"Thaw" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cases more remote—losing the interest of neighbourhood, but compensating that loss by their deeper intrinsic hold upon the sensibilities. Ladies of the highest rank would suffer their reserve to thaw in such interviews; besides that, before unresisting humility and inferiority too apparent even haughtiness the most ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... that have yielded a heavy crop every fall since their eighth year, not a single failure having been experienced. The ground has never been cultivated. The nuts planted were taken at random from a barrel in a grocery store. During the "silver thaw" of 1907, the most severe cold spell in the history of Oregon, one of the trees was wrenched in two, but the dismembered limb, hanging by a shred, bore a full crop of ...
— Walnut Growing in Oregon • Various
... Botticelli's Primavera in his Sistine frescos. It is not a sentiment of summer, though it is sometimes a summer warmth which you feel, and except in the steam-heated hotels it does not penetrate to the interiors. In the galleries and the churches you must blow your nails if you wish to thaw your fingers, but, if you go out-of-doors, there is a radiant imitation of May awaiting you. She takes you by your thick glove and leads you in your fur-lined overcoat through sullen streets that ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... larger than ever, and the blaze kept continually on the roar. No ordinary scale of consumption could withstand the attacks of the enemy, and thaw the icicles ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... no man stirred abroad who was not compelled thereto, and those who went abroad risked life and limb thereby. Next morning all was calm again, and the snow was deep, but it did not endure long, for the wind shifted to the southwest and the thaw came, and three days after, when folk could fare easily again up and down the Dale, came tidings to Burgstead and the Alderman from the Lower Dale, how a house called Greentofts had been ransacked there, ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... a thaw, with a storm of wind and rain; and after lunch they gathered in the glooming library, and began to tell ghost stories. Walter happened to know a few of the rarer sort, and found himself in his element. His art came to help him, and the eyes of the ladies, and he rose to his best. ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... ice were ingendred and congealed in time of Winter, and now by the great heat of Summer were thawed, and then by ebs, flouds, winds, and currents, were driuen to and fro, and troubled the fleet; so that this is an argument to proue the heat in Summer there to be great, that was able to thaw so monstrous mountaines of ice. As for continuall snow on tops of mountaines, it is there no otherwise then is in the hotest part of the middle Zone, where also lieth great snow all the Summer long vpon tops of mountaines, because ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... protuberant Adam's apple throbbing with the accelerando of pleasure, and a thaw set in between them. He let his arm drape over the back of her chair, a stolen sense of her nearness dizzying him. He was like a man with a suddenly developed new sense, which he could ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... husband and children enshrined on the mantelshelf; looked at the abomination of desolation surrounding him until his soul sickened and cried out like a child's for something more like home. It was as if a spring thaw had melted his ice-bound heart, and on the crest of a wave it was drifting out into the milder waters of some unknown sea. He could have laid his head in the kind lap of a woman and cried: "Comfort me! Give ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... taking with him little Arthur. He seems to have found the French Emperor a little stiff and cold at first, as he wrote to the Queen, "The Emperor thaws more and more." In the sunshine of that genial presence he had to thaw. The Prince adds: "He told me one of the deepest impressions ever made upon him was when he arrived in London shortly after King William's death and saw you at the age of eighteen going to open Parliament ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... wide up-town street the human tide flowed fast and as if thaw had set in, releasing it from the bondage of winter. Girls in light wraps and without hats loitered in the white flare of drugstore lights. Here and there a brown stoop bloomed with a boarder or two. In front of Seligman's florist shop, which occupied the ground floor of ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... charity! She did not take the first announcement of his coming very amiably; but when I told her she was to reign in the nursery, and take care the poor little chief know the sound of a Scots' tongue, she began to thaw; and when he came into the house, pity or loyalty, or both, flamed up hotly, and have quite relieved me; for at first she made a baby of me, and was a perfect dragon of jealousy at poor Ailie's doing anything for me. It was ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thoughts travelled back over a great many Thanksgivings,—years ago, when she wore short frocks, and used to go with John to see the turkeys fed, and be so scared when they gobbled and strutted with rage at her scarlet bombazette;—how they used to pick up frozen apples and thaw them in the dish-kettle; how she pounded her thumb, cracking butternuts with a flat-iron, and John kissed it to make it well,—only it didn't! And then how they slid down-hill before church, and sat a long two hours thereafter in the square pew, smelling of "meetin'-seed," and dinted with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... 15. I was conscious of my existence again on Sunday, April 1st. I opened my eyes and saw that there was a thaw. That was the first thing of which I was aware—that water was apparently dripping on every side of me. It is a strange sensation to lie on your bed very weak, and very indifferent, and to feel the world turning to moisture all ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... see her. The rector's wife and the doctor's sent dainties. But the child coughed and pined, and old Daniel began to look forward to spring and summer—the seasons which had been his bugaboos through life—as if they were angels. When the February thaw came, he told little Dan'l, "Jest look at the snow meltin' and the drops hangin' on the trees; that is a ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... do. We're on to a big thing. I've got to go right there; and she's got to come right here. She's held off, and she's kept me off; but now the ice'll be broken with a regular thaw." ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... the parlour. They rubbed his face and his hands vigorously with snow. They gave him a drink of hot tea flavoured with whiskey—or perhaps it was a drink of whiskey with a little hot tea in it—and then, as his senses began to return to him, they rolled him in a blanket and left him on a sofa to thaw out gradually, while they went ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... Worn caves where thought lay couchant in its lair; Wert thou a spark among dank leaves, ah ruth! With age in all thy veins, while all thy heart was youth; Our contact might run smooth. But life's Eoan dews still moist thy ringed hair; Dian's chill finger-tips Thaw if at night they happen on thy lips; The flying fringes of the sun's cloak frush The fragile leaves which on those warm lips blush; And joy only lurks retired In the dim gloaming of thine irid. Then since my love drags this poor shadow, me, And one without the other may not be, From both ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... from the cottage door— "I'm thinking that, to-night, if not before, There'll be wild work. Dost hear old Chewton[12] roar? It's brewing up down westward; and look there, One of those sea-gulls! ay, there goes a pair; And such a sudden thaw! If rain comes on, As threats, the waters will be out anon. That path by th' ford's a nasty bit of way— Best let the young ones ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... little more selfish—these mean professionals estimating their rubbish far beyond all reason!—My spirits are damped—and so are we all, for the water-pipes that that rascal Plummer fixed, at the low contract, have burst with this evening's thaw, and were discovered just as the water was coming in; having played, I know not how long, a fountain in the bathroom, tumbling down the stairs like the falls of the Niagara, obliging us to insert tobacco-pipes all over the drawing-room ceiling, to drain the inundation:—it has spoilt the watered ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... to the gates of the farm, when the thaw came after severe winters. But the flood had never increased so rapidly. We could see through the open door that the courtyard was transformed into a lake. The water ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... cessation of robbery on their trap line after the inconclusive visit to the enemy's camp. But a new and extreme exasperation arose in the month of March, when the alternation of thaw and frost had covered the snow with a hard crust that rendered snowshoes unnecessary and made it easy to run anywhere and leave ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... The branches of the trees should then be well covered with straw or hay, with heavy boards laid on top to keep it from blowing away. If trees are received for planting after the ground has frozen, all that is necessary is to build a log fire on the side where they are to be heeled in. This will thaw out the soil enough so that a trench can ...
— Growing Nuts in the North • Carl Weschcke
... shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... four days later, there came a "January thaw." Rain and a warmer temperature melted away much of the snow, the little river was swelled to a great torrent, breaking up the ice and carrying it down stream, and the roads became almost impassable. When the week was up and the farmer wanted the axes, ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... concluded—what with losing his wife and not being able to get any golf, he had little appetite these days—was sitting in his drawing-room, moodily polishing the blade of his jigger. Soon wearying of this once congenial task, he laid down the club and went to the front door to see if there was any chance of a thaw. But no. It was freezing. The snow, as he tested it with his shoe, crackled crisply. The sky above was black and full of cold stars. It seemed to Mortimer that the sooner he packed up and went to the South of France, the better. He was ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... madly down, among the riven blocks of rock, into the level country, far below. Gradually down, by zig-zag roads, lying between an upward and a downward precipice, into warmer weather, calmer air, and softer scenery, until there lay before us, glittering like gold or silver in the thaw and sunshine, the metal-covered, red, green, yellow, domes and church-spires of ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... greene leafe on it, would haue answered her: my very visor began to assume life, and scold with her: shee told mee, not thinking I had beene my selfe, that I was the Princes Iester, and that I was duller then a great thaw, hudling iest vpon iest, with such impossible conueiance vpon me, that I stood like a man at a marke, with a whole army shooting at me: shee speakes poynyards, and euery word stabbes: if her breath were as terrible as terminations, there ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... came of being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold, Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine 35 O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave; Only, she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... better?—whether you cannot devise some expedient whereby the heart of your worthy father may be melted and become as other men's hearts. I don't demand a permanent or even a protracted melting—all I ask is a temporary thaw, just long enough to let me extract a promise from him to let me insure those car barns and power houses. Then he can revert to adamant and be—and welcome, so far as I am concerned. Now, Miss Maitland, have ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... he could see me, I would have choked before ever I would let him hear me laugh; but he caught me smiling and straightened up, chuckling, to say: "Many other things you would smile at, too, Simon, if your bringing up would but allow the frost to thaw ...
— The Trawler • James Brendan Connolly
... secured by any one method. The best results are to be expected when they can be kept in a house built for the purpose, in which the temperature is uniform and the air fairly moist. When stored out of doors, they are likely to freeze and thaw alternately; and if the water runs into the heads, mischief results. Sometimes they are easily stored by being piled into a conical heap on well-drained soil and covered with dry straw, and the straw covered with boards. It does not matter if they are frosted, ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... day has been occupied with exploring the house, sending for food and supplies, trying to thaw the rooms, moving furniture to make things homelike, and trying to arrive at a ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... Round Island always comes first in a breaking up; and I hold my breath in my teeth as I skurry the dogs across it. The ice grinds, the water follows the sledge. But the sun is so far down in the southwest, I think "The wind will grow colder. The real thaw will not come ...
— The Skeleton On Round Island - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... the standing hail. Such was the face without: a mountain stood Threatening from high, and overlooked the wood: Beneath the lowering brow, and on a bent, The temple stood of Mars armipotent; The frame of burnished steel, that cast a glare From far, and seemed to thaw the freezing air. A straight long entry to the temple led, Blind with high walls, and horror over head; Thence issued such a blast, and hollow roar, As threatened from the hinge to heave the door; In through that door a northern light there shone; 'Twas all it had, for windows there were ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... the first grey hairs begin to show on the temples, and one can no longer jump as high as one's third button—scarcely, alas! to any button at all; and what with innumerable sprains, bruises, soakings, and chillings, one's lower limbs feel in a cold thaw much like an old post-horse's, why, one makes a virtue of necessity: and if one still lusts after sights, takes the nearest, and looks for wonders, not in the Himalayas or Lake Ngami, but in the turf on the lawn and the brook in the park; and with good Alphonse Karr enjoys the macro-microcosm ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... January thaw that spoiled all outdoor sport for the Lakeview Hall girls. Skating, bobsledding, skiing, and even walking, was taboo for a while, for there was more mud in sight than snow. The girls had to look for entertainment ...
— Nan Sherwood at Rose Ranch • Annie Roe Carr
... the East winds. A continual ringing in my brain of bells jangled, or The Spheres touchd by some raw Angel. It is not George 3 trying the 100th psalm? I get my music for nothing. But the weather seems to be softening, and will thaw my stunnings. Coleridge writing to me a week or two since begins his note—"Summer has set in with its usual Severity." A cold Summer is all I know of disagreeable in cold. I do not mind the utmost rigour of real Winter, but these smiling hypocrites of Mays wither me to death. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... along the sides. Bella, who'd worked in Detroit for seven dollars a day (her figures), a husky good-looking person; Rosie, the prettiest little sixteen-year-old Italian girl; and I. Such conversations! One day they unearthed Harry Thaw and Evelyn Nesbit and redid their past, present, and probable future. We discussed whether Olive Thomas had really committed suicide or died of an overdose of something. How many nights a week could a girl dance and work next day? Minnie was ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... is carried across the frozen lake every season between Russia and China. To accommodate this the Russian postal authorities once established a post house on the middle of the lake, where horses were kept for travelers. But this was discontinued after one winter, when an early thaw suddenly set in, and horses, yemschliks and post house all disappeared beneath the ice, and were never seen more. In summer the lake is navigated by an antiquated steamer called the General Korsakoff, which ventures out in calm weather, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... brought a perceptible shrinking of the snowy mantle, leaving bare patches of wet, brown earth. One day Mokwa, breaking through a thick clump of juniper bushes, came out upon the bank of the Little Vermilion, its glassy surface as yet apparently unaffected by the thaw. For a moment the bear hesitated, his little near-sighted eyes searching the opposite bank and his nose sniffing the wind inquiringly; then, as if reassured, he stepped out upon the ice and made ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... they ever heard of. I understand the road is ten feet deep with snow from this to Hamilton. I have had it cut through once, but this third fall makes an attempt impossible. Heaven only knows when the road will be open, nothing but a thaw can do it—it is now ...
— A Hundred Years by Post - A Jubilee Retrospect • J. Wilson Hyde
... of good liquor as those four gentlemen from beyond the Atlantic. They drank the strong red Cyprus as if it had been spring-water. "The dust of your Italian roads takes some cleansing, Mr. Townshend," was their only excuse, but in truth none was needed. The wine seemed only to thaw their iron decorum. Without any surcease of dignity they grew communicative, and passed from lands to peoples and from peoples to constitutions. Before we knew it we were embarked ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... a day or two to thaw out and mend bruises, and then ran over to Martigny, crossed the Grand St. Bernard, the St. Gotthard, and the Grimsel passes, spent a week in William Tell's country, prowling about the ruins of old castles and the sites of legendary battles, and finally settled down ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... of provisions laid in for the use of the landlord and his family falling short before the inroads of the unexpected visitors, they had recourse to the turkeys, geese, and Yorkshire pies with which the coach was laden; and even these were beginning to fail, when a fortunate thaw released ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... have thought me reserved, for it is true that I could barely be civil to him. He argued from that, as I learned afterwards from Donna Giulia, that I was of a ducal family, and in proportion as I froze, so did he thaw. As I receded, so did he advance. He pressed invitations upon me, all of which I could not decline; it was proper that I should offer him some hospitality in return—and I did. He supped with me once or twice in my lodgings, lost money to me at cards and so had some grounds for believing ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... I guess we are all right this time. It snows pretty fast, and the air doesn't feel like a thaw or rain." ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... great deal, remembering how you suffer from cold in the winter, and hope you are in a warm, comfortable house, have pleasant books to read, and some pleasant friends to see. One does not want many; only a few bright faces to look in now and then, and help thaw the ice with little rills of genial conversation. I have fewer of these than at Rome,—but still several. * * * * * Horace Sumner, youngest son of father's friend, Mr. Charles P. Sumner, lives near us, and comes every evening to read a little while with Ossoli. He has solid good ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... fulminating against insurrections that only existed in their own guilty imaginations, filled the minds of the people with false alarms, and taught every man to distrust if not to hate his neighbour. There was no more chance of Reform under the existing regime than of 'a thaw in Zembla,' to borrow a famous simile. Cobbett was right in his assertion that the measures and manners of George IV.'s reign did more to shake the long-settled ideas of the people in favour of monarchical ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... of the last few days had given place to a thaw. The melting ice in the river was streaked in strange curves, and the bare trees along the straight heights of the Palisades were blurred by a faint bluish mist, out of which white lights and yellow ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... be met with inland, and therefore more agreeable to the dilapidated constitution of a sensitive valetudinarian. His commentators suppose he produced nothing during his marine hybernations: if the inclement season froze 'the genial current of his soul,' the aspect of the sea did not thaw it. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... midnight and walked over to the remains of one of our niggers' fires. Crouching over the embers I found a bearded figure, which hoarsely denounced me for coming to its fire. I explained that it was our fire, but that he was welcome, and settled down to thaw. It turned out to be a sergeant of the 38th Battery. I asked something, and he began a long rambling soliloquy about things in general, in a thick voice, with his beard almost in the fire, scarcely aware of my presence. I can't reproduce it faithfully, because of the language, but it dealt ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... go on like this, I should begin to grumble; but we shall probably get broken in to each other in a day or two, and then I can thaw him out. We talked glittering generalities for a while—the weather, and the war prospects abroad, and the chances of getting deer on the other side of a mountain not far away—like any commonplace boobies at a county fair. Then ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... the dory turning over, or a gunboat dropping on to you. Then there was a good deal of very genuine excitement to be got out of placer-mining in British Columbia, especially when there was frost in the ranges, and you had to thaw out your giant-powder. Shallow alluvial workings have a way of caving in when you least expect it of them. After all, however, I think I ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... latent heat, it appears to me that the weather should be warm when it freezes, and cold in a thaw: for latent heat is liberated from every substance that it freezes, and such a large supply of heat must warm the atmosphere; whilst, during a thaw, that very quantity of free heat must be taken from the atmosphere, and return to a latent state in ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... home, he ceased to treat young Babington as a criminal, but rode in a friendly manner with him through lanes and over moors, till the young fellow began to thaw towards him, and even went so far as to volunteer one day that he would not have brought Mistress Cicely into the matter if there had been any other sure way of getting the ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... breakfast, and it was not until the coach was rattling along the high road, and the last house had been left behind him, that Bob's spirits began to rise. There had been a thaw, a few days before, and the snow had disappeared; but it was ...
— Held Fast For England - A Tale of the Siege of Gibraltar (1779-83) • G. A. Henty
... to be a slight prospect of some general outdoor activity (and Frederick's ski were pronounced perfect) a thaw occurred. I am bound to say that the event was received philosophically. Not a single member of the company made any complaint; they faced adversity like true Britons and boldly sat in the warm hotel to save themselves for the evening. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 17, 1920 • Various
... back, I was caught in fog. It rolled in, layer on layer, while I felt for the landing; but I managed to find the place and picked up the trail we had worn packing over the ice. And I lost it; probably in a new thaw that had opened and glazed over since I left. Anyhow, in a little while I didn't know where I was. I had given my compass to Weatherbee, and there was no sun to take bearings from, not a landmark in sight. Nothing but fog and ice, and it all looked ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... with wire beds, each hut holding about 150 men. Here, final preparations were made for the line, which was visited by officers who reported that the trenches were dry and in good condition. It was very frosty weather at this time, but unfortunately before the Battalion moved up a thaw had set in. The relief of the 5th Yorkshire Regiment will never be forgotten by those of the Battalion who took part in it. Following on the methods adopted by the French the relief took place through very long communication trenches, running from Estrees through Berny to the ...
— The Story of the 6th Battalion, The Durham Light Infantry - France, April 1915-November 1918 • Unknown
... can stand before His Cold? Then by his own and people's sickness three Sabbaths passed without public Worship." February 20 he preached from these words: "He sends forth his word and thaws them." And the very next day a thaw set in which was regarded as a direct answer to his prayer and sermon. Sceptics now-a-days would suggest that he chose well the time to ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... tell at the right time, and both Prussians and Russians drew slowly off. Soult was to have repeated the turning manoeuver as carried out before Jena, but the marching was so difficult, owing to a thaw, that he could not accomplish anything like the ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... be glad to get work as soldiers, or extra policemen; the farmers, too, might turn out to preserve your law and order; but the working army would have the most men and the best men. The war might be bloody but the right would prevail. Men like Tom Scott, Frank Thomson—yes, and William Thaw—who have got rich swindling the stockholders of railroads, so that they cannot pay honest labor living rates, we would hang to the ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... the spring asserted itself,—there came a whiff of wind from the south and a feeling of thaw. The sled-runners began to cut through to the frozen ground, and about the tree-trunks, where thin crusts of ice were sparkling, came a faint musical sound of trickling drops. The sun was regnant, and little brown birds flew cheerily over the snow ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... done during the winter, with the temperature almost constantly at 10 deg. and dropping below zero over night. The precautions observed were to heat the sand and water, thaw out the concrete with live steam, if it froze in transporting or before it was settled in place, and as soon as it was placed, it was decked over and salamanders were started underneath. Thus, a job ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... gusto into the spirit of the occasion, arranged themselves in a half-circle about the piano, replaced their shoes, stripped their instruments of their coverings—the cornetist breathing noiselessly into the mouth-pieces to thaw out the frost—and stood at attention for ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... in his canoe," said Wilton, "he's frozen solidly in the middle of the river, and he won't be able to move it until a thaw comes." ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... hospitable in her welcome. Olivia felt the hospitality; I felt the frigidity. Julia called her "Mrs. Dobree." It was the first time she had been addressed by that name; and her blush and smile were exquisite to me, but they did not thaw Julia in the least. I began to fear that there would be between them that strange, uncomfortable, east-wind coolness, which so often exists between the two ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... live In beauty's tempting show, Shall find his hopes ungive, And melt in reason's thaw; Who thinks that pleasure lies In every fairy bower, Shall oft, to his surprise, ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... Revolutionary War." In the one on the corner of First (N) and Potomac Streets used to live Mrs. Gannt and her daughter Clare and Mrs. Gannt's sister Mrs. Smith. I think they were descendants of the builder of the row. Their old home was for a time occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Blair Thaw, the former a poet, the latter ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... to his victim, "that we Christians keep our promises, which you don't. That fire is going to thaw out your legs and tongue and hands. Hey! hey! I don't see a dripping-pan to put under your feet; they are so fat the grease may put out the fire. Your house must be badly furnished if it can't give its master all he wants to ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... you say false! you think by this To win Apollo with his sultry beams To thaw your snowy head, & to renew The worn out soil of your bare, ugly hill. I do appeal to Phrygian Midas here; Let him decide, he is no ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... with all the men still under arms. Cut off at Smolensko, he escaped almost by miracle, by creeping during the night along the banks of the Dnieper and successively repulsing the several Russian corps that threw themselves in his way.[20] A thaw now took place, and the Beresina, which it was necessary to cross, was full of drift-ice, its banks were slippery and impassable, and moreover commanded by Tschitschakow's artillery, while the roar of cannon to the rear announced Wittgenstein's approach. ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... to get your long chatty letter, and to hear that you are thawing towards science. I almost wish you had remained frozen rather longer; but do not thaw too quickly and strongly. No one can work long as you used to do. Be idle; but I am a pretty man to preach, for I cannot be idle, much as I wish it, and am never comfortable except when at work. The word holiday is written in a dead language for me, and much I grieve at it. We thank you sincerely ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... of December, generally, they experience their first thawing. Those which a month ago were sour, crabbed, and quite unpalatable to the civilized taste, such at least as were frozen while sound, let a warmer sun come to thaw them, for they are extremely sensitive to its rays, are found to be filled with a rich, sweet cider, better than any bottled cider that I know of, and with which I am better acquainted than with wine. All apples are good in this state, and your jaws are the cider-press. Others, which have more substance, ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... advances. "He thinks I am angry because of his keen criticism of my picture. For the sake of my own pride, I must not let him think that I care so much about his opinion;" and Christine resolved to let some of the ice thaw that had formed between them. Moreover, in spite of herself, when she was thrown into his society, he greatly interested her. He seemed to have just what she had not. He could meet her on her own ground in matters of taste, and then, in ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Ghost came to thaw their memories, that the words of Christ, like the voice in Plutarch that had become frozen, might at length ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 71, March 8, 1851 • Various
... a thaw set in. The ice and snow began to melt. The brooks and rivulets swiftly carried the water ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... "I saw a crag, a lofty stone As ever tempest beat! Out of its head an Oak had grown, A Broom out of its feet. The time was March, a cheerful noon—15 The thaw wind, with the breath of June, Breathed gently from the warm south-west: When, in a voice sedate with age, This Oak, a giant and a sage, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... microscopic vision and punctiform sensibility of those who think themselves practical, that speculative natures seem to be proclaiming another set of interests, another and quite miraculous life, when they attempt to thaw out and vivify the vulgar mechanism; and the sense of estrangement and contradiction often comes over the spiritually minded themselves, making them confess sadly that the kingdom of heaven is not of this world. As common morality itself falls easily into mythical expressions and speaks of a fight ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the ice was thick and firm, they went across the pond. But their mother did not like to have them do this unless some one was with them. 4. "Do n't go across the pond to-day, children," she said, as she kissed them and bade them good-by one morning; "it is beginning to thaw." 5. "All right, mother," said Harry, not very good- naturedly, for he was very fond of running and sliding on the ice. When they came to the pond, the ice looked hard and safe. 6. "There," said he to his sister, "I knew it had n't thawed ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... wooed, in love with the respectabilities of his social standing; but depend upon it, bambina mia, if you can once awaken the dormant passion of such a man, you may produce effects wholly irresistible,—you may do anything with him! His love would be like a frozen torrent when the thaw comes! It would dash aside every opposition that could be offered it. The calculated and calculating tentatives, and coquettings and nibblings of your practised lovers, who have been in love a dozen times, would be as a trickling rill to an ocean wave, ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... wet, sloppy, snowy day, our "January thaw," Mr. H. says. I took the two children out on the sled upon the ice and pushed at the handle-bars until I was reeking with perspiration, afterwards giving Jennie ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... alchemy that changes the dark evil subsistence of the universe to bright, valuable gold. In her light shoes, and with her black hair loose about her shoulders, she ran out into the rainy yard, fled round the house quickly so that none might see her and spy on them, and plunged down the thaw-wet hillside, crying out with joy, even when she slipped and fell, because her lover's arms would so soon ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... more than once, "God can touch him and he will thaw like a spring day. There is somethin' great in Richard Travis if ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... later a huge labourer stood guard over Monks Barton, and the miller, with his man, entered upon their long and fruitless search. The thaw had come, but glimmering ridges of snow still outlined the bases of northern-facing hedges along the river. With infinite labour and some difficulty they explored the stream, then, wet and weary, returned by the southern bank to their ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... approached. We were looking forward to the pleasures of summer and to a buffalo hunt which we had promised ourselves, when, after finding the heat unusually great at night, on rising in the morning, loud cracks in the ice were heard, and we discovered that a thaw had commenced. We were surprised at the rapidity with which the snow melted, and the low shrubs and the green grass appeared, and long dormant Nature seemed to be ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... the snow is gone and the ground begins to thaw, thousands of geese, ducks, swans, and other feathered creatures appear, enlivening the monotonous scene for a few months; then, when the sharp September frosts announce the approach of winter, with their tundra-reared progeny they wing their way southward, ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... in a moment with the ferocity of a hundred storms, are ripped and torn like hills of clay. The frosted scale of the granite, the desperate root of the cedar, the poised nest of the eagle, the clutch of the crannied vine, the split and start of the mountainside, are all as one before the June thaw. At its height Little Crawling Stone, with a head of forty feet, is a choking flood of rock. Mountains, torn and bleeding, vomit bowlders of thirty, sixty, a hundred tons like pebbles upon the valley. Even there they find no permanent resting-place. Each succeeding year sees ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... Flocks of snow-birds (the harbingers of cold in autumn, and heat in spring) begin to appear, and soon the whirring wings of the white partridge may be heard among the snow-encompassed willows. The first thaw generally takes place in April; and May is characterised by melting snow, disruption of ice, and the arrival of the first ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... forgotten, It is mine, or Valentines praise? Her true perfection, or my false transgression? That makes me reasonlesse, to reason thus? Shee is faire: and so is Iulia that I loue, (That I did loue, for now my loue is thaw'd, Which like a waxen Image 'gainst a fire Beares no impression of the thing it was.) Me thinkes my zeale to Valentine is cold, And that I loue him not as I was wont: O, but I loue his Lady too-too much, And that's the reason I loue ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... assembly was indescribable; and, in the first alarm, the deputies prepared for flight. The Emperor alone declared that he would not leave the town, and encouraged the rest by his example. Unfortunately for the Swedes, a thaw came on, which broke up the ice upon the Danube, so that it was no longer passable on foot, while no boats could cross it, on account of the quantities of ice which were swept down by the current. In order to perform something, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... been his comforting and cheering friend. Immediately the crock of gold had been taken from its ambush in the thatch, it seemed as if the chill which had frozen up her heart had been melted by a sudden thaw. Roger Acton was no longer the selfish prodigal, but the guiltless, persecuted penitent; her care was now to soothe his griefs, not to scold him for excesses; and indignation at the false and bloody charge made him appear a martyr in her eyes. As to his accuser, Jennings, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... miller were among the number, for the one sharpened the plough-shares, and the other ground the corn; and Bessy rattled his box, and danced so high that he showed his worsted stockings and corduroy breeches; and, very often, if there was a thaw, tucked up his gown-skirts under his waistcoat and shook the bonnet off his head, and disarranged the long ringlets that ought to have concealed his whiskers. For Bessy is to the procession of Plough Monday what the leading figurante is to the opera or ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... built by our forest-rangers who help the timber jacks build these roads. You see, while frost holds good the heaviest tree trunks can be readily moved over icy swamp bottoms, but in the spring, when thaw and freshets begin, the bottoms are more like a marsh, or shallow lake, than anything else I know of. Then these corduroy roads are a make-shift for hard ground," explained Polly, while Noddy started to clip-clop ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... it does not circulate freely, and Nature to every man is a double of himself, so that the universe seems also cold in extremities, as though there were too little original life to fill her veins. The poet is not fire on the hearth to thaw this numbness by foreign heat. He rubs and rouses us to activity, drags us to the open air, puts us on a glowing chase, provokes us to race and climb with him till we also are thoroughly alive. No other gift of his is worth much beside this hope of reaching his side. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... Ah! that will be good," and she rubbed her hands at the prospect of not having to crouch under a leaky awning when the rain came pelting down, or over a tiny fire in a brass bowl in the winter, to thaw her frozen and ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... valleys, and the paths lead over lofty mountains. Sometimes, when the inhabitants are obliged from famine to change their habitations in winter, the old and feeble are frozen to death, standing and resting their chins on their staves; remaining as pillars of ice, to fall only when the thaw of ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... for some days, and at that early time of the season a thaw might any hour begin. This made the two lads eager to push on; but "too much haste is bad speed," and they almost knocked up their horse before half the day's journey was over. The evening was drawing on, and they ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... surface, some brown sparrows and a robin were hopping across the snow. Not a breath stirred the laden branches, though they drooped under their snowy festoons. "I dare say the ice would be right enough for a little while, but the air feels milder, and there is danger of a thaw." ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... ten Wounds The River-Dragon tamed at length submits To let his Sojourners depart, and oft Humbles his stubborn Heart; but still as Ice More harden'd after Thaw, till in his Rage Pursuing whom he late dismissed, the Sea Swallows him with his Host, but them lets pass As on dry Land between two Chrystal Walls, Aw'd by the Rod of Moses so to ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... is the imprisoned soul, And all our aspirations are its own Struggles and strivings for a golden goal, That wear us out like snow men at the thaw. And we shall make our Heaven where we have sown Our purple longings. Oh! can the loved dead draw Anear us when we moan, or watching wait Our coming in the woods where first we met, The dead leaves falling in their wild hair ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... twenty miles brought the travellers to a rugged defile in the mountains, from which they had a view of a beautiful valley of considerable extent. During the last two days a steady thaw had been rapidly melting away the snow, so that it appeared only here and there in the landscape in dazzling patches. At the distance of about half-a-mile from where they halted to breathe the horses before commencing the ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... that I should maintain as much health as possible for the sake of 'others,' if not for myself. She then brought me some tea, which refreshed me greatly; for I had tasted nothing at all beyond a little water since the preceding morning's breakfast. This refreshment seemed to relax and thaw the stiff frozen state of cheerless, rayless despair in which I had passed the night; I became susceptible of consolation—that consolation which lies involved in kindness and gentleness of manner—if not susceptible more than before of any positive hope. I sat down; and, having no witnesses to my ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... cells containing a saccharine liquid do not permit infiltration from interior to exterior; this phenomenon occurs only when cell and tissue are dead. It is necessary that the degree of cold should be sufficiently intense, or that a thaw take place, under certain conditions, to kill tissue of walls of said cells. An interesting fact is that when cells are broken through the action of freezing, it is not those containing sugar that are the first affected. The outer cells containing very little ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... distilled from this great biographical mass by skilful hands, and, like the succeeding pages, will stand for centuries unshaken by the bombardment of the critic, while succeeding years shall try them with frost and thaw, and the tide of time dash high against their massive front, only to ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... sometimes became so embedded that they had to be abandoned, the drivers being glad to get off with their horses alive. Many times a quartermaster, taking advantage of a frost, would send off a convoy of provisions, only to hear of its being swamped by a thaw before reaching its destination. One of the tragedies of the war was the suffering of the troops while waiting for supplies of clothing, tents, medicines, and food which were stuck in swamps or frozen up in ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... of some securer retreat. There, too, they found a plantation of willows, already in bud with soft moleskin buttons, and a tortoiseshell butterfly, evoked by the sun from its hibernation, settled on one of the twigs, opening and shutting its diapered wings, and spreading them to the warmth to thaw out the stiffness and inaction of winter. Blackbirds fluted in the busy thickets, a lark shot up near them soaring and singing till it became invisible in the luminous air, a suspended carol in the blue, and bold male ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... a mist of dull gray clouds that clung in rings about the street lamps like the damp fog of a typical February thaw, yet it was the last day of October. Such weather was uncanny. It added to the strange feeling of impending calamity which had been hanging over the business world during the summer and had broken ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... that were still swollen, gingerly to the floor. He drew them up again with a jerk and sat with his teeth chattering hunched on the edge of the bed. Lyaeus burrowed into the blankets and went back to sleep. For a long while Telemachus could not thaw his frozen wits enough to discover what noise had waked him up. Then it came upon him suddenly that huge rhythms were pounding about him, sounds of shaken tambourines and castanettes and beaten dish-pans and roaring voices. Someone was singing in shrill tremolo above ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... all his youthful strength, and that it would therefore be the challenge of the strong to the weak, saved him from the sin, and he schooled himself to the endurance of middle aged arrogance. For the learning of the lesson he had practice enough: they rode every day, and Griffith did not thaw; but the one thundering gallop he had every morning along the sands with Kelpie, whom * no ordinary day's work was enough to save from the heart burning ferment of repressed activity, was both preparation and amends ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... stared at it that night until their eyes ached, it seemed that it was visibly approaching. And that night, too, the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all Central Europe and France and England softened towards a thaw. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... made thuch a jolly widdle the other day on the Ethplanade. I thaw a fellah with a big New—Newfoundland dog, and he inthpired me—the dog, you know, not the fellah,—he wath a lunatic. I'm keeping the widdle, but ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... different from the petulant pleasure they were formerly wont to excite. For a long time Pelet bore with my frigid demeanour very patiently; he even increased his attentions; but finding that even a cringing politeness failed to thaw or move me, he at last altered too; in his turn he cooled; his invitations ceased; his countenance became suspicious and overcast, and I read in the perplexed yet brooding aspect of his brow, a constant examination and comparison of premises, and an ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... near a pond, and when the cold weather came it was great fun to skate on the ice. Oftentimes they would slide across it on their way to school. One morning, as their mother buttoned their coats, she said, 'Don't go across the ice this morning, children. It has begun to thaw, and it ...
— A Hive of Busy Bees • Effie M. Williams
... the room now, though it was only half-past two o'clock, and the sun would not set for more than half-an-hour yet; for if Robert had lifted his head and looked up, it would have been at, not through, the skylight. No sky was to be seen. A thick covering of snow lay over the glass. A partial thaw, followed by frost, had fixed it there—a mass of imperfect cells and confused crystals. It was a cold place to sit in, but the boy had some faculty for enduring cold when it was the price to be ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... I, even if there be no more coal in the ship than what lies in the cook-house, enough fuel is here in the shape of casks, boxes, and the like to thaw me provisions for six months, besides what I may come across in the hold, along with the hammocks, bedding, boxes, and so forth in the forecastle, all which would be good to feed my fire with. This was a most comforting reflection, and I recollect springing out through the lazarette ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell |
