"Fathom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... behind Hyacinthe," he indifferently acknowledged, "I begin to fathom the secret of my life failure. So my morning hasn't been ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... see for a harbour to put into, which they did, and soon brought us an account that there was a deep bay, with a very good road, and several little islands, under which they found good riding, in ten to seventeen fathom water, and accordingly there ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... Where the torrent had been seen, it was now only heard; where the wild cliffs had displayed every variety of form and attitude, a dark mass of mountains now alone appeared; and the vale, which far, far below had opened its dreadful chasm, the eye could no longer fathom. A melancholy gleam still lingered on the summits of the highest Alps, overlooking the deep repose of evening, and seeming to make the stillness of the ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... slept like an angel, holy and white, Till ten o' the clock in the shank o' the night (When men and other wild animals prey) And then she cried in the viewless gloom: "There's a man in the room, a man in the room!" And this maiden lady (they make it appear) Leapt out of the window, five fathom sheer! ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... he sternly answered. "There you have the catalogue of all my rightful titles. And besides, it pleases me, for a reason I cannot entirely fathom, to be unpardonably candid and to fling my destiny into your lap. To-night, as I have said, the Tranchemer lies off Manneville; keep counsel, get me a horse if you will, and to-morrow I am embarked for desperate service ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... far as the eye could reach out the sea continued and upon its bosom floated tiny islands, those in the distance reduced to mere specks; but ever beyond them was the sea, until the impression became quite real that one was LOOKING UP at the most distant point that the eyes could fathom—the distance was lost in the distance. That was all—there was no clear-cut horizontal line marking the dip of the globe below ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thing was incomprehensible to him. Why under heaven had she done it? How could one so sensitive have done a wanton cruel thing like this? Her reason he could not fathom. The facts that confronted him were that she had done it, and had meant to carry the crime through. Only detection ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... a stirring of something within him impossible to fathom; something apart from himself, strange and different, like the birth of a soul; a second personality, unknown, unrevealed. His heavy eyes gleamed through the slits. The round of his chin stiffened; his mouth took new lines. The luxurious artist personality of the musician was dormant for the first ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... are naturally inside of all the secrets of the big cattle trust. I have watched the old Croesus' career for years. It's only since I got into possession of the law business of this branching-out railroad that I have been able to fathom ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... periods of thine absence? More heavenly than those twinkling stars seem to us the everlasting eyes which Night has opened within us. Farther they see than the palest of those numberless hosts; not needing light, they fathom the depths of a loving heart, filling a higher space ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... away to your hotel and hide in your room, and lock and double-lock the doors, and begin to study timetables with a view to quitting Paris on the first train leaving for anywhere, the only drawback to a speedy consummation of this happy prospect being that no living creature can fathom the meaning ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... that it is, most certainly. That profound wisdom; that toleration of the weaknesses of men; that sympathy with men, who cannot fathom the mysteries of life, and the struggle for life of all things that love life; that spirit I call God, and I don't think that a better name has been found ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... quite fathom him," confessed Hodge. "If ever I saw a deceptive young scoundrel, it's that chap. At times he's so meek and modest that he dazes me. At other times he's so flippant and forward that I want to collar him and shake him out of his clothes. I wouldn't know ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... Life of the Herschels; they could not have had a more accomplished biographer, if they had waited for it another century. Your article on Argon fills me with amazement and admiration. How can the human mind fathom such things! I beg you to send me the corrected proofs to-morrow by return of post, as I want to make it up immediately. If anything new is said on the subject at the British Association, you can add a note to be printed at the ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... not given to a humble man like myself, occupying a position of no authority, to fathom what may be in the minds of those great Princes of the Church, the Archbishops. In effect they rule the country, and it is possible that they prefer to place on the throne a drunken nonentity who will offer no impediment to their ambitions, rather than to elect a moral young man who might in time ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... cried I, turning to the negro postillion, but that sable worthy could not understand my question. The most expressive pantomimes were as unavailable as words, and so in despair I turned again into the porch, and stood in a reverie. I was clearly a fathom deep in love, and as my extreme height is but five feet eleven and a half, that is equivalent to saying that I was over head and ears in love with the strange lady. I began to talk to myself. 'By Venus!' said I, aloud, 'but she is an ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... theories ran riot through his mind its to the motive for the theft of the Drifter. Then he decided that it must be some professional who had done the act. It was hard to fathom the ultimate plans of such an abstractor, who would not dare to use the machine in any public way and could scarcely ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... recognized as the great continental champion of Darwinism—the Huxley of Germany. Like Huxley, Haeckel had at once made the logical application of the Darwinian theory to man himself, and he sought now to trace the exact lineage of the human family as no one had hitherto attempted to fathom it. Utilizing his wide range of zoological and anatomical knowledge, he constructed a hypothetical tree of descent—or, if you prefer, ascent—from the root in a protozoon to the topmost twig or most recent offshoot, man. From that day till this Haeckel's persistent labors have been directed ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... basins—results of erosion, most likely—that are described as natural bath-tubs. The middle and largest of these pools is partly filled with silt, probably occluding the entrance to a cavern which formerly opened into it, a fathom or so below the water-surface. This cave was the hiding-place of a native woman whose father had discovered her love for one of Ponce de Leon's soldiers. He forbade her to have anything to do with the enemies of his country, enlarged on ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... birds were singing. The lichi tree by the tank looked like a smudge of ink on a background a shade less deep. The south wind was blindly roaming about in the darkness like a sleep-walker. The stars in the sky with vigilant unblinking eyes were trying to penetrate the darkness, in their effort to fathom ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... two were bearing out—none too soon, for those pumas crowded up once or twice within a fathom of their deck, devilish and devouring. But they wore away with a capricious current, and down a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... burning to Roderick's heart, but he had to master his own agony a moment, in the effort to support Pauline who had utterly broken down. When she had recovered sufficiently, he protested tenderly that there was a mystery in all this which he was unable to fathom, and entreated her to help him discover it by telling him minutely all that had happened since they had last met. She gradually summoned strength and composure enough to do so, relating in detail the scene in ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... progress. The sons and daughters of men may then, without mockery, stand before the great throne of love and worship the beauty and the wonder and the glory of the earth, sky, and sea, as brothers and sisters in one holy unity, and be more worthy to fathom the deeper mystery. Thus Socialism, or the law of the religion of love, unfalteringly maintains: That private property in land is public robbery. It is public robbery because, the land being the source of all the necessaries of life, it should belong equally to ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... of interests at present springing up in Europe, which is difficult to fathom. Just now it seems as if the Polish insurrection were being fomented by Austria, at French instigation, in order that the hands of Russia may be tied, so that in case of war with America, we may be deprived of the aid of our great European friend. England sees it in this ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pale-faced moon; Or dive into the bottom of the deep Where fathom-line would never touch the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... means an economic loss to the countries concerned of $15,000,000,000. But the economic value of the lives destroyed represents only a small fraction of their potentiality—socially, morally, and spiritually. No human brain can calculate, no heart can fathom the cost or loss ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... it to you to make more careful enquiries," Seaman replied. "All I can tell you is that I made up my mind last night to interview him once more and try to fathom his very mysterious behaviour. I found the door of your butler's sitting-room locked, and a very civil fellow—Mr. Pelham's valet he turned out to be—told me that he had left in the car which went ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... having had recourse to the vile agency of Caterine Collins in enacting the said Banshee, for the purpose of giving the last fatal blow to the almost dying Alice Goodwin. He felt, and he had reason to feel, that there was a mystery about the Black Spectre, which, for the life of him, he could not fathom. He was, however, a firm and resolute man, and after a moment or two's thought he declined to make any further disclosure on the subject, but reverted to the general topic ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Julius Caesar brought forth of Africa; it stood in Faustus's time leaning against the church-wall of St. Peter's; but Pope Sixtus hath erected it in the middle of St. Peter's churchyard. It is fourteen fathom long, and at the lower end five fathom four square, and so forth smaller upwards. On the top is a crucifix of beaten gold, the stone standing on four lions of brass. Then he visited the seven churches of Rome, that were St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Sebastian, St. John Lateran, St. Laurence, ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... 69: Blanco thus describes the tobacco of the Philippines: "It is an annual, growing to the height of a fathom, and furnishes the tobacco for the estancos (licensed shops). General opinion prefers the tobacco of Gapan, but that of the Pasy districts, Laglag and Lambunao, in Iloilo, of Maasin or Leyte, is appreciated for its fine aroma; also ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... is as jentle as that of the Columbia glides Smoothly with an eavin surface, and appears to be Sufficiently deep for the largest Ship. I attempted fathom it with a Cord of 5 fathom which was the only Cord I had, could not find bottom 1/3 of the distance across. I proceeded up this river 10 miles from it's enterance into the Columbia to a large house on the N E. Side and Encamped near the house, the flees being So noumerous ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... upon her face, and saw her turn slowly back to the house with eyes down—troubled. The mother moved away. The father bent his head upon his hand with closed eyes. The girl came back to her work, but the song on her lips had died. She worked silently with a far look in her eyes, trying to fathom it. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... into the pool at this spot,' he said. 'Search the rock with your hands as you descend, and, about a fathom and a half down, you will find a hole. Enter it, head-first, but going slowly, for the lava rock is sharp and may cut your ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... ministers! you novices! We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward; Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us; We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us; We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also; You furnish your parts toward eternity; Great or small, you furnish your ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... got no breath to waste in hollering," he panted. "Why, there's a good fathom and a half or two fathom o' water under her keel, and if I slack out down she'll go. Wants a couple o' boats to back in, one on each side, and get a rope under her thwarts. They could get her ashore ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... Isolda, Why this to me? When clearly was disclosed what before I could fathom not, what joy was mine to find my friend was free from fault! In haste to wed thee to my hero with flying sails I followed thy track: but howe'er can happiness o'ertake the swift course of woe? More food for Death did I make: ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... readily allowed, there are truths in Christianity which reason cannot fathom. Not because they are opposed to reason, but because they are beyond its reach. They are infinite, while man's reason is finite. But it is only by the light of reason that man can see any consistency or propriety in the assertion of such truths. Reason may sanction what ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... awful waste and stupidity of human life such as any great city unbares. But the Rector used the many instances to illustrate the requirements of wide sympathy, and to teach us to reverence the qualities of personality even when we could not fathom the reasons for apparent foolishness. He would say things like this: "Never forget that the development of our free will is what God wants. Love may make mistakes, but they are not failures. There are times when one's own life is of very little importance compared ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... composition," observed Shirley, as Moore concluded. "Your censor-pencil scored it with condemnatory lines, whose signification I strove vainly to fathom." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... adds (p. 554): 'I have done all that I could to gain true understanding of this dogma and to find the solution of the difficulties surrounding it. I confess to you quite simply that I still cannot properly fathom it. That does not discourage me; I suppose, as other philosophers in other cases have supposed, that time will unfold the meaning of this noble paradox. I wish that Father Malebranche had thought fit to defend it, but he took other measures.' Is it possible ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... face to face, so close that they could feel each other's breath on their faces. They gazed deep into one another's eyes with that gaze in which two souls seem to blend. They sought the impenetrable unknown of each other's being. They sought to fathom one another, mutely and persistently. What would they be to one another? What would this life be that they were about to begin together? What joys, what happiness, or what disillusions were they preparing in this long, indissoluble tte—tte of marriage? And it seemed ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... prolongation of their patent for twenty-five years, they have since that time drained many of the deep mines in Cornwall, which but for the happy union of such genius must immediately have ceased to work. One of these engines works a pump of eighteen inches diameter, and upwards of 100 fathom or 600 feet high, at the rate of ten to twelve strokes of seven feet long each, in a minute, and that with one fifth part of the coals which a common engine would have taken to do the same work. The power of this engine may be easier comprehended by saying that it raised a weight ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... in the year 1858, falls into the Victoria N'yanza on the west side. Most unfortunately, as we led off to cross it, rain began to pour, so that everybody and everything was thrown into confusion. I could not get a sketch of it, though Grant was more fortunate afterwards; neither could I measure or fathom it; and it was only after a long contest with the superstitious boatmen that they allowed me to cross in their canoe with my shoes on, as they thought the vessel would either upset, or else the river would ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... to the land, in contrast to the sea, and seems to be intended to intensify and extend the meaning of the term previously used. The passage is difficult. Expert Hawaiians profess their inability to fathom its meaning.] ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... cautiously for this opening. One of the men constantly heaved the lead and cried the soundings as the ship progressed. The pirate chief kept to the left of the channel and finally passed through into a wide lagoon, with a scant fathom to spare at the shallowest place. The Fortune entered without difficulty, but the deeply-laden Francis grounded midway in and had to wait several hours for the tide to ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... go to the end of the terrace, contemplate the roadstead at our feet, and then return home. To-night the harbor looks only like a dark and sinister rent, which the moonbeams cannot fathom,—a yawning crevasse opening into the very bowels of the earth, at the bottom of which lie faint and small glimmers, an assembly of glow-worms in a ditch—the lights of the ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... and benumbing the men. 4. One of the augurs, in consequence, advised that they should sacrifice to the wind; and a sacrifice was accordingly offered; when the vehemence of the wind appeared to every one manifestly to abate. The depth of the snow was a fathom;[215] so that many of the baggage-cattle and slaves perished, with about thirty of the soldiers. 5. They continued to burn fires through the whole night, for there was plenty of wood at the place of encampment. But those who came up late could get no wood; those therefore who had arrived before, ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon
... a couple of rows, but she wa'n't discouraged—not by a forty fathom. She got after her brother mornin', noon and night about the smokin' habit. The most provokin' part of it, so she said, was that he ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... it be on a communion Sunday," the Elder had said, with an expression on his face which Draxy could not quite fathom; "I can't tell you what it 'ud be to me to promise myself over again to the blessed Saviour, the same hour I promise to you, darling, I'm so afraid of loving Him less. I don't see how I can remember anything ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... great poem of the Great Author. Not to learn how to read it, to spell out its meaning, to appreciate its beauties, or to attempt to fathom its mysteries, is ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... much," replied Prissie, half frightened at her manner, which was sweet enough but had an intangible hardness about it, which Priscilla felt, but could not fathom. "I thought you'd be so glad about the decision Miss Heath and Miss Eccleston have ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... feeling of terror with which he filled her at the first moment of each encounter was far worse than mere dislike. Intuitively, she regarded him as a menace, and, through his unvarying politeness, she found herself trying to fathom his real intentions. What object could he have had in ranging himself with the suitors for her hand? He was very rich himself. Aside from his own fortune, "poor Jane"—as every one called his first wife—had left a handsome amount, which, ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... considerable way, I was unwilling to discourage the men, and reluctantly gave up my intention of ascertaining the depth and the character of the bed. There was a general shout in the boat when we found ourselves in one fathom, and we soon after landed on a low point of mud, immediately under the butte of the peninsula, where we unloaded the boat, and carried the baggage about a quarter of a mile to firmer ground. We arrived just in time for ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... her husband's countenance; who had no other wish, no other prayer, no other hope than to please him. She felt that the eye of Frederick never rested upon her with any other expression than that of cold friendship or absolute indifference. The reason for this she could never fathom. Elizabeth would have given her heart's blood to be beloved by him for one single day, yes, for one short, blessed hour; to be clasped to his heart, not for form or etiquette, but as a loving and ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... your humble writer. For the western country, as a hardy and profitable stock of thrifty hogs, the Berkshire mixed or crossed with the Poland China, would be my choice, but every man has his own notions concerning the breed of his stock. The main point is to keep them healthy. Please fathom these instructions, which will cost you no ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... pale green as delicate as the leaves burgeoning beneath it, and Loveday drew herself up in a bunch, knees to chin, her brown strong hands clasped and her slim feet curved over the slope of the smooth granite. The wood below was wrapping itself in mystery, and her eyes attempted to fathom its fastnesses. Ordinarily, she was fearful of venturing into the darkness under the trees when once the evening had fallen, and it was then she was accustomed to come out up to her boulder, but this evening she was strung to any courage, for she walked in that certainty which on rare occasions ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... something that would run. You do me justice when you give me credit for good intentions; but the extent of my good-will and strong and warm interest in you personally and your great undertaking, you cannot fathom nor express. ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... to me. I must be growing in wickedness, to fathom that of others, I who so short a time ago disbelieved in the very existence of such a thing. I remembered having heard that the young lady and her family were extremely anxious to form his acquaintance, and that her cousin had coolly informed Ada that ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... impecunious assemblage, gathered for mere sport. One gentleman did, indeed, offer to stake "that 'ere blowsy bob," as though a shilling in his possession were a rarity of which his friends must be certainly aware. What was the occult meaning of the epithet "Blowsy" I could not fathom, but there were no takers; and, after the windows had been opened for a few minutes to clear the atmosphere, they were closed again; the door locked; the two markers took their place at a table in front of the birds, with bits of chalk in their hands; mine host stood by as referee in case of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... 28th we sighted a cape of the said coast, off which we sounded in from 45 to 70 fathom, but shortly after we got no bottom, and in the evening the land ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... being the principal arm, up which the boats went some 30 miles, or about 10 beyond the barracoon. Fresh water can be obtained almost immediately inside the entrance, as the stream runs down very rapidly with the ebb tide. The least water crossing the bar (low-water— springs) was 1-1/2 fathom, one cast only therefrom from 2 to 5 fathoms, another 7 fathoms nearly ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Kantos Kan," I whispered, "by 'his poor mother'?" for the words had seemed to carry a sinister meaning which I could not fathom. ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... whirled hurriedly; and not a fathom's length away rode a second small boat; and standing forward were two men, their revolvers levelled directly at the ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... skipper, the cook, the boy and two men for each boat. Each trawl had a thousand hooks, a strong ground line six thousand feet long, with a smaller line two and a half feet in length, with hook attached, at every fathom. These hooks were baited and the trawl was set each night. The six trawls stretched away from the vessel like the spokes from the hub of a wheel, the buoy marking the outer anchor of each trawl being over a mile away. I was captain of a dory this year, ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... enough, Barry; thank God it is all over!" she said, at the end, "and we know," she went on, with one of her rare revelations of the spiritual deeps that lay so close to the surface of her life, "we know that she is safe and satisfied at last, in His care." For a moment her absent eyes seemed to fathom far spaces. ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... Parisian heroine, unable to fathom the mystery of the fanatical hearts of the colony, ventures to think that her love for the Japanese hero and his equally great devotion to her is the important human relation on the horizon. She flouts his obscure work, pits her charms against it. In ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... episodes as these was difficult to fathom. Captain Waterman demanded a legal investigation, but nothing came of his request and he was commended by his owners for his skill and courage in bringing the ship to port without losing a spar or a sail. It was a skipper of this old school who blandly ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... we now understand we cannot infer with plainness and certainty the precise means and method by which we can discriminate our friends in heaven need be no obstacle to believing the fact itself; for there are millions of undoubted truths whose conditions and ways of operation we can nowise fathom. Upon the whole, then, we conclude that we cannot by our mere understandings decide with certainty the question concerning future recognition; but we are justified in trusting to the accuracy of that doctrine, since it rests safely with the free ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... a scrutinizing gaze, Resolved to fathom these your secret ways: But, sift them as I will, Your ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... the energetic promoter of the Atlantic Telegraph, then making (I think he said) his thirtieth transit within five years. He was certainly entitled to the freedom of the ocean, if intimate acquaintance with every fathom of its depth and breadth could establish a claim. It rather surprised me, afterwards, to see such science and experience yield so easily to the common weakness of seafaring humanity. Mr. Field told me that throughout the fearful weather to which the Niagara and Agamemnon were exposed, on their ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... He occasionally tried to fathom a comrade with seductive sentences. He looked about to find men in the proper mood. All attempts failed to bring forth any statement which looked in any way like a confession to those doubts which he privately acknowledged in himself. He was afraid to make an open ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... very little way from the horizontal, scarcely more than two inches in a fathom, and the stream ran gently murmuring at our feet. I compared it to a friendly genius guiding us underground, and caressed with my hand the soft naiad, whose comforting voice accompanied our steps. With my reviving spirits these mythological notions seemed ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... mother, old Hagar attempted to tell her. "Could you bear Miss Margaret's death as well," she said, "if Maggie, instead of being bright and playful as she is, were weak and sick like Hester?" and her eyes fastened themselves upon Madam Conway with an agonizing intensity which that lady could not fathom. "Say, would you bear it as well—could you love her as much—would you change with me, take Hester for your own, and give me little Maggie?" she persisted, and Madam Conway, surprised at her excited manner, which she attributed in a measure to ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... Bonner known that now gray-haired, gray-mustached veteran. Twenty-five years had he liked him, admired him, and much of late had he sought to know him, but Hazzard was a man he could not fathom. ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... things in me—because—Now you can punish me for being proud in earnest!"—It was said in great confusion; it had cost Faith a struggle; the white and red both strove in her downcast face. Mr. Linden might not fathom what was not in a man's nature; but Faith had hardly ever perhaps given him such a token of the value she set ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... he said at last. I came to a fathom and a half. 'That's the bank,' he said; 'we'll give it a bit of a berth ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Mrs Jane. "When did you ever see a man that could fathom a woman? Good, simple soul that he was!—she made him think black was white with holding up a finger. She glistened bravely, and he thought she was gold. Well!—we shan't have much peace now,— take my word for it. Eh, this world!—'tis ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... and wooden handles (about three feet long). The points should be sharp, but not the barbs. Sometimes the barbs are omitted altogether. Each head should have an eye to which is attached twenty feet of one-quarter inch rope. On each rope, six feet from the spearhead, is a fathom mark made by tying on a rag ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... But the most skillful physiognomists, those divers into the soul, on fixing their looks upon it, if it had been possible for a subject to sustain the glance of the king,—the most skillful physiognomists, we say, would never have been able to fathom the depths of that abyss of mildness. It was with the eyes of the king as with the immense depths of the azure heavens, or with those more terrific, and almost as sublime, which the Mediterranean reveals under the keels of ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... and the consequence was, that soon after I resumed the plough, I wrote the "Poet's Welcome."[177] My reading only increased while in this town by two stray volumes of Pamela, and one of Ferdinand Count Fathom, which gave me some idea of novels. Rhyme, except some religious pieces that are in print, I had given up; but meeting with Fergusson's Scottish Poems, I strung anew my wildly-sounding lyre with emulating vigour. When my father died, his all went among the ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... advancing, the jaws retreating, and the nostrils leaving the lips, until they finally settle in a detached villa midway between the eyes and the mouth. This is the nose. I do not know the use of it. I cannot fathom the meaning of it. It is a solemn mystery. See the face of an orang-outang. It is a countenance, a signboard with three distinct lines of writing on it, the eyes, the nose and the mouth. You may not think much of this particular nose. Neither do I. I think it is situated ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... the sun Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes Follow thy fair sun, unhappy shadow For auld lang syne, my dear Four and twenty bonny boys From Oberon, in fairy land From the forests and highlands From the white blossom'd sloe my dear Chloe requested Full fathom five thy ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... commotion in the back of the court-room. He lifted his gavel for silence, his gaze falling upon a dripping, shivering, red-haired girl, who raised to his face a pair of copper-colored eyes in which shone a soul, the magnitude of which the judge could not fathom with ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... blind obedience, in habituating them to proceed upon grounds of fact with which they can rarely be sufficiently acquainted, and in rendering them executive instruments of designs the bottom of which they cannot possibly fathom. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a dry twig snapped somewhere near him. The sound went through the anxious youth like a shock of electricity. Its direction he could not fathom; yet he was sure that the branch had crackled under the pressure of a foot. Somebody—or something—was approaching his fire, which now threw a dull red light across the forest glade. Enoch's eyes were fastened first upon one blot of shadow and then another. Occasionally, ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... plough of adamant, and oxen that from tawny jaws breathed flame of blazing fire, and with bronze hoofs smote the earth in alternate steps, and had led them and yoked them single-handed, he marked out in a line straight furrows, and for a fathom's length clave the back of the loamy earth; then he spake thus: 'This work let your king, whosoever he be that hath command of the ship, accomplish me, and then let him bear away with him the imperishable coverlet, the fleece glittering with ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... aside towards the sacred enclosure which stood behind them. Meryl turned also, and ventured as she did so to glance into his face. It was stern again now, but she knew for a brief moment as he made the exclamation it had not been so, and for a reason she did not seek to fathom her ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... respectable fellow, with a voice rendered hoarse and rough by constantly shouting his wares. But by the whispered words that had passed I knew that Ambler was in his confidence. The nature of this I had several times tried to fathom. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... in extenuation. "You can tell when he salutes. He shows the back of his hand." Secretly, they were proud of him. Standish came of a long chain of soldiers, and that the weakest link in the chain had proved to be himself was a sorrow no one else but himself could fathom. Since he was three years old he had been trained to be a soldier, as carefully, with the same singleness of purpose, as the crown prince is trained to be a king. And when, after three happy, glorious years at West Point, he was found not clever enough to pass the examinations and was dropped, ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... to the fluke of one of our mudhooks next time we come to anchor, and after it's laid a while on the bottom of Singapore harbor, or wherever it is we next let go, under twenty, thirty, or forty fathom of water, whatever it is, I'll let you see what it ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... still a woman's voice outside the castle, husband, And 'tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place. Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventure Ere ever thou ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... puzzled her much as well as grieved her. She knew his loneliness, and could understand that he might be melancholy, but why he should shrink from the home he so loved was beyond what she could fathom. ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Peking dust which is so rapidly converted into such clinging slush by a few minutes' rain. Then immediately below, for eight feet or so, there is a curious soil full of stones and debris, which must mean something geologically, but which no one can explain. Finally, at about a fathom and a half there is a sea of despond—the real and solid substratum, thick, tightly bound clay, which has to be pared off in thin slices just as you would do with very old cheese. This is work which breaks your hands and your back. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... it would do me to be copied, or what good it would do that mind to copy me, if farther consequences are expressly and in principle ruled out as motives for the claim (as they are by our rationalist authorities) I cannot fathom. When the Irishman's admirers ran him along to the place of banquet in a sedan chair with no bottom, he said, "Faith, if it wasn't for the honor of the thing, I might as well have come on foot." So here: but for the honor of the thing, I might as well have remained uncopied. ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... Induction, postponing that of Reasoning, on the ground that it is necessary to obtain premises before we can reason from them. Now, Induction is mainly a process for finding the causes of effects: and in attempting to fathom the mode of tracing causes and effects in physical science, I soon saw that in the more perfect of the sciences, we ascend, by generalization from particulars, to the tendencies of causes considered singly, and then reason downward from those separate tendencies, to the effect of the same ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... any difference, sir," he said. "Where I take one shell from its rock, I leave a hundred, a thousand. The sea is a good mother, she has plenty children. See!" he added, lifting a splendid horned shell, "this is the Royal Triton. On a rock I found him, twenty fathom down. It was a family party, I think, for all around they lay, some clinging to the rock, some in the mud, some walking about. I take one, two, three, put them in my pouch; up I go, and the others, they have a ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... to discover it. Without staying to consider whether they had done so or not, William had come down from his perch; and now that he had reapplied himself to the oar, and saw that he was gaining ground in the right direction, he did not like to desist. Every fathom he made to windward was a fathom nearer to the saving of the lives of his companions,—a stroke less for the swimmers to make,—to whom, wearied as they must now be, the saving of even a single ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... was the nightgown that he wore, instead of coat and waistcoat, over his ragged shirt. He was long unshaved; but what most distressed and even daunted me, he would neither take his eyes away from me nor look me fairly in the face. What he was, whether by trade or birth, was more than I could fathom; but he seemed most like an old, unprofitable serving-man, who should have been left in charge of that big house upon ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fat oxen should himself be fat;" Who sings for nobles, he should noble be. There's no non sequitur, I think, in that, And this is logic plain as a, b, c. Now, Hector Stuart, you're a Scottish prince, If right you fathom your descent—that fall From grace; and since you have no peers, and since You have no kind of nobleness at all, 'Twere better to sing little, lest you wince When made by heartless critics to sing small. And yet, my liege, I ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... never a word, although in the earlier part of our journey he had proved himself a most unrivalled chatterer. He seemed ill at ease in the presence of our guest, and a sort of mutual distrust, the cause of which I could not exactly fathom, seemed ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... very little, but drank of the coffee. Bassett too ate almost nothing. He was pulling himself together for the struggle that was to come, marshaling his arguments for flight, and trying to fathom the extent of the change in the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... foretold of them who dwell in the dust of the vineyard. Bow and be silent, ye children of God and ye of far countries. Consider how many lie low in the old, immemorial vineyard. Deep—fathom deep—is the dust of the dead 'neath the feet of ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... alane, dominie. It will tak a jury o' rich men to judge rich men. A poor man isna competent. The rich hae straits the poor canna fathom." ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... watches men who dispose of one's future. A slouching, slender figure; a head like a wise macaw; a beaked nose; shaggy eyebrows; unorderly hair and clothes; hoarse voice; offhand manner; free talk, and perpetual cigar, offered a new type — of western New York — to fathom; a type in one way simple because it was only double — political and personal; but complex because the political had become nature, and no one could tell which was the mask and which the features. At table, among friends, Mr. Seward ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... vast vacuity! all unawares, Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops Ten thousand fathom deep." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... her man (ladies are very apt to fathom their male acquaintance—too apt, I think); and, to pin him to the only medical theme which interested her, seized the opportunity while he was in actual contact with Julia's wrist, and rapidly enumerated her symptoms, and also told him ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... to get instruments with which he could work on the Captivity, and, no doubt, also to secure servants who had no links with anybody in Babylon. Foreigners, 'kinless loons,' are favourites with despots, for plain reasons. But Nebuchadnezzar could not fathom the hearts of the lads. An incarnation of unbridled will would find it difficult to understand a life guided by conscience, and religious scruples would have sounded as an unknown tongue to him. But yet, as he and they stood face to face, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... week at Thorndale Park, Captain Morville returned to make his farewell visit at Hollywell, before joining his regiment at Cork, whence it was to sail for the Mediterranean. He reckoned much on this visit, for not even Laura herself could fathom the depth of his affection for her, strengthening in the recesses where he so sternly concealed it, and viewing her ever as more faultless since she had been his own. While she was his noble, strong-minded, generous, fond Laura, he could bear with his disappointment in his sister, with the ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a man of such delicate temperament and gloomy imagination. But Voltaire was not precise here, as in other matters about Pascal. He understood him too little to be a good judge of his mental peculiarities. All that Leibnitz really said was, that Pascal, “in wishing to fathom the depths of religion, had become scrupulous even to ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... ashamed of it now, and I think I was even a little conscious of shame about it then, but I felt inclined to comprehend the man, to fathom his depths of self-excuse, and I bore with his evasions and his explanations in a spirit of ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... not seized me at once? Probably because he had some ulterior purpose to serve, which would have been thwarted by my immediate apprehension. What that purpose was I did my best to fathom, and, as I thought, succeeded in the attempt. What I was to do when the coach stopped was a more difficult point to settle. To give the runner the slip, with two women to take care of, was simply impossible. To treat him, as I had treated Screw at the red-brick ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... that love, free, unrepaid, Which nurtures into being each particle that floats, Descending from far sun-worlds to microscopic motes; O God! so grand and awful in yonder little ray, What thought dare seek to fathom the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... Confidential friends that we were, in possession of each other's secrets, he spoke freely of everything except his past. That some remarkable romance enveloped him I felt certain, yet by no endeavour could I fathom the mystery. ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... it endeavours to comprehend the manifestations of the individualities of peoples in ever new images, and the prevailing law in the disappearance of phenomena; natural science, in so far as it strives to fathom the deepest instinct of man, that of speech; aesthetics, finally, because from various antiquities at our disposal it endeavours to pick out the so-called "classical" antiquity, with the view and pretension ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Philip did not fathom Annie's mind: Scarce could the woman when he came upon her, Out of full heart and boundless gratitude Light on a broken word to thank him with. But Philip was her children's all-in-all; From distant ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... can't fathom you!" and Reginald moved impatiently upon his couch. "You are invulnerable as Achilles. I never saw a fellow get so much comfort out of everything as you do, and yet your life is a steady grind. What ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... southern anchorage, we should never have found her more, or found her stranded beyond help. As it was, there was little amiss, beyond the wreck of the mainsail. Another anchor was got ready, and dropped in a fathom and a half of water. We all pulled round again to Rum Cove, the nearest point for Ben Gunn's treasure-house; and then Gray, single-handed, returned with the gig to the Hispaniola, where he was to pass the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... character, as he was to obtain all the information within his reach. His reflections assured him that some one had chosen the role of an impostor for the purpose of accomplishing some treasonable object, and he was anxious to fathom the mystery for his country's sake rather ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Salamanders were of necessity good confidential agents, or whether a fire-proof man was as a matter of course trustworthy, Frederick Trent threw himself into a chair, and, burying his head in his hands, endeavoured to fathom the motives which had led Quilp to insinuate himself into Richard Swiveller's confidence;—for that the disclosure was of his seeking, and had not been spontaneously revealed by Dick, was sufficiently plain from Quilp's seeking his company and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... a dying voice, "value the imperishable word of the Lord at all times, and never try to fathom what he in His wisdom has veiled from us. May my example never be blotted out of your memory. Only to-day the words of the Psalmist were revealed to me. 'A thousand years are but as a day in Thy sight.' May he have mercy on me, a poor sinner." He sank lifeless to the ground, and the brothers, ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... was what it came to, and before sunset was reddening the western skies behind the Cheviots. We went a long, long way out—far beyond the thirty-fathom line, which is, as all sailors acquainted with those waters know, a good seven miles from shore; indeed, as I afterwards reckoned, we were more than twice that distance from Berwick pier-end when the ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... Marion came one Sunday in the Spencer house, with Natalie asleep up-stairs after luncheon, and Clayton walking off a sense of irritation in the park. He did not like the Hayden girl. He could not fathom Natalie's change of front with regard to Graham and the girl. He had gone out, leaving them together, and Marion had launched her ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... babies: this was inconvenient, as it prevented the supply of provisions and the success of forced loans. The letter suggests that he was a man of action rather than of ideas, and probably it was this practical quality which bound Buonaparte in friendship to him. Yet it is difficult to fathom Buonaparte's ideas about the revolutionary despotism which was then deluging Paris with blood. Outwardly he appeared to sympathize with it. Such at least is the testimony of Marie Robespierre, with whom ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... we can never fathom the depth of a mother's tenderness. Who in the whole world cares for us as she does? Pitiful to our faults, sorrowing with our griefs, rejoicing in our joys. Who so unselfish? who so true? Happy the child who can truthfully ...
— Little Pollie - A Bunch of Violets • Gertrude P. Dyer
... God shall be finished, his judgments will be made manifest;" hitherto, "his way is in the sea, and his judgments are a great deep." We know that his way is perfect; but witness many things in the divine administration, which we do not understand. We have no line to fathom the depths ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... nothing to forgive, dear," was my reply, as, placing my arm tenderly about her slim waist, I looked into the depths of those wonderful dark eyes of hers, trying to fathom ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... chaplains and led-captains, Noblemen with ribbons and stars, dove-coloured Quakers, Duchesses, quacks, fortune-hunters, lackeys, lank-haired Methodists, Bishops, and boarding-school misses. Ferdinand Count Fathom will be there, as well as my Lord Ogleby; Lady Bellaston (and Mr. Thomas Jones); Geoffry Wildgoose and Tugwell the cobbler; Lismahago and Tabitha Bramble; the caustic Mrs. Selwyn and the blushing Miss Anville. Be certain, too, that, sooner or later, you will encounter Mrs, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... Jean. There was something about these things that presented to his understanding a wall of insurmountable height. Then, he recalled his last interview with Jean and the suspicions that had been cast upon himself, suspicions he had vainly endeavored to fathom. What was in the wind, anyhow? he asked himself. There seemed to be forces at work over which he had no control, forces big with portent, heavy with menace. Like a towering thunder-cloud that casts its sickly green over all about, so these unknown influences were overshadowing ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... in pensive discouragement. He was sensible of being manipulated, operated, but he was helpless to escape from the performer or to fathom her motives. His pensiveness passed into gloom, and was degenerating into sulky resentment when he went away, after several failures to get back to the old ground he had held in relation to Alma. He retrieved something of it with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... maybe a little over a fathom," said the mate, "but the villains would let me go no nearer. I think I was in the channel, though. 'Tis more open inside, as I mind me of it. There's a kind of a hole there, and if we get in over the shoals just beyond where I was ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... 'Full fathom five thy father lies. Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Hark! now I hear ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb |
