"Swimming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she saw something white waving. Next moment a big splash. She could see, through a little gap, a white blazer thrown down on the bank—a pair of sprawling brown boots; in the water a sleek wet round head, an arm in a blue shirt sleeve swimming a strong side stroke. It was the lunatic; of course it was. And she had called to him, and he was coming. She pushed back to the boat, leaped in, and was fumbling with the chain when she heard the splash and the crack of broken twigs that ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... hands to heaven exclaimed, 'May they never quit that pool, but pass their lives there!' And it came to pass accordingly. They now live in the water, sometimes totally submerged, then raising their heads above the surface or swimming upon it. Sometimes they come out upon the bank, but soon leap back again into the water. They still use their base voices in railing, and though they have the water all to themselves, are not ashamed ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... were to attack. Iberville answered, "Albany." "Humph," grunted the Indians with a dry smile at the camp fire, "since when have the French become so brave?" A midwinter thaw now turned the snowy levels to swimming lagoons, where snowshoes were useless, and the men had to wade knee-deep day after day through swamps of ice water. Then came one of those sudden changes,—hard frost with a blinding snowstorm. Where the trail forked for Albany and Schenectady it was decided to ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... our amiable allies cannot be sufficiently commended—nor subscribed for. Amongst other details omitted in the various [A] despatches of our eloquent ambassador, he did not state (being too much occupied with the exploits of Colonel C——, in swimming rivers frozen, and galloping over roads impassable,) that one entire province perished by famine in the most melancholy manner, as follows:—In General Rostopchin's consummate conflagration, the consumption of tallow and train oil was so great, that the market was inadequate to ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... me $30, and I found him to be a poor, lazy little fellow. However, I thought that when he got some good grass, and a little fat on his ribs he might have more life, and so I hitched a rope to him and drove him ahead down the river. When I came to the Bad Axe river I found it swimming full, but had no trouble in crossing, as the pony was as good as ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... could be seen through shattered windows; and numerous petty shops, all the open-air cook-stalls of a lazy race which never lighted a fire at home: you saw frying-shops with heaps of polenta, and fish swimming in stinking oil, and dealers in cooked vegetables displaying huge turnips, celery, cauliflowers, and spinach, all cold and sticky. The butcher's meat was black and clumsily cut up; the necks of the animals bristled with bloody clots, as ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... up a yell, then drove his pony into the bay. No small boats were in sight, so, throwing himself in the icy water, he grasped the pony's mane and, swimming with the animal, headed ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... any use, now," thought Alice, "to speak to this mouse? Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very likely it can talk: at any rate, there's no harm in trying." So she began: "O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!" (Alice thought this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse: she had never done such a thing before, but she remembered having seen, in her brother's Latin Grammar, "A mouse—of a ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... by the water and often broke under the strain, causing many accidents of a trying and serious nature. The banks were sometimes so rocky and precipitous as to afford no foothold; then the men took to the water, wading, swimming, making headway as they could. One extract from the journals will illustrate the severity ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... chiefly effected by two vertical fins, which normally lay back like gill-flaps on either side of the head. It was indeed a most complete adaptation of the fish form to aerial conditions, the position of swimming bladder, eyes, and brain being, however, below instead of above. A striking, and unfish-like feature was the apparatus for wireless telegraphy that dangled from the forward cabin—that is to say, under the chin ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... soon; it can't be more than a half mile to yonder rock—I'm for swimming to it! Once on land we can move about, get our blood going, and ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... I'll go. My grandfather has a big apple orchard and everything, and I can go swimming in the Mississippi. I'll write ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... and sink, and was after her in a moment. A broad-chested, strong-armed fellow, it was nothing for him to keep afloat in the water, till, in a moment or two, the child rose to the surface, and he caught her in his arms, and, swimming with her to the boat-side, handed her up, all dripping, to the grasp of hundreds of hands, which, as if they had all belonged to one man, were stretched eagerly out to receive her. A few moments more, and her father bore ...
— Pictures and Stories from Uncle Tom's Cabin • Unknown
... being destroyed by knowledge, one should live happily, without giving way to grief (for anything that happens), and with one's doubts dispelled. Know that they who mingle in the affairs of this world are as distressed in body and mind as persons ignorant of the art of swimming when they slip from the land and fall into a large and deep river. The man of learning, however, being conversant with the truth, is never distressed, for he feels like one walking over solid land. Indeed, he who apprehends his Soul ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... wear a look of tragic gloom in a swimming-bath," said Clovis, "it's especially noticeable from the fact that you're wearing very little else. Didn't she ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... magnesium dome of a powerhouse reactor, repair and maintenance shops, personnel-housing area carefully shielded against radiation by a huge stellene bubble, sealed and air-conditioned, with double-doored entrances and exits. Inside it were visible neat bungalows, lawns, gardens, supermarket, swimming pools, swings, a kid's bike ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... swimming in the satisfaction of several simultaneous woes, said plainly, "What about ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... I never went to Sunday-school, and I was not often seen inside the church. My Sundays were spent rather roaming in the woods and fields, or climbing to "Old Clump," or, in summer, following the streams and swimming in the pools. Occasionally I went fishing, though this was to incur parental displeasure—unless I brought home some fine trout, in which case the displeasure was much tempered. I think this Sunday-school in the woods and fields was, in my case, best. It has always ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Master Mont. I have been swimming about everywhere looking for you ever since that submarine beast swamped us. Ugh! What a terrible brute it is! It laughs at bullets, and cares no more for sinking a ship than I should for kicking ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... vessel that had been lately lost on the coast of Wales, when most of the ship's crew and passengers were drowned, among whom, he said, was the mother of the tender infant at his back, and that he had saved himself and the infant by swimming. By this story he pocketed a great deal of money every where, especially, as by way of confirmation, when he was telling of it, he would turn and ask the babe, where is your poor mammy, my dear, my jewel? To which the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... across the room. The Prince touched a bell, the doors were opened. Ghastly pale, his head swimming, the tortured man dashed out into the street. The Prince leaned back amongst his cushions, untied a straw-fastened packet of his long cigarettes, lit one, and ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to inquire about his refrigerator, his vacuum cleaner, his car, his helicopter, his subterranean swimming pool, and the hundreds of other items Carrin had ...
— Cost of Living • Robert Sheckley
... the whole flotilla of trenchers—wrecks and all—were sent swimming to the further end of Lake Como; and thence removed, gave place to ruddy hillocks of fruit, and floating islands of flowers. Chief among the former, a quince-like, golden sphere, that filled the air with such fragrance, you thought you were tasting ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... I might as well have been a chauffeur for all the choice of guests or destination I had when I drove my father's friends in our cars. I never did anything I wanted to do, and I never got any gratitude for doing what they wanted me to do. I might as well have been a goldfish, swimming round and round in the same globe, month after month, year after year. It wasn't my job! Nature hadn't made me for a fat, tame life. But young Marcel wasn't as much use as an understudy for a dutiful son as I'd once hoped. So I made up my mind ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... his efforts were rewarded: the man opened his eyes, and they were swimming with the calm light of reason. He smiled faintly ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... cut much of a figure at the village school—though he did his best, and was fairly successful—but in the playground he reigned supreme. At football, cricket, gymnastics, and, ultimately, at swimming, no one could come near him. This was partly owing to his great physical strength, for, as time passed by he shot upwards and outwards in a way that surprised his companions and amazed his mother, who was a distinctly little woman—a neat graceful ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... They go on trying to direct their gifts to the end of reputation, or wealth, or dominion; and they attain that end only to find that it is no end, and that their lives, which should have grown broader and richer, have grown shrunken, and meagre, and unsatisfied. Such a life is like a fish swimming into the labyrinth of a weir. It follows along the line of its vocation until the liberty to return grows less and less; and, at last, in the very element where it seems most free, it is in fact a ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... of a chance to provide an excuse for a vacation expedition. The real purpose, so far as Rick was concerned, was to get in some superb swimming in clear water. He also intended getting plenty of underwater movies of the colorful reefs and fish. Scotty planned ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... stair she went, to the accustomed chamber, where an additional chair was on the dais under the canopy, the half circle of ladies as usual, but before she had seen more with her dazzled, swimming eyes, even as she rose from her first genuflection, she found herself in a pair of soft arms, kisses rained on her cheeks and brow, and there was a tender cry in her own tongue of "My Grisell! my dear old Grisell! I have found you at last! Oh! that was good in you. ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... over my head from the deck above me, and I was pulled from my fearfully perilous position, more dead than alive. Now for revenge on the brutes who would have eaten me if they could! It was a dead calm, the sharks were still swimming round the ship waiting for their prey. We got a lot of hooks with chains attached to them, on which we put baits of raw meat. I may as well mention a fact not generally known, viz., that a shark must turn ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... most roomy of the four. It evidently represents the regions under the earth, and both its size and the complication of its arrangements show us that it was, in the opinion of the artist, more important than either of the three above it. The whole of its lower part is occupied by five fishes all swimming in one direction, a conventional symbol always employed by Assyrian artists to represent a river. The left bank is indicated by a raised line running from one side of the plaque to the other. On this bank towards the left of the relief ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... white indeed with blossom, some fifty yards landward from where she stood. So she laughed, and did off her other raiment, and slid swiftly into the water, that embraced her body in all its fresh kindness; and as for Birdalone, she rewarded it well for its past toil by sporting and swimming to ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... fleet of magnetic ships, with tin swans, ducks, and fishes swimming around them, floated in state on the wonderful brook, along the bank of which the procession marched. Now let the Reader picture to himself this interminable multitude advancing in the beautiful green woods, all amidst ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... swimming, swimming and swimming And with delight seemed overbrimming; I never saw such a thing in my life As the little gray fish seeking ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... ten feet deep, bank-full of a muddy, foaming flood, in which waves two feet high roared after one another, carrying clumps of bushes, stalks of cactus, bones, and other debris. As they plunged into the torrent, Ellhorn seized the tail of Tuttle's horse, and, holding it with one hand and swimming with the other, made good progress. But in mid-stream a big clump of mesquite struck him in the side, stunning him for an instant, and he let go his hold upon the pony's tail. A high wave roared down upon him the next ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... the snorkels, and each boy tested his flow of air, checked to be sure his mask was connected to the lung by a safety line, charged his gun, and set his watch. The watches, designed especially for underwater swimming, had an outer dial that could be set to show elapsed ...
— The Wailing Octopus • Harold Leland Goodwin
... sounded in his ears; and looking up he saw a pretty little duck swimming in the brook and popping its head under the water in search of something to eat. The duck belonged to Johnny Sprigg, who lived a little way down the brook, but the little man did not know this. He thought it was a wild duck, so he stood up and ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... I had a mighty narrow escape. Just you catch me dropping overboard again while we're around this region! Why, Phil, would you believe it, while I was fishing above, didn't I see as many as five of the nasty wigglers go swimming past. Ugh! they give me a ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... something of the sort, and they are here to guard the gold, lest anybody should try to steal it. It would not be easy to steal, even if it had no guard, and knowing this has perhaps made these pretty keepers a little careless about it, so that now, instead of watching it very closely, they are swimming and diving and circling about, trying to catch one another, having the jolliest time in the world, and never thinking that there may be ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... as, released from those kindly arms, she stands, still clinging with one hand to her new mamma, and holding out the other to Riccabocca—with those large dark eyes swimming in happy tears. What a lovely smile!—what an ingenuous candid brow! She looks delicate—she evidently requires care—she wants the mother. And rare is the woman who would not love her the better for that! ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... should have fought. By a union of astuteness and hard fighting Rauparaha's people won, and signal was the revenge taken on his assailants. Previous to this he had almost exterminated one neighbour-tribe whose villages were built on small half-artificial islets in a forest-girt lake. In canoes and by swimming his warriors reached the islets, and not many of the lake ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... so confident, and his laugh so buoyant, that Mr. Heard, who had been fully expecting him to withdraw from the affair, began to feel that he had under-rated his swimming powers. "Just jumping in and swimming out again is not quite the same as saving a drownding man," he said, ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... Sawyer', most of them, really happened. Sam Clemens did clod Henry for getting him into trouble about the colored thread with which he sewed his shirt when he came home from swimming; he did inveigle a lot of boys into whitewashing, a fence for him; he did give Pain-killer to Peter, the cat. There was a cholera scare that year, and Pain-killer was regarded as a preventive. Sam had been ordered to take it liberally, and perhaps thought ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the fainting man was coming back to consciousness, his dry, rattling breaths bearing out Captain Bingo Wrynche's similitude regarding husks and shavings, rings of blue fire swimming before his darkened vision, and a dull roaring in his ears.... The Royal Army Medical Corps wrought over him; the nurse lent a deft helping hand; the Resident Surgeon talked eagerly to the Colonel; and he, lending ear, scarcely heard the reiterated, stereotyped parrot-phrases, so taken up was ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Siberian peasant so far as to speak to a group of sailors, first in French and then in German; they understood neither: the idlers on the quays began to gather round in idle curiosity, and he had to desist. In vain, despite the icy coldness of the water, he tried swimming in the bay to approach some vessel for the chance of getting speech of the captain or crew unseen by the sentinel. In vain he resorted to every device which desperation could suggest. After three days he was forced to look the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... upon hers that she looked up, her eyes swimming with tenderness. Neither spoke for a long minute, but words were not needed to tell what the soul ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... Madokawandock have been fooling deir poor old fader again," said he. "I'm purty sure I seen some one on the tree, when dem pieces of bark come swimming downstream." ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... himself. — "Art thou that Beowulf, Breca's rival, who emulous swam on the open sea, when for pride the pair of you proved the floods, and wantonly dared in waters deep to risk your lives? No living man, or lief or loath, from your labor dire could you dissuade, from swimming the main. Ocean-tides with your arms ye covered, with strenuous hands the sea-streets measured, swam o'er the waters. Winter's storm rolled the rough waves. In realm of sea a sennight strove ye. In swimming he topped thee, had more of main! Him ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... as an afterthought: "if you please, ma'am." He looked up and saw that his hostess's eyes were swimming in tears. "I—I hope it ain't bad news," ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... the boy broke out, "don't say anything more about it! I do hate being thanked, and there was nothing in swimming ten yards in a calm sea. Please don't say anything more about it. I would rather you ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... a hail from behind me. I turned my head, and to my delight saw the brave skipper of the lost ship swimming toward me. ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... came about the ship—the flying-fish with beautiful silvery wings that sparkled in the sunlight coming inboard in shoals, pursued by their enemies the albacores, who drove them out of the sea to take refuge in the air; besides numbers of grampusses and sharks swimming round us. Adams, the sailmaker, killed one of these latter gentry with a harpoon, spearing him from the bowsprit as he came past the ship. He looked up with his evil eye, fancying perhaps that he would "catch one of us napping," ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... try my skill against yours," returned Kolbiorn modestly, "for you have already beaten me at chess, at swimming, at shooting, and at throwing the spear. Nevertheless, it ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... Betty is here, there, and everywhere,' mimicking me in a droll way. 'Lady Betty walks a little, talks a little, plays a little, and dances when she gets a chance. At present, lawn-tennis is a great object in her life; last winter, swimming in Brill's bath and riding from Hove to Kemp Town or across the Brighton Downs were her hobbies. In the summer a gardening craze seized her, and just now she is in an idle mood. What does it matter? a short life and ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... a felled tree beside the pools, and while he remained motionless, his pipe unlighted, his gun beside him, a spaniel worked below in the sere sedges at the water's margin. Presently the dog barked, a moor-hen splashed, half flying, half swimming, across the larger lake, and a snipe got up and jerked crookedly away on the wind. The dog stood with one fore-paw lifted and the water dripping along his belly. He waited for a crack and puff of smoke and the thud of ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... Creek, we took leave of our young friends, who remained on the bank long enough to witness our passage across—ourselves in the canoe, and the poor horses swimming the stream, now filled with cakes ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... upon his mighty sides, throw out their tiny casting nets, as this Pyrgoma does, to catch every passing animalcule, and sweep them into the jaws concealed within its shell. And this creature, rooted to one spot through life and death, was in its infancy a free swimming animal, hovering from place to place upon delicate ciliae, till, having sown its wild oats, it settled down in life, built itself a good stone house, and became a landowner, or rather a glebae adscriptus, for ever and a day. ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... swimming. Fortunately, Baldry knew more of it than he did, and was able to clutch him by the arm and hold him up. But those on the raft saw with horror that they had floated right away from Hibbert, and that was he drowning before ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... Floated and flashed beneath the shadowy palms; While ever and anon a bark canoe With naked Indian maidens flower-festooned Put out from shadowy coves, laden with fruit Ambrosial o'er the silken shimmering sea. And once a troop of nut-brown maidens came— So said Tom Moone, a twinkle in his eye— Swimming to meet them through the warm blue waves And wantoned through the water, like those nymphs Which one green April at the Mermaid Inn Should hear Kit Marlowe mightily portray, Among his boon companions, in a song Of Love ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Europa. For the question here is not concerning our genius and elocution, but our species and figure. If we could make and assume to ourselves any form, would you be unwilling to resemble the sea-triton as he is painted supported swimming on sea-monsters whose bodies are partly human? Here I touch on a difficult point; for so great is the force of nature that there is no man who would not choose to be like a man, nor, indeed, any ant that would not be like an ant. But like what man? For how few can ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... beach. 'Dolph, barking furiously by the edge of the waves, was caught and borne down by the first line of them—borne down and rolled over into the water with no more ceremony than if he had been a log. They did not deign to hurt him, but passed on swimming, and he found his feet and emerged behind them, sneezing and shaking himself and looking a fool. He was, as we know, sensitive about looking a fool; but just then no one had time to laugh ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a pool occupying the third of the area, and like the large pond before the house bordered with aquatic plants. At the edge stood two ibises, while many brilliantly plumaged waterfowl were swimming on its surface or cleaning their feathers on ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... to stay right here by the lake," said Margery Burton, "for one. It's as nice here as it can possibly be anywhere else. I'd like someone to go in swimming with me." ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Long Lake - Bessie King in Summer Camp • Jane L. Stewart
... is, in my opinion, deserving notice: viz.—the position of the female's teats, which are not placed on the belly, as with most animals, but on the side, approaching to the back, by which means it is enabled to suckle its young on both sides at once, whilst swimming on the surface of the water; and it presents, I have understood, a singular group to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... old time, when he was swimming about—or when most of them were. There were no trees, to speak of; and no grass or anything but sea-weed and mosses; and no living things but fishes ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... ancestors sojourned in caves, lived in tents, or dwelt in the mountain fastness. In this same way the advocates of this theory seek to explain the strange and early drawings which the young lad has for wading, swimming, fishing, boating, and other forms of ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... Frog was awake yet. He had no idea of meeting a stranger there, and so you can imagine just how surprised he was when he got in sight of the Smiling Pool to see some one whom he never had seen before swimming about there. He knew right away who it was. He knew that it was Mrs. Quack the Duck, because he had often heard about her. And then, too, it was very clear from her looks that she was a cousin of the ducks he had seen in Farmer Brown's dooryard. The difference was that while they ...
— The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack • Thornton W. Burgess
... locked the door on her. She was herself in great agitation, but nerved by deeper anger there was no faltering in her movements. She went to the glass a minute, as she tied her bonnet-strings under her chin, and pinned her shawl. A night's vigil had not chased the bloom from her cheek, or the swimming lustre from her dark eyes. Content that her aspect should be seemly, she ran down the stairs, unfastened the bolts, and without hesitation closed the door behind her. At the same instant, a gentleman crossed the road. He asked whether Mrs. Ayrton lived in that house? Rhoda's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he saw he knew not what, of a shining red, swimming close to the vessel. They put out the long-boat to see what it could be: it was one of his sheep! Candide was more rejoiced at the recovery of this one sheep than he had been grieved at the loss of the hundred laden with the ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... could see that erosion from above had washed down sufficient rubble to form a narrow ribbon of beach. Toward this I swam with all my strength. Not once did I look behind me, since every unnecessary movement in swimming detracts so much from one's endurance speed. Not until I had drawn myself safely out upon the beach did I turn my eyes back toward the sea for the hyaenodon. He was swimming slowly and apparently painfully toward the beach upon ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... shore stood the family bathing-house; and the girls came down to sit in its shadow and watch the swimming. It was late in August, and on the first of September Emilia was ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... eels are very plentiful, not only in the numberless small streams which debouch into the shallow waters enclosed by the barrier reefs, but also far up on the mountainsides, occupying little rocky pools of perhaps no larger dimensions than an ordinary-sized toilet basin, or swimming up and down rivulets hardly more than two feet across. The natives of Ponape, the largest island of the Caroline Group, and of Kusaie (Strong's Island), its eastern outlier, regard the fresh-water eel with shuddering aversion, and should a man accidentally touch one with his foot when crossing a ...
— Amona; The Child; And The Beast; And Others - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... first. After these forty days after the lessing of the waters, Noah opened the window and desired sore to have tidings of ceasing of the flood. And sent out a raven for to have tidings, and when he was gone he returned no more again, for peradventure she found some dead carrion of a beast swimming on the water, and lighted thereon to feed her and was left there. After this he sent out a dove which flew out, and when she could find no place to rest ne set her foot on, she returned unto Noah and he took her in. Yet then were not the tops of the ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... supposed to be free and enlightened, but in reality heavily burdened with churches, there are tennis courts built and paid for out of public funds, my own included; yet I cannot use these tennis courts on Sunday, because of the ancient Hebrew taboo. My mail is not delivered to me, the swimming pool in the park is closed to me, the library is closed nearly all day. If I enquire about it, I am told that it is desirable that city employees should have one day's rest a week; but when I ask why it might not be possible to relay the ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... She would swim to him through the crystal water, and he would stretch out his hands to her, and she would go up to him like a bird from the sea, and perch upon the stern. He would scold her a little for swimming out so far, but what of that? She liked being ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... to be swimming a little," said Teddy, "but I guess it was more instinct than anything else. You went down before we got to you. But you'd better not talk any more just now. We'll be on shore before long I hope, and then we'll tell ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... the power of movement, swimming or creeping slowly over the slide as we examine them, but the mechanism of these ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... Decoud had not been aware. Of course, it was too dark to see, and it was only when Nostromo put his hand upon its painter fastened to a cleat in the stern that he experienced a full measure of relief. The prospect of finding himself in the water and swimming, overwhelmed by ignorance and darkness, probably in a circle, till he sank from exhaustion, was revolting. The barren and cruel futility of such an end intimidated his affectation of careless pessimism. In comparison to it, the chance of being left floating in ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Goldfinch, the Nighthawk, and the Sparrow Hawk, is so characteristic in each case that I have often been able to name the bird for a student upon being told its approximate size and the character of its flight. Who can see a Wild Duck swimming, or a Gull flying, without at once referring it to the group of birds to which it belongs? Thus the first step is taken toward learning the names of the species, and the grouping of ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... girl to look on that I had been. There was a bright colour in my cheeks and my eyes were bright; but I had a swimming in my head and I felt hot and cold by turns. I saw that I was splendid, for Margaret had put on me as many as she could of the jewels with which my lover loaded me, which used to lie about so carelessly that my grandmother had rebuked me saying I should be robbed of ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... swimming with his boat until he could wade, and in this way came out of the river dripping, temporarily held in check by his misfortune, but not in the ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... they had the good fortune to fall in with several pieces of beef, swimming in the sea, which had been washed out of the wreck, which afforded them a most seasonable relief, after the hardships they had endured. To complete their good fortune, there came shortly afterwards to the place two canoes with Indians, among whom ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... them. A few of the best shots obtained permission from the officers to try their muskets on the reptiles, in case any showed up. On reaching the bend indicated, there were the alligators, sure enough, lazily swimming about, and splashing in the water. They were sluggish, ugly looking things, and apparently from six to eight feet long. Our marksmen opened fire at once. I had read in books at home that the skin of an alligator was so hard and tough that it was impervious to an ordinary ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... of her sweater. But Eleanor caught at her skirts from behind. "Sit down, Phil. Here comes that wretched Madge, swimming toward us from over there. She purposely ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... directed by those who had given information, started to cross the river and bring those boats over. The Minho was at this time in flood and was running with great rapidity, and Terence felt confident that in its present state none of the enemy's cavalry would attempt to cross it by swimming. ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... p. 251. "Which may sit from time to time where you dwell or in the neighbouring vicinity."—Taylor's District School, 1st Ed., p. 281. "Place together a large and a small sized animal of the same species."—Kames, El. of Crit., i, 235. "The weight of the swimming body is equal to that of the weight, of the quantity of fluid displaced by it."—Percival's Tales, ii, 213. "The Subjunctive mood, in all its tenses, is similar to that of the Optative."—Gwilt's Saxon Gram., p. 27. "No other feeling of obligation remains, except that of fidelity."—Wayland's ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... 91. Skating, Swimming, and Rowing. Skating is a delightful and invigorating exercise. It calls into play a great variety of muscles, and is admirably adapted for almost all ages. It strengthens the ankles and helps give an easy and graceful carriage to the body. Skating is especially valuable, ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... to spy out at least a strap of the harness he wore; to examine closely what sort of candles, if any, he burned in the seclusion of the library. Now she forgot to do either; could not have seen if she had tried. For her eyes were swimming, blinding her. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... Mother Otter came swimming down the river with her children. One of them climbed upon her shoulders and stared solemnly at Little Bear ...
— Little Bear at Work and at Play • Frances Margaret Fox
... or Swimming in the Head, will generally be removed by proceeding in the same Manner as ...
— An Account of the Extraordinary Medicinal Fluid, called Aether. • Matthew Turner
... to be impossible that a floating mass of ice should travel onward in one rectilinear direction, turning neither to the right nor to the left, for such a distance. Equally impossible would it be for a detached mass of ice, swimming on the surface of the water, or even with its base sunk considerably below it, to furrow in a straight line the summits and sides of the hills, and the beds of the valleys. It would be carried over the depressions without touching bottom. Instead of ascending the mountains, it would remain stranded ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... thousand drops struck upon a silver harp-string, causing the most delightful sounds to fill the air, and mingle with the songs of the birds and the perfume of the flowers. Around the great basin were silken cushions on which the Prince reclined, and the goldfish that were swimming in the basin came up to him to be fed. There also came the ruby fish, that shines as red as blood, and the zimphare, or transparent fish, which is as colorless as the water, and can only be discovered by a green knot on its head and another on ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... too agitated to note how immaculate and dainty the dining room table looked with its fine linen and cut glass. There were six dices of apple with a nut on top on the handsome salad plates, and the crystal dessert dishes each held three prunes swimming in their ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... me, sir," answered Paddy promptly. "I'll not be stopping. I would be swimming to Ireland before she ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... "sick headache," or "nervous headache," begins by a sense of blindness or blur, before the eyes, of green or purple colors, dazzling or swimming in the head, without, for some time at first, any positive aching or pain. In the course of an hour, a longer or shorter time, the dimness of vision goes off, and the head begins to ache. This may or may not be accompanied with nausea and ...
— An Epitome of Homeopathic Healing Art - Containing the New Discoveries and Improvements to the Present Time • B. L. Hill
... this Wood did by its being frequently Infus'd in New Water by degrees Decay, I Conjectur'd that the Tincture afforded by the Wood must proceed from some Subtiler parts of it drawn forth by the Water, which swimming too and fro in it did so Modifie the Light, as to exhibit such and such Colours; and because these Subtile parts were so easily Soluble even in Cold water, I concluded that they must abound with Salts, and perhaps contain much of the Essential Salt, as the Chymists call it, of the ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... run down a stag on foot. There was no relic of ancient times preserved whatever, except that at midsummer, as in Lyme, that very curious custom was kept of driving the red deer round the park, and then swimming them through the lake before the house—a very difficult feat, by-the-by, to any save those who have been accustomed to "drive deer." One peculiar virtue of Carew—he was addressed, by-the-way, by all his inferiors, and some of his equals, as "Squire" ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... "squaw," they did not give themselves the trouble to get into the canoe—a very difficult operation with one made of bark, and which is not loaded—but they set about towing the captured craft to the shore, swimming each with a single hand and ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... story speaks of a mermaid who fell in love with a fisherman. As he did not want to be carried away into the sea he, by fair means or foul, succeeded in getting hold of her pouch and belt, on which her power of swimming depended, and so retained her on land; and she became his bride. But we are not surprised to hear that her tail was always in the way: her silky hair grew tangled too, for her comb and glass were in the pouch; the dogs teased her, and ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... finale; and all the dancers began to dance with a last desperate fury. Bodies buffeted one from behind, and while one was yet looking round in apology or anger more bodies buffeted one from the flank. It was like swimming in a choppy sea, where there is no time to get the last wave out of your mouth before ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various
... cried, desponding, "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the fourth day of his fasting In his lodge he lay exhausted; From his couch of leaves and branches Gazing with half-open eyelids, Full of shadowy dreams and visions, On the dizzy, swimming landscape, On the gleaming of the water, On the splendor of the sunset. And he saw a youth approaching, Dressed in garments green and yellow, Coming through the purple twilight, Through the splendor of the sunset; Plumes of green bent o'er ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... the unfortunate creatures composing the smaller division, which was fired on close to the seacoast, at some distance from the other column, succeeded in swimming to some reefs of rocks out of the reach of musket-shot. The soldiers rested their muskets on the sand, and, to induce the prisoners to return, employed the Egyptian signs of reconciliation in use in the country. They, came back; but as they advanced they ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... along the coast. On the defeat of the Pretender, and the suppression of the insurrection in 1746, Stoneywood's estate was confiscated, and he fled to the Continent. Family tradition adds that his escape was achieved by his disguising himself as a miller and swimming across the Don from Stoneywood to Grandholm, where the laird of Grandholm, who was of opposite politics, had removed the ferry-boat, and saw but did not denounce his kinsman. The houses of Grandholm and Stoneywood are exactly opposite each other on the two ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... at once, getting away at a sharp pace, till presently they could see him swimming the stream. When he was in the cabin the sounds changed, dropping off to one at a time, and expired. But when the riders came out into the air, they leaned and collided at random, whirled their arms, and, screaming till they gathered heart, charged with ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... boy? What care I for the ship, sailor, I never was aboard her. Be she afloat, or be she aground, Sinking or swimming, I'll be bound, Her owners can afford her! I say, how's my John?" "Every man on board went down, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... length of the hedge there is a great duckpond, nine yards broad, and three wild ducks swimming on it. Alas!" he cried, "I shall never ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... Trenta, has ceased speaking, Enrica raises her heavy eyelids and turns her eyes, swimming in tears, upon her aunt. Then she clasps her hands—the small fingers knitting themselves together with a grasp of agony—and wrings them. Her lips move, but no sound comes from them. Something there is so pitiful in this mute appeal—she looks so slight and frail in ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... and the mute flocks Of scaly creatures swimming in the streams, And joyous herds around, and all the wild, And all the breeds of birds—both those that teem In gladsome regions of the water-haunts, About the river-banks and springs and pools, And those that throng, flitting from tree to tree, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... it late, and I told him, too, that if he didn't come I'm make everything known. I never said owt to anybody, but I kept t' knife with me. Give me some more stuff, doctor; I feel as though my head is all swimming!" ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... in his finishing touches this morning I thought of my mother. She was like that when they brought my brother Archie home. You remember Archie—and the day he was drowned? We were all in swimming that Sunday, you know, and Parson Moore said it was a judgment, but my poor mother could not ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... feet sheer down into the sea, which at this point swirled round the rocky base in dark, deep, blackish-green eddies, sprinkled with trailing sprays of brown and crimson weed. It was a wonderful sight to look down upon this heaving mass of water, if it could be done without the head swimming and the eyes growing blind with the light of the sky striking sharp against the restless heaving of the waves, and Mary was one of the few who could stand fearlessly on almost the very brink of the parapet of the "Giant's Castle," and ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... with the vessel on either side. The keel seemed to be cutting its way through a number of tiny cliffs, over which the sea was breaking. But closer inspection showed that they were no cliffs, but countless shoals of large fish, swimming alongside the ship, as if in order of battle. From time to time they leaped high out of the water, their bright, scaly bodies glistening ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... McGuire, throwing off his jacket. And in that strange room in a strange world, under the shadow of death and of tortures unknown, the two men stripped with all the care-free abandon of a couple of schoolboys racing to be first in the old swimming hole. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... the Brownie, at which they all laughed, but did it; and when they opened their eyes again, what should they behold but a whole fleet of ducklings sailing out from the roots of an old willow-tree, one after the other, looking as fat and content as possible, and swimming as naturally as if they had lived on a pond—and this particularly ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... dark eyes swimming in their own ethereal essence; tell me not of pouting lips, of glossy ringlets, of taper fingers, and well-rounded insteps; speak not to me of soft voices, whose seductive sounds ring sweetly in our hearts; preach not of those thousand womanly graces so dear to every man, and doubly to him ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... last sentence did not please him. "God bless you and grant you a safe deliverance from factions and factious men." These words Wilkinson read over and over. To him, in his dejected mood, with nerves unstrung and head swimming in quinine bitters, the blessing sounded ironical; a mocking face seemed concealed behind the mask of considerate friendliness. The tone of the communication struck him as patronizing, perhaps unconsciously ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... into gold if I could, father," she said, with swimming eyes, "if it would only make you well and strong as you ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... he reached the city. So he spent sixpence of his little store on a bath in the swimming baths, and another sixpence on some breakfast. Then, refreshed in body and mind, he called at the post-office. There was nothing for him there. Though he hardly expected any letter yet, his heart sunk as he thought what news might possibly be on its way to him ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... from the low chair, and she fell without power to save herself, to struggle further. The room was swimming before her eyes, and Dresser had his arms about her. Then the door opened, and she saw Sommers enter. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... numbers with their big guns, and while most of our men were fighting them to gain time, the women and the old men made and equipped the temporary boats, braced with ribs of willow. Some of these were towed by two or three women or men swimming in the water and some by ponies. It was not an easy matter to keep them right side up, with their helpless freight of little children and such ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... of a cape or object. To cut through a sea, the surface of which is poetically termed breast.—To breast the sea, to meet it by the bow on a wind.—To breast the surf, to brave it, and overcome it swimming.—To breast a bar, to heave at the capstan.—To breast to, the act of giving a ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... about that island lay Larie's fourth world—the sea. When his great day for swimming came, he slipped off into the water; and after that it was his, whenever he wished—his to swim or float upon, the wide-away ocean reaching as far as any gull need care ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... in neuralgia of the face, and in every form of rheumatism. The baths are of marble and easily entered, and furnished with ingenious contrivances to facilitate the application of the water to any particular part. Near the Casino, and standing by itself, is a swimming bath, 62 ft. long by 29 wide and 5 deep, filled with the mineral water cooled down to 90 Fahr. The surplus water is still carried off by the underground channels constructed by the Romans. At intervals along their course perpendicular shafts are sunk down ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... many-colored streamers which adorn you, is not this music which welcomes you, this radiance that glows about you, meant solely for your enjoyment, young miss of seventeen or eighteen summers, now for the first time swimming unto the frothy, chatoyant, sparkling, undulating sea of laces and silks and satins, and white-armed, flower-crowned maidens struggling in their waves beneath the lustres that make the false summer of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a sort of parable. Many years ago when I was on the staff of a great public school, we engaged a new swimming master. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... by one into the shivering lake; They say "Peeng" and then after a long time, "Peeng," Swimming ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers
... are you not wounded?" asked the horsemen. "You need not concern yourself about that," answered the tailor. "They have not bent one hair of mine." The horsemen would not believe him, and rode into the forest; there they found the giants swimming in their blood, and all round ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... over against the other shore, the scurrying shoals of pin-fish played safely in the sun. Once in a long while a fish would pass, up or down, so big that the master of the pool was willing to let him go unchallenged. And sometimes a muskrat, swimming with powerful strokes of his hind legs, his tiny forepaws gathered childishly under his chin, would take his way over the pool to the meadow of the blue flag-flowers. The master of the pool would turn up a fierce eye, and watch the swimmer's progress breaking the golden surface ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... build a squash-court?" Blanche Carbury proposed; and the two fell instantly to making plans under the guidance of Ned Bowfort and Westy Gaines. As the scheme developed, various advisers suggested that it was a pity not to add a bowling-alley, a swimming-tank and a gymnasium; a fashionable architect was summoned from town, measurements were taken, sites discussed, sketches compared, and engineers consulted as to the cost of artesian wells and the best system ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... looked on, threw himself into the midst of them, and after many signal demonstrations of his valor, rescued the officers, and beat off the barbarians. He himself, in the end, took to the water, and with much difficulty, partly by swimming, partly by wading, passed it, but in the passage lost his shield. Caesar and his officers saw it and admired, and went to meet him with joy and acclamation. But the soldier, much dejected and in tears, threw himself down at Caesar's feet, and begged his pardon for having ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... most frequently employed in the manufacture of the jellies supplied by the confectioner; but those prepared at home from calves' feet do possess some nutrition, and are the only sort that should be given to invalids. Isinglass is the purest variety of gelatine, and is prepared from the sounds or swimming-bladders of certain fish, chiefly the sturgeon. From its whiteness it is mostly used for making blanc-mange ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... for the convenience of embarking and landing. Carriages, horses, palankeens, camels and troops, all passed without the slightest difficulty. The elephants were preparing to cross, some in boats and some by swimming, as might seem to them best. Some refuse to swim, and others to enter boats, and some refuse to do either; but the fault is generally with their drivers. On the present occasion, two or three remained behind, one plunged into the stream from his boat, in the middle of the ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... "If the pharaoh were to stretch his hand today toward Phoenicia, in a month Assyrian armies intended for the north and east would turn southward, and a year hence or earlier their horses would be swimming in your ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... Harpeth Valley by preaching both heaven and hell in their fitten places, what's a thing this younger generation don't know how to do any more, it seems like. A sermon that sets up heaven like a circus tent, with a come-sinner-come-all sign, and digs hell no deeper than Mill Creek swimming pool, as is skeercely over a boy's middle, ain't no sermon at all to my mind. Most preaching in ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... scene of busy life and animation. The instant the ship dropped anchor she was surrounded by native boats, paddled by Hawaiian youngsters, who indulged in exhibitions of diving and swimming that were a ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... one to whom I would yield the superiority in swimming; but my strength, like that of other human beings, had its limits. My previous fatigues had been enormous, and my clothes, heavy with moisture, greatly encumbered and retarded my movements. I had proposed to free myself from this imprisonment; ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... shreds; then the effect of the storm is described as 'destruction,' and then the hurrying words turn back to paint the downpour of rain, 'mighty' from its force in falling, and 'overflowing' from its abundance, which soon sets all the fields swimming with flood water. What chance has a poor twist of flowers in such a storm? Its beauty will be marred, and all the petals beaten off, and nothing remains but that it should be trampled into mud. The rush of the prophet's denunciation is swift and irresistible as the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... struck into the sea; and next moment our canoe was flying like a sea-gull on the crest of the wave towards the shore. Another instant, and the wave had broken on the reef with a mighty roar, and rushed passed us hissing in clouds of foam. My company were next seen swimming wildly about in the sea, Manuman the one-eyed Sacred Man alone holding on by the canoe, nearly full of water, with me still clinging to the seat of it, and the very next wave likely to devour us. In desperation, I sprang for the reef, and ran for a man half-wading, half-swimming to reach ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... hours a day. In the first place I have never believed in practicing too much—it is just as bad as practicing too little! And then there are so many other things I like to do. I am fond of reading and I like sport: tennis, golf, bicycle riding, boating, swimming, etc. Often when I am supposed to be practicing hard I am out with my camera, taking pictures; for I have become what is known as a 'camera fiend.' And just now I have a new car, which I have learned to drive, and which takes ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... implored her mother, she was led that afternoon to the darkened room in which he sat, and, like knight of old, he took and bent over and kissed her trembling little hand. "I would kneel, too," he murmured, even as her mother stood beside her, with swimming eyes, and as he looked up into the blushing face his own eyes were filled with unfeigned homage, admiration, even love, his deep voice with emotion that was sweet to woman's ear. "Heaven never made a lovelier lover than Hal Willett," once ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... poor humanity, or at best a piece of poetical justice, and that the hollow ball, &c. represented the head—fools being oftener inheritors of good fortune than their wiser companions. As the great secret in swimming is to keep the chest as full of air as possible, perhaps the great art of living is to keep the head a vacuum, a state "adapted to the meanest capacity." But had kind Nature supplied us with an air-bladder at the neck, the heaviest of us might have floated to eternity, Leander's swimming ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 332, September 20, 1828 • Various
... great difficulty, on rafts and by swimming, and the soaked and weary army took its way to Lynch's Ferry, where the Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River join. Here were found some rafts belonging to the Mexicans, piled high with army stores, and these ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... men turned to aim at Rohan, he was no longer visible. They fired at random at the hole in the cliff, and after filling the great cavern with drifting smoke and echoing thunder, they fled for their lives, wading, swimming through the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the sudden with a grievous swimming in my head, and such a mist before my eyes, that I can neither hear ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... those of the Leander, and the contents of her starboard broadside as quickly followed, carrying destruction into the groups of row-boats; as the smoke opened, the fragments of boats were seen floating, their crews swimming and scrambling, as many as escaped the shot, to the shore; another broadside annihilated them. The enemy was not slack in returning this warm salute, for almost before the shot escaped from our guns, a man standing on the forecastle ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... the water. The curtain rises and discloses the depths of the river, from which rise rugged ridges of rock. Around one of these, upon the summit of which glistens the Rhinegold, Woglinde, a Rhine-daughter, is swimming. Two others, Wellgunde and Flosshilde, join her; and as they play about the gleaming gold, Alberich, a dwarf, suddenly appears from a dark recess and passionately watches them. As they are making sport of him, his eye falls upon the gold and he determines to possess ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... I saw two swans of goodly hue Come softly swimming down along the lee; Two fairer birds I yet did never see; The snow which doth the top of Pindus strow, Did never whiter show, Nor Jove himself, when he a swan would be For love of Leda, whiter did appear; Yet Leda was (they say) as white as he, Yet not so white as these, ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... fed, they drank, they played exuberantly in their gymnasiums and swimming pools, they played long and eagerly at games of chance. Beyond this their lives were essentially blank. Ambition and curiosity they had none beyond the narrow circle of their round of living. But for all that they were docile, contented and, within their limitations, ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... as a protest against the fate awaiting him. To his surprise he heard an answering shout and a second later saw Ted Turner dash through the pines, pause on the shore, and scan the stream. Another instant and the boy had thrown off his coat and shoes and was in the water, swimming toward the boat with ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... than those that can hardly give a sound reason for the first principles of religion; and such as are ignorant of many more weighty things that are easily to be seen in the face and superficies of the Scripture; nothing will serve these but swimming in the deeps, when they have not yet learned to wade through the shallows of the Scriptures. Like the Gnostics of old, who thought they knew all things, though they knew nothing as they ought to know. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... vessel, smashing it into a thousand fragments, and crushing, or hurling into the sea, passengers and crew. I myself went down with the rest, but had the good fortune to rise unhurt, and by holding on to a piece of driftwood with one hand and swimming with the other I kept myself afloat and was presently washed up by the tide on to an island. Its shores were steep and rocky, but I scrambled up safely and threw myself down to rest upon the ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... wedding in Flatbush and had been drinking schnapps until he saw stars on the ground and fences in the sky; in fact, the universe seemed so out of order that he seated himself rather heavily on this rock to think about it. The behavior of the stars in swimming and rolling struck him as especially curious, and he conceived the notion that they wanted to dance. Putting his fiddle to his chin, he began a wild jig, and though he made it up as he went along, he was conscious of doing finely, when the boom ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... seems unaccountable is simple. Now and then it happens that when a sudden demand is made upon a person to save his life by swimming he instinctively does the right thing. He adjusts his body correctly, and uses his legs and arms properly—his action being exactly like those of a bullfrog when he starts on a voyage to the other side of the spring where he ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... father and mother gave themselves to the missionary work, in that lofty enthusiasm whose wave swept through the country early in the nineteenth century. The boy was born in 1839 in the Hawaiian Islands, and grew up in the joy-giving climate, with a happy boy-life, swimming the sea and climbing the mountains; trained firmly and kindly in obedience and service; impressed by the constant presence in the home of unselfish and consecrated lives. As he grew older, his bright eyes studied the native character, emotional, genial, unstable; ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... march. My head was swimming, but all thoughts of my own plight were dispelled by an incident which was as unexpected as it was sudden. At the command "March" one of the two Indian students, positive that he was now going to his doom, staggered. ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... levees yet. I am cruel thirsty this hot weather.—I am just this minute going to swim. I take Patrick down with me, to hold my nightgown, shirt, and slippers, and borrow a napkin of my landlady for a cap. So farewell till I come up; but there is no danger, don't be frighted.—I have been swimming this half-hour and more; and when I was coming out I dived, to make my head and all through wet, like a cold bath; but, as I dived, the napkin fell off and is lost, and I have that to pay for. O, faith, the great stones were so sharp, I could hardly set my feet on them as I came out. It was pure ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... He knew very well he had been cheated, though he could not think how. Once he desired to have some water brought him from the well into which Ilonka had been thrown. The coachman went for it and, in the bucket he pulled up, a pretty little duck was swimming. He looked wonderingly at it, and all of a sudden it disappeared and he found a dirty looking girl standing near him. The girl returned with him and managed to get a place as ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... to see him cross the street to the cafe entrance of the huge Saffron Hotel—and once she saw him emerge from it with a fluffy blonde. But she did not attack him. She was spellbound in a strange apathy, as in a dream of swimming on forever in a warm and slate-hued sea. She was confident that he would soon have another position. He had over-ridden her own opinions about business—the opinions of the underling who never sees the great work as a rounded whole—till she had come to have ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... anyway," replied Morey. "I suggest something more like this on a small scale. We won't have much work on that, merely think of every detail of the big ship on a small scale, with the exception of the control cube furnishings. Instead of the numerous decks, swimming pool and so forth, ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... sometimes not a French book, in the original, which I can procure in a good version. I like to be beholden to the great metropolitan English speech, the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven. I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals when I have them rendered for me in ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... entertained us with stories of the perilous adventures of people who insisted upon entering it in stormy weather,—especially of a French painter who had been imprisoned in it four days, and kept alive only on rum, which the patriarch supplied him, swimming into the grotto with a bottle-full at a time. "And behold us arrived, gentlemen!" said he, as he brought the boat skillfully around in front of the small semicircular opening at the base of the lofty bluff. We lie flat on the bottom of the boat, and complete the ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... falling upon the 'poor crops,' gazing up at the sky and seeing there only a little white cloud floating here and there upon its calm, azure surface, groaned aloud and exclaimed: "You would say they were nothing more nor less than a lot of dogfish swimming about and sticking up their snouts! Ah, they never think of making it rain a little for the poor labourers! And then when the corn is all ripe, down it will come, rattling all over the place, and think no more of where it is falling than if it was on the sea!"—when ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... in letters of the time, and remembered as a man; and though the story may be the fabrication of his mulatto boy comrade of those days, it is woven of shreds and patches of reality. After all, the little book is but a lad's log of small doings,—swapping knives, swimming and fishing, of birds and snakes and bears, incidents of the road and excursions into the woods and on the lake, and notices of the tragic accidents of the neighborhood. It has some importance as illustrating the external circumstances ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... stable, firm-founded land, else it would not cut such capers. It was like all the rest of our landfall, unreal. It was a dream. At any moment, like shifting vapour, it might dissolve away. The thought entered my head that perhaps it was my fault, that my head was swimming or that something I had eaten had disagreed with me. But I glanced at Charmian and her sad walk, and even as I glanced I saw her stagger and bump into the yachtsman by whose side she walked. I spoke to her, and she complained about the antic ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London |
