"Oasis" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... prized among them for war head-dresses, and that in the course of their hunt they had been led far from the mountains and were much troubled by thirst. Seeing trees on the horizon, however, they walked towards them, and discovered a large and fertile oasis some miles in extent, and plentifully watered. It was by way of this oasis that Infadoos suggested we should return, and the idea seemed to us a good one, for it appeared that we should thus escape the rigours of the mountain pass. Also some ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... natural advantages, I grant." Sir Richard spoke rather dubiously. "We went over it one day, in a spirit of curiosity; and I have a pretty clear recollection of the place. To begin with, as I told you the Bedouin encampment is a sort of oasis in a valley at the foot of some quite respectably high rocks. You know the desert is not, as some people imagine, merely a flat expanse of sand. Here and there are ranges of hills, limestone, and so on—and now and then one comes across quite ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... "mirages." They were of shady groves and flowing rivers, and many a time had Aleppo seen them as he pressed on through the sands, with head held high, so that he might scan the horizon for the longed-for oasis. He turned to speak of these to Phil; but his little companion, he saw, had meantime drifted ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... Athelstane had only just been demobilized, and had hardly yet settled down to civilian life. They had joined the rest of the party at Lynstones before returning to their native town of Grovebury. The six weeks by the sea seemed a kind of oasis between the anxious period of the war that was past and gone, and the new epoch that stretched ahead in the future. To Ingred they were halcyon days. To have her father and brothers safely back, and for the family to be together in the midst of such beautiful scenery, was ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... was rather overpowering; that period he usually spent dozing or reading in the court of the house, which was occupied by a cool flashing fountain in the centre of an oasis of marble pavement, streaked and veined. About seven it became cooler, and then in the light native costume he used to ride leisurely about the picturesque city or among the delightful houses scattered about in ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he shrink now when the passing of a brief ordeal may well mean reunion with his beloved and her rescue from the welter of Paris. The Pilgrim's soul hungers and thirsts for her. After the great Sahara of imprisoned loneliness, how near the Oasis of love and rapture! How beautiful the prospect, if not ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... or less, of tree-bordered road sloped gently from the Residency gate-posts to the walled City of Victory, backed by craggy, red-grey spurs of the Aravalli range, hidden almost in feathery heads of banyan, acacia, and neem—a dusty, well-ordered oasis, holding its own against the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... should have seemed to assume a tangible form. The principality of Herat, although on the other side of intervening deserts, extending for many hundred miles, was in itself a fertile and beautiful oasis, where a numerous army might be refreshed and provisioned, and established as on a vantage-ground. From thence the Persians, strengthened and officered by the Russians, might roll on towards Cabool, and there prepare for a descent upon India. This magnificent but terrible idea was not examined ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... knew Willow Springs and its well-kept ranch. It was the only fertile neck of land that ran down to Ochre Desert, an oasis, a veritable paradise of cottonwoods, willows, dark fields of alfalfa, a capably fenced corral, long lines of beehives, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... of your writing stories!" he exclaimed, with as near an approach to anger as I had ever seen in him. "I forbid you to write them!" But I believe this command only added a new attraction to authorship, agreeably haunting me as I beckoned imaginary scenes and souls out of chaos. An oasis bloomed at remote seasons, when we went to visit Mr. and Mrs. Fields in Boston. My mother writes of my reviving, and even becoming radiant, as soon as a visit of this fragrant nature breathed upon ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... said Emmeline, who was seated on Paddy's shoulder, holding on tight to him, and gazing upon the island, the green of whose trees was now visible, an oasis of verdure in ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... liberty, here, of citing an instance of this. In 1861, when I found myself on the West Coast of Mexico, a dozen backwoods families determined upon settling in Sonora (forming an oasis in the desert); a plan which was frustrated by the invasion at that time of the European powers. Many native farmers awaited the arrival of these immigrants in order to take them under their protection. ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... travellers with general rations for both man and beast. The place was clean in comparison with what we had been accustomed to, and we seemed to sigh a mutual sigh of content at our good luck in reaching this "oasis." We rested all afternoon, and got to bed early, and, although there were rats about, I slept "like a log," I was ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... considerations detain from scenes of festivity—a trait of affection by no means uncommon among our thoughtful people—dignifies those social meetings where it is manifested, and sheds a ray of sunshine on our common nature. It is "an oasis in the desert,"—to use the striking expression of the last year's "Valedictorian" of the Apollinean Institute. In the midst of so much that is purely selfish, it is delightful to meet such disinterested care for others. When a large family of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and the extraordinary sequence of dishes which probably belonged to the early days of colonisation, either proves herculean strength or the triumph of mind over matter, but to those of less heroic mould the unwonted amenities of a more familiar civilisation are welcome as a green oasis in a sandy desert. A cool and healthy mountain climate gives unwonted zest for the lovely excursions of which Garoet is the centre. From the little lake Setoe Bajendit, a covered raft plies to a cupola-crowned hill, facing ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... squatter's cabin. An old tin was completely covered by a graceful clematis mixed with streamers of Virginia creeper, and white muslin curtains, and above all two shelves of admirably-chosen books, gave the room almost an air of elegance. Why do I write almost? It was an oasis. It was barely three weeks since I had left "the communion of educated men," and the first tones of the voices of my host and hostess made me feel as if I had been out of it for a year. Mrs. C. stayed an hour and a half, and then went home to the cows, when we launched ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... roaring flames, wrecked forests, and the dreary brulee. Uncle Eb killed the snake, maintaining that water-snakes were "plaguy p'isonous," while Cyrus scouted the idea. The supper that evening was a merry enough meal. The camp, lit by the ruddy glow from its great fire, looked an oasis of light, warmth, and jollity in the black ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... good. Beyond watching that boys' school which one sees gesticulating on the Brighton front, I had never until this night seen these afflicted creatures in intimate and sparkling talk. I found the sight not only interesting, but as cheering as those poor old things in the King's Road oasis had been saddening. Because the unfortunates were making such a splendid fight for it. No boy with every faculty about him could have been gayer or merrier than this mute with the dancing eyes; nor can I conceive of a spoken conversation that contained a completer interchange of ideas ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... was absolutely magnificent! Surrounded as that garden was by "ballast" from the embankment, broken wheels and rail, bricks and stones, and other miscellaneous refuse and debris of the line, it could only be compared to an oasis in the desert, or a bright gem on a rugged warrior's breast. This garden owed its origin to Lucy Marrot's love for flowers, and it owed much of its magnificence to Will Garvie's love for Lucy; for that amiable fireman spent much of his ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... up his boots and examining the lock of his gun with rather a gloomy expression, "do you see those reeds?" He pointed to an oasis of blackish green in the huge half-mown wet meadow that stretched along the right bank of the river. "The marsh begins here, straight in front of us, do you see—where it is greener? From here it runs to the right where the ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... not visit it. It was so named because it had been found on land belonging to Sir William Bagshawe, whose lady christened its chambers and grottos with some very queer names. Across the moors we could see the town of Tideswell, our next objective, standing like an oasis in the desert, for there were no trees on the moors. We had planned that after leaving there we would continue our way across the moors to Newhaven, and then walk through Dove Dale to Ashbourne in the reverse direction to that taken the year before on our walk from London ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... surface caused it to gleam like a sheet of gold. We could not trace the outlines of the water, for the trees partially hid it from our view, but we saw that the smoke that had at first attracted us rose up somewhere from the western shore of the lake.' In this strange oasis they found what appeared to be a snug farm-house, with stables and outhouses, garden and fields, horses and cattle. Here they were hospitably entertained by the proprietor, his wife, and two sons, and served by a faithful negro; and of course it is the history of the settlers, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... rocks decreased in size, and were more widely spread; a plain slightly depressed in the centre, dotted here and there with thinly growing thickets, was reached. In the background there was a clump of firs and a glittering lake, quite a liquid oasis hidden ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... is driven, and presently by means of a wind-mill, or oil pump, a sparkling stream is brought from the vast caverns which have held it prisoner, turning the oft-times dreary waste into a smiling, life-giving oasis. ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... pine for news of you, of Uncle John, of all at dear, dear Fernley. Alas! how young I was there! a simple child, sporting among the Northern daisies. Now, in the whirlwind of my passionate existence, I look back to that peaceful summer. For you, Marguerite, the green oasis, the palm-trees, the crystal spring; for me, the sand storm and the fiery death. No matter! I live and die a daughter of Cuba, the gold star on my brow, the three colours painted on my heart. Good night, beloved! I kiss the happy paper that ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... thither; as from it he could either proceed into Abyssinia by Kordofan, or traverse Africa from east to west. He therefore left Assiou in Egypt with the Soudan caravan in 1793, passed through the greater Oasis, and arrived at Sircini in Darfur: here he resided a considerable time, but he found insurmountable obstacles opposed to his grand and ulterior plan. He ascertained, however, the source and progress of the real Nile or White River. The geography of Darfur and Kordofan is illustrated by him in ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... and the famous palace where the blue stone is kept on which each new khan must seat himself on his accession, is defended by a very strong citadel. Karschi, with its triple cordon, situated in an oasis, surrounded by a marsh peopled with tortoises and lizards, is almost impregnable, Is-chardjoui is defended by a population of twenty thousand souls. Protected by its mountains, and isolated by its steppes, the khanat of Bokhara ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... prisoners were settled by the victors in the oasis of Merv, as bondsmen compelled after the Parthian fashion to render military service ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... walls, blue the mat on the floor, blue and white the coverlet on the bed, blue the quaintly shaped china on the wash-stand. She remembered with a thrill of satisfaction that her own bags and cases were of the same hue, and took off her hat feeling that she had found an oasis in ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light-hearted but determined Negro humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... I was likely to find nothing but the eternal "sowbelly," beans, and coffee; while at Sunk Creek the omelet and the custard were frequent. The passing traveller was glad to tie his horse to the fence here, and sit down to the Judge's table. For its fame was as wide as Wyoming. It was an oasis ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... downwards, they would have found no water that night nor ever after, and the Sahara would have taken them as she has taken so many and shall take so many more. All that night they followed their new course: at dawn they found an oasis and ...
— Tales of Wonder • Lord Dunsany
... and fear: Adieu to arid sand. All Hail! Oh prospect bright and clear! All Hail, oasis grand! Hand joined in hand, heart linked with heart, Come joy, come hope, come glee! United, ne'er on earth to part, I'll always think ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the drifting sand. To the yellow sea they say: "Thus far, but no farther." Desolation is held back. Soon the land under the lee of the rocks becomes rich. It is fed by springs that seep out of the cliffs. It becomes a veritable oasis with figs and olives and vineyards and aromatic shrubs. Here dwell the sheik and his flocks. Hither come the caravans seeking refreshment. In all the Orient no spot so beautiful as the oasis under the shadow of the rocks. Long centuries ago, while Isaiah rejoiced under the beneficent ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... spicy savour and scent? A funeral vase awaiting tearful showers? An Eastern odour, waste and oasis blent? A silken cushion or a ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... odor from the heavenly bowers, Which stirs our senses tenderly, and brings Dreams which are shadows of diviner things Beyond this grosser atmosphere of ours. An oasis of verdure and of flowers, Love smiteth on the Pilgrim's weary way; There fresher air, there sweeter waters play, There purer solace charms the quiet hours. This glorious passion, unalloyed, endowers With moral beauty all who feel its fire; Maid, wife, and offspring, brother, mother, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... an inscrutable stranger meet and love in an oasis of the Sahara. Staged this season with magnificent cast and ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... his personal character; but there was another and a large section of the new society which was destined to be known after the Restoration as the Liberal party; and these, with du Croisier as their unacknowledged head, laughed at an aristocratic oasis which nobody might enter without proof of irreproachable descent. Their animosity was all the more bitter because honest country squires and the higher officials, with a good many worthy folk in the town, were ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... been spared, formed a sort of large lobby, with a high ceiling, guarded on the staircase side by a wrought-iron rail, lighted by a large window which looked out upon roofs, courtyards, and other windows, and, farther away, upon the garden of the Fromont factory, which was like a green oasis among the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... indicate the facility and frequency of Transatlantic travel, the Indian chiefs smoked the pipe of peace with the victorious colonists under the shadow of Fort Amsterdam, and the latter held fairs there, or gathered, for defence and pastime, round the little oasis of the metropolitan desert where carmen now read "The Sun." No. 1 was the Kennedy House, subsequently the tavern of Mrs. Koch,—whose Dutch husband was an officer in the Indian wars,—and was successively the head-quarters of Clinton, Cornwallis, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... the house had been struck by a bomb, and were astonished that it stood. In the uproar of explosions and crashings and jinglings, the small silence of our room—with its gay chrysanthemums and shaded candles—was like that of a sheltered oasis in a desert storm. ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... islands, through narrow, rocky channels and along those endless water-ways, that stretch like a tangled, silver chain with emerald jewels, all the way from the Great Lakes to the plains. Somewhere along Rainy River, where there is an oasis of rolling, wooded meadows in a desert of iron rock, we pitched our tents for the night. The evening air was fragrant with the odor of summer's early flowers. I could not but marvel at the almost magical growth in these far northern latitudes. Barely a month had passed since ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... begun the nomadic life, with its recurrent phases of brawls, drunken debauches by her father, occasional brief intervals of prosperity and longer ones of abject poverty. Lower Charleswood had seemed as an oasis in the wilderness and the employment offered by Sir Jacques too bountiful to be real. Nevertheless, it was real enough, and all went well for a season. Michael Duveen gave the bottle a go-by, and the first real home that Flamby had known established its altars in Dovelands Cottage. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... spring, which, once put forth and blighted, cannot be renewed. I speak,' said Miss Mills, 'from experience of the past—the remote, irrevocable past. The gushing fountains which sparkle in the sun, must not be stopped in mere caprice; the oasis in the desert of Sahara must ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... in twos or threes, or in great bands. Without haste, almost imperceptibly, they drew aside to allow the safari to pass, and closed in again behind it. Thus the travellers were always the centre of a little moving oasis of clear space five hundred yards in diameter. Occasionally some unusual and unexpected crease in the earth or density of brush in the dongas brought them in surprise fairly atop an unsuspecting herd. Then ensued a wild stampede. This ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... alleys" (as we called them); and from its wide stone chimneys the pearly smoke rose upward in the still air through the poplar branches. Beyond it a setting sun gilded the corn-fields, and horses and cattle dotted the pastures. We stood for a while staring at this oasis in the wilderness, and to my boyish fancy it was a fitting introduction to a ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... from the flame and looked away from the oasis of warmth it made, to where the light shaded away into darkness, a darkness that was unbroken for many a score of miles to the north and west. She sighed deeply and drew herself up with an aggressive motion as though she was freeing herself of something. So she was. She was trying to shake off ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... exhausted for a considerable distance from a camp. Edgar took a rough basket to which Amina pointed and was away for some hours, following the track by which he had arrived and making a circuit of the oasis, and returned with the basket piled up ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... grove, or wood I have ever entered or seen, do I remember that shady oasis of trees at my new home on the illimitable grassy plain. Up till now I had never lived with trees excepting those twenty-five I have told about and that other one which was called el arbol because it was the only ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... that pleasurable tranquillity to be had therein to-day, scarcely a stone's throw from the rush and turmoil of the whirlpool of wheeled traffic which centres around the junction of the Rue Richelieu with the Avenue de l'Opera. It is as an oasis in a turbulent sandstorm, a beneficent shelf of rock in a whirlpool of rapids. The only thing to be feared therein is that a toy aeroplane of some child will put an eye out, or that the more devilish ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield
... there with verdure; but the turf was so hard and piercing, we could scarcely walk over it without wounding our feet. Our presence in these frightful solitudes put to flight three or four Moorish shepherds, who herded a small flock of sheep and goats in an oasis. At last we arrived at the tents after which we were searching, and found in them three Mooresses and two little children, who did not seem in the least frightened by our visit. A negro servant, belonging to ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... at first whether the garret was empty of human life, or whether Mrs. Muir was likely to pounce upon her with reproaches from behind one of those immense oak posts which went up like trees to meet the high beamed roof. Or she might be concealed by an oasis of furniture. There were several such oases in the large wilderness of garret, which covered the whole upper story of the old house. But a lovely garret it was, a heavenly garret! even better than Barrie had dreamed it might be, with her eye at the ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of that day the marchesa was in her own room, opening from the sala. The little furniture the room contained was collected around the marchesa, forming a species of oasis on the broad desert of the scagliola floor. A brass lamp, placed on a table, formed the centre of this habitable spot. The marchesa sat in deep shadow, but in the outline of her tall, slight figure, and in the carriage of ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... Scripture (mere creeks,) run through Damascus, and so every house and every garden have their sparkling fountains and rivulets of water. With her forest of foliage and her abundance of water, Damascus must be a wonder of wonders to the Bedouin from the deserts. Damascus is simply an oasis—that is what it is. For four thousand years its waters have not gone dry or its fertility failed. Now we can understand why the city has existed so long. It could not die. So long as its waters remain to it away out there in the midst of that howling desert, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... taken his stand not far from the rose-clad oasis of Jericho, on the banks of the Jordan; and men of every tribe, class, and profession, gathered thither, listening eagerly, or interrupting him with loud cries for help. The population of the metropolis, familiar with the Temple services, and accustomed to the splendour of the palace; fishermen ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... fields, bounded by a dark border of fir-trees. Could the spectator have raised himself a few hundred feet from the ground, he would have seen that there were fields beyond the village, and that the whole of this agricultural oasis was imbedded in a forest stretching in all directions as far as the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... with a party of gentlemen, one of whom we had known slightly in Algiers; and they, like ourselves, were bound for Biskra. This complicated matters, as it was understood that the accommodation at the oasis was of a somewhat scanty description. They were three, and we were four—altogether, a party of six gentlemen and one lady. We telegraphed from Batna to ascertain whether or not we could all get rooms. Our despair may be imagined when we received the answer: one of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... along the line of trees that marked the serpentine course of the brook which zigzagged its way toward the southwest. Every man, woman and child of our company expressed in some way the declaration, "We must get into that beautiful oasis." It looked like field, park and orchard, in one landscape; all fenced off from the desolate surroundings by this wall of stone. Like Moses viewing Canaan from Nebo's top, we looked down and yearned ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... time, unless, as is the case with the Castilian epic, more poems are lost than extant. The often quoted Cantica de la Virgen of Gonzalo de Berceo (first half of thirteenth century), with its popular refrain Eya velar, is an oasis in the long religious epics of the amiable monk of S. Millan de la Cogolla. One must pass into the succeeding century to find the next examples of the true lyric. Juan RUIZ, the mischievous Archpriest of Hita (flourished ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... of the main street were half a dozen smoke-blackened houses which remained standing, an oasis in the sea of destruction, with doors and windows intact facing gaps where doors and windows had been. We entered with a sense of awe of the chance which had spared ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... cross, for the difficulties and dangers of the route were not unknown to them. Disencumbering their pack-mules of all useless burdens and supplying themselves with water for two days, they pushed forward on their first stage which brought them on the evening of the second day to a kind of oasis in this desert where they found wood, water, and grass. From this point there was a stretch of ninety miles perfectly bare of wood and water, and with rare intervals of scanty herbage for the beasts. After this desolate region had been passed they would have a comparatively ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... gullies and ravines it was lost to their sight; but always they kept it as their goal. The trail they were upon led to it—of that there could be no longer the slightest doubt. And as they rode with their destination in view black, beady eyes looked down upon them from the very green oasis toward which they urged their ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Chavanne's book on the Sahara is apt to get the impression that there is, after all, an oasis in the desert of African lovelessness and contempt for women. Touareg women, we are told therein (208-10), are allowed to dispose of their hands and to eat with the men, certain dishes being reserved for them, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... We were together, and time meant nothing against that age-long wash of the sea. The air blew her hair in small damp curls against her face, and little by little the tide retreated, leaving our boat an oasis in a ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... but never can this be said of the blood-hued Rio Colorado. If it had beauty, it was beauty that appalled. So riveted was my gaze that I could hardly turn it across the river, where Emmett proudly pointed out his lonely home—an oasis set down amidst beetling red cliffs. How grateful to the eye was the green of alfalfa and cottonwood! Going round the bluff trail, the wheels had only a foot of room to spare; and the sheer descent into the red, turbid, ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... nor have we followed the southern shore that stretches from the strait to the Gulf of Cabes. It is the old coast, and not the new, that we have been tracing; as yet, we cannot say positively that there is no outlet to the south; as yet, we cannot assert that no oasis of the African desert has escaped the catastrophe. Perhaps, even here in the north, we may find that Italy and Sicily and the larger islands of the Mediterranean may still ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... the Doctor's fourth daughter, married Mr. John Cropper in 1858, and here, too, in her house beside the Mersey, among fields and trees that still maintain a green though besmutted oasis in the busy heart of Liverpool, that girdles them now on all sides, and will soon engulf them, there were kindness and welcome for the little Tasmanians. She died a few years ago, mourned and missed by her own people—those ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... a Mormon too," returned Cole, "but my hands are stained with blood. Soon yours will be if you keep your water-holes and your cattle. Yes, I know. You're strong, stronger than any of us, far off in your desert oasis, hemmed in by walls, cut off by canyons, guarded by your Navajo friends. But Holderness is creeping slowly on you. He'll ignore your water rights and drive your stock. Soon Dene will steal cattle under your very eyes. Don't make ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... Friars' Holm, usually a coolly green oasis in the midst of the surrounding streets, seemed as airless as any back court or alley, and Coppertop, who had been romping ever more and more flaggingly with a fox-terrier puppy he had recently acquired, finally gave up the effort and flung himself down, red-faced and panting, ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... the narrative given in the Oasis, of a slave in Georgia, who having ranaway from his master, (accounted a very hospitable and even humane gentleman,) was hunted by his master and his retainers with horses, dogs, and rifles, and having been driven into a tree by the hounds, was shot down by his more cruel ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... last rays upon the spires of the city, Hasty's spirit was released, and she was free. Fanny gave herself up to a child's grief, and refused to be comforted. To the slave, the affections are the bright spots in his wilderness of sorrow and care; and as an Arab loves the oasis the better that it is in the midst of the desert, so the slave centers the whole strength of his nature in his loved ones, the more so that he is shut out from the hopes of wealth, the longings of ambition, and the excitements ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... alders, oaks, and the largest beech trees to be found in Europe. It is more than a French league in circumference, and is situated to the east of the city, only a few steps from the last houses. It is a really delightful oasis in the midst of the depressing Dutch plains. When one has entered the wood and passed beyond the fringe of pavilions, little Swiss cottages, and summer houses dotted about among the first trees, one seems to have lost one's self in a lonely ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... where Wills Creek joined the Potomac, and the forest girded it like a mighty hedge, or rather like a paling of gaunt brown stems upholding a canopy of green. All around spread illimitable woods, wrapping hill, valley, and mountain. The spot was an oasis in a desert of leaves,—if the name oasis can be given to anything so rude and harsh. In this rugged area, or "clearing," all Braddock's force was now assembled, amounting, regulars, provincials, and ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... whom either curiosity or business had brought thither, stood on the platform of the little station looking about him. To the right of him, beyond the village, blooming like an oasis from the irrigation afforded by the artesian wells, rose the mountains, the foothills green and dimpled, the slopes with their massed shadows of pines and oaks climbing upward and gashed with deep purple canons, and above them the great white, ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... life, and we have all sorts of sensations. We hunger and are fed. We are thirsty, and reach an oasis. We are homeless, and find shelter. We are ill, and again walk the streets. We dig and delve and strain every nerve and tissue, and the triumph comes at last, and with it often riches and honor. All these things send shivers of delight ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... her blood-stained husband, and spent her life in the recesses of the harem, praying as a Christian both for the murderer and his victims. It is a relief, in the midst of this atrocious saturnalia to encounter this noble and gentle character, which like a desert oasis, affords a rest to eyes wearied with the contemplation of so much wickedness ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... making camp, all the men turned out to hunt the Reed cattle. In every direction they searched, but found no clue. Those who rode onward, however, discovered that we had reached only an oasis in the desert, and that six miles ahead of us lay ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... horizons—a dozen heavens—seemed there, whilst the thunder that reached us from below seemed too remote to threaten. But at last the clouds gathered in form and volume, hiding the little firmaments of violet and amber; the bright blue sky, bending over the green oasis—all vanished as if by magic. We could see no more, and nothing remained but to go back, and the quicker the better. The storm, our guide said, was too far off to reach us yet, and we might reach the chalet without being drenched ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... That same oasis of a week gave to Una her first taste of business responsibility, of being in charge and generally comporting herself as do males. But in order to rouse her thus, Chance broke the inoffensive limb of unfortunate Mr. Troy ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... Young Catholic, this vast mirage of the desert of life had but glimmered upon the distant horizon; they saw it coming and they did their best to point Catholic youth away from it and lead it to the real oasis of God, with its grateful shade, its delicious fruits, and its ever-flowing springs of ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... land a deep indigo sea. The fantastically built hotel (in its ancient beginnings the palace of a Pasha) was like a closely huddled group of chalets, looked down on from its central roof. On the fringe of the oasis-garden the cafes and curiosity-shops buzzed with life, and glittered like lighted beehives. Outside the gateway, donkey-boys and camel-men and drivers of sandcarts chattered. To-night, and on a few moonlight nights to come ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... to the very chapter's end; and, considerately anxious to spare their attention a task from which it recoils, they will unanimously hurry past the dreaded desert of conventional reflection, to alight on the first oasis that may present itself, whether it be formed by a new division of the story, or suddenly indicated by the appearance of a dialogue. Animated, therefore, by apprehensions such as these, we hasten to assure ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... boasted that she was fairer than the Nereids, the fifty nymphs who are the spirits of the waves. Neptune was so much displeased that he sent a flood to overflow the land, and a sea-monster to devour the people and cattle. In an oasis or isle of fertility in the middle of the Lybian desert was a temple of Jupiter, there called Ammon, and the Ethiopians had sent there to ask what to do. The oracle replied that the evil should cease if ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wearisome sand, our eyes were gladdened by the sight of the group of palms "El Guja"—"the snail," at the foot of the sand-hills, towards which we turned that we might take our lunch beneath their grateful shade. As one descends, a charming desert scene is presented by this oasis, with the Jebel Abou Assab in the background. As soon as we reached the spot, at half-past eleven o'clock, we pitched our little tent, and, soothed by the gentle rustling of the breeze through the leafy crowns of the tall and slender palms, enjoyed a delightful rest. I ...
— The Caravan Route between Egypt and Syria • Ludwig Salvator
... a half back and a bit off the road lay the narrow, sheltered flat between two forbiddingly barren ridges which Hu Dra, the gardener, had converted into an oasis. Thin-leaved tea-trees fringed the little dam whence the industrious fellow hauled water for his vegetables. Drought-stricken, broad, blue-leaved, scented ironbarks stood in envious array on the steep sides of the ridges, and grass-trees, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... per cent. commission exacted twice a year, on advances. In the end, maybe, his mortgagee stepped in; he and his children saw their homestead, with its garden and clumps of planted eucalypts, willows, and poplars—an oasis in the grassy wilderness—no more. Sometimes a new squatter reigned in his stead, sometimes for years the mortgagee left the place in charge of a shepherd—a new and dreary form of absentee ownership. Meanwhile, in the earlier years the squatters were ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... and communion, that a man can learn what beauty is, and where to look for it. Out in the world beauty is held to be a sporadic thing. It is like a flower growing where no one expected a blossom. It is an unrelated and unexplained surprise. It is a green oasis in the desert of unlovely and unpromising things. But for the dweller in the house of the Lord beauty is not on this wise. Said one such dweller, 'The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.' He looked across the leagues of burning sand and ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... walking together in a secluded lane that led from behind the Farm Hospital barns to a little patch of woodland through which a clear stream sparkled, a silent, intimate, leafy oasis amid an army-ridden desert, where there was only a cow to stare at them, knee deep in young mint, only a shy cardinal bird to interrupt them with ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... men breakfasted together, and Krantz presently went about his business, leaving Shelby in some quandary how he should employ the interval before the hour appointed by the great leader for their meeting. For a time he loitered in a window overlooking the restful oasis of the square, a place of fountains and pleasant leafage, dominated by a graceful tower which served as footstool for a shining goddess on tiptoe to greet the morning. His eyes were not long bent upon the goddess,—he did not "live with the gods,"—nor yet upon the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... said Mr. Guppy, rising, "this is indeed an oasis. Mother, will you be so good as to put a chair for the other lady and get ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... middle of this plain is the oasis of birdcherries and greenery where I spend my happy days, and in the middle of the oasis is the gray stone house with many gables where I pass my reluctant nights. The house is very old, and has been added to at various times. It was a convent before the Thirty Years' ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... Marie, of Roumania, was exhibited in Munich in 1901; its reality and personality were notable, and one critic called it "an oasis in a desert of portraits." "Anno 1793" and "A Mother and Child" have attracted much favorable comment in Munich, where her star is in the ascendant, and greater excellence in her work is ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... Spitzbergen by a nearly allied type, the pink-footed goose (Anser brachyrhynchus, Baillon). These geese are much larger than both the eider and the barnacle goose, and appear to be sufficiently strong to defend themselves against the fox. They commonly breed high up on some mossy or grassy oasis, among the stone mounds of the coast mountains, or on the summit of a steep strand escarpment in the interior of the fjords. During the moulting season the grey geese collect in flocks at the small fresh-water ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... cries labyrinth mattress sobs ploughing desert bed precision telemetre monoplane cackling theatre applause monoplane equals balcony rose wheel drum trepan gad-fly rout arabs oxen blood-colour shambles wounds refuge oasis." ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... the infamous Arnold. Long saddened by the sight of the woes of the American nation, by the fear of seeing injustice and cupidity triumphing over the cause of the people, we were seeking relief in a measure of gaiety. When I had an hour's leisure I used to escape from my stern toils to the oasis of my own thoughts in the family at Sainte-Severe. At such a time I was wont to tell my kind friend Arthur some of the comic incidents of my entry into life after leaving Roche-Mauprat. At one time I would give him a description of the costume in which I first appeared; ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... the hot sun beating down on their heads they went on. Still the oasis, if such it was, appeared as far off as ever. Roger, whose strength, though he was the youngest, held out, did his best to cheer them on. At last old Sam declared that he could go no farther, and sank down, begging ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... the 'purpose' displayed in these 'canals.' Their being all so straight, all describing great circles of the 'sphere,' all being so evidently arranged (as he thinks) either to carry water to some 'oasis' 2000 miles away, or to reach some arid region far over the equator in the opposite hemisphere! But he never considers the difficulties this implies. Everywhere these canals run for thousands of miles across waterless deserts, forming a system and indicating a purpose, ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... made the environment seem even more friendly and unexceptional. One of the girls, on being introduced, promptly read to me a letter which she had just received from my sister in America. It made this oasis in an encircling wilderness seem very much a part of a neighbourly world. This girl is an example of the varied experiences which have trained American women into becoming the nursemaids of ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... influence upon him. The result of all these tendencies was that the Platonic Academy at Florence deliberately chose for its object the reconciliation of the spirit of antiquity with that of Christianity. It was a remarkable oasis in the humanism ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... first time the doctor began to take an intelligent interest in his surroundings, and saw that the tree, the white stoop and the small white building were situated in a little, quiet oasis separated by a low fence from the desert of a large yard containing the red pump. On the other side ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... but it is an indication of the ancient connexion between the Guanches and Berbers, a tribe of mountaineers, in which the ancient Numidians, Getuli, and Garamanti are confounded, and who extend themselves from the eastern extremity of Atlas by Harutsh and Fezzan, as far as the oasis of Siwah and Augela. The natives of the Canary Islands called themselves Guanches, from guan, man; as the Tonguese call themselves bye, and tongui, which have the same signification as guan. Besides the nations ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... he beheld a young Arab asleep. He awoke, and, leaving behind him a bag of pearls, sprang into the saddle and rapidly disappeared from the horizon. Another Arab came to the oasis; he discovered the pearls, took them, and vanished in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... sports are disregarded when his mother weeps; his "alley tors" and his "commoneys" are alike neglected; he forgets the long familiar cry of "knuckle down," and at tip-cheese, or odd and even, his hand is out. But Pickwick, gentlemen, Pickwick, the ruthless destroyer of this domestic oasis in the desert of Goswell Street—Pickwick who has choked up the well, and thrown ashes on the sward—Pickwick, who comes before you to-day with his heartless tomato sauce and warming-pans—Pickwick still rears his head with unblushing effrontery, and gazes ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... to be an oasis of liberty and abundance in a worldwide desert of disappointed dreams. Our Nation was created to help strike away the chains of ignorance and misery and tyranny wherever they keep man less than God means ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Lyndon B. Johnson • Lyndon B. Johnson
... one has patiently, even happily, given up much of the joy of living to serve, has learned to keep self under and love even the unlovable, has put to the test the promises of the Bible and found them hold true in time of need, and has found the Sabbath day an oasis in the desert of an otherwise dreary life, even an old theologian wouldn't have much more to go on in beginning a discussion ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... the long-sought oasis. Beyond a hill, on a still higher one, some slated roofs peep from clusters of foliage as brightly green as a salad. The village is there, and our looks embrace it, but we are not there yet. For a long time it seems to recede as fast as the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... Sapor was by Odenatus, a Syrian chief, and his beautiful Arabian wife Zenobia, who held out the city of Palmyra, on an oasis in the desert between Palestine and Assyria, till Sapor retreated. Finding that no notice was taken of them by Rome, they called themselves Emperor and Empress. The city was very beautifully adorned with splendid buildings in the later Greek style; ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... and berry of attractive appearance, however hot and acrid, all go to form a mulching of vegetable matter such as no other tree of forest or jungle gets. Prodigal and profuse as she may be, Nature is the rarest of economists. Out here in the forest is springing up an oasis of jungle, every plant of which owes its ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... "How do these people occupy their time?" First of all, they have large flocks, which must be fed and watered, and they are thus compelled to wander from well to well, or from one oasis to another, and they are also great breeders of horses, which must be carefully looked after, and from time to time taken to some far away fair for sale. Food and water also have often to be brought long distances to their camps by the camel-men, while the women are occupied with ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... The oasis of the Otradnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards off, the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostov, having finally settled with "Uncle" where they should set on the hounds, and having shown Natasha where she was to stand—a spot where ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... prescribed by custom and example. But, independently of the Robinson Crusoes of the class, many such slaves of conventionalism achieve their freedom while intending only to better their condition. They emigrate to a new country, and find themselves actually in a desert island—an oasis in the wilderness—where it is necessary to work at whatever employment offers the means of subsistence—to resort to all sorts of shifts and expedients, and to submit cheerfully to the deprivation of things they had in former times reckoned necessaries ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... "On the way hence to Mount Lebanon, on the other side of the Tigris and Euphrates, the traveller comes, after a journey of some days, to a vast desert. There, in the middle of a large barren and sandy plain, lies a fruitful oasis, watered by a little stream, on whose brink grow tall palms, refreshing the wanderer with their shade and fruit. But the neighbourhood of the palms is frequented by a monstrous lion of a dark colour,—the only one that has wandered into ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... our own duty. A zealot might allow his neighbours to be damned in peace, did not a certain heretical odour emitted by them infect the sanctuary and disturb his own dogmatic calm. In the same way practical people might leave the artist alone in his oasis, and even grant him a pittance on which to live, as they feed the animals in a zoological garden, did he not intrude into their inmost conclave and vitiate the abstract cogency of their designs. It is not so much ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... articles of the desert. The same tribes which advanced from the oases of the desert to the north also descended towards the south, thus establishing intercourse between the Barbary States and Timbuktu. Many slaves picked up by these immigrating tribes were carried from one oasis to another until they were finally sold into ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... sands stretch level and far, Around this little oasis of Tamarind trees. A curious, Eastern fragrance fills the breeze From the ruinous ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... and seemed to cut them off from the observation of passers-by. It was as if their tenderness for each other had found an oasis in the ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... when they swept down into a little nest of green trees and grass. It appeared so suddenly, and was such an unexpected oasis amid that surrounding wilderness, that Hampton gave vent to a sudden exclamation of delight. But that was all. Instantly he perceived numerous dark forms leaping from out the shrubbery, and he wheeled ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... 1798, the traveller left Cairo with a caravan, and visited the famous oasis of Jupiter Ammon or Siwah, situated in the desert on the east of Egypt. It is a small independent state, which acknowledges the Sultan, but is exempt from paying tribute. The town of Siwah is surrounded by several villages, at distances ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... the sympathy—I had nearly said for the pity—of my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I have been, in some measure, the slave of circumstances beyond human control. I would wish them to seek out for me, in the details I am about to give, some little oasis of fatality amid a wilderness of error. I would have them allow—what they cannot refrain from allowing—that, although temptation may have erewhile existed as great, man was never thus, at least, tempted before—certainly, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... taken refuge in religion as in a cool, refreshing oasis in the desert of vulgarity and monotony in her life. Her heart would swell with pride every time a priest would say to her ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... be water," I exclaimed, rushing on with eager haste, like the pilgrim in the desert, towards the longed-for oasis, even fancying that I saw the shining surface through the trees. I reached the spot; I looked about; there were the rushes sure enough, and there had been the water, but it was dried-up. Oh, how thirsty I felt! I thought I might find some moisture at the roots of the rushes. I pulled ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... last. The husband left them too much undisturbed. The fact is, that man was a philosopher. His wife gone, he had closed the green door of his oasis and quietly set about trimming his roses again, happy in the thought that these at least, attached to the soil by long roots, would not be able to run away from him. Our reassured lovers returned to Paris and then suddenly the ...
— Artists' Wives • Alphonse Daudet
... noted of the usurpers of authority in the provinces during the period of anarchy of which we have spoken, was Odenatus, Prince of Palmyra, a city occupying an oasis in the midst of the Syrian Desert, midway between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates. In gratitude for the aid he had rendered the Romans against the Parthians, the Senate had bestowed upon him titles and honors. When the empire began ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... deaf to the virtues of the old servant, the innkeeper, but altogether alive to the fact that she keeps an inn. "What a blessed oasis in our wilderness! And it can't be more than half a mile away. Why," recovering his usual delightful manner, "we shall find ourselves housed in no time. I do hope, my dear girl, you are comfortable! Wrapped up to the chin, ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... planning, spending, with its invariable ending of disappointment and weariness of heart, brought forth a longing for the peace of rest, routine, satisfied aspirations; and from a dream the convent became a passion, longed for as the oasis by ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... been drying up, sinking into his surface. But the inhabitants are making a brave fight for it, They have constructed canals right round their world so that the water, which otherwise would run to waste over the vast deserts, is led from oasis to oasis. Here the great centres of civilisation are placed: their Londons, Viennas, New Yorks. These gigantic works are the works of despair. A great and civilised world finds death staring it in the face. They have had to triple their canals so that when the central canal has done its ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... a world of rigid mechanistic automatism in the regular routine of living with rioting individual license in recreational pleasure. The Free Level seemed some ancient Bagdad, some Bourbon Court, some Monte Carlo set here, an oasis of flourishing vice in a desert of sterile law-made, machine-executed efficiency and puritanically ordered life. Aided by a hundred ingenious wheels and games of chance, men and women gambled with the ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... matter which it brings down to the month, forming shifting sands and banks, renders it difficult to navigate. A great portion of the volume of the stream is absorbed in the irrigation of the Khivan Oasis. The tendency of the Oxus, like that of the great Siberian rivers, is to press continually on its right or east bank, and twice within historic times it has oscillated between the Caspian and Aral Seas. In the fourteenth century it is supposed to have entered the Caspian by the Uzboi channel, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... July or August. For our own part we think this region of fresh moss is quite worthy of comparison with the far-famed Jardin of the Talefre, which we find described in Murray's hand-book as "an oasis in the desert, an island in the ice—a rock which is covered with a beautiful herbage, and enamelled in August with flowers. This is the Jardin of this palace of nature, and nothing can exceed the beauty of such a spot, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... he extended and pressed the fingers unconsciously. The sight of this man was like the finding of an oasis at the point where the desert ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Brick. I won't try to explain what this hour has meant to me for I believe you understand. I'm like a man crossing the desert who finds a spring and gets enough water to last him till the next oasis." ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... equal interest with man himself. If Connecticut, with its blue laws, disloyal Hartford convention, and Democracy, has, nevertheless, been a Canada for fugitive wives from the yoke of matrimony, pray keep that little State, like an oasis in the desert, sacred to sad wives, at least until the sixteenth amendment of the federal constitution shall give the women of the republic the right to say whether they are ready to make marriage, under all circumstances, for better or worse, an indissoluble tie. We have grave doubts as ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... some women who have given their hands to their husbands, but never their hearts. I see faces, now and then, which make me think of what I have read descriptive of deserts where there is no water to quench the thirst, no oasis with its green palms giving grateful shade from the summer heat,—faces that tell of hunger and thirst for the bread and water ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the ferryman on our return journey after the summer's absence, the plantation could be seen stretching away into the distance, hemmed in by the flat-topped cypresses. From there we had a view of our distant dwelling, gleaming white in the sunlight and standing in a green oasis of trees and grass, all looking wonderfully small amid the expanse of flat fields around it. Apart as I now am from the restless, never-ending push of life, when neither men nor women have time for leisure, when even pleasure and amusement ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... each trawl being over a mile away. I was captain of a dory this year, passing as a seasoned fisherman with my experience of the year before. My helper or "bow-man" was John Hogan, a young Irishman about my own age, red-headed, but green at the fishing business. John's mother kept a little oasis for thirsty neighbors, in a city adjacent to my home town, and his father was a man of unsteady habits. But John was a good fellow, active and willing, and, though he had not inherited a rugged constitution, he could pull a ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... to the music of the beating rain. It was like an oasis, a restful halt between two stretches of desert journey; she wished to make it as long as possible. Only those who live exposed to life's buffetings ever learn to enjoy to the full the great little ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... its souffles Javanaise; leave the blatant Boulevard des Italiens for the timid bistrop of Monsieur Delmas in the scrawny Rue Huygens, with its soupe aux legumes at twenty centimes the bowl, its cotelette de veau at fifty the plate. A queer oasis, this, with old Delmas's dog suffering from the St. Vitus and quivering against the tables as you eat; with its marked napkins in a rack, like the shaving cups in a rural barber shop, one napkin a week to each regular patron. Avaunt, ye gauds of Americanized ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... key of this paddock, and never let any man but himself enter it; nor would he even let little Gerard go there without him or Margaret. "Children are all little Cains," said he. In this oasis, then, he spoke to Margaret, and said, "Dear Margaret, I have thought more than ever of thee of late, and have asked myself why I am content, ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... come at length when the full epos of a remarkable prosperity was closed up and sealed for De Quincey. But that was in the unseen future. To the child it was not permitted to look beyond the hazy lines that bounded his oasis of flowers into the fruitless waste abroad. Poverty, want, at least so great as to compel the daily exercise of his mind for mercenary ends, was stealthily advancing from the rear; but the sound of its stern steppings was wholly muffled by intervening years ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... product of the reconstructed school, for this school does already exist, though in conspicuous isolation. But the oasis is accentuated by its isolation in the desert which spreads about it and is the more inviting by contrast. When, as a child, he entered school, the teacher, who was in advance of her time in her conception of the true function of the school, ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... hospital, and was with Sherman's army in that wonderful march to the sea, and here we found her on the outpost of civilization, determined to start what Kansas most needed—a good hotel. But alas! it was too good for that latitude and proved a financial failure. It was, to us, an oasis in the desert, where we would gladly have lingered if the opposition would have come to us for conversion. But, as we had to carry the gospel of woman's equality into the highways and hedges, we left dear Mother Bickerdyke with profound regret. The seed sown in Kansas in 1867 is now bearing ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Jefferson will be hailed with gratitude, his memory honored and cherished as the second founder of the liberties of the people, and the period of his administration will be looked back to as one of the happiest and brightest epochs of American history; an oasis in the midst of a sandy desert. But I beg the gentleman's pardon; he has already secured to himself a more imperishable fame than I had supposed; I think it was about four years that he submitted to the House of Representatives an initiative proposition ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... from place to place with its goats, its sheep, its camels, Johnny with his sons and grandsons would take to prettying up the camp sites a bit. He particularly like the dates from one palm that grew upon an oasis far down the desert. He carried the seeds from this tree and planted them at various stopping places. He did the same thing with some especially sweet nuts from a walnut tree which he had found, let us say, in the Caucasus ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... thinking. As I thought, the world around me seemed to be illimitably great. The only little spot in which I was interested seemed like a tiny speck in the midst of a wilderness. Without and around it were darkness and unknown danger, pressing in from every side. And the central figure in our little oasis was one of sweetness and beauty. A figure one could love; could work for; could ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... is truly an oasis in the midst of the desert of Africa. It produces in abundance wheat, beans, lentils, and all leguminous foods; palms rear themselves in forests. On the pastures irrigated by the Nile graze herds of cattle and goats, and flocks of geese. With a territory ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... years the memory of those four months with Amy Kelly remained with the boy, an oasis in the trackless Sahara of his school life. In this dreary expanse now and then a shadow of hope arose, as if to lure him on, as some new teacher came up over his horizon, but in the main these all proved delusions, mirages that glittered at phantom distances, but faded away ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... elbow and pushing her hair back from her forehead—not as you have seen a leading lady pass a lily hand across her alabaster brow, but as a heart-sick woman does it. Her tears and sniffles had formed a little oasis of moisture on the pillow's white bosom so that the ugly stripe of the ticking showed through. She gazed down at the damp circle with smarting, swollen eyes, and another lump ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... have my moral, if I draw it from such a lean text as crumbling bones. Let us hope that what we leave behind us, when our journey over the drear expanse of mortal life shall cease, may serve to guide some future wanderer in the devious way, and lead him to the bright oasis of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... anniversary was a sweet oasis in the severe monotony of a life which had been filled always with hard work, criticism and misrepresentation, although it was only a public expression of the numerous and strong friendships which had been ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Palmyra, a ruined city of Asia situated in an oasis of the Syrian desert, supposed to be the Tadmor built by Solomon in the wilderness ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... with civil powers, it is always on condition that they be subject to its narrow tutelage and be treated as minors and children. —Besides, these universities, even of age, are to remain as they are, so many dispensaries of diplomas. They are no longer to serve as an intellectual refuge, an oasis at the end of secondary instruction, a station for three or four years for free curiosity and disinterested self-culture. Since the abolition of the volontariat for one year, a young Frenchman no longer enjoys the leisure to cultivate himself in this way; free curiosity is interdicted; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... where you were bullied by the stronger fellows without redress, and thrashed for very little reason; where there were also many coarsenesses which were sickening at the time to any lad with a sense of decency, and which he is glad, if he can, to forget; but, at least, there was one oasis in the wilderness where there was nothing but enjoyment for the boys, and that was the "Department of Modern Languages," over which Moossy ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... fell. He had been looking forward to good cheer and a good bed, to a rare oasis of comfort in his squalid life. He cast a wary look round him. "What has happened, my ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... chateau there was a brilliant spot of light, standing out vividly against the surrounding darkness. I could not account for that brilliantly lighted spot then. But we came into it as the car stopped; it was a sort of oasis of light in an inky desert of surrounding gloom. And as we came full into it and I stood up to descend from the car, stretching my tired, stiff legs, the silence and the darkness were ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... each in a green niche of its own in this steep and narrow forest dell. Though they were so near, there was already a good difference in level; and Mr. M'Eckron's head must be a long way under the feet of Mr. Schram. No more had been cleared than was necessary for cultivation; close around each oasis ran the tangled wood; the glen enfolds them; there they lie basking in sun and silence, concealed from all but the clouds ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... oasis with eighty wells. The water was full of salts. It was bad as water; it was execrable as tea. Many of the wells on the Baghdad-Samarra Railway have these natural salts. Every one who left Sumaikchah next morning was suffering from diarrhoea. Here again ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... at the Hotel Astor is the oasis in the desert days of rehearsal for all early fall plays, and beside its tinkling fountain and under its tinkling music can be found at luncheon all of the theatrical profession who are not around the corners at the equally cool, white-tiled ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... miles had been accomplished above a flattish country ridged occasionally with large sandhills. If the "Albatross" had halted, she would have come to the earth in the depths of the Wargla oasis hidden beneath an immense forest of palm-trees. The town was clearly enough displayed with its three distinct quarters, the ancient palace of the Sultan, a kind of fortified Kasbah, houses of brick which had been left to ...
— Rubur the Conqueror • Jules Verne
... and farther away to a bit of an oasis where the Sheikh's people are gathered with their flocks. They find pasture there at this time of year, and a little employment with the travellers who come to Cairo. In the summer time, when the city is pretty well empty, they go right away to some high ground where it is ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn |
