"Desert" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to me, I shall turn it over to General Buckner," said General Pillow, who was also disposed to shirk responsibility and desert the men whom he had induced to vote to secede from the Union and take ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... fight: to you I can say nothing but that if any word I speak discourage you, I shall heartily wish I had never spoken at all: but to be shown the enemy, and the castle we have got to storm, is not to be bidden to run from him; nor am I telling you to sit down deedless in the desert because between you and the promised land lies many a trouble, and death itself maybe: the hope before you you know, and nothing that I can say can take it away from you; but friend may with advantage cry out to friend in the battle that a stroke is coming ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... to go to some other school," their Aunt Martha had said, but one and another had murmured at this, for they loved Captain Putnam too well to desert him so quickly. ...
— The Rover Boys on Land and Sea - The Crusoes of Seven Islands • Arthur M. Winfield
... True, all the girls ran after him, and he was constantly whispering some amorous nonsense in her ear and secretly pressing his knee against her dress, and seeking her foot. But she could have lived a hundred years on a desert island with him, and he would never have been dangerous to [Pg 97] her. And Zientek, that little fair-haired fellow, what did she care for such a stupid boy? Her lip curled with a disdainful smile. What did she care ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... and I will never desert you again, unless you again force me to by your conduct. I have come back to you in the hour ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... look which had fascinated him—and so many others—in their day. The perfume which had intoxicated him in the first days of his love of her, and steeped his senses in the sap of youth and Eden, smote them again, here on the verge of the desert before him. He suddenly caught her in his arms and pressed her ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in his haste, took off Scharnhorst's cap. "I must look at you, my friend," he exclaimed. "I must see the face of my dear Scharnhorst, and now that I see it, I must kiss it! To see you again does me as much good as a fountain in the desert to the pilgrim dying ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... looked behind her. Back there, somewhere, were her hot little room and her still hotter bed; but between her and them lay a horrid desert of blackness across which one must feel one's way with outstretched, shrinking arms; while before her, out on the sun-parlor roof, were the moonlight and the cool, ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... "colossal amusement enterprise," as the streamers eloquently phrased it, preferred to secure a shop in the main street to pitching his tent in some out-of-the-way place, where his persuasive powers might be wasted on the desert air. ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... modern addition of a vermilion letter-pillar contributing indeed to the splendour, but scarcely to the interest of the scene; and a child of any sense or fancy would hastily contrive escape from such a barren desert of politeness, and betake itself to investigation, such as might be feasible, of the natural history ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... I'm thrown away on a desert island, I speak to be thrown away with you," she said. "There isn't another man of my acquaintance who could bring order ...
— Ladies Must Live • Alice Duer Miller
... street! Having forsworn his barber at the Plaza he went around the corner one morning to be shaved, and while waiting his turn he took off coat and vest, and with his soft collar open at the neck stood near the front of the shop. The day was an oasis in the cold desert of March and the sidewalk was cheerful with a population of strolling sun-worshippers. A stout woman upholstered in velvet, her flabby cheeks too much massaged, swirled by with her poodle straining at its ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... napkinless tray, and glass of bluish milk. Clo gave the woman twenty cents, and promised the same sum if her breakfast were brought upstairs. Violet agreed to this bargain, which was well for the girl. She would have starved rather than desert her room long enough to eat while Churn and Kit remained in their quarters. She surmised that they would not often ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... see the kings grow pallid With astonished fear and hate, As the hosts of Amr or Khaled On their cities fall like fate; Like the heat-wind from its prison In the desert burst and risen— La ilaha illah 'llahu— God ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... troops, whom they more willingly expose to danger than their own people: they give them great pay, knowing well that this will work even on their enemies, that it will engage them either to betray their own side, or at least to desert it, and that it is the best means of raising mutual jealousies among them: for this end they have an incredible treasure; but they do not keep it as a treasure, but in such a manner as I am almost afraid to tell, lest you think it so ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... his hasty march to put his hand on her chair and kiss her brow. "Motherling, I will restrain myself, so you will give me your word not to desert us." ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... talent there descended upon the lower levels of society an influence equally wholesome and beneficent! Were there more streams from the mountain, there would be more fruits upon the plain. The world would not be the scorched desert which it is, in which the vipers of envy and discontent hiss and sting; but a fragrant garden, full of the fruits of social order and of moral principle. Truly, man might learn many a useful lesson from the ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... as the tower beneath its stroke, for where now are the aims that were mine? The grave opens its mouth and makes reply. But life lies behind me like a dried-up stream, and these eighteen years are lost as in a desert. The sign, the sign that was with me from my birth! In lofty flight I have followed it hither with all the strength of my soul, and here I am struck by the arrow of death. I fall, and behold the rocks beneath, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... if I was to tell you all that went on in that long trail into the Gila Desert and what happened when we got what we went for, you'd know as much as I do. You'd know enough to hold up Mike McGuire yourself if you'd a mind to. This is where the real story stops. What happened in between ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Europaeans; making them his great Officers, accounting them more faithful and trusty than his own People. With these he often discourses concerning the Affairs of their Countreys, and promotes them to places far above their Ability, and sometimes their Degree or Desert. [The colour of white honoured in this Land.] And indeed all over the Land they do bear as it were a natural respect and reverence to White Men, in as much as Black, they hold to be inferior to White. And they say, ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... I'll take them with me. I'll accustom myself to the sight of them. The innocents! they shall not be poisoned by the refinements of society. Rather let them hunt their daily sustenance upon some desert island with their bow and arrow; or creep, like torpid Hottentots, into a corner, and stare at each other. Better to do nothing than to do evil. Fool that I was, to be prevailed upon once more to exhibit myself among these apes! What a ridiculous figure shall I be! and in ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... up this belated clue that the pilgrims had come to the Ferry inn, crossing by team from valley to valley, cutting off a great bend of the Oregon Short Line as it traverses the Snake River desert; those bare high plains escarped with basalt bluffs that open every fifty miles or so to let a road crawl down to some little rope-ferry supported by sheep-herders, ditch contractors, miners, emigrants, ranchmen, all the wild industries of a country ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... himself and young Langrishe and Nelly and the babies in the big happy house. They would belong to him—no one would push him away from his girl. They would be together till they closed his eyes. The thought of it now was like a green oasis in the desert; but it was a ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... lined its banks. The flaming steamboat had not broken its surface; the canoe, gliding noiselessly over it, was all that gave token of the presence of man. A rude cabin erected in some lone spot in the wilderness, like a green spot in the desert, showed the feeble footing which he had ...
— The Ranger - or The Fugitives of the Border • Edward S. Ellis
... of new teachers, in search of books, in search of the necessaries of life; undergoing such an amount of bodily and mental toil as makes it wonderful that all of them did not—as some of them doubtless did—die under the hard training, or, at best, desert the penurious Muses for the ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... unto a Spaniard; You alone enjoy my heart; I am lovely, young, and tender, And so love is my desert. Still to serve thee day and night my mind is press'd; The wife of every English man ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... through the skin and other organs, have given men their differences of color. This color pigment is a protection against sunlight and consequently varies with the intensity of the sunlight. Thus in Africa we find the blackest men in the fierce sunlight of the desert, red pygmies in the forest, and yellow Bushmen ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... place some might have given up all for lost; but in addition to a sense of rectitude, and the consciousness of desert, I had to support me an intimate knowledge of the King's temper; which, though I had never suffered from it to this extent before, I knew to be on occasion as hot as his anger was short lived, and his ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... hundred thousand people went to the scene. Thousands left their skeletons with the red brother, and other thousands left theirs on the Isthmus of Panama or on the cruel desert. Many married men went who had been looking a long time for some good place to go to. Leaving their wives with ill-concealed relief, they started away through a country filled with death, to reach a country they knew not of. Some died en route, others were ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... 15.4 per cent, and the unimproved area in farms decreased 5.6. Future changes of farm areas may be expected to be of this same nature, mainly in the improvement of rough pastures, swamps, partly cleared woodlands, and desert lands awaiting irrigation. An increasing population will have to be provided with food and other products of agriculture on a farming area that henceforth will be increasing less rapidly than it has in the past and than ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... him, none the less the death of every individual was due to him. As I said before, a word from him and the slaughter would have ceased. But he refused to give that word. He insisted that the integrity of society was assailed; that he was not sufficiently a coward to desert his post; and that it was manifestly just that a few should be martyred for the ultimate welfare of the many. Nevertheless this blood was upon his head, and he sank into deeper and deeper gloom. I was likewise whelmed with the guilt of an accomplice. Babies were ruthlessly killed, children, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... from the lake, The pigeon in the pines, The bittern's boom, a desert make Which no ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... bear, of the white buffalo, of the carcajou, of the panther, and the ravenous wolf. We can recognise the horns and frontlets of the elk, the cimmaron, and the grim bison. Here and there are idol figures, of grotesque and monster forms, carved from wood and the red claystone of the desert. ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... went on, in their rich-voiced, monotonous chant, "who, as our magic tells us, are destined to deliver our land from the terrible scourge, we greet you, we bow before you, we acknowledge you as our lord and brother, to whom we vow safety among us and in the desert, to whom we ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... these lessons, or were inwardly ready to learn them, they recognised more and more clearly in Jesus their heaven-sent redeemer, and in following their own conscience and desperate idealism into the desert or the cloister, in ignoring all civic virtues and allowing the wealth, art, and knowledge of the pagan world to decay, they began what they felt to be an ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... good to see people again," said Ben, whose temperament was social. "I felt like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island when I was up ...
— Ben's Nugget - A Boy's Search For Fortune • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... handfuls glean'd, But in one solid mass Th' infernal gates should pass. But Jove, displeased with both The Fury and her oath, Despatched her back to hell. And then a bolt he hurl'd, Down on a faithless world, Which in a desert fell. Aim'd by a father's arm, It caused more fear than harm. (All fathers strike aside.) What did from this betide? Our evil race grew bold, Resumed their wicked tricks, Increased them manifold, Till, all Olympus through, Indignant murmurs flew. When, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... but the confidence of his pulpit tone, which was one of the secrets of his power, would now and then desert him, and he would look up to me as if waiting for an ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... her tears and recitals of distress, suffering one syllable to escape her lips that could convey a doubt of him, or a complaint, or a lessening of pride in his genius and good intentions. Her daughter died a year and a half since, but she did not desert him. She continued his ministering angel—living with him, caring for him, guarding him against exposure, and when he was carried away by temptation, amid grief and the loneliness of feelings unreplied to, and awoke from his self abandonment prostrated ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Woodyard, when he sailed up the bay on his return in October, realized that politically he was buried,—that is, in the manner of politics he cared about. And he could never explain, not to his most intimate friend, how he had happened to desert his post, to betray the trust of men who trusted him. It was small satisfaction to believe that it would all have happened just as it had, even if he had been there to block the path ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... to communicate with you in some way—to-morrow. I beg of you, I implore you, do not desert me. If I can only ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... now, fair Italy! Thou art the garden of the world, the home Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree; Even in thy desert, what is like to thee? Thy very weeds are beautiful, thy waste More rich than other climes' fertility; Thy wreck a glory, and thy ruin graced With an immaculate charm which can ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... society, or art. By a Heart, long desired; and perhaps more pleasing than wise or useful. By a Club, due to one's own judgment and persistency. By a high spade, entailing trouble or cost. By a low spade, at the cost of another's misfortune; or not wholly our desert rather than ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... first said that there would be no Opposition, and that Peel would not stir; but William Peel told me last night that the old Ministerial party was by no means so tranquilly inclined. Peel will not be violent or factious, but he thinks an attentive Opposition desirable, and he will not desert those who have looked up to and supported him. Then there will be the Tories (who will to a certainty end by joining him and his party) and the Radicals—three distinct parties, and enough to keep the Government on the qui vive. The expulsion of the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... fire-irons, the sense of smell gently excited by the aroma of the Arabian bean, and my eyes shaded by my cap pulled down over them, it often seems as if each cloud of the fragrant steam took a distinct form. As in the mirages of the desert, in each as it rises, I see some image of which my mind had been ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Climate: principally desert; December to February - northeast monsoon, moderate temperatures in north and very hot in south; May to October - southwest monsoon, torrid in the north and hot in the south, irregular rainfall, hot and humid periods (tangambili) ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... contint wid that gowld-mine at Minook? No, be the Siven! What's wan gowld-mine to a millionaire? What forr wud ye be prospectin that desert oiland, you and yer faithful man Froyday, if ye ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... march, and his men suffered exceedingly. The only possible relief was making numerous fires, by which his enemies got notice of his coming. For the barbarians who dwelt on the mountains overlooking the desert, amazed at the multitude of fires they saw, sent messengers upon dromedaries to acquaint Peucestes. He being astonished and almost out of his senses with the news, and finding the rest in no less disorder, resolved to fly, and collect what men he could by the way. But Eumenes relieved ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... silent and cheerless, Like a lonesome and desert-like plain. If but one were courageous and fearless And would cry out aloud in his pain! Neither storm-wind nor starshine by night, And the days neither cloudy nor bright: O my people, how sad is thy state, How gray and how ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... Circassy, Say what your valour has availed to you! Say what your honour boots, what goodly fee Remunerates ye both, for service true! Sirs, show me but a single courtesy, With which she ever graced ye, — old or new, — As some poor recompense, desert, or guerdon, For having born so long ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... is the soil, but the road is very wide, so down hill you take the soil, very safe. All through Prussia, as far as I have been, the farming is very good, the land very clean, but the soil very, very poor; it is a great desert in fact, made habitable by the perseverance and industry of the people; round this town it is wonderful to see what can be done by the hand of man. This town stands in a desert of driving sand, but the town has created a soil round it which is now ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... one of our soldiers has been in the Spanish service, and that he hath stroved to seduce several men to desert with him to them, on their arrival in Georgia. He designed also to murder the officers, or such persons as could have money, and carry off the plunder. Two of the gang have confessed, and accused him; but we cannot discover ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris
... to his race and his country, wherever he may now be eking out a precarious and inglorious existence, and I have nothing to heap upon his head but the curses, the execrations of an injured people. Like Benedict Arnold he should seek a garret in the desert of population, living unnoticed and without respect, where he might die without arousing the ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Waterford, and Galway. The truth is that our enemies wish only to divide us, and care not by what means. One day they try to excite jealousy among the English by asserting that the plan of the government is too favourable to Ireland. Next day they try to bribe the Irish to desert us, by promising to give something to Ireland at the expense of England. Let us disappoint these cunning men. Let us, from whatever part of the United Kingdom we come, be true to each other and to the good cause. We have the confidence of our country. We have justly ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... some old acquaintance was just arrived out of the country; but, upon her entrance, she saw only Mr Harrel and some workmen, and found that the agreeable surprise was to proceed from the sight of an elegant Awning, prepared for one of the inner apartments, to be fixed over a long desert-table, which was to be ornamented with various ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... weeping, but this time it is for lack of pupils, not of teachers or machinery. "We are unfairly handicapped!" she cries. "You have prizes and scholarships for classics and mathematics, and you bribe your best students to desert us. Buy us some bright, clever boys to teach, and then see what we can do!" Once more we heard and pitied. We had bought her bones; we bought her boys. And now at last her halls were filled—not only with teachers ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... sea lanes between Atlantic and Pacific Oceans (Strait of Magellan, Beagle Channel, Drake Passage); Atacama Desert is ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... desert. From Winnipeg to the Pacific Ocean there are a few places that might attain to the dignity of an oasis—at Brandon, Portage la Prairie, etc.—but it is generally what I should call worthless; 100 miles to wood and 100 feet to water was ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... But all the earth, though it were full of kind hearts, is but a desolation and a desert place to a mother when her only child is absent. And you, Clement, would leave me for this Virginie,—this degenerate De Crequy, tainted with the atheism of the Encyclopedistes! She is only reaping some ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... thus carrying in joyful state Thick boughs of palm and willows from the brook, March'd round the altar—to commemorate How, when their course they from the desert took, Guided by signs which ne'er the sky forsook, They lodged in leafy tents and cabins low, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... there are other animals which, in this matter, are exactly in the same position as man. They have no foes at all whom they need fear, and a change of death-rate among them can therefore be compensated for only by a corresponding change in the power of propagation. The great beasts of prey of the desert and the sea, as well as many other animals, belong to this category. What foe prevents lions and tigers, sperm-whales, and sharks from multiplying until they reach the limit of their food supply? Does man prevent them? If anyone ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... aor. xi, fut. xac. To forsake, abandon, desert, depopulate; "desamparar y despoblar ...
— The Maya Chronicles - Brinton's Library Of Aboriginal American Literature, Number 1 • Various
... primitive attitude toward a human type common to all conditions of society. The particular mould in which the story is cast takes shape from the manner of aboriginal life in the Southwest, anywhere between the Klamath River and the Painted Desert; but it has been written in vain if the situation has not also worked itself out in terms of ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... neighbouring shop people, whose premises she was eternally haunting without ever buying anything. Her usual tactics were to quarrel with them as soon as she had managed to learn their histories, when she would bestow her patronage upon a fresh set, desert it in due course, and then gradually make friends again with those with whom she had quarrelled. In this way she made the complete circuit of the market neighbourhood, ferreting about in every shop and stall. Anyone would have imagined that she consumed an enormous amount of provisions, whereas, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... Archie, on this all-important phase of the situation, we must have the light of definite knowledge. Now, as a man who has had many love affairs, some innocent and some not, you should have a good working knowledge of your endurance in such matters. If you were cast away on a desert island with a very pretty woman, you to whom women have always been necessary, you from whose hand there has always been some woman or other ready to eat, how long would ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... th w-bhh (Genesis i. 2), i.e., formlessness and voidness, of primeval matter, to the Hebrews She is depicted both on bas-reliefs and on cylinder seals in a form which associates her with LABARTU, [3] a female devil that prowled about the desert at night suckling wild animals but killing men. And it is tolerably certain that she was the type, and symbol, and head of the whole community ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... Laurencine's sunshade had to be opened, and Laurencine had to prove to the maids that she could hold the sunshade in one hand and push the doll's perambulator with the other. Finally, the procession of human beings and vehicles moved, munitioned, provisioned, like a caravan setting forth into the desert, the parlourmaid ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... not, and that is a fact. I let her go and I promised to say nothing, more is the shame to me. She told me that if I would side with her she would marry me and make me king of this country, but thank goodness I did find the heart to say that even to marry her I could not desert my friends. And now you can do what you like, I deserve it all. All I have to say is that I hope that you may never love a woman with all your heart and then be so sorely tempted of her,' and he turned ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... never even been named, stretches from the fifty-first to the sixtieth degree of latitude in one almost continuous ridge, and at last breaks off abruptly into the Okhotsk Sea, leaving to the northward a high level steppe called the "dole" or desert, which is the wandering ground of the Reindeer Koraks. The central and southern parts of the peninsula are broken up by the spurs and foot-hills of the great mountain range into deep sequestered valleys of the wildest ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... on their way to the far West in the crowd—men, women and children and babies in arms—Irish, English, Germans and Yankees. There were also well dressed, handsome young men from the colleges of New England going out to be missionaries "between the desert and the sown." ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... volume, and houses and buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off again. It came in a full tide down Exhibition Road. I stopped, staring towards Kensington Gardens, wondering at this strange, remote wailing. It was as if that mighty desert of houses had found a voice for its ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... great benefit from this man, who though in many respects a most singular and uncouth being speaks Mandchou gallantly, with the real pronunciation of Pekin, which differs considerably from that of Pekhan (the desert), being far more soft and melodious. During the interval which will elapse between my writing to you and hearing from you, I shall borrow from Baron Schilling the Mandchou Old Testament and reperuse the notes in order to be able to give a suitable opinion as to their ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... as though there might very well be a niche in such a household that she could fill. Mentally she proceeded to make a tour of the room, duster in hand, and she had just reached the point where, in imagination, she was about to place a great bowl of flowers in the middle desert of the table, when the elderly Abigail re-appeared and dumped a tea-tray down ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... to desert us?" cried young Knowlton, coming up with her. "We don't know a step of the way, nor where to find blackberries or anything. I have been piloting myself all the way by your waggon. Come back and let me make ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... cool shade, we waited till they crossed that miniature desert. I looked once or twice, and hoped we would not have to walk over it; I'd seen the Mohave and the Staked Plains, and I knew it was sizzling hot in that ancient river-bed—it is hot, and dry, when the heat-waves play tricks with objects seen from afar. Those three riders moved in a transparent ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... whenever and wherever they could meet. Their forefathers, who had been engaged in the lawsuit about the island which I have mentioned, wore dead and petrified in their graves; and the little peninsula in the glen was gradationally worn away by the river, till nothing remained but a desert, upon a small scale, of sand and gravel. Even the ruddy, able-bodied squire, with the longitudinal nose, projecting out of his face like a broken arch, and the small, fiery magistrate—both of whom had fought the duel, ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... from attention to private education will ever be very confined, and the parent who really puts his own hand to the plow, will always, in some degree be disappointed, till education becomes a grand national concern. A man cannot retire into a desert with his child, and if he did, he could not bring himself back to childhood, and become the proper friend and play-fellow of an infant or youth. And when children are confined to the society of ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place or giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed; or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... tangles. On the east slopes of the middle Sierras the pines, all but an occasional yellow variety, desert the stream borders about the level of the lowest lakes, and the birches and tree-willows begin. The firs hold on almost to the mesa levels,—there are no foothills on this eastern slope,—and whoever has firs misses nothing else. It goes without saying that a tree that can afford ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... Guy, I cannot. I acknowledge the love which has stolen upon me, I know not how, but I cannot do this wrong to Lucy. Away from me you will love her again. You must. Read this, Guy, then say if you can desert her." ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... finest birds; and if you happen to know of any good birds, price will not stand in the way of our purchasing them. Joseph answered that he had not heard of any, but if he should—You'll not forget us, said a small meagre woman with black shining eyes in a colourless face, drab as the long desert road she had come by. Joseph promised; and then a short thick-set man with matted hair, and sore eyes that were always fixed on the ground, opened one of the baskets and took out a long lean bird, which he held in shining fingers for Joseph's admiration. Listen to him, cried ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... Portland, Seattle, Duluth, St. Paul, Minneapolis, and scores of smaller places. The entire Pacific slope was soon dotted with towns and cities, and even the great arid plains of the West—as well as the "Great American Desert" covering Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Nevada—began to take on signs of life which had not been dreamed of a ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... manner? Many people will like him because they see in him—or they think they do—a certain happy mean. Will they not fancy they catch him taking the middle way between the unsociable French etude and the old-fashioned English "picture"? If one of these extremes is a desert, the other, no doubt, is an oasis still more vain. I have a recollection of productions of Mr. Alfred Parsons' which might have come from a Frenchman who was in love with English river-sides. I call to mind no studies—if ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... a clump, he plodded toward the wash room. He was going to rest. He was going to feel cool water on his head and his neck; he was going to revel in cool water... and then he would sleep. SLEEP! He made toward sleep as one lost in the desert would make toward a ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... doubtless die in the desert," the merchant wrote; "but if he should find his way down, or you should hear of him as arriving at any of the villages, I pray you to send him up to me with a guard. I will so treat him that it will be a lesson to my other slaves ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... letter to Johnson, asking him to employ his pen in favour of Dodd. Mr. Allen, the printer, who was Johnson's landlord and next neighbour in Bolt-court, and for whom he had much kindness[409], was one of Dodd's friends, of whom to the credit of humanity be it recorded, that he had many who did not desert him, even after his infringement of the law had reduced him to the state of a man under sentence of death. Mr. Allen told me that he carried Lady Harrington's letter to Johnson, that Johnson read it walking up and ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... moulted between us. But as to operating between you and Harry, with the view of keeping you apart, I decline the commission. It is my assured belief that sooner or later he will be your husband. Now we will go up to Janet, who will begin to think herself a Penelope, if we desert her ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... Atlantic seaboard had already begun to explore southward along the African coast. In 1402 they had settled the Canary Isles. In 1443 they reached southward beyond the sands of the Sahara and saw Cape Verd, discovered that Africa was not all burning desert, that heat would not forever increase as they went southward. In 1487 Bartholomew Diaz, after almost a year of sailing, reached the Cape of Good Hope, the southern point of the vast African continent; and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... would happen to me now, if you were not with me? No living soul of my own here! Alone, alone, as in a desert." ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... it was! He tossed off his coat and sat for ten minutes looking blankly at the sputtering gas jet. Then his whole life, desolate as a desert, loomed up before him with appalling distinctness. Throwing himself on the floor beside his bed, with clasped hands and arms outstretched on the white counterpane, he sobbed. "Oh! God, dear God, I thought you loved me; ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... pause, "I have always done my duty,—I have sacrificed myself for the children. Why do they desert me, why do they desert me?" And then came a low moaning cry, terrible to hear. The sisters were by the bedside, in a moment. Their father stood ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... been better weighed and looked upon, and in sanctificationem, to make them holy; for he is juge sacrificium, "a continual sacrifice," in effect, fruit, and operation; that like as they, which seeing the serpent hang up in the desert, were put in remembrance of Christ's death, in whom as many as believed were saved; so all men that trusted in the death of Christ shall be saved, as well they that were before, as they that came after. For he was a continual sacrifice, as I said, in effect, fruit, ...
— Sermons on the Card and Other Discourses • Hugh Latimer
... high-born bride were not more successful than those of the driver: in vain he made use of every endearing epithet and tender expression, and recalled the time when she used to declare that she could dwell with him in a desert; her only replies were bitter reproaches and upbraidings for his treachery and deceit, mingled with floods of tears, and interrupted by hysterical sobs. Provoked at her folly, yet softened by her extreme distress, Douglas was in the utmost state of perplexity—now ready to give way ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... factory, on lake and river, in mine and forest, on an August day of 1914, Canada was stricken to the heart. Out of a blue summer sky a bolt as of death smote her, dazed and dumb, gasping to God her horror and amaze. Without word of warning, without thought of preparation, without sense of desert, War, brutal, bloody, devilish War, was thrust into her life by that power whose business in the world, whose confidence ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... of nerve for the pioneers of Fresno County to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in bringing water upon what the old settlers regarded as a desert, fit only to grow wheat in a very wet season. In other parts of the State the Mission Fathers had dug ditches and built aqueducts, so that the settlers who came after them found a well devised water system, which they merely followed. But in Fresno no one had ever tried to grow crops ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 829, November 21, 1891 • Various
... more rapid. While Russia was laboriously crossing a barren desert, the North-West Provinces, the Carnatic, the territories of the Peshwa, Sind, and the Punjab, successively came under our rule, and by 1850 we had extended our dominions to the foot of the mountains beyond ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... living soul," answered the man. "It's queer how they came to desert her, but I guess the captain and crew got scared and went off in a hurry, without making a proper investigation. The brig is a small one, and if she hit on a rock, or was in a collision, it would not take ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... a spell; they must, however, be diversified with either heath or rock, and are hardly to be considered perfect without conifers. Even sand-hills, with their intricate plan, and their gulls and rabbits, will stand well for the necessary desert. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... may be added that some of those posts will be keys to the trade with the Indian nations. Can any man think it would be wise to leave such posts in a situation to be at any instant seized by one or the other of two neighboring and formidable powers? To act this part would be to desert all the usual maxims of prudence and policy. If we mean to be a commercial people, or even to be secure on our Atlantic side, we must endeavor, as soon as possible, to have a navy. To this purpose there must be dock-yards and arsenals; ...
— The Federalist Papers
... him Lord Abergavenny.[211] Lord Cobham, Wyatt's uncle, was known to wish him well. Sir {p.091} Thomas Cheyne, the only other person of weight in the county, would be loyal to the queen, but Wyatt had tampered with his tenants; Cheyne could bring a thousand men into the field, but they would desert when led out, and there was nothing to fear from them. Whether Southwell and Cobham would act openly on Wyatt's side was the chief uncertainty; it was feared that Southwell might desire to keep within the limits of loyal opposition; Cobham offered to send his sons, but "the sending of sons," some ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... peaches in the world, and the finest apples—the Newton pippins. Besides, there were luscious pears and plums, and upon the espaliers, vines bearing bushels of sweet grapes. If Colonel P— lived in the woods, it cannot be said that he was surrounded by a desert. ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... lost all sense of direction, for twilight had come and gone, and blank darkness, except for the stars, stretched on all sides. He had never seen this sand level; he knew it must be far off the Lazette trail. And he knew, too, before he had ridden far into it, that it was a desert. For as twilight had come on he had scrutinized it hopefully in search of timber, bushes, a gorge, a gully—anything that might afford him an opportunity for concealment, for escape from the big, grim pursuer. He had seen nothing of that character. Barren, level, vast, ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... group of slaves, chained to the pole of a spacious tent, lay a sleek and glossy leopard, sleeping in the sun as unconcernedly as though he were in the midst of his native desert. The Arab, unaware probably of the beast's presence, walked slowly round the circle inspecting ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... set off in a burning sun, over a perfect Egyptian desert, to visit the famous arches of Cempoala, a magnificent work, which we are told had greatly excited the admiration of Mr. Poinsett when in this country. This aqueduct, the object of whose construction was to supply these arid ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Hercynian wood. The banks of the Rhine were crowded, like those of the Tiber, with elegant houses and well-cultivated farms; and if the poet descended the river, he might express his doubt on which side was situated the territory of the Romans. This scene of peace and plenty was suddenly changed into a desert; and the prospect of the smoking ruins, could alone distinguish the solitude of nature, from the desolation of man. The flourishing city of Mentz was surprised and destroyed; and many thousand Christians ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... north-west called mistral; the Italians call it maestro, meaning "the masterful." It is very prevalent along the south coast of Europe at certain times of the year, drying up the soil, and doing much damage to the fruit trees. The dust, like sand in the desert, is almost blinding; on one side you have a cold cutting wind, on the other perhaps scorching heat—altogether very far from pleasant. This wind sometimes raises a tumult in the Mediterranean Sea, which is much dreaded by the French ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... procedure followed by a Confederation exploratory ship making a first landing on a barren planet. There was a description of the atmosphere, the soil surface, the land masses and major water bodies. Physically, the planet was a desert, hot and dry, and barren of vegetation excepting in two or three areas of jungle along the equator. "The planet is inhabited by numerous small unintelligent animal species which seem well-adapted to the semi-arid conditions. Of higher animals ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... gone down the towpath, toward the village, looking for us. Well, wasn't Aunty May mad when she found out how long I'd been alone and how badly I'd wanted her. She just paddled as fast as she could, and all the time pretended that we were wild savages who would catch Mr. Garry and put him on a desert island, just to ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... where the first English ship, sent into these seas in 1815, was lost, during the third of Parry's voyages to the Pole; the Fury was so damaged by the ice on her second wintering, that her crew were obliged to desert her and return to England on board her ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... north, a broad dark shadow that stretched out into the lake defined the city. Nearer, the ample wings of the white Art Building seemed to stand guard against the improprieties of civilization. To the far south, a line of thin trees marked the outer desert of the prairie. Behind, in the west, were straggling flat-buildings, mammoth deserted hotels, one of which was crowned with a spidery steel tower. Nearer, a frivolous Grecian temple had been wheeled to the confines ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... their huts, with closed doors, which when opened disclosed the mouldering corpse with the poor rags round the loins—the skull fallen off the pillow—the little skeleton of the child, that had perished first, rolled up in a mat between two large skeletons. The sight of this desert, but eighteen months ago a well peopled valley, now literally strewn with human bones, forced the conviction upon us, that the destruction of human life in the middle passage, however great, constitutes but a small portion of ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... of reaching the promised land except by a voyage around Cape Horn or an overland trip from western Missouri across the great American desert, the Rocky and Sierra Nevada ranges of mountains, either of which routes necessitated a weary and dangerous trip of nine months' duration. The usual plan adopted in the East was to form a company of about ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... to ask leave to come to their mother. She burst into tears, and declared she could neither see them, nor pray, while in this dreadful situation, expecting every moment to be broken in upon, and quite uncertain in what manner, yet determined not to desert her apartment, except by express direction from the physicians. Who could tell to what height the delirium might rise? There was no constraint, no power: all feared the worst, yet none dared take ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... he spoke once more of this projected journey which became ever more and more remote, like a mirage in the desert: "My health is good, the weather very mild; the bad season has not begun, but the roads are bad in a country where there are no highways. So Hortense will come with Napoleon; I am delighted. I am impatient to have things settle themselves so that you can come. I have made peace with ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... from them a religious interpretation. The celestial messenger was a fulfillment of their hope and a guide to their feet. They were obedient to the heavenly vision, and across long burning stretches of desert sand they came and appeared in Jerusalem with their inquiry concerning the new-born ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden
... The district of the Sekhti is indicated by his travelling south to Henenseten, and going with asses and not by boat. Hence we are led to look for the Sekhet Hemat, or salt country, in the borders of the Fayum lake, whence the journey would be southward, and across the desert. This lake was not regulated artificially until the XIIth Dynasty; and hence at the period of this tale it was a large sheet of water, fluctuating with each rise and fall of the Nile, and bordered by lagoons where rushes would flourish, and where salt and natron would accumulate ...
— Egyptian Tales, First Series • ed. by W. M. Flinders Petrie
... and all Titles with it, came to Otto, third son of Kaiser Ludwig, who is happily the last of these Bavarian Electors. They were an unlucky set of Sovereigns, not hitherto without desert; and the unlucky Country suffered much under them. By far the unluckiest, and by far the worst, was this Otto; a dissolute, drinking, entirely worthless Herr; under whom, for eight years, confusion ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... impossible," he answered. "My life is forfeited. My death is just, and shall serve as a warning to others. But promise me that you will not desert my poor daughter. I had thought to lay her in your arms"—tears choked his voice—"but, alas, that fond hope is vanished. You cannot marry the daughter of a sentenced murderer. But promise me that you ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... their first parting, and there came over her a feeling that, should he never come back, the world would be a desert, nothing left ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley |
