"Ebb" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cleared to sail on the first of the ebb at seven this morning. She's out in the stream now, a tidy bit of a schooner, the Bethlehem, with good lines and hull and large cabin accommodations. She used to be in the Tahiti trade, before the steamers ran her out. Provisions are good. Everything is most excellent. I saw to that. I cannot ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... course westwards, the admiral found the depth of the water gradually to lessen, till passing through five and four fathoms, they at length had only two and a half at the ebb. The tide differed considerably in this place from what it had been found at Trinidada; for whereas there it ebbed and flowed three fathoms, here, at forty-five leagues to the westward it only rose and fell one fathom. At Trinidada ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... principles that such a law as he discovered must be obeyed. It is quite true that Kepler had some slight knowledge of the existence of what we now know as gravitation. He had even enunciated the remarkable doctrine that the ebb and flow of the tide must be attributed to the attraction of the moon on the waters of the earth. He does not, however, appear to have had any anticipation of those wonderful discoveries which Newton was destined ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... opponent was Logi (wild fire); that Thialfi had run a race with Hugi (thought), than which no swifter runner exists; that Thor's drinking horn was connected with the ocean, where his deep draughts had produced a perceptible ebb; that the cat was in reality the terrible Midgard snake encircling the world, which Thor had nearly pulled out of the sea; and that Elli, his nurse, was old age, whom none can resist. Having finished these explanations and ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... work more good than harm. Save for its location at the edge of the wild Basque country, and what it has seen, itself sheltered by obscurity, of the forays of that restless people, the place has little to tell. It is a watering-place, pure and simple, buoyed entirely by the prospering ebb and flow of modern fashion. Let us take it as of to-day, not of yesterday, content to seek its charms under that aspect alone, enjoying it for itself, not ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... the cause of liberty in Chili was at its lowest ebb. After four years of struggle the patriots had met with a crushing defeat in 1814, and had been scattered to the four winds. Since then the viceroy of Spain had ruled the land with an iron hand, many of ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... some music-book forgotten in the orchestra, or some actor left at his lodging, we in about one hour after the time fixed by the pilot for the latest minute of tide, slipped the hawsers of the smart little Washington, and fell off into the stream of ebb. ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... truly evangelical. It was Catholic. It was apostolic. It was recognised and praised by Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Bucer, Bullinger and other saints. As long as the moral life of the Church of Rome remained at such a low ebb, so long would there be need for the ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... to goodness draw; How, while the neighbour world, toss'd by the Fates, So many Phaetons had in their states, Which turn'd to heedless flames their burnish'd thrones, Thou, as ensphered, kept'st temperate thy zones; In Afric shores the sands that ebb and flow, The shady leaves on Arden's trees that grow, He sure may count, with all the waves that meet To wash the Mauritanian Atlas' feet. Though crown'd thou wert not, nor a king by birth, Thy worth deserves the richest crown on earth. Search this half sphere, and the Antarctic ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... was light, the boat made fair way with the tide, and when the ebb ceased at about ten o'clock the mouth of the river was but a few miles away. The mast was lowered and the sails stowed. The boat was then rowed into a little creek and tied up to the bushes. The basket ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... that cannot be quenched, yet will not despair. Then, at the lowest ebb of the sweet agony, an ecstasy of hope, a wildly blissful contemplation of a promise of reward. If I depart here for a brief space from my announced purpose not to analyze the music in the manner of the Wagnerian commentators, it will be only ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... obtained the hand of Joanna, Princess of Portugal, whose ambition and unprincipled intrigues heightened the ill-favor with which he was already regarded. The court of Castile, once so famous for chastity and honor, sank to the lowest ebb of infamy, the shadow of which, seeming to extend over the whole land, affected nobles and people with its baleful influence. All law was at an end: the people, even while they murmured against the King, followed his evil example; and history ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... my tears," she said, smiling; "it was the revulsion of feeling. My life was at a low ebb: if your sentence had been against me it ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... at this hour of peril was a man of ability and energy, Leo III; but the empire had sunk so low as a result of the misrule of his predecessors that his authority scarcely extended beyond the shores of the Sea of Marmora, and his resources were at a low ebb. The navy on which so much depended was brought to a high point of efficiency, but it was so inferior in numbers to the Saracen armada that he dared not attempt even ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... provided with their cue for the day. They ask with a face of dreary vacuity, 'Have you anything new?'—and on receiving an answer in the negative, have nothing further to say. (They are like an oyster at the ebb of the tide, gaping for fresh tidings.) Talk of the Westminster Election, the Bridge Street Association, or Mr. Cobbett's Letter to John Cropper of Liverpool, and they are alive again. Beyond the last twenty-four hours, or the narrow round in which they move, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... miles, after which we saw on our lee land bearing S.W. which we would not sail clear of; we therefore dropped anchor in 9 fathom, the weather still continuing dirty with rain and wind, and a strong ebb from the E.S.E. running flat against the wind; the water rising and falling fully two ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... joined with them, a mere adjunct not forming a part of them. They toil and act like men—they are never still. Thor bears the hammer, the emblem of physical strength, energy, and activity. He can at a draught half drain the sea, and cause the tides to rise and ebb; he can lift the serpent that surrounds the world; he can wrestle with Death himself, and almost come off victorious. The giants are his mortal enemies, and against them he wages war and bears deadly hatred, as Jupiter against the Titans. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... this world. But all their efforts were of no avail. I remained as much a man as anyone of themselves. They found me in full health and vigor, for I had never had a day's sickness in my life, having come to my death by drowning while foolishly swimming too far from land in a strong ebb tide, and my body, being carried out to sea, was never recovered. Being thus put to their wit's end, they determined to keep the matter privy, and to make the best of it, and the first necessity was to provide me with clothing, for ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton
... Arthur was passing heavy at Helen's fate. He wasted no time in tears, nor suffered himself to be fearful. Arthur bade his companions get into their harness, and ride with him to the ford. The tide was now at the ebb, so that they crossed on their horses, and came speedily to the foot of the hill. There they dismounted, giving their mantles and destriers to the charge of the squires. Arthur, Bedevere, and Kay, the three together, began briskly to climb the mount. After they ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... by this mighty union of the positive and negative forces of Nature, react, not only upon the waters and the Earth, but the human family. Not only does the mighty ocean obey this wonderful influence in the ebb and flow of its tides, but the Earth, as she rotates upon her axis, obeys this mighty power and manifests in her depths and heights in her serpentine movement about ...
— Within the Temple of Isis • Belle M. Wagner
... just that when youth's outward-looking curiosity and passion begin to ebb—is the art of freeing oneself from the influence of books so that one may enjoy what one is destined to enjoy without pedantry or scruple. And yet, by the profound law of the system of things, when one has thus freed oneself ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... convalescence. Mrs. Whately now spent most of the time on her plantation, her presence being needed there to remedy the effects, as far as possible, of the harsh measures at first adopted by her son. It was discouraging effort. The strong ebb tide in the old order of things had set in even far from the Union lines, and only the difficulty in reaching them prevented a general stampede of the negroes. As it was, two or three of her best hands would steal away from time to time, and run the gantlet of many dangers in their travel by night ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... a cinch, had his forehead pressed against the saddle and could afford a grin. He knew that the courage of a killer is largely dependent on his physical well-being. If he is cold or hungry or exhausted, his nerve is at low ebb; if life is running strong in his arteries his grit is above par. For years Roush had been drinking to excess. He had reached the point where he dared not face in the open a man like Albeen with nerves of unflawed steel. The declension of a gunman, if once ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... death came upon him unmistakably there was no touch of self-pity or impressiveness. He had just to die, and he devoted his swift energies to it, as he had done to living. I never saw him so splendid and noble as he was at that last awful moment. Life did not ebb away, but he seemed to fling it from him, so that it was not as the death of a weary man sinking to rest, but like the eager transit of a soldier to another ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... so closely, saw the blood ebb from cheeks and lips; noted the ashy pallor that succeeded, and the strange groping motion of her hands. She staggered toward the platform, and when the Magistrate caught her arm, she fell against him like some tottering ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... and life was running at flood-tide all over the great city. Always tempestuous, always disturbed with the passion and pain and strife of its struggle to maintain the ground it had gained, never for one brief moment calm, even at its lowest ebb—now, on this last night of the long, weary week, all the currents and counter-currents of the worker's world were suddenly released. At the stroke of bell, at the clang of deep-mouthed gong, at the scream of siren whistle, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... was quiet and clear. She leaned her head out of the window, and heard the mellow Sunday evening roar of the city as of a sea at ebb. And Dahlia was out on the sea. Rhoda thought of it as she looked at the row of lamps, and listened to the noise remote, until the sight of stars was pleasant as the faces of friends. "People are kind here," she reflected, for her short experience of the landlady was good, and a young gentleman ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... morning, as I awoke, I somehow felt the day coming to me like a new gilt-edged letter, with some unheard-of news awaiting me on the opening of the envelope. And, lest I should lose any fragment of it, I would hurry through my toilet to my chair outside. Every day there was the ebb and flow of the tide on the Ganges; the various gait of so many different boats; the shifting of the shadows of the trees from west to east; and, over the fringe of shade-patches of the woods on the opposite bank, the gush of ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... looked better than the rest solely because we expect boys to be torn and patched. Mrs. Simms was invisible except as a gray blur beyond the rain-barrel, in the midst of which her pipe glowed with a regular ebb and ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... right to be measured by—it had been easy, after the first slip, to drop a little lower with each struggle. The woman—oh, the woman was—well, of the kind who prey on such men. Arthur, out there, at his lowest ebb, had drifted into living with her as a man drifts into drink or opium. He knew what she was—he knew where she had come from. But he had fallen ill, and she had nursed him—nursed him devotedly, of course. That was her chance, and she ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... In those days, apart from sieges, a battle was an event, here it is the rest or respite that is an event. Even British soldiers can't stick day and night fighting for ever. The attack spirit begins to ebb unless it is fed with fresh blood. Whether K.'s mind, big with broad views, grasps this new factor with which he has never himself come into personal contact, God knows. But for his sake, every bit as much as for my own, it is ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... Delia hath the waters of mine eyes, The ready handmaids on her grace t'attend, That never fail to ebb, but ever rise; For to their flow she never grants an end. The ocean never did attend more duly Upon his sovereign's course, the night's pale queen, Nor paid the impost of his waves more truly, Than mine unto her cruelty hath been. Yet nought the rock of that hard ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles - Delia - Diana • Samuel Daniel and Henry Constable
... the three had taken seizin of the northern hill, eaten their manchets of saffron cake, and shared their canful of milk, she took up a post from which, while the others scanned the offing for Spaniards, she could watch and time the ebb of the tide on ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of this nonchalance, the situation was serious. His money was at a low ebb. All his regular income was diverted to the support of the large household in the country. He was too proud to appeal to his wealthy uncle. He hated also to think of Mrs. Purp's mortification if she learned that her star ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... way Anstice would have deemed it his duty to scoff at such superstition; but to-night, his nerves unstrung, by the happenings of the last few days, his bodily vigour at a low ebb, his mind a chaos of miserable, hopeless memories and fears, Chloe's words woke a quite ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... unemployed men in their ranks becomes greater, they are being petted and made much of by our class; an infallible sign that they are making no further progress in their duty of destroying us. The small capitalists are left stranded by the ebb; the big ones will follow the tide across the water, and rebuild their factories where steam power, water power, labor power, and transport are now cheaper than in England, where they used to be cheapest. The workers will emigrate in pursuit of the ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... hummed with Gaelic and the round bellowing of cattle. It was clear warm weather, never a breath of wind to stir the gilding trees behind the burgh. At ebb-tide the sea-beach whitened and smoked in the sun, and the hot air quivered over the stones and the crisping wrack. In such a season the bustling town in the heart of the stem Highlands seemed a fever spot. Children came boldly up to us for fairings or gifts, ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... that still more issues had to be made, and in 1870 there were over L73,000 worth of notes in circulation. The notes were declared a legal tender, but the Government were unable to keep up their value by artificial methods. They fell to a low ebb, and passed from hand to hand at a discount of about 75 per cent, from ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... struggle, Wang Khan defeated Temujin near Ourga, where the mounds that cover the slain are still shown to the curious or skeptical visitor. After this serious, and in some degree unexpected reverse, the fortunes of Genghis sank to the lowest ebb. He was reduced to terrible straits, and had to move his camp rapidly from one spot to another. A small section of his followers, mindful of his past success and prowess, still clung to him, and by ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... aspirations. Its place and power, it is true, were shortly to be taken by religion, simple, puritanic, and intensely spiritual; but so far, the country was in a condition of utter disorder, morally and socially. Its national life was at its lowest ebb, its religious life was as yet undeveloped and gave little promise of the great things to come. The nation as a whole—people, patrician, and priest—had sunk to depths of moral degradation; the people, through ignorance and superstition; the patrician, through contact with ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... some bad, as in everything," replied the sailor. "We shall see. But now the ebb is evidently making. In three hours we will attempt the passage, and once on the other side, we will try to get out of this scrape, and I hope may find the captain." Pencroft was not wrong in his anticipations. Three hours later at low tide, the greater part of the sand forming ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... shall have; Yet each in turn shall rise and fall, As falls the dark brown autumn leaf; Or as those dread sky-kissing tides, Which toss frail barks high upon Some ghastly, frowning storm-beat shore,— Though slowly, yet quite surely ebb away. —Aye! Egypt fair once spread the Nile, And green-bay-tree-like proudly flourished; Her snowy sails sea-ports bedecked, And deeply ploughed the rolling main, Or clave the placid lakes, as does The gentle swan, when some soft ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... with the marked changes (corresponding with phases of the earth's movement) which take place in the atmosphere, at midnight, at two o'clock, and again at four o'clock. During those four hours falls a period wherein all life is at its lowest ebb, and every physician is aware that there is a greater likelihood of a patient's passing between midnight and 4 a.m., than at any other period during the cycle of ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... engineers had undertaken one of the most difficult pieces of railway engineering in the world, and the financiers of the company were having an equally desperate struggle. During the Civil War the finances of the nation were at a low ebb and money was exceedingly difficult to secure. Yet in spite of all obstacles the company had gone ahead in perfect good faith, and at that very time were hauling rails and track material from Alta, and soon from Cisco, to Truckee (then called Coburn Station on the old Emigrant ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Rich with all the colors of the East, glowing with the warmth and poetry of Arabian romance and story, "Mohammed" was rather the work of a thinker and a poet than of a master dramatist. It was never acted, Forrest himself judging that it had not that ebb and flow of passion, nor that strong presentation of character which of all things are so necessary for the stage. Yet in other plays, notably in "Senor Valiente" and especially in "De Soto," and "Mary's Birthday," Miles showed ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... our steps; let us pull again, with the ebb-tide, for the mouth of the river, and then coast it along shore; we may arrive at some settlement, if we do not starve by ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... gangway for the landing, which puts them all quite upon the scream. All three cutters race after you pell-mell, and it is much if they do not run into one another. You take the beach, stem on, with the tide upon the ebb, and by that time it ought to be getting on for midnight. What to do then, I need not tell you; but make all the stand you can to spare us any hurry. But don't give the knock-down blow if you can help ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... things which happened in Thessalia and in Achaia; and from these regions he proceeded to the Malian land, going along by a gulf of the sea, in which there is an ebb and flow of the tide every day. Round about this gulf there is a level space, which in parts is broad but in other parts very narrow; and mountains lofty and inaccessible surrounding this place enclose the whole land of Malis and are called ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... profitable cultivation. It requires that the land to be so treated shall be under the level of the river at full tide, and it is managed by providing a sluice through which the river water is allowed to flood the land at high tide, and again to escape at ebb, leaving a layer of mud generally about a tenth of an inch in thickness, which it brought along with it. By the repetition of this process, a layer of several feet in thickness, of an excellent soil, is accumulated on the surface. Herapath, who has carefully examined ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... that his dwelling did not float with the flood- tide, and become stranded with the ebb, the young lord was nearly as comfortably accommodated as he was while on board the little trading brig from the long town of Kirkaldy, in Fife, by which he had come a passenger to London. He received, however, every attention which could be paid him by his honest landlord, John Christie; for Richie ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... become level if there are no more upheavals? The ice of the upper Hudson was journeying toward the sea that it would never reach. The sun smote it, the high winds ground the honey-combed cakes together, and the ebb and flow of the tide permitted no pause in the work of disintegration. By the middle of March the blue water predominated, and adventurous steamers had already picked and pounded their way to ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... lengths, forming a pretty little sheet of perfectly smooth water between it and the island. Of course, to do this, the line of reef just mentioned must come very near the surface; as in fact was the case, the rock rising so high as to be two or three feet out of water on the ebb, though usually submerged on the flood. The boat was obliged to pass round one end of this last-named reef, where there was deep water, and then to haul its wind a little in ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... caught at last on the ebb of his resistance, one elbow was not enough. So he seized the other, and by the pair held her off from him, ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... belief in the town that Gaspard Roussillon never missed a good thing and always somehow got the lion's share. He went out with the ebb to return on the flood. Nobody was surprised, therefore, when he suddenly appeared in the midst of his friends, armed to the teeth and emotionally warlike to suit the occasion. Of course he ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... to all these, there are ups and downs of our own nature, the fluctuations which are sure to occur in any human heart, when faith seems to ebb and falter, and love to die down almost into cold ashes. But, dear brethren, whilst we shall always be liable to these fluctuations of feeling, it is possible for us to have, deep down below these, a central core of our personality, in which unchanging continuity may ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... to Garnett had of course marked a specially low ebb in her fortunes. Save in moments of exceptional dearth she had richer sources of supply; and he was nearly sure that, by running over the "society column" of the Paris Herald, he should find an explanation, not perhaps of her presence at Ritz's, but of her means of subsistence there. What really ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... time their stock of food was getting down to such a low ebb that there was little choice when it came to preparing a meal. True, Jimmy would run over a long list of things that appealed especially to his clamorous appetite; but after all was said and done, it might be noticed that each meal was very much a repetition ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... reached Eighth Avenue, and entered a car bound downwards. When the conductor came along, Smith said, "I pay for two," indicating Martin. This was fortunate; for Martin's purse was at a low ebb, his entire stock of money ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... yet no card seemed to turn up favourable to the royal cause, until the movement of General Monk from Scotland. Even then, it was when at the point of complete success, that the fortunes of Charles seemed at a lower ebb than ever, especially when intelligence had arrived at the little Court which he then kept in Brussels, that Monk, on arriving in London, had put himself under the orders ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... the great misfortune of the civilized world, at the present hour," said I, "that the state of morals in France is apparently at the very lowest ebb, and consequently the leadership of fashion is entirely in the hands of a class of women who could not be admitted into good society, in any country. Women who can never have the name of wife,—who know none of the ties of family,—these are the dictators whose dress ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Future? Will the progress of the last forty or the last ninety years be maintained? I trust it will, but one need not be a pessimist to be sensible that the humane treatment of the insane may have its ebb as well as its flow; that so far from its being true that there is a constant and certain tendency to humanity, there is also a strange tendency to relapse into inhuman ways. Vigilance is and always will be required, for if it be allowed to slumber, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... the saloon cabins at that moment. My task accomplished, I returned to the music-room, in which the wounded men still slept restlessly. I occupied my time in preparing a meal, and I took a strong glass of whisky and water, for my strength was beginning to ebb. I had endured much and fought hard, and had slept but little. As I stood looking down on my companions, I was aware of a grey shadow that the slender sunlight cast as a ghost upon the wall. I turned and ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... of date. If ever a herald of Christ falls under suspicion of caring more about life's comforts than about his work, good-bye to his usefulness! If ever he does so care, whether he be suspected of it or no, spiritual power will ebb ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... way was rough and broken. Jogues was greatly exhausted, and his wounded limb gave him such pain that he walked with the utmost difficulty. When he reached the shore, the day was breaking, and he found, to his dismay, that the ebb of the tide had left the boat high and dry. He shouted to the vessel, but no one heard him. His desperation gave him strength; and, by working the boat to and fro, he pushed it at length, little by little, into the water, entered it, and rowed to the vessel. The Dutch sailors received ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... on all manner of subjects. He asks his scientific friends to explain to him the mystery of a spring whose waters ebb and flow, of a lake which contained floating islands, and in one letter he tells a fascinating ghost story of quite the conventional type, about a haunted house, which drove any unwary tenant crazy, and the ghost of a murdered man which walked with clanking chains. Pliny was no cut ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... inures enormously to the benefit of the body-whole. Exceptionally, however, it fails to do so, and behold disease. This struggle and turmoil is not only necessary to life—it is life. Out of the varying chances of its warfare is born that incessant ebb and flow of chemical change, that inability to reach an equilibrium, which we term "vitality." The course of life, like that of a flying express train, is not a perfectly straight line, but an oscillating ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... have a kind of ebb and flow, sometimes discharging its current like the Fountain of Vaucluse, at others retaining and scarcely suffering it to run at all. The Levites, we are likewise told, used to sprinkle the water of Siloam on the altar at the Feast of ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... Thousands of feet above the lake-sea's lip, A rock in which old waters' rise and dip, Plunge and recoil, and backward eddying tide Had, age-long, worn, while races lived and died, Involved channels, where the sea-weed's drip Followed the ebb; and now earth-grasses sip Fresh dews from heaven, whereby on earth they bide— I sat and gazed southwards. A dry flow Of withering wind blew on my drooping strength From o'er the awful desert's burning length. Behind me piled, away ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... a mould and metal unless you have a fire. It is no use having a perfect Pattern unless you have a motive to copy it. Men do not go to the devil for want of examples; and morality is not at a low ebb by reason of ignorance of what the true type of life is. But nowhere but in the full-orbed teaching of the New Testament will you find a motive strong enough to melt down all the obstinate hardness of the 'northern iron' of the human will, and to make it plastic to His hand. If we can say, 'He ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... of the country were at the lowest ebb. But there was to be a speedy reversal of conditions, and the world was to learn how dangerous a man was leading the Continental troops. Washington, to whom a retreat was as hateful as it had been necessary, had long meditated an attack whenever any chance whatever of success might present itself. ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... to the shores on either side in position for sinking. Instead of flooding her they prepared an explosive bomb and timed it to go off at the fall of the tide. But the bomb failed to explode, and an ebb tide setting in, broke the stern moorings and drove her sideways on the shore. Here she lies now and the channel is still free to all our ships to come and go. We found, at the occupation, the record of the court-martial on the German naval ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... after public meetings were held or printed reports issued, funds often fell to their lowest ebb. Mr. Muller and his helpers were singularly kept from all undue leaning upon any such indirect appeals, and frequently and definitely asked God that they might never be left to look for any inflow ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... was to be done with his existence? In the plenitude of youthful health and strength, was his life to ebb away, like an unreplenished stream, flowing into nothingness? His days became more and more wearisome; the hours hung more and more heavily upon his hands; the feet of time sounded with iron tramp in his ears, yet never ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... the ebb of the tide the dark people that dwelt upon the marge of the sea fared shorewards and found the blue-eyed mariners lying dead beside their vessel; and they, marvelling greatly what manner of men these might have been, took counsel ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... looking its best, a boy came out of a dwelling that was half farmhouse, half manor-house, and that lay in a cup of low hills on the edge of a tract of moorland. The house belonged to a man named Walter Raleigh, of Fardell, a gentleman of good family whose fortunes had sunk to a low ebb. It was one-storied, with thatched roof, gabled wings, and a projecting central porch. Here lived Mr. Raleigh of Fardell with his wife Katherine, four sons and a daughter. It was a large family for such a small estate, and already the father was wondering what would happen to the ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... turn your name to me, that side I have not last seen: you cannot tell how I feel glad that you will not part with the name—Barrett—seeing you have two of the same—and must always, moreover, remain my EBB! ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... shore was her schoolroom also. She learned to read from letters traced in the sand, and to make them herself with shells and pebbles. She did her sums that, way, too, after she had learned to count the sails in the harbor, the gulls feeding at ebb-tide, and the great granite blocks which ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... show that "this decay of power and ebb of authority in the north, is being followed by similar processes in the south under yet more dangerous circumstances. People of this State residing in that direction have been compelled within the last three months, at the bidding ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... the rifts between more impressively chasmal. The tremendous volume of life that flows through the narrow and winding channels past the dim cliffs and pinnacles, and the lower banks which the lesser buildings form, is such that the highest tide of Broadway or Fifth Avenue seems a scanty ebb beside it. The swelling and towering omnibuses, the huge trucks and wagons and carriages, the impetuous hansoms and the more sobered four-wheelers, the pony-carts, donkey-carts, handcarts, and bicycles which fearlessly find ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... treasure-trove is found when the tide is at its lowest ebb, so often when the wall of impossibility seems an insuperable mass of concrete, it is found to be the merest paper. As the Intelligence officer, awed by the great solitude of the sleeping veldt, stood musing on its fringe, a voice hailed out ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... bones, of which mountains are formed, the tufa its tendons; its blood the veins of water which surround its heart, which is the ocean; its breathing and increase and decrease of blood in the pulses the ebb and flood of the sea; and the heat of the spirit of the world is fire which pervades the earth, and the vital soul dwells in the fires which from various apertures of the earth issue in springs and sulphur minerals ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... heroic mold. She came down from the old race of goddesses of her own Nibelungenlied, whose passions might consume them but had nothing in common with the ebb and flow of mortals. But great brains are fed by stormy souls, and in the souls of women there is an element of weakness, unknown, save in a few notable instances, to great men in the crises of their destiny; for women ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... under the embroidery of appearance; nor could he, keen-sighted as he was, penetrate into my heart, search my brain, and read my peculiar sympathies and antipathies; he had not known me long enough, or well enough, to perceive how low my feelings would ebb under some influences, powerful over most minds; how high, how fast they would flow under other influences, that perhaps acted with the more intense force on me, because they acted on me alone. Neither could he suspect for an instant the history of my communications ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... shot. From behind the wreck a small boat shot out into the moon's brilliance. Two figures sat in it, a woman and a man; and as the boat dropped swiftly down on the ebb he had time to notice that both were heavily muffled about the face. This was all he could see, for in a moment they had passed into the gloom, and the next the angle of the house hid them from view; but he could still hear the plash ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... commercial and material interests seemed wholly in the ascendant, and the anti-slavery cause was at a low ebb. But many things had happened in two decades, below the surface current of public events, and, just on the threshold of a new era, we may glance back over these twenty years. All the European world had been full of movement. France had passed through three revolutions. ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... him; that wiped the death-damp from his forehead; dropped the refreshing cordial on his tongue; held the mirror to his nostrils to ascertain if still, perchance, he breathed. The tides of the ocean had reached their farthest ebb and were setting towards the flood once more, bringing sweet and refreshing odors from the ever-heaving sea. The night winds were drying the dampness from the marble brow. Day was dawning, its amber light flowing along ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... left the bawling barkers shout their enticements, begging one's patronage. Up and down the street the endless patter of the feet of men and women, the wheeze of the little electrics and the blare of brassy music ebb and flow. Here and there is the dominant note of the Exposition, its pastel shades of burnt orange and red, and its indefinable blue. They flutter forth, hooped about the flagpoles with Oriental effect. Those wonderful lanterns, that ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... an uncle of the ill-fated Jehoiachin. He was the third son of Josiah, and, like his brothers, Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim, he was to see the fortunes of Judah ebb to their lowest point, and finally to witness the destruction of the capital and the ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... for persons of the first rank and distinction to give their birthday suits to the most favoured actors. I think Mr. Thurmond was honoured by General Ingolsby with his. But his finances being at the last tide of ebb, the rich suit was put in buckle (a cant word for forty in the hundred interest). One night, notice was given that the General would be present with the Government at the play, and all the performers on the stage were preparing to dress out in the suits presented. The spouse of Johnny (as he was ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... kept it to himself. This epigram remained at the time a profound secret to Lord Oldborough. Whilst Cunningham was going with a prosperous gale, it was not heard of; but it worked round, according to the manoeuvres of courts, just by the time the tide of favour began to ebb. Lord Oldborough, dissatisfied with one of Cunningham's despatches, was heard to say, as he folded it up, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... was now full—indeed, so crowded that no more men could be stowed on board—she got under way with the first of the ebb, and dropped down ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... great wonder, which I never could have deemed possible.. One end of the horn stood in the sea, but that you did not see. When you come to the sea-shore you will discover how much the sea has sunk by your drinking; that is now called the ebb. Furthermore he said: Nor did it seem less wonderful to me that you lifted up the cat; and, to tell you the truth, all who saw it were frightened when they saw that you raised one of its feet from the ground, for it was not such ...
— The Younger Edda - Also called Snorre's Edda, or The Prose Edda • Snorre
... stable adjoining, in which old Bay could enjoy himself in his quiet, prosaic way. A good-sized boat was hired, and, as the tide was in, we at first decided to go up the creek as far as possible and float down with the ebb. This, to the children, was like a voyage of discovery, and there was a general airing of geography, each little bay, point, and gulf receiving some noted name. At last we reached a deep, shaded pool, which was eventually dubbed "Bobsey's Luck;" for he nearly ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... complete the master-piece, to reduce that Leipzig, which had once patiently sustained, without being entirely exhausted, the burdens of a war that lasted seven years—to reduce it, I say, in six months, to so low an ebb, that even the opulent were in danger of perishing with hunger; that reputable citizens could no longer procure the coarsest fare; and that, though their hearts overflowed with pity and compassion, they were absolutely incapable of affording the slightest relief, not so much as ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... clearly. The majority of the bishops, writhing under the inhibitions, looked on in sullen acquiescence, submitting in a forced conformity, and believing, not without cause, that a tide which flowed so hotly would before long turn and ebb back again. Among the Reforming clergy there was neither union nor prudence; and the Protestants, in the sudden sunshine, were becoming unmanageable and extravagant. On the bench there were but four prelates who were on the moving side,—Cranmer, ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... advantage, with Haydn and Mozart. But the latter, however, sometimes come within near reach of the former; and had the means at their disposal been similar, they might possibly have equalled him. And, on the other hand, Beethoven's inspiration was sometimes at a comparatively low ebb. Speaking generally, however, the comparison, we ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... that I had experienced the ebb of some vitality, for it is the saddest thing about us that this bright spirit with which we are lit from within like lanterns, can suffer dimness. Such frailty makes one fear that extinction is our ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... interest in astronomy seemed, in Europe at least, to sink to a low ebb. When the Caliph Omar, in the middle of the seventh century, burnt the library of Alexandria, which had been the centre of intellectual progress, that centre migrated to Baghdad, and the Arabs became the leaders of science and philosophy. In astronomy they made careful observations. In the middle ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... entering the Sound of Mull; and on our left, at the eastern-most point of the island, Duart Castle, which commands the entrance to the Sound, looks down upon us from its rocky promontory. We have just passed the Lady Rock, which, bare and black at ebb-tide, but wave-washed at high-water, is the scene of a legend which has given a wicked notoriety to one of the ancient lairds of this same Duart. It gave rise to Campbell's poem of "Glenara," and forms the basis of Joanna Baillie's tragedy of "The Family Legend." But we have neither ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... began my Voyage (for North Carolina) from Charles-Town, being six English-men in Company, with three Indian-men, and one Woman, Wife to our Indian-Guide, having five Miles from the Town to the Breach we went down in a large Canoe, that we had provided for our Voyage thither, having the Tide of Ebb along with us; which was so far spent by that Time we got down, that we had not Water enough for our Craft to go over, although we drew but two Foot, or thereabouts. This Breach is a Passage through a Marsh lying to the Northward of Sullivans Island, ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... passive burden, on some soft and yielding substance, which he conjectured at once to be a beach of finely powdered coral fragments. As he touched this beach for an instant, the undertow of that vast dashing breaker sucked him back with its ebb again, a helpless, breathless creature; and then the succeeding wave rolled him over like a ball, upon the beach as before, in quick succession. Four times the back-current sucked him under with its wild pull in the self-same way, and four times the return wave flung him up upon the beach again ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... Civil War. The colored race then presented itself to me in the character of numerous contrabands of war, and as a people who, individually, yearned for the light and life of liberty. Ages of slavery had reduced them to the lowest ebb of manhood. From that degree of degradation I have been an interested spectator of the marvelously rapid evolution of the down-trodden race. From the commencement of this evolution to the present time I have been more or less in a position to closely observe their progress. At the close ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... exhibit the appearance of two harbours facing the two entrances of the Euripus. It would be difficult to find a station more dangerous for shipping; for not only do the winds come down with great violence from the high mountains on each side, but the strait itself of the Euripus does not ebb and flow seven times a day at stated times, as is reported, but the current changing irregularly, like the wind, now this way now that, is hurried along like a torrent rolling headlong down a steep mountain, so that no quiet is given to vessels there day or night. But ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... it now. So I betook myself to another church, and this other church got a credit which it did not deserve, for they had no family life to touch. It was a church at Chatham Square, and its usefulness consisted in the fact that it was situated where it could catch the ebb ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... Varick had been nineteen, his wife five years older. The two had soon parted, but they had made up their differences after a separation which lasted four years. Varick's fortunes had then been at their lowest ebb, and the two had drifted to Chichester, where Mrs. Varick had humble, respectable relations. After a while the woman had fallen ill, and finally died. Blanche had seen how it had pained and disturbed Varick to rake out the embers of the past, ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... the future, or contemplating the present, rather, from an active than from a passive standpoint; and, as a natural consequence, remained quite tranquil and composed—my feelings and emotions being at a lower ebb than they could now be, if the occasion would repeat itself. The idea of making a tour through Europe and to the Orient, had been continually revolving in my mind for many years; and now, that I saw the prospect open of once realizing the happy dreams of my ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... eaten; indeed, their stock of provisions had by this time gotten to a low ebb, and would not allow of much variety; though they managed to scrape enough together to satisfy everybody but Fritz, who growled a little, and wanted to know however a scout could do his ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... found other women worth studying deeply, so that the girls in his books do not read real enough to interest one greatly, and it is almost a relief to take up Treasure Island, The Wrecker, or The Ebb Tide, in which there is very little about them. Lady Violet Greville, in a recent article, expresses much the same opinion. She says, 'The late Robert Louis Stevenson had no opinion of women writers, he said they were incapable of grasping the essential ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... about an hour, the boat reaches a sort of cove, where the beach is entirely corn posed of small round boulders. They form a long ridge, the outer verge of which is always in motion, rolling to and fro with a crash like a volley of musketry at the rush and ebb of every wave. To climb over this ridge of moving stone balls is quite disagreeable; but after that one has only about twenty yards to walk, and the Sai-no-ike appears, surrounded on sides by wooded hills. ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... tide, if possible. The ships will be ready, for you know what our navy can do when required: but as you know, I have not one atom of stock on board. The flood-tide has made almost an hour, and we must sail at the first of the ebb, as twelve hours' delay may be most serious. Now, tell me—here is the list of what is required; boats will be ready and men in plenty to get it on board;—can you get ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... its pressure should detach the land-ice to which we were secured, and thus set us adrift and at the mercy of the tides. Happily, however, neither of these occurred, the floe remaining stationary for the rest of the tide, and setting off with the ebb which made soon after. In the mean while the Hecla had been enabled to get under sail, and was making considerable progress towards us, which determined me to move the Fury as soon as possible from her present situation into the bight I had sounded in the morning, where ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... warped out of the dock into the river, a steam-tug made fast to the tow-rope ahead, and another hooked herself on to the port side of the great ship to steady her, as she began to glide slowly with the tide, now just beginning to ebb, along through the hundreds of craft on ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... The Duke of Portland gravely expressed his wonder that any one could be dissatisfied. But the public were not to be gulled; that same evening the stock fell to 640, and the next day to 540. It soon got so low as 400. The ebb tide was running fast. "Thousands of families," wrote Mr. Broderick to Lord Chancellor Middleton, "will be reduced to beggary. The consternation is inexpressible, the rage beyond description." The Bank was pressed to circulate the South Sea bonds, but as the panic ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... him a suck of a piece of licorice I had. Then I saw that he had stopped and was hunched above the grating of a sewer. I could but think that his spirits had reached such an ebb that nothing save the contemplation of the foulest depths might salve his misery. But I was mistaken! His hand moved above the grating. Something flashed. Then I swelled my chest with pride in him. Truly, The Seraph ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... anchorage likes him best. The day declines: This night with us you harbour, and our Queen Shall lovingly receive you.' Staid and slow The King rode homewards, while behind him paced Augustine and his Monks. The ebb had left 'Twixt Thanet and the mainland narrow space Marsh-land more late: beyond the ford there wound A path through flowery meads; and, as they passed, Not herdsmen only, but the broad-browed kine Fixed on them long their meditative ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... however disastrous to local interests. The British force at Estcourt and at Mooi River were considered safe, and the enemy's advance in fact did not extend in any force beyond the latter. Very shortly after the affair at Willow Grange the tide began to ebb. The precise cause for this is still a matter of surmise. It may be that Joubert considered he had gathered in all that was needed to supply his positions around Ladysmith and behind the Tugela; it was reported at ...
— Story of the War in South Africa - 1899-1900 • Alfred T. Mahan
... tiptoe precautions. The picture needs not another scar or stain, now, to be the saddest work of art in the world; and battered, defaced, ruined as it is, it remains one of the greatest. We may really compare its anguish of decay to the slow conscious ebb of life in a human organism. The production of the prodigy was a breath from the infinite, and the painter's conception not immeasurably less complex than the scheme, say, of his own mortal constitution. There has been much talk lately of the irony of fate, but I suspect fate was never more ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... this made something beyond itself: and you will be the ebb of this great flood, and rather go back to the beast than overcome ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... Ironsyde, Sabina Dinnett and their son, together with those interested in them. Time, the supreme solvent, flows over existence, submerging here, lifting there, altering the relative attitudes of husband and wife, parent and child, friend and enemy. For no human relation is static. The ebb and flow forget not the closest or remotest connection between members of the human family; not a friendship or interest stands still, and not a love or a hate. Time operates upon every human emotion as it operates upon physical life; and ten years left no single situation at Bridetown or Bridport ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... another voice seemed to say "At evening time it shall be light," and "Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." She could have cried, but spirits were too absolutely at an ebb. She knew this was partly physical, because she was tired and faint, but it could not the better be overcome. Yet those streaks of sunlight were pleasant company, and Fleda watched them, thinking how bright they used to be once; till the oxen and sled came out from ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... expected her death, but was inexpressibly grieved to lose from out her life that sweet presence which had been an inspiration for thirty years, whose staunch support had never failed, even when friends were fewest and fortune at its lowest ebb. In times of greatest perplexity she could slip down to the Philadelphia home for sympathy and encouragement, and there was always a corner in the pocketbook from which a contribution came when it was most needed. If ever any human ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... she know? For Gatty lived in a dreary time, when religion was at one of its lowest ebb-tides, and had sunk almost to the level of heathen morality. If Gatty had been required to give definitions of the greatest words in the language, and had really done it from the bottom of her heart, ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... me more than I can ever express to her; she has many a time given me courage when my spirits were at a very low ebb. ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... patient, unremitting industry, according to his own ideas of industry. He visited the offices of his various brokers daily, reading the tape with the single-hearted devotion of a veteran speculator. He acquired a general knowledge of the ebb and flow of popular stocks. He frequently saw opportunities for quick profit in other stocks than the three he was dealing in, but he would not let himself ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... leaned against a balustrade of the great basin, to speak about a carp. Nobody made any answer. He afterwards addressed his remarks about these carp to some builder's-men who did not keep up the conversation in the regular way; it was but a question of carp with them. Everything was at a low ebb, and the king went away some little time after. As soon as we dared look at one another out of his sight, our eyes meeting told all." There was no venturing beyond looks. Fenelon had said, with severe charity, "God will have compassion upon a prince beset from his youth ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the Romans had gained no advantage. Scipio had not expected any; the assault was merely designed to draw away the garrison from the side next to the harbour, where, having been informed that part of the latter was left dry at ebb-tide, he meditated a second attack. While the assault was raging on the landward side, Scipio sent a division with ladders over the shallow bank "where Neptune himself showed them the way," and they had actually the good fortune to find the walls at that point undefended. Thus the city was ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... that these accidents occur in the night-time, in very hazy weather, or at ebb tide. In the latter case it is necessary for boats to be taken in carts over the sands down to low-water mark, before any assistance ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... of course, and practically decided the fate of the workman. Containing as this ticket usually did particulars as to the class to which the workman in question belonged; as to the wages he was worth, &c., the scale of ironworkers' wages in the town got to an unbearably low ebb. The masters held the full sway for a while; then the workpeople broke out in open revolt against the pernicious system of their masters, and thus commenced the great "ticket-of-leave" strike. Early in the dispute I was applied to by the strike ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... has not lost its freshness. Antelao and Tofana, guarding the vale above Cortina, show faint streaks of snow upon their amethyst. Little clouds hang in the still autumn sky. There are men dredging for shrimps and crabs through shoals uncovered by the ebb. Nothing can be lovelier, more resting to eyes tired with pictures than this tranquil, sunny expanse of the lagoon. As we round the point of the Bersaglio, new landscapes of island and Alp and low-lying mainland move into sight at every slow stroke of the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... appointments had absolutely no existence except in his imagination—though perhaps costermonging, at its lowest ebb, still claimed his services—he was able to make it very convenient indeed to visit his Aunt Elizabeth. History repeats itself, and the incident of the half-and-half happened again, point for point, until settlement-time came, and then ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Marlborough as one of the best-liked ministers of James's reign and of the first years of Charles's. "He was a person of great gravity, ability, and integrity; and, as the Caspian Sea is observed neither to ebb nor flow, so his mind did not rise or fall, but continued the same constancy in all conditions." The words are Fuller's, and they probably express the character of the Earl that had come down among ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... experienced an agitation with which he had been long familiar. He felt in himself an ebb and flow as of some strange power. A kind of marvellous energy, gathered by some means known to himself alone, issued slowly from him. A mysterious current passed between himself and the grave where the boy ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... directions in which discoveries might be made. The most marked contrast between him and earlier critics is his caution about altering the received text. He first stemmed the tide of rash emendation, and the ebb which began with him has continued ever since. The case for moderation in this respect has never been better stated than in his words: "It has been my settled principle that the reading of {216} the ancient ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... round Cape St John; where they take a N.W. direction, and continue to run very strong both within and without New Year's Isles. While we lay at anchor within this island, I observed that the current was strongest during the flood; and that on the ebb its strength was so much impaired, that the ship would sometimes ride head to the wind when it was at W. and W.N.W. This is only to be understood of the place where the ship lay at anchor, for at the very time we had a strong current setting ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... his marked effect on early Venetian art, Veronese painting fell for a time to a very low ebb; but Mantegna's influence was strongly felt here, and art revived in Liberale da Verona, Falconetto, Casoto, the Morone and Girolamo dai Libri, painters delightful in themselves, but having little connection with ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... white Is pride past sum: take care, take care! Even to dream of wish'd delight Too much perturbs the ebb of night— Bind up, bind ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... established law allows every man to speak his mind without reserve. That is the law, replied Maternus; you may proceed in perfect security. When you speak of the ancients, speak of them with ancient freedom, which, I fear, is at a lower ebb than even the genius ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... misery and violence, which began in May, 1798, and its repression, we may pass over, coming to their political consequences. It is admitted on all hands that the morality and religion of England reached their lowest ebb at this very time; we are, therefore, ready to learn that the Act of Union between England and Ireland, which followed on the heels of this insurrection, was carried by unlimited bribery and corruption. The Parliament of Ireland, as we know, was ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... in times not unlike our own, when wars had shaken civilization, the arts of peace were unsettled, religion was at a low ebb. As a young man, he experienced an intense revulsion from the vicious futility of Roman society, fled into the hills, and lived in a cave for three years alone with his thoughts of God. It would be easy to regard him as an eccentric boy: ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... passion of the soul, and being such, is subject to ebb and flow, and to be extreme both ways. For whatever is a passion of the soul, whether love or hatred, joy or fear, is more apt to exceed, or come short, than to keep within its due bounds. Hence, oft-times that which is loved today is ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was taken up systematically in Great Britain in the eighth century by King Offa, to whom is credited the maxim, "He who would be secure on land must be supreme at sea"; but it must have dropped to a low ebb by 1066, for William of Normandy landed in England unopposed. Since that time Great Britain's naval defense, committed to her navy, has increased steadily in effectiveness and power, keeping pace with the increase in the national interests it defended, and utilizing ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... the ebb, and as the cutter passed through the narrows at Connel Ferry, she pitched and tossed in the turbulent current, here forming a perfect race, in a way which put a stop to further conversation. The breeze being steady, she, however, with Murray's skilful ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... her hope to the lowest ebb. A sudden hurt reached her heart. His unregeneracy suggested unfaithfulness to her. Their positions had been reversed. It was she that had been denied. Duty reasserted ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... down into his pocket with angry decision. But—it didn't come out. The color began to ebb out of his face. The countenances about him showed a growing interest; and some of them a heightened satisfaction. There was an uncomfortable pause—then he forced out, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chapter of Exodus the Lord addresses Moses at the Red Sea: "Wherefore criest thou unto me?" Moses had not cried unto the Lord. He trembled so he could hardly talk. His faith was at low ebb. He saw the people of Israel wedged between the Sea and the approaching armies of Pharaoh. How were they to escape? Moses did not know what to say. How then could God say that Moses was crying to Him? God heard the groaning heart of Moses and the groans to Him sounded like loud ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... modelled boats rested upon the beach, and five miles out to sea was pictured upon the horizon, like a phantom ship, the weird and indistinct outlines of a United States Coast Survey schooner. The tide was on the last of the ebb, and finding it impossible to get within half a mile of the point, I anchored my little craft, built a fire in my bake-kettle, made coffee on board, and, quietly turning in for a doze, rested until the tide arose, when in the darkness ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... young men shall utterly fail.' Physical weariness, weakness, the longing for rest, the consciousness of ever-narrowed and narrowing powers, will come to you, and if you grow up to be old men, which it is probable that many of you will do, you will have to sit and watch the tide of your life ebb, ebb, ebbing ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... half-transformed, with qualities That oft betrayed each other, elements Not blent but struggling, breeding strange effects, Passing the reckoning of his friends or foes. Haughty and generous, grave and passionate; With tidal moments of devoutest awe, Sinking anon to furthest ebb of doubt; Deliberating ever, till the sting Of a recurrent ardor made him rush Right against reasons that himself had drilled And marshalled painfully. A spirit framed Too proudly special for obedience, ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... day at noon we were near Condillac Island, after which a sea-breeze from the westward enabled us to pass Cape Voltaire, at which point our last year's survey terminated. When we were within the Cape we found an ebb-tide setting out of a bight, which trended deeply in to the southward and appeared to be studded with rocky islands. This adverse tide continued to run all the evening and prevented our reaching the bottom; so that at sunset we dropped the anchor a few miles to the south ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King
... the American army were now at the lowest ebb, so that had Howe been an efficient general it must have been either captured or entirely destroyed. Through the treason of Adjutant Demont, who had deserted to Lord Percy with complete information of their weakness, Forts Washington and Lee were captured, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... eleven—five minutes after eleven, to be exact; the month April; the day sunny, with a humming northerly wind; the tide drawing far out towards low-ebb, and the air so clear that the small figure standing on the edge of the ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... around the camp-fire, brooding because hope was at lowest ebb; listening because the weird, black silence, with its moan of wind and hollow laugh of brook, compelled them to hear; waiting for sleep, for the hours to pass, for whatever ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... of a submarine forest was further heightened by the droves of gaily-coloured fish that flitted in and out among the branches. Perhaps the most beautiful of all were the little dolphins. The diving expeditions went away from the ship with the ebb tide, and returned with the flow. Sometimes their search would take them long distances away, and on one occasion they were working fully ten miles from the Veielland. When the water suddenly ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... play, and ideas come rolling in upon us, like waves impelled by a strong wind. There is in the ebb and flow of Shakspeare's soul all the grandeur of a mighty operation of nature; and when we think or speak of him, it should be with humility where we do not understand, and a conviction that it is rather to the narrowness of our own mind than to any failing in the art of the great magician, that ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson |
