so simple. Her subtleties were all objective, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... after daybreak one morning, or not yet having gone to bunk, Levi Long was the unsuspected witness of acts of Chinese iniquity that brought about the climax of the anti-Chinese agitation. There was no water-supply at Simpson's Ranges, and the wash-dirt had to be carted four miles to the river at Carisbrook, to be puddled and washed. This morning the Chinamen were busy ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... But suddenly mingling with the masterly variations on the national hymn, somewhere from some corner quite close, on one side come the vulgar strains of "Mein lieber Augustin." The "Marseillaise" goes on unconscious of them. The "Marseillaise" is at the climax of its intoxication with its own grandeur; but Augustin gains strength; Augustin grows more and more insolent, and suddenly the melody of Augustin begins to blend with the melody of the "Marseillaise." The latter begins, as ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... it. But his master told him that he would teach him even greater secrets when the time came, and suddenly changed the subject by cursing the Biscayan, of whom he had just been reminded by a twinge in his bleeding ear. The sight of his shattered helmet brought the climax to his anger, and he swore by the creator and all the four gospels to avenge himself. When Sancho heard this, he reminded his knight of his solemn oath to the ladies. Had he not promised them to refer the Biscayan's punishment to the court of his Dulcinea? ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... himself up in the climax of denunciation, and then look abroad frankly as one whose spirit had been relieved. He hated bad men; and it was besides necessary for him to denounce somebody, and get relief of some kind. Italians edged away from him. He was beginning to feel ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... all my experience," said Captain Arms, wiping the water out of his eyes. "I was struck by a waterspout once in the Indian Ocean, and I thought that that capped the climax, but it was only a catspaw to this. Give me a clear offing and I don't care how much wind blows, but blow me if I want to get under any more lakes ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... more profoundly poetic, and yet penetrated, especially in Tolstoy and Dostoievsky, with an intensity of moral conviction beside which the ethical fervour of George Eliot seems an ineffectual fire, was one of the roots of the Russian Novel; which also reached its climax in the third quarter of the century. But though it concurred with analogous movements in the West, it drew little of moment from them; even Turgenjev, a greater Maupassant in artistry, drew his inner inspiration from wholly alien springs of Slavonic passion and ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... Portgartha, evidently objecting to any intrusion on his right, as narrator, to a delayed climax. "Well, there we sat, like two ghoostes, till we got to Penzance, but all the time I was thinkin' to mysel' that I'd find out who she was. I sed to myself I'd ride on to the station, instid of gettin' out a piece this side of it so as to make a short ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... expensive offering for justification by faith and mental anguish, which cost nothing, and an expensive church for a cheap Bible—we feel that the dish of theory has run away with the spoon of fact. The climax was capped by the German sociologist Friedrich Simmel, who explained the Reformation by the law of the operation of force along the line of least resistance. The Reformers, by sending the soul straight to God, spared it the detour via the {727} priest, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Osborn has named him, was the climax of evolution of the giant flesh-eating dinosaurs. It reached a length of forty-seven feet, and in bulk must have equalled the mammoth or the mastodon or the largest living elephants. The massive hind limbs, supporting the whole weight of the ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew
... has developed the climax in armament and the world has learned more within the last few years about the devilish instruments of destruction which human ingenuity has devised than was known in all the ages before. Since ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... departure of the patriarch from our shores, the feelings of his converts reached their climax. From Kerikeri and from Waimate they came in crowds to the Bay to bid him farewell, and the scene on the beach resembled that at Miletus when the people of Ephesus "fell on Paul's neck, and kissed him." A warship conveyed Marsden to Australia, ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... protected by the mountain, it could never have resisted them. As it was, it shook and creaked, and a little iron shed went rolling along the ground like a die. Down in the plain the storm tore the leaves off the palms, and uprooted trees and blew down houses. The cyclone reached its climax at sunset, then the barometer rose steadily, and suddenly both wind and rain ceased. The stillness lasted for about half an hour and then the storm set in again, this time from the north, striking the house with all its strength; fortunately ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... was—somewhat, I will own, to my disappointment—that for him my story had but one moral—the treason of Henry P. Tobias, Jr. The treasure might as well have had no existence, so far as he was concerned, and the grim climax in the cave drew nothing from him but a preoccupied nod. And John Saunders was little more satisfactory. Both of them allowed me to end in silence. They both ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... brought us nearer the climax of our trip. We of the plains had longed and dreamed of the peaks. To us the White Mountains were at once the crowning wonder and chief peril of our expedition. They were to be in a very real sense the test of our courage. The iron crest ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... words of his could follow so marvellous a climax, he sat down, amid a silence that seemed to him to be fraught with eloquence, so impressive and significant was—to him—its full meaning. Some speeches are cheered vulgarly. It was the outward sign of coarse approval. ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... which. But they did know, perfectly well, and had no misgivings whatever about becoming permanently confused; even when, having been dressed in different colours to facilitate distinction, they changed dresses and produced a climax of complication. Even this was not so bad as when Phoebe had a tiff with Maisie—a rare thing between twins—and Maisie avenged herself by pretending to be Phoebe, affecting that all the latter's protests of identity were malicious misrepresentation. Who could decide when they themselves were ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... and it will not brook a moment's delay. The eye must be trained to pick up the minutest detail, and must be capable of doing this for hour after hour. For those on submarine patrol in a small ship there is not one second's rest. As is well known, the submarine campaign reached its climax in April, 1917. In that month British and Allied shipping sustained its greatest losses. The value of the airship in combating this menace was now fully recognized, and with the big building programme ...
— British Airships, Past, Present, and Future • George Whale
... citizens of death's grey land, Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows. In the great hour of destiny they stand, Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows. Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives. Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean ...
— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon
... phagocytes and Nature's antitoxins on the one hand, and the poisons and microorganisms of disease on the other hand, gradually progresses, accompanied by a corresponding increase of fever and inflammation, until it reaches its climax, marked by the greatest ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... shouldn't wonder if it would be. I shall do my best to make it so. It will come at the Piping Rock Club, where I have got an invitation for the members of this party for a dance. If Storm has the cheek to go, his blood be on his own head! The dance is, as Miss Moore says, the "climax" of our tour. I hope it may be so for Storm in one sense of the word, ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... from the eye of genius?" Selingman cried, with a theatrical wave of the hand. "More than I have told you indeed—more than I shall tell you. One thing, at least, I have learnt in my struggles with the pen, and that is to avoid the anti-climax. It is a great thing to remember that. So I am dumb, I speak no more. . . Why don't you send your poor little secretary out for a walk? Mademoiselle, forgive me, but he works ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... along this strolling Longfellow minstrel," he continued, ignoring or not hearing my remark, "with his dreary hurdy-gurdy to cap the climax. Heavens! what a nasal twang the whole thing has to me. Not an original or cheerful note! 'Old Hundred' ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... from his convalescence, Lucilla completed the cure of the patient. In other words, she received from Oscar an offer of marriage. I have not the slightest doubt, in my own mind, that he required assistance in bringing this delicate matter to a climax—and that Lucilla ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... medicine. Then mother's sick a good deal too, and has to have medicine. We have to have more medicine than most anything else, and we hardly ever have any pie or cake, and it's all the fault of them rich folks." Abby Atkins wound up with a tragic climax and a fierce roll of her ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sentence. But why weary you with all this? I pass over all the rest of the hateful details which made life insupportable to me. Suffice to say, that one wet Sunday evening, when we could not go to chapel and were in the dining-room alone, the climax was reached. My husband had a religious magazine before him, and I sat still, doing nothing. At last, after an hour had passed without a word, I could bear it no longer, and I broke ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... except in writing historical plays. Battles and armies are left out. This comedy, like others by the same cunning hand, presents a series of contrasted and interesting situations leading up to a startling climax. Need we call to mind the rash contract of the merchant, and its almost tragic result, the game of the caskets, the trial and defeat of the clamorous Shylock? The by-plot assists the main action, else why ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... presents substitutes for war in so far as war is a source of virtues, on the other hand, renders war a much more dangerous performance both to the individual and to the community, becoming indeed, progressively more dangerous to both, until it reaches such a climax of world-wide injury as we witness to-day. The claim made in primitive societies that warfare is necessary to the maintenance of virility and courage, a claim so fully admitted that only the youth furnished ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... bass singer when a chorus is in full cry, and the tenors are rising on tiptoe in their efforts to compass a particularly high note, and the whole body of choristers are wagging their heads before approaching a climax, and this contrabasso alone is tucking his bearded chin into his collar, and sinking almost to a squatting posture on the floor, in order to produce a note which shall cause the windows to shiver and their panes to crack. Naturally, ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... "chassay" and "balance" and acquitted himself. Now that his first panic of astonishment was over, he observed that the figures of the dance were of great simplicity, all but the central part, the climax. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... out. The air seemed to wave in his face, cool and relieving. Larry was there with the horses. Slingerland stood by with troubled eyes. Both men stared at Neale. He was aware of that, and conscious of his agitation. And suddenly, as always at a climax of emotion, he ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... 25, the day the Valley army halted at Ashland; but the climax was reached on the 28th. For forty-eight hours Jackson had been fighting McClellan, yet Banks, although "quite confident that he was not within thirty miles, believed that he was preparing for an attack on Middletown." To reach Middletown Jackson would have ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... thirteen out of fifteen years following Winthrop's death, and John Norton, an able and upright but narrow and intolerant clergyman. The persecuting spirit which had never been absent in Massachusetts reached, under these leaders, its climax in the wholesale ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... torn with regrets, took his hands from his face and gazed steadily at the tragedy nearing its climax. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Lambertville, of the identification of Torsielli's body, of the elaborate fabrications of Strollo, and in due course, of the tell-tale letter in the murderer's pocket. Gradually the true character of the defendant's crime came over them and they turned from him in aversion. The natural climax in the evidence was Miss Phillip's extraordinary identification of the defendant sitting at the bar as the man who had mailed upon the 26th of July, at the Lambertville post-office, the envelope purporting to come from Yonkers and containing the forged ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... had come to conclusions of her own concerning Virginia's acquaintance with the millionaire. When a man of his wealth and position took the trouble to pay a girl of Virginia's station such marked attention, capping the climax with this present invitation to dine at his house, either his intentions were not avowable or else he was very much in love and wanted to marry her, which last hypothesis sent a thrill down the good sister's back. Virgie the wife of a millionaire! It seemed incredible—too ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... To cap the climax of Union success, on the 4th of July General Ulysses S. Grant, who had been operating against Vicksburg on the Mississippi during four months, captured that city, with thirty-two thousand prisoners, and a few days later Port Hudson with its garrison fell into ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... gap which he left. With a loss of only three of his immediate followers be Wet won his way out of the most dangerous position which even his adventurous career had ever known. Lord Kitchener had descended to Wolvehoek to be present at the climax of the operations, but it was not fated that he was to receive the submission of the most energetic of his opponents, and he returned to Pretoria to weave a ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... period that the art reaches its climax. The monumental grandeur of the Shang specimens is often allied to clumsiness; the later work, if more elaborate, is always less powerful. Nevertheless, it is to a later period that ninety-nine out of a hundred Chinese bronzes must be referred, and the great majority belong either to the Han ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... friends (said the melancholy gentleman), was a climax. The unities in the system of persecution adopted against me were strictly observed. There was beginning, middle, and end complete—nothing wanting. Well—still determined to maintain my neutrality—I wrote a note to my friend, expressing precisely the same sentiments to which I have ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... sense. He plays before the Grand Duke at seven, but he is destined for greater things. An idol of the hour, in some ways suggesting Richard Strauss, tries in vain to wreck his faith in his career. Early love episodes follow, and after a dramatic climax, the hero, like Wagner, has to fly, a ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... and then it became thick and indistinct with rage, and he cleared his throat roughly, as if he were angry with it, too. At first he maintained the outward forms of courtesy in words if not in tone, but long before his wrath had reached its final climax he forgot them altogether. ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... that your brother 'Dolphus is toiling and moiling in the fog and cold, and you rolling in the lap of luxury with a—with a baby, and everything you can wish for," said Mr. Tetterby, heaping this up as a great climax of blessings, "but must you make a wilderness of home, and maniacs of your parents? Must you, Johnny? Hey?" At each interrogation, Mr. Tetterby made a feint of boxing his ears again, but thought better of it, and ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... started away he Kissed her, and it wasn't any Make-Believe such as you see in Comic Opera. It was a genuine Olga Nethersole Buss, full of Linger and Adhesion. To cap the Climax he said he would stop in and order ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... lake has reached its climax, the millers, who are the principal sufferers by the overflow, prepare to cut a passage through the Bar for the superabundant waters of the Pool. Before they can do this, however, they must conform to a curious old custom which has been practised for centuries, and is retained down to the present ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... upside down for a parcel of girls who don't care a sixpence for you? I thought you had too much pride and sense to truckle to any mortal woman just because she wears French boots and rides in a coupe," said Jo, who, being called from the tragic climax of her novel, was not in the best ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... adhere strictly to the full score which I had sent to you from Dresden with all my marks; and I will only add that the song of Tannhauser in the first act should be sung in its entirety (the three verses): the real climax, especially in its effect upon Venus, is ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... isn't much of a story, especially as there is no climax; and I've taken enough English to know that there ought to be some sort of a climax somewhere. Maybe, though, what happened next day will ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... in the last half of the reign, and its tory opponents vainly imagined that the movement had spent itself. We now know that, in the absence of noisy demonstrations, it was really and constantly gaining strength in the minds of thoughtful men until it reached its climax ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... Crisodd's Devilgrass Symphony was first played in Carnegie Hall an audience three times as great as that admitted had to be accommodated outside with loudspeakers and when the awesome crescendo of horns, drums, and broken crockery rubbed over slate surfaces announced the climax of the sixth movement, the crowds wept. Even for Mozart the hall was full, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... sounds, or a series of two or three notes repeated more than a hundred times in uninterrupted and monotonous succession, he condescends to utter a single delightfully modulated strain. He often brings his tiresome extravaganzas to a magnificent climax of melody, and just as often concludes an inimitable chant with a most contemptible bathos. But the notes of the Robin are all melodious, all delightful,—loud without vociferation, mellow without monotony, fervent without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... redemption of the heart, that is to say, the part for the whole. These papers make me understand the radical difference between morals and intellectualism. The writers of them wish to supplant religion by philosophy. Man is the principle of their religion, and intellect is the climax of man. Their religion, then, is the religion of intellect. There you have the two worlds: Christianity brings and preaches salvation by the conversion of the will, humanism by the emancipation of the mind. One attacks the heart, the other the brain. Both wish to enable man to ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were different and that love to you meant something deeper and finer than—just that." And she would stand before him, her body alive with a sexual ardor that seemed to find its satisfaction in the discomfiture of the man, in his apologetic stammers, in her own virtuous words; and reach its climax in the contrite embrace which usually followed and the words, "Forgive me, dearest. I didn't mean.... Oh, ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... This was the climax to Polly's misery; for she was already so overcome by the thought of her rudeness that she was on the point of begging Laura's pardon for that particular speech then and there, and she had only to hear her exact words ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Hearth," which, however tender and touching and true to its century, is rather a rambling narrative than an elucidated plot. "Very Hard Cash" is wrought out with the finest finish, yet nowhere overdone; it so abounds in scenes of dramatic climax that we fancy the stage has lost immensely by the romance-reader's gain; yet there is never a single situation thrown away, every word tends in the main direction, and after that the prolific mind of the writer ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... rhapsody of the valor of her lover, such as only a romantic child could picture. But, alas! As the dream comes to the grand climax and Little Ellie, "Her smile not yet ended," goes to see what more eggs were with the two in ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers
... reverence of the treatment and the imaginative beauty of the writing have reconciled us to the daring of the conception. This "Dream of the World's Tragedy" is a lofty and not inadequate paraphrase of the supreme climax of ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... is a stage on which the actors walk their parts much better than the spectators can. This play is played in every district. Every rustic feels that his house is not like my lord's house; his life like my lord's life; his wife like my lady. The climax of the play is the Queen: nobody supposes that their house is like the court; their life like her life; her orders like their orders. There is in England a certain charmed spectacle which imposes on the many, and guides their fancies as it will. As a rustic on coming to ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... by others besides Griffiths. A few hours now was all the start he could reasonably expect. He was face to face with a very real and serious danger, which he could no longer ignore, and from which escape was all the time becoming more difficult. And yet all the emotionalism of this climax was centered elsewhere. It was from Philippa's lips that he would hear his real sentence; it was her answer which would fill him once more with the lust for life, or send him on in his rush through the night for safety, callous, almost indifferent ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... just then capped the climax of Maurice's misery. A deep, rumbling noise had for some time been audible in the distance; it was the artillery, that had been the last to leave the camp and whose leading guns now wheeled into sight around a bend ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... individual will, and therefore with individual responsibility—and that for the express purpose of realising his highest potentialities: it is only when we accept such a reading of the facts as this that we escape from that worst of nightmares which reaches its climax in hurling its foolish defiance at the Most High, challenging His right to punish the instruments of His own will, those "helpless pieces of the game He plays," impotent items in ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... Barber? Her hair was drawn high upon her head, and topped with a huge cluster of false puffs, which made her look several years older than she had appeared in the afternoon, while her gown of blue satin was cut rather too low for a young girl, and had mere excuses in the way of sleeves. To cap the climax, however, it had a real train that persisted in getting in her way every time she attempted ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... of Miss Cynthia was a very gradual process, but it reached a climax one September morning, when Mrs. John Joe came into the former's kitchen with an important face. Miss Cynthia was ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... tone of thought as respects our own distinctive principles and distinctive situation, with a total indifference to the theories that have been broached to sustain an alien and an antagonist system, in England; and the last (the climax), a total reform in the kitchen! If I were to reverse the order of these improvements, I am not certain the three last might not follow as a consequence of the first. After our people have been taught to cook a dinner, they ought also to be taught ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... his heart's content, receiving more fun than he had bargained for. It had not occurred to him to personate Frederick's ghost; he had only thought of personating Frederick himself; but to his unbounded satisfaction, he found the former climax arrived at. He met old Matthew Frost; he frightened Dan Duff into fits; he frightened Master Cheese; he startled the parson; he solaced himself by taking up his station under the yew-tree on the lawn at Verner's Pride, to contemplate that desirable structure, which ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... those general ideas as to the method of the government of the world, of which we have already seen something, had formed what he conceived to be a perfectly satisfactory way of accounting for the eighteenth century and its terrific climax. The will of man is left free; he acts contrary to the will of God; and then God exacts the shedding of blood as the penalty. So much for the past. The only hope of the future lay in an immediate return to the system which God himself had established, and in the restoration of that spiritual power ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... discussions should begin with a very brief outline of the story (perhaps half a page). Other matters to consider: 1. Is there an abstract dramatic theme? 2. Can regular dramatic structure be traced, with a clear central climax? 3. Variety of scenes? 4. Qualities of style, e. g., relative prominence of bombast, proper dramatic eloquence, and sheer poetry. 5. Qualities, merits, and faults of the blank verse, in detail. E.g.: How largely ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... The climax of the story is the battle on the Somme where so many dear friends have perished. The name is taken from a spot where a small party of the 7th N.F. did something long afterwards to ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... perhaps in the loftier sound, or more pompous allusion in the sense, which latter is sometimes carried to an extraordinary pitch of bombast, as in the instance of Pengunchang bumi, or Shaker of the World, the title of a pangeran of Manna. But a climax is not always ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... hardly know what to tell master. We're certainly seeing some unusual things, and for two months we've had no time for boredom. The latest wonder is always the most astonishing, and if this progression keeps up, I can't imagine what its climax will be. In my opinion, we'll never again have ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... to say adoo to my girl,' said Lew, to cap the climax. 'Don't none o' you touch my kit because it's wanted for active service; me bein' specially invited to go ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... leaves were slowly changing to a parched and withered brown, parched and withered as his face, which had been bared to the heat of the Kansas prairies for so many years, parched and withered as his heart which had borne the brunt of sadness and sorrow and separation until the climax was reached and it could ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... send you the new copies of my Mass (which I think I have considerably improved in the last revision, especially by the concluding Fugue of the Gloria and a heavenward-soaring climax of the subject. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... high pressure. Now and then, in periods of adversity, he would fly into a perfect passion with things in general. But, in the end, it was a sham battle, and he saw the uselessness and humor of it, even in the moment of his climax. Once, when he found it impossible to make any of his favorite shots, he became more and more restive, the lightning became vividly picturesque as the clouds blackened. Finally, with a regular thunder-blast, he seized the cue with both hands and literally mowed the balls across ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... sure, he said, and Dr. Parker agreed. "I'd be willing to bet that you are all right," declared the latter, "but I know Trumet, and if I SHOULD let you go and you did develop even the tail end of a case of varioloid—well, 'twould be the everlasting climax for you ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Jemima herself. "Cobbler" Horn told of the dilapidated condition in which he had found the village, and of the instructions he had given to the agent. At the recital of the latter, Miss Jemima held up her hands in dismay, while the eyes of the secretary glistened with unconcealed delight. But the climax was reached when "Cobbler" Horn spoke of his intentions with regard to the old Hall. Miss Jemima uttered a positive shriek, and shook her head till her ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... Jack," said Jenvie. "She grieved exceedingly when he went away, though she hid it so superbly that only her mother knew about it, and she has rejected every suitor since except Stetson, and I fear when the climax comes she will reject him. The chances are, when Jack comes they will rush into each other's arms. At the same time, I do not want him for a son-in-law. But I would like to get some of the money into the firm, for we ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... the design of her lover. The expedient of Mephistopheles, to lull his prey by dissipations, is a failure. Faust finds them "tasteless," and he must return to Margaret. He finds her in prison, crazed and dying, and he strives in vain to set her free. There is a climax, whereat, while her soul is borne upward by angels he—whose destiny must yet be fulfilled—is summoned by the terrible voice of Satan. This is the substance of what is shown; but if the gaze of the observer pierces beyond this, ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... man sets a specific position or an external reward of any kind before him as the limit of his journey, he is in danger of getting to the end before he has fully put forth his strength, and so giving his life the pathos of an anti-climax. The more noble and able a man is, the less satisfaction can he find in any material return which his work brings him; no man with a touch of the artist in him can ever rest content with anything short of the complete putting ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... heroic couplet, which the fashion of the time and his own habit of mind imposed upon him, he secured the largest variety of modulation and emphasis of which that verse was capable. He used antithesis, periphrasis, and climax with great skill. His example dominated English poetry for nearly a century, and even now, when a poet like Dr. Holmes, for example, would write satire or humorous verse of a dignified kind, he turns instinctively to the measure and manner of Pope. He was not a consecutive thinker, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... The climax of his uneasiness was reached, however, when, just as his lessons were to begin, he heard his mother propose to Cecile to go down into the garden. What would she say when he was not there? He watched them from the window; Cecile's slender figure and quiet ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... intense cold; and he passed half the night, when he was once more in his own room, packing his effects against his departure next day. When all was done, he went to bed, half wishing that he might never rise from it again. It was not that he cared for Kinney; that fool's sulking was only the climax of a long series of injuries of which he was the victim at the hands ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... bring about. Throughout the time of my growth my dear parent alternated between periods of high exultation and of keen torture. As time passed he became more and more completely absorbed in me. When my climax came into sight he fell to working upon me with exceeding fury, and in the construction of my climax it was plain that he wrestled with much agony—an agony, however, which seemed to be a kind of strange, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... turned the fortunes of France from disaster to expansion. But the rest of the settlement is still vague and uncertain, and German imperialism, at least, is already working hard and intelligently for a favorable situation at the climax, a situation that will enable this militarist empire to emerge still strong, still capable of recuperation and of a renewal at no very remote date of the struggle for European predominance. This is a thing as little for the good of the saner German people as it is for the rest of the world, but ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... exultation, directly in the presence of the court: and Wilson told the Sheriff to take the jury to a grocery, that he might treat them, and invited every body that chose to go. The house was soon filled to overflowing. The rejoicing was kept up till near supper time: but to cap the climax, soon after supper was over, a majority of the jury, together with many others, went to the rooms that had been occupied several days by the friend and relation of the murdered Anthony, and commenced a scene of the most ridiculous dancing, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... But the climax, the real heart of his whole two days, was after Sunday dinner when he went out to call upon Ruth Macdonald. And it was characteristic of his whole reticent nature, and the way he had been brought up, that he did not tell his ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... god of Wealth. The attention of the audience is at once enlisted for the semblance of a plot by which the scheme is put into execution. The design once effected, the remainder of the play is given over to a series of loosely connected scenes, ascending to a climax of absurdity, in which the consequences of the original happy thought are followed out with a Swiftian verisimilitude of piquant detail and a Rabelaisian license of uproarious mirth. It rests with the audience to take the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Store the stools have long since been removed and the holiday hysteria of Peace on Earth rose to its Christmas Eve climax, as a frenzied gale drives upward the sea into mountains of water, or scuds through black-hearted forests, bending them double in ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... matters were brought to their climax by an awkward love adventure of Ralph's with one of our tenants' daughters. My father acted with his usual decision on the occasion. He determined to apply a desperate remedy: to let the refractory eldest son run through ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... evils of the time, and above all of the Church, had generated a sense of unbearable sin in her pure spirit; her constant instinct to identify herself with the guilt of others found in this final offering an august climax ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... cavalry alone who, for more than a fortnight previously, had been disputing foot by foot every yard of the ground to the River Lys. They had fought day and night with the utmost tenacity, and the battles of October 31st and November 1st were but the climax to a long and bitter spell of ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... humiliation would in a measure be a public one. His preparations for marriage were widely known, for he had spoken freely to his friends of the event. He had spent a large sum of money in adding to and in decorating his home. It was altogether a climax of the most painful nature ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... was close behind her. I was on her right. Before us was the open deck, and the low gunwale of the boat overlooking the deep water. In a moment we might step across; in a moment we might take the fatal plunge. The bare thought of it brought the mad wickedness in me to its climax. I became suddenly incapable of restraining myself. I threw my arm round her waist with a loud laugh. "Come," I said, trying to drag her across the deck—"come and look ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... knew that the battle between us had reached climax and victory simultaneously, and any question about who had won it ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... defy death and leaps four centuries: it is young and perpetual. It thrills with something the failing middle ages had forgotten: it reaches what they never reached, a climax, for one cannot put too vividly the flash of the penultimate line, "I am granted a vision when I ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... lightning, and touches the wrong man perhaps, and pulls the bandage off, only to have to put on again, while the passengers roar with delight; the little tub is not forgotten in this game; and then the climax comes when we think the blindfold has had enough of it, and when a burly stoker steps out to deliver his slap, the rank closes up tightly, and on rushing back to his place with the blindfold at his heels, and the wild exertions ...
— The Stoker's Catechism • W. J. Connor
... Spain? There was not one of them that did not keep time to the music as if she were dancing like mad, but all noiselessly and with extreme caution, keeping scouts on the watch to warn them if the old man awoke. Loaysa finally played them several seguidillas, and so put the climax to his success, that they all eagerly begged the negro to tell them who was this marvellous musician. Luis replied that he was a poor beggar, but the most gallant and genteel man in all the back slums of Seville. They conjured the negro to contrive some means ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Tragedy? Well! passons! Their heavy, large-boned actresses might manage one or two big scenes where a commanding presence and a powerful voice would not come amiss, and where prominent teeth would pass unnoticed in the agony of a dramatic climax. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... must be otherwise helped out, so some kindly champion of orthodoxy put in a fairy-story climax,—Job got well of his boils, had more sheep and oxen than ever, had other children born to him. And so the ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... with all its oily phraseology, that you should be imposed on. There is a scene in a "print-shop" over the authenticity of an engraving which gets to an exceedingly painful climax. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... "This was the climax; I felt that another such encounter would drive me raving mad. Somewhere there must be a natural explanation; it was only a question of finding it. Among other things it occurred to me that someone, for reason unknown, might be playing a series of practical jokes upon me, but it was hard to believe ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... to shine as a gallant "in hall or bower," but had he been the climax of knightly qualities, the very impersonation of beauty, grace, and accomplishment, he could not have been better adapted than, in his own estimation, he already was, to please the fancy of a lady. He was blissfully unconscious of every imperfection; and displayed himself before what ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... the climax of error in this matter, some mothers allow their infants to lie on their arm, as a pillow. This practice not only exposes them to all or nearly all the evils which have been mentioned, but to one more; viz. the danger of being thrown ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott
... lucky glimpse of the great Talbot Potter, the girls who caught it may thank that conjunction of Olympian events which brings within the boundaries of one November week the Horse Show and the roaring climax of the football months and the more dulcet, yet vast, beginning of the opera season. Some throbbing of attendant multitudes coming to the ears of Talbot Potter, he obeyed an inward call to walk ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... oughtn't to be. He's too trivial for anything: I like a man that's serious about one thing in the universe, at least, and that's just what Mr. Breckon isn't." She went at such length into his disabilities that by the time she returned to the climax with which she started she was ready to clamber into the upper berth; and as she snapped the electric button at its head she ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Hermitage to stand or crumble without him. The first of them had been spent far from it, even as Aurora supposed, for the sake of letting the impression of having been laughed at wear off a little. Already for some time before that forced climax Gerald had been haunted by the feeling that he ought to offer himself to Aurora, as it were to regularize his status in her house. After hanging around as he had been doing, one might almost say that good manners ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... high, proud spirit, which, if fairly aroused, is certain to lead me into stubborn resistance. So far I have managed to hold this spirit in abeyance; but if matters progress as they have begun, the climax of endurance will ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... their influence, as they were left in possession of their principal stronghold. In fact, Elam was not signally defeated in the reign of Kudur-mabug, but in that of his son Rim-Sin. From the date-formulae of Hammurabi's reign we learn that the struggle between Elam and Babylon was brought to a climax in the thirtieth year of his reign, when it is recorded in the formulas that he defeated the Elamite army and overthrew Rim-Sin, while in the following year we gather that he added the land of E'mutbal, that is, the western district of Elam, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... enough. The power of a tale, he thought, turned chiefly if not solely upon its unity, its harmony of effect. This is illustrated in all of his finest stories. In "The Fall of the House of Usher" the theme is Fear; the opening sentence strikes the key and the closing sentence contains the climax. In the whole composition every sentence is modulated to the one end in view. The autumn landscape tones with the melancholy house; the somber chamber frames the cadaverous face of Roderick Usher; the face is an index of the tumultuous agitation of a mind wrestling with the grim phantom Fear ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... Detective Marshall, and he could not avoid a smile. 'The climax was unfortunate, but you have certainly ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... them to retain, in order to retain what it would destroy their influence to give up; they got possession of him to the extent of insinuating subtly into his mind ideas which they made him think he himself originated; and finally they capped the climax of their skilful audacity, by taking him out of "practical relations" with the party to which he was indebted for his elevation, and made him the representative of the small party which voted against him, and of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Warrior. On they come to join the Nations of the West in the great Court of the Universe. This group is as fine as any group ever seen at an exposition. It rises in its impressive pyramidal height to a climax in the Spirit of the East - a fitting pivot on ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... intently studying the calm face of the young man. Innocent himself of all the intrigue and international chicanery back of the affair, representing only an individual in these secret negotiations, he saw in the statement, as Mr. Grimm intended that he should, the possible climax of a great business contract. His greed was aroused; it might mean hundreds of thousands of ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... The Pioneers. North of Lakewood Cemetery a climb up the precipitous mountainside leads to Natty Bumppo's Cave, which, with some poetic license in his treatment of its dimensions, the novelist employs as a setting for the final climax of his story. To the platform of rock over the cave, as a refuge from the forest fire, Leather-Stocking guided Elizabeth Temple and Edwards, and carried the dying Chingachgook. On this spot, with his glazing eyes fixed upon the western hills, the last of the Mohicans yielded up his spirit. ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... watching the woman's suffering told on both of the girls, and the night by her bedside seemed centuries long. Toward morning the paroxysms appeared to reach a climax and then to subside. They were of shorter duration, and the ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... Restoration, he was obliged to conceal himself for a time; and to cap the climax, the conduct of his son, who was still in Paris, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... violent outbursts of profanity served now. And these proceeding to a climax of strength and rapidity, gradually subsided as such outbursts do and the two sides started to argue ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... you to my suggestion?" asked Addie Marchmont. "I think it would be one of the best practical jokes I ever knew. The very thought of such an incorrigible witch as you palming yourself off as a demure Puritan maiden is the climax of comical absurdity." ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... numbered "twenty-five" in the shallow box, and its identity had long since been evident. But this fact mitigated my curiosity not at all. The "Archives" had furnished a continuous narrative—surely one of the strangest ever committed to writing—and now I was to read the climax of that romantically terrible story; to witness the final achievement of that object that my poor friend had pursued with such ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... tete-a-tete dinner. Such a dinner! Even after a lapse of all these years I am unable to think of it without a shudder. Half famished though we were, we could not do much more than look at the greater part of the dishes which were set before us; and the climax was reached when we were served with an astonishing compote, made up, so far as I was able to judge, of equal proportions of preserved plums and mustard, to which vinegar and sugar had been superadded. Both the signorina and I partook of this horrible mixture, for ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... for a duck and a paddle. So Luclarion superintended the bath-room; Diana helped her; and Desire and Hazel tended the shop. Luclarion invented a shower-bath with a dipper and a colander; then the wet, tangled hair had to be combed,—a climax which she had secretly aimed at with a great longing, from the beginning; and doing this, she contrived with carbolic soap and a separate suds, and a bit of sponge, to give the neglected little heads a ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... further in French and Tahitian that this was to be the climax of all ring battles in the South Seas between natives, the Christchurch Kid and Cowan, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... a youth with tassels on his boots. "Bring out your oldest brandy for a boast, From that small barrel in the very roots Of your deep cellar, man. Why here is Max! Ho! Welcome, Max, you're scarcely here in time. We want to drink to old Jan's luck, and smoke His best tobacco for a grand climax. Here, Jan, a paper, fragrant as crushed thyme, We'll have the best to wish you ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... Andamanese are possessed of a bright intelligence, which, however, soon reaches its climax, and the adult may be compared in this respect with the civilised child of ten or twelve. He has never had any sort of agriculture, nor until the English taught him the use of dogs did he ever domesticate any kind of animal or bird, nor did he teach himself to turn turtle or to use ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... then the swift current gripped her, swung her broadside in the entrance against the matted grasses, and there she lay, heeling over slowly, burning away merrily above water, but safe to stay there in the opposing elements of fire and water whose contest must come to a climax when fire reached ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle |
