"Wreck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to Atlantic City. Atlantic City in August! Two days of crowds and noise were sufficient. A crumpled, perspiring wreck, he boarded the train bound for the mountains. The White Mountains were his destination. He had never visited them, but he knew them ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... it eventually proved that no one of those present was the successful suitor. I know only that the fair girl was afterward a bride; and (what we all so little anticipated) her home is now a scene of desolation, her fortune very likely a wreck, her family scattered or slain, and ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... ignorance of the laws governing the atmosphere. Sure, we had had large volumes on the laws of storms, but the later revelations leave them shelved high and dry on the shores and as useless as a wreck in a similar condition; with the daily weather map before us we have no need to even open these huge volumes; they are completely circumvented, and only negative in value—to show how little was known of the subject without the full and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 433, April 19, 1884 • Various
... at the sight. "Comrades, what a pity! She will undoubtedly be lost, and I had counted upon this magnificent bounty. Carrambo! we shall get nothing but a wreck." ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... a piece of needless cruelty. During her connection with him he had always treated her with kindness and courtesy, and often with generosity. She had nothing whatever against him, so why should she wreck the happiness of his honeymoon, and perhaps of his whole married life, by disclosing the secret that had been so strangely revealed to her? So she ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... Norman, was sent round to the Gulf of Carpentaria to search for the missing explorers, had they reached that part of the coast; and to expedite and assist land parties in advancing, southwards, to their aid. Captain Norman suffered some delay by the unfortunate wreck of the Firefly, a trader, laden with horses, coals, and straw; and having on board Mr. Landsborough and party, who were to start from the Albert river, or thereabouts. This wreck occurred on the 4th September, 1861, on one of the group of islands to the north, ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... Brown," Cried the youth with a frown, "How wrong the whole thing is, How preposterous each wing is, How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck is— In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis! I make no apology, I've learned owl-eology. I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections, And cannot be blinded to any deflections Arising from unskilful fingers that fail To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail. Mister Brown! Mister Brown! ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... meet about fourteen miles from Freeport, in Stephenson County, on the extreme north border of Illinois, and about three miles from Brother Young's. After being exposed to many dangers and detentions, and one wreck on the way, I arrived safe at the place ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... procession was to be supplemented by artillery, and now here was a time-eaten old gun, mounted on a worm-eaten old carriage, and trailed in harness of rope by two stalwart Flemish horses. Here also was gunpowder enough to wreck the village, and the Janennois, who for a moral people have a most astounding love of noise, were out at earliest dawn of light on Sunday morning to see the gun fired. The first firing was supposed to be an experiment, and everybody ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... for a breeze, in hope. Whither bound? Northward: an evil coast for sailing-craft—cruel waters: rock and fog and ice and tempestuous winds. Thither bound, undaunted, with wings wide, abroad in the teeth of many perils, come wreck or not. At least (I thought) she ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... for America, have been seized as lawful prizes. Added to this, three vessels from the Indies, laden with island produce, have been taken on their homeward bound voyage, and one lost on her return from Holland. This wreck of fortune I might have survived, had I to sustain only my equal dividend of the loss: but of the merchants with whom I have been connected, not one remains to share the fate of the event; all have absconded or secreted themselves. To attempt to compound with my creditors ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... Only think—if you had been anybody else, it would have come to that already. You must have hated me for dragging you down into this mire of deceit, you must have forsaken me, and I must have gone to wreck and ruin. Oh, I see it all—just as if it had really happened. ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... don't know where you are or what is your position, and you will find yourself, before long, on the rocks of debt and difficulty. Extravagant housekeeping has been the cause of the most serious evils; and, if persisted in, will be sure, in time, to wreck the peace and happiness ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... smiling dubiously. "'Tis four mountain rivers you'd have to cross, two of them, at least, deeper than your head, and there's the pass of Barnascorny, where you'd have to turn the side of a mountain, with a precipice hundreds of feet below you, and a wind blowing that would wreck a seventy-four! There's never a man in the barony would venture over the same path, with a storm ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... my son, Miss Glenwilliam—but you do not love him! That is perfectly plain. You are prepared none the less, apparently, to wreck his happiness and ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... approached his mother's house, Caesar began to observe the signs of strange devastation. The street was scattered with the wreck of furniture and strips of precious stuffs. As he arrived at the foot of the little flight of steps that led to the entrance gate, he saw that the windows were broken and the remains of torn curtains were fluttering in front of ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... we understand it to be in motion, we nevertheless regard as an image of repose; where, therefore, the exact degree of development is so hard to apprehend. If one had to choose a single product of Hellenic art, to save in the wreck of all the rest, one would choose from the "beautiful multitude" of the Panathenaic frieze, that line of youths on horseback, with their level glances, their proud, patient lips, their chastened reins, their whole bodies in exquisite service. This colourless, unclassified purity of life, with its ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... writhing in the agony of rheumatic fever. For days she had lain at the gates of death, and when at last she came back to life again, it was such a wreck of her old self that she was scarcely able to do anything. And this in Granny Barnes' eyes had been an ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... dramatist. On each of these three occasions, Ben's TONE varies. In 1619 he said no more to Drummond of Hawthornden (apparently on two separate occasions) than that Shakespeare "lacked art," and made the mistake about a wreck on the ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... garb and likeness as when she was alive, and, standing at the mainmast, would blow with a whistle, and though it were never so great a calm, yet immediately there would arise a most dreadful storm, that would break, wreck, and drown the ship and goods; only the seamen would escape with their lives—the devil had no permission from God to take them away. Yet at this rate, by her frequent apparitions and disturbances, she had made a poor merchant of her son, for his ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... is the same energy that wells up in us as consciousness. Speaking for myself, I can see no insuperable difficulty in the notion that at some period in the evolution of Humanity this divine spark may have acquired sufficient concentration and steadiness to survive the wreck of material forms and endure forever. Such a crowning wonder seems to me no more than the fit climax to a creative work that has been ineffably beautiful and marvellous ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... 105) is one used only for temporary purposes as it is too easily knocked over and would be of no use where animals as large as bears might wreck it. It consists of two sticks lashed together at their small ends and with their butt ends buried in the earth; their tops are secured by a rope to a near-by tree while the duffel is suspended from the top of the ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... for Hispaniola, but with bad luck, or owing to retribution, a sudden hurricane arose which drove them back to the one spot in the West Indies they must have been most anxious to avoid—that is, the Bahama Islands. Here the sloop became a total wreck, but the crew got ashore and for a while lay hidden in a wood. Rogers, hearing where they were, sent an armed sloop to the island, and the captain by fair promises induced the eleven marooned pirates to come aboard. Taking these back to Providence, Rogers had them all tried ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... yards. Then the fore-top-mast went, with a heavy lurch, and soon after the main, carrying with it the mizzen-top-gallant-mast. We owed this to the embargo, in my judgment, the ship's rigging having got damaged lying dry so long. We were all night clearing the wreck, and the men who used the hatchets, told us that the wind would cant their tools so violently that they sometimes struck on the eyes, instead of the edge. The gale fairly seemed like ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... wreck of a home-bound ship just entering the harbor is yet told in many a family on this coast. A few hours after, the unfortunate crew were washed ashore in all the joyous holiday rig in which they had attired themselves that morning to go to their ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sudden appearance of the fourth servant, wild with terror, crowning the crushing tidings already received, by telling Job that a gale from the wilderness had swept down upon the eldest son's dwelling, where the whole family were, excepting the patriarch, and thrown walls and roof into a common wreck, burying his ten children under ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... elders should wish to see their two dear young ones united? They began with suitable age, money, good temper, and parents' blessings. It is not the first time that, with all these excellent helps to prosperity and happiness, a marriage has turned out unfortunately—a pretty, tight ship gone to wreck that set forth on its voyage with cheers from the shore, and every prospect of fair wind ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Polygnote, Protogenes, renowned Apollodore, Timanthes, and Apelles, first of note, Zeuxis and others, famed heretofore, Whose memory down the stream of Time will float, While we their wreck and labours lost deplore, Whose fame will flourish still in Fate's despite, (Grammercy authors!) while men ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... prisoner, and pass'd four or five months in secesh military prisons, narrowly escaping with life, from a severe fever, from starvation and half-nakedness in the winter. (What a history that 51st New York had! Went out early—march'd, fought everywhere—was in storms at sea, nearly wreck'd—storm'd forts—tramp'd hither and yon in Virginia, night and day, summer of '62—afterwards Kentucky and Mississippi—re-enlisted—was in all the engagements and campaigns, as above.) I strengthen and comfort myself much with the certainty that the capacity for just such regiments, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... not enjoy the prospect," Koto said after a glance at his temporarily helpless left arm. "If Leider is able to wreck a space ship before she ever reaches his planet, he has more power than he ever ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... map of Africa loses no lure or mystery from the fact of nearness to the continent itself. Rather it increases. In the hot upper room that night, between the wreathing smoke of oil lamps, we pored over the large scale map Monty had saved from the wreck along with ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... with not a star in sight, and in no condition to take any reckonings, we made up our minds that we must somehow fight our way through one more night before giving up. The mainmast was a wreck; the shrouds on the port side having been torn from the gunwale the second day of the storm, and the entire deck was one ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... method and his arguments preserved the same type and color throughout. Any one who had at the beginning of his career discerned in him the capacity for such strange diversities and contradictions would probably have predicted that they must wreck it by making his purposes weak and his course erratic. Such a prediction would have proved true of any one with less firmness of will and less intensity of temper. It was the persistent heat and vehemence of his character, the sustained passion ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... had somewhat subsided and the sea had ceased to spew up wreckage, I ventured to swim back in search of something substantial enough to support my weight and that of Nobs as well. I had gotten well over the area of the wreck when not a half-dozen yards ahead of me a lifeboat shot bow foremost out of the ocean almost its entire length to flop down upon its keel with a mighty splash. It must have been carried far below, held to its mother ship by a single rope which finally parted to the enormous strain ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Abe Lincoln of Springfield who was fighting the Rebels that were trying to wreck the country and spread red ruin. The Copperheads were wicked folks at the North who sided with the Rebels. Society was divided into two classes: those who favored Abe Lincoln, and those who told lies about him. All the people I knew and ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... with goods bought on credit, carried on a flourishing trade till within a few days of their bills falling due, and then decamped, leaving their unfortunate and silly creditors to get paid from the wreck of the stock left in the shop. I knew an auctioneer who played this nefarious trick, leaving his creditors minus the enormous sum of 70,000l. He did not, however, long retain his ill-gotten wealth: ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... sped, yet nought had happened to signify that things would shape the course by me so ardently desired; that the means would be afforded me of mending my miserable ways, and repairing the wreck my life had suffered on the shoals of Fate. True, I had been housed and fed, and the comforts of indolence had been mine; but, for the rest, I was still clothed in the livery of folly which I had worn on my ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... as the Constitutional powers of Congress, must be rigorously and religiously guarded and preserved, as the condition on which alone our form of Government and the constitutional rights and liberties of the People themselves can be saved from the wreck of anarchy ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... Harry, "if a train comes over the road before this is mended, there'll be a wreck and loss of life. What ...
— Facing the World • Horatio Alger
... iv th' Dutch. Th' Fr-rinch gin'ral in command iv th' Swedish corps lost his complexion an' has been sint to th' hospital, an' Mrs. Gin'ral Crownjoy's washin' that was hangin' on th' line whin th' bombardmint comminced is a total wreck which no amount iv bluin' will save. Th' deserters also report that manny iv th' Boers ar-re outspannin', trekkin', loogerin', kopjein' an' veldtin' home to be dyed, f'r'tis not known whether lyddite is a fast color or will ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... of the storm, but the light enabled us to realize more clearly how near we were, a second time, to death. The rain still poured down in torrents, the wind leaped at us with hurricane fury, the schooner tossed, a helpless wreck, in the midst of a mountainous sea. The carpenter reported that, in spite of all our labours, the water was fast gaining on us. The sailors now lost heart, and one of them left his post, saying sullenly they might as well drown first as last. It was a dangerous example, ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... other side, And poising this, the second Sappho stood,— Young Erexcea, with her head discrowned, The anadema on the horn of her lyre: And by the walls there hung in sequence long Merlin himself, and Uterpendragon, With all their mighty deeds, down to the day When all the world seemed lost in wreck and rout, A wrath of crashing steeds and men; and, in The broken battle fighting hopelessly, King Arthur, with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... poured from the paper to the invalid's tongue. Bainbridge was interested in Peters—not only selfishly and with a motive to learn the facts of the old sailor's strange voyage; but he was also interested in the poor old wreck for the sake of the man himself. I saw that in the opinion of Bainbridge, if that white powder were administered to the invalid it would injure him—probably weaken him, and cause a relapse, and perhaps even an earlier death than otherwise might occur; and I saw that Bainbridge was really apprehensive ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... the time run and the currents, and all that, and then reckons up where he is. I travelled with a captain once, and so long as he stuck to dead-reckoning he was all right. He made out we were off Cairns, and that's just where we were; because we struck the Great Barrier Reef, and became a total wreck ten minutes after. With the cattle it's just the same. You'll reckon the cattle that you started with, add on each year's calves, subtract all that you sell,—that is, if you ever do sell any—and allow for deaths, and what the blacks spear and the thieves steal. Then ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... unhurt into the water, where he succeeded in getting into one of the canoes. According to his statement, the bay presented an awful spectacle after the catastrophe. The ship had disappeared, but the bay was covered with fragments of the wreck, with shattered canoes, and Indians swimming for their lives, or struggling in the agonies of death; while those who had escaped the danger remained aghast and stupefied, or made with frantic panic for the shore. Upwards ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... he must refuse. Or perhaps because, thinking himself the greatest of all kings instead of but a plaything of the gods, pride locks the doors of his heart that in a day to come the tempest of the Future, whereof I have spoken, may wreck the house which holds it. I do not know why he refuses, but her Highness Userti is ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... not harbor ill-will to Hubert Tracy. He pitied him with a tender pity, and mourned for the wreck of a life that had such a good beginning. But Mr. Lawson had a feeling of enmity towards his contemporaries in the far west. He could ill repress the angry feelings that arose when the scheme presented itself in all ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... Robinson Crusoe redivivus with modern settings and a very pretty love story added. The hero and heroine, are the only survivors of a wreck, and have many thrilling adventures on ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... thus in the enjoyment of a triumph that backbiters failed to shake, and that scandal vainly sought to tarnish, when news came of the wreck of the French galleys in Sicilian waters, and of the death of the Marquis de Castellane, who was in command. The marquise on this occasion, as usual, displayed the greatest piety and propriety: although she had no very ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... under which we have been ruled is that of government through a board of trustees, through a selected number of the big business men of the country who know a lot that the rest of us do not know, and who take it for granted that our ignorance would wreck the prosperity of the country. The idea of the Presidents we have recently had has been that they were Presidents of a National Board of Trustees. That is not my idea. I have been president of one board of trustees, and I do not care ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... of the wreck, I went inland at once," remarked John, "and I never saw the sea again. When you related your story about seeing a certain tribe offering up victims you must have been on the western ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... effects from her terrifying experience on the first day, she found herself a nervous wreck when she woke in the morning, and wisely decided to ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... it was left in the ships, excepting what belonged to the necessary instruments. Whole suits of clothes were stripped of every button: bureaus were deprived of their furniture; copper kettles, tin canisters, candlesticks, and whatever of the like kind could be found, all went to wreck; so that these Americans became possessors of a greater medley and variety of things from our people, than any other nation that had been visited in the ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... Where the thrifty, pig-tailed Chinese peasant once cultivated broad and level fields in such river valleys, he is now able to rescue only a few half-hearted patches by piling the rock in heaps and saving a few intervening arable remnants from the general soil-wreck. ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... did not move, and his mind went back. He did not see the bearded wreck who lay dying before him, but a picture of Irene, with the sun lighting her copper hair with places of burning gold, and a handsome young giant beside her. They rode together on some upland trail at sunset rime, sharply framed against the bright sky. Their hands were together; their ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... rigidity in this respect has annually led thousands of people to resort to revolting and immoral acts and join in collusion, in order to obtain relief from wretched and unbearable marriage bonds. Such laws are unjust. Such laws wreck valuable lives. With strong characters they lead only to unhappiness; with the weak, they ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... one of our antiquarians, in reviewing the papers published by Mr. Jos. Hamel, in 1843, on the recent discovery of the wreck of the Petite Hermine, on the Ferme des Anges, at the mouth of the Lairet stream, thus expressed himself, p. 3:—"Il ne me fut pas difficile, en suivant attentivement le texte du second voyage de Jacques Cartier, tel que nous le donne Lescarbot, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... It makes me tired. Cut along and get the book, can't you? Why waste all this time fussing?" burst out the invalid fretfully. "How am I ever going to get well, or think I am well, if you keep reminding me every minute that I am a helpless wreck? It is enough to discourage anybody. Why can't you treat me like other people? If you chose to sit in a boat alone for half an hour nobody'd throw ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... from view as the boat, under the impulse of her engines and wheel, straightened to a course for the wreck. Soon the engines stopped again, and Denman heard the sounds of a boat being lowered. He saw this boat leave the side, manned by Hawkes, Davis, Forsythe, and Kelly, but it soon left his field of vision, ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... amid the wreck of broken oars and writhing limbs, a voice is shrieking in broadest Devon to the master, who ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... land; they were more successful on the sea, as will be seen in the chapter on Naval Operations. On September 4, 1914, an attempt was made by the Germans to wreck the British gunboat Dwarf, which with the cruiser Cumberland was watching German ships in the Cameroon estuary. The German merchantman Nachtigal tried later to ram the same gunboat and wrecked herself with a loss of 36 ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... two guns had burst. Both sides of the ship were riddled, in several places two or more ports had been knocked into one, and the after-deck beams had come down, making a huge gap in the upper-deck. The "Redoutable," already in a desperate condition, became a sinking wreck when the "Temeraire" added her fire to that of ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... genuine trouble. Let them move aggressively and there would be panic and disorder and pure catastrophe, with self-exiled city dwellers desperate from hunger because they were away from market centers. It looked as if a dozen or two monsters could wreck a civilization without the need to kill one ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the man of war "Squirrel" endeavored to raise the "Ulysses" but was forced to abandon the attempt and she proved a total wreck. ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... and west, I have thought many a time I was on the right trail, but it has come to naught so far. About a year ago I fell ill, and was a long time in a hospital. When I was discharged I was a mere wreck. Something was the matter with my heart, they said. I have not been able to work long at a time since. Such work as I get is given me ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... exert a reasoning faculty it would know that these various objects indicated a wreck. Some vessel has either foundered and gone to the bottom, or has caught fire and ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... marries will be a perfect slave to him. His fortune would be a nice thing if he did not live long; but even for that my Augusta shall not be sacrificed," returned the other matron whose Augusta had vainly tried to captivate "P. F.," and revenged herself by calling him "a wreck, my dear, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... attached to chests, (Handled when ancient dames chose forth brocade) Modern chalk drawings, studies from the nude, Samples of stone, jet, breccia, porphyry Polished and rough, sundry amazing busts In baked earth, (broken, Providence be praised!) A wreck of tapestry proudly-purposed web When reds and blues were indeed red and blue, Now offer'd as a mat to save bare feet (Since carpets constitute a cruel cost). * * * * * Vulgarised Horace for the use ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... this day, when I write at an interval of fifteen years, I have the tragic ague of that hour in my blood, and I behold the shrouded form of the most admirable of women, whose heart was broken by a faithless man ere she devoted her wreck of life to arrest one weaker than herself on the descent to perdition. Therein it was beneficently granted her to be of the service she prayed to be through her death. She died to save. In a last letter, found upon her pincushion, addressed to me under seal of secrecy toward the parties principally ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Ella tried to place on parchment words of soothing and consolation—to draw her thoughts from lingering around the ruined wreck of her affections, and direct them to the "hope set before" her, of obtaining through the merits of the Savior a home "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." Every letter she received came burthened with its ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... love this victim of nature," she replied, "and look after him with every care. He is young, rich, without family, and is going to marry me. Like you, I am just on forty; my hair is turning grey, my youth vanishing. I shall soon be cast adrift on the sea, a wreck. This boy is the providential spar to which I am going to cling that I may reach land in safety." "You mean, then," said the widow, "that you will soon be beyond the reach of want?" "Yes," answered the friend, "I needn't worry any more ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... wild days of Cornish wreckers and wrecking, both priest and clerk are said to have taken part in the sharing of the tribute of the sea cast upon their rockbound coast. The historian of Cornwall, Richard Polwhele, tells of a wreck happening one Sunday morning just before service. The clerk, eager to be at the fray, announced to the assembled parishioners that "Measter ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... other woman—you won't take the trouble to think. What would happen is this. The force that held the particles together would be released, and the hammer would fall to powder like that gold you showed me. The explosion that followed, caused by the sudden release of the power, would probably wreck this room and extinguish both our lives. You ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... will the pebbles and bricks which gangs of slaves erected into a pyramid. I do not hold Sesostris in much higher estimation than those quieter lumps of matter. They, O Timotheus, who survive the wreck of ages, are by no means, as a body, the worthiest of our admiration. It is in these wrecks, as in those at sea, the best things are not always saved. Hen-coops and empty barrels bob upon the surface, under a serene and smiling ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Sweet wreck of loveliness! alas, how soon The sad brief summer of thy joys hath fled: How sorrows Friendship for thy hapless doom, Thy beauty faded, and thy hopes all dead. Oh! 'twas that beauty's power which first destroy'd Thy mind's serenity; its charms but led ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... split it into a thousand pieces. The mariners and passengers were all crushed to death, or sunk. I myself was of the number of the latter; but as I came up again, I fortunately caught hold of a piece of the wreck, and swimming sometimes with one hand, and sometimes with the other, but always holding fast my board, the wind and the tide favouring me, I came to an island, whose shore was very steep. I overcame that difficulty, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 1 • Anon.
... wives' torts or petty misdemeanors. Yet in New Mexico, at this very minute, a wife is so completely her husband's property that he is responsible for her behavior. If she should rob her neighbor's clothesline, or wreck a chicken yard, her unfortunate husband would have to stand trial. Simply because in New Mexico married women are still living under laws that were evolved in another civilization, long before New Mexico was dreamed of as ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... hard all day, it came on one dark night to blow harder still, and, without warning, first our main and then our mizen-topmast went over the side, and lastly the foremast went altogether, so that we no longer could carry sail on it. What a crippled wreck we looked in the morning! There was a thick fog: not one of the squadron could be seen. We were boasting the day before that we were ready to meet more than an equal number of the finest ships the French could bring ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... Armada, when the proud vessels of Spain were driven partly by tempest, partly by the pursuit of our admiral, headlong along: this very coast, one of them had got into Colveston Bay, and there been driven ashore at the base of Raven Cliff, not one man of all her crew surviving that awful wreck. And he repeated one after another the legends connected with Druce Castle, whose ruined turrets we could discern away behind us, and of all the coves and crags and caves as we passed them, till, in our imagination, the bay became alive once more with ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... heart be moved at what I write. If I can escape the dreadfullest part of my father's malediction, (for the temporary part is already, in a manner, fulfilled, which makes me tremble in apprehension of the other,) I shall think the wreck of my ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... Tsarevich, that of some of her sister battleships was even worse. The Peresviet, for example—the flagship of Prince Ukhtomsky, who, in consequence of the death of Admiral Vitgeft, was now in supreme command—was a perfect wreck, so far as her upper works were concerned; both masts were destroyed, her funnels were battered and pierced, and she was on fire; while the Poltava had two of her 6-inch guns smashed and ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... though the interest was hardly the kind of which the professor had been thinking when he spoke. For, whilst standing on the opposite side of the heap, contemplating the remains of an ancient and grass-grown wreck, they were startled by the appearance of a sharp snake-like head with a pair of fierce gleaming eyes which was suddenly protruded from a gap in the ship's side, and in another moment the creature—a conger-eel of truly gigantic ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... mile from the base of the bold rocky island. The waves breaking over the ship, the masts were cut away and fell over the side. The smallest boat was then launched and immediately broke in pieces. While the wreck of a masts was being cleared away by a good swimmer called Muller, a Dutchman, in order to get a clear sea to launch the ship's large boat, our party took the opportunity of feeding and watering the horses, ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... an attack? The wolverines? Shann drew his legs under him, ready to erupt into a counter-offensive. He hesitated between drawing stunner or knife. In his brush with the injured Throg at the wreck the stunner had had little impression on the enemy. And now he wondered if his blade, though it was super-steel at its toughest, could pierce any joint in the armored bodies ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Numbers! All things change and glide, Corrupt and crumble, suffer wreck and decay, But, obstinate dark Integrities, you abide, And obey but them who obey. All things else are dyed In the colours of man's desire: But you no bribe nor prayer Avails to soften or sway. Nothing of me you share, Yet I cannot think ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... of men embarked on board of the sixteenth-century galleys we can see that the numbers are by no means exaggerated, especially as no quarter was given on either side. When the Captain Ojeda recaptured the battered wreck which had been the Capitana of Malta, we are told that on board of her were three hundred dead Turks; if this were the cost of the capture of one galley we need not ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... castle, on the east side, is the old church of All Saints with its ruined nave, eloquent of the destruction wrought by the Parliamentary cannon in the successive sieges, and to the north stands New Hall, the stately Tudor mansion of Lord George Talbot, now reduced to the melancholy wreck depicted in these pages. The girdle of fortifications constructed by the besiegers round the castle included New Hall, in case it might have been reached by a sally of the Royalists, whose cannon-balls, we know, carried as far, from the discovery of one embedded in the masonry. ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... into play. None of the witnesses, e. g., had seen that Mary Stuart received, when being executed, two blows. In the case of an execution of many years ago, not one of those present could tell me the color of the gloves of the executioner, although everyone had noticed the gloves. In a train wreck, a soldier asserted that he had seen dozens of smashed corpses, although only one person was harmed. A prison warden who was attacked by an escaping murderer, saw in the latter's hand a long knife, which turned out to be ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... pry out a bowlder. He does his work fairly well, usually; but the fact that it would require a hundred such men to care for a small place causes not the slightest solicitude. He would smoke just as stolidly and complacently after bringing wreck and ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... mountains. Two such equipages! and he never uses either himself, since he never stirs out of the house; and coachmen and lacquies always on their legs to wait on some beggarly strangers, who don't even thank him when his carriages and horses go to wreck, and new ones are to be bought at the end ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... foregoing lines from the "Voluspa," is meant the Mundane Tree Yggdrasil, which shall survive unscathed, and wave mournfully over the universal wreck. But in the "Edda" Hor tells Gangler that "another earth shall appear, most lovely and verdant, with pleasant fields, where the grain shall grow unsown. Vidar and Vali shall survive. They shall dwell on the Plain of Ida, where Asgard formerly stood. Thither shall come ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... quiet eye, Beneath the low November sky, I wandered in the woods, and found A clearing, where the broken ground Was scattered with black stumps and briers, And the old wreck of forest fires. It was a bleak and sandy spot, And, all about, the vacant plot Was peopled and inhabited By scores of mulleins long since dead. A silent and forsaken brood In that mute opening of the wood, So shrivelled and so thin they were, So gray, so haggard, and austere, ...
— Lyrics of Earth • Archibald Lampman
... the principal street runs down the hill to the open country across which the French "push" advanced. No house on this street escaped. Some of them are absolutely destroyed. The church is a mere shell. Its tower is pierced with huge holes. Its bell lies, a wreck, on the floor beneath its tower. The roof has fallen in, a heaped-up mass of debris in the nave beneath. Its windows are gone, and there are gaping wounds in its side walls. Oddly enough, the Chemin de la Croix is intact, ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... country with irredeemable paper. Gambling speculation was the madness of the day; and, in the wide-spread ruin which we are now witnessing as the last stage of this moral pestilence, Texan bonds and Texan lands form no small portion of the fragments from the wreck of money corporations contributing their assets of two or three cents to the dollar. All these interests furnished vociferous declaimers for the ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... "You may wreck the pyramid," said Phorenice contemptuously. "I myself have some knowledge of the earth forces, as I have shown this night. But though you crumble every stone above us now and grind it into grit and dust, I shall still be Empress. What force can you crazy priests bring against ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... Intensity of Experience. A vivid experience is one that excites and arouses us, strongly stimulating our feelings. Such experiences establish strong bonds of connection. When I think of a railroad wreck, I think of one in which I participated. The experience was vivid, intense, and aroused my emotions. I hardly knew whether I was dead or alive. Then, secondly, I usually think of a wreck which I witnessed in childhood. A train plunged ...
— The Science of Human Nature - A Psychology for Beginners • William Henry Pyle
... hurrahed for the largest wave; but the captain and one or two others, old sailors, knowing its power, grew momentarily more and more anxious, feeling, with a dread instinctive to the sailor, that, in case of extremity, no wreck yet known to ocean could be so hopeless as this. Solid iron from keelson to turret-top, clinging to anything for safety, if the Monitor should go down, would only insure a share in her fate. No mast, no spar, no floating thing, to meet the outstretched ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... in any new relationship, we must first have sufficient intellectual light to satisfy our mind that we are entitled to stand in this relationship. The shadow of a question here will wreck our confidence. Then, having seen this, we must make the venture, the committal, the choice, and take the place just as definitely as the tree is planted in the soil, or the bride gives herself away at the marriage altar. It must be once for all, ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... had equipped the ship with all that he thought would enable her to escape destruction, and had then met with a tempest in which the tackling had been strained or even broken to pieces, were to be held responsible for the wreck of the vessel. 'Why,' he would say, 'I was not steering the ship'—just as I was not the general[n]—'I had no power over Fortune: she had power over everything.' But consider and observe this point. {195} If it was fated that we should fare as we did, even ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... way on our oars, we shot along the inlet without much difficulty; and presently old Bill announced that, he caught a faint sight of the wreck in the distance—to all appearance 'most all gone but the hull.' But we had little or no opportunity to indulge in speculation or remark on the discovery, for in a moment or two we began to oppose the wildness of the open main, and the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... by the city-bred man on coming to the country. Mr. Dooley's description of a night in the country with the crickets and the mosquitoes and the early birds shows that it is the unusual noise rather than the volume or variety of noises that wreck nerves. At the time of the opening of the New York schools in 1907 a newspaper published an editorial on "Where can the city child study?" showing that in New York the curriculum, the schoolhouse, and the tenements are so crowded and so noisy that study is practically impossible. ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... died here. He is buried here, and I would not like to go away and leave him alone. It won't be very long, and it is a comfort to the children to be able to visit his grave. No, I reckon we will stay here, and out of the wreck of the old house which sticks up out of the mud, we will put up another little hut, higher up on the bank out of the way of the floods, and if it is only a hut, it will be a home for us and we will get into it, and ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton
... swamps and sand, which, when we at last escaped from it, we learned was Florida, I must not write here. It was months before such of us as were left crawled through into civilisation, and it is not too much to say that every day of the time after we parted from the wreck we carried our lives in our hands. It was sixteen months almost to a day before I set foot once more on Peter Port quay. For beggars cannot be choosers, and for the very clothes we stood in we were indebted to the kind hearts who took pity on us in the American ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... yelling like mad. Radford heard them, and, mounting his horse, rode in hot haste to the store. I had been sent that morning with grist to the mill, and had to pass the store. I saw Radford ride up, his horse a lather of foam. He dismounted, and looked in upon the wreck through the open door He was aghast at the sight, and said, 'I'll sell out this thing to the first man that comes along.' I rode up and said, 'I'll give you four hundred dollars for it.' 'Done!' said he. 'But,' I said, 'I have no money. I must have time.' 'How much?' 'Six ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... up this morning's paper—which you possibly have neglected to read—you will see a list of those killed in a railroad wreck which took place the night before last on a Washington-bound train. The list includes 'two women, unknown' and the pictures of both are printed. Their bodies are now in the morgue in ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... incursions of banditti into our territory. In her fate and in her fortune, in her power to establish and maintain a settled government, we have a far deeper interest, socially, commercially, and politically, than any other nation. She is now a wreck upon the ocean, drifting about as she is impelled by different factions. As a good neighbor, shall we not extend to her a helping hand to save her? If we do not, it would not be surprising should some other nation undertake the task, and thus ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... crushing, withering influence. Ah! how many fair young members of the household band have been decoyed from the hearthstone and immured in gloomy cells. Ah! how many a widowed parent has mourned over the wreck of all that was beautiful in a cherished daughter, snatched by the hand of bigotry from her warm embrace, and forever incarcerated in monastic gloom. Oh! tell me, Florry, if compulsory service is acceptable to all-seeing God? If the warm young heart, beating behind many ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... violence," begged Mr. Lyddon. "This love-making 's like to wreck the end of my life, wan way or another, yet. 'T is bad enough with the young; but when it comes to auld, bald-headed fules ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... hard to keep their heads above water during the Revolution. They loyally supported the government, with blood and money; and at the same time they endeavored to save some of their property from the general wreck, and to fittingly educate their girls, and those of their boys who were too young to be in the army. The men of this stamp who now prepared to cast in their lot with the new communities formed an exceptionally valuable ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... preparation, awaited the bursting of the storm with uneasy feelings. In a few minutes its distant roar was heard,—like muttered thunder. On it came, with a steady continuous roar, as if chaos were about to be restored, and the crashing wreck of elements were being hurled in mad fury against the yet unshattered portions of creation. Another second, and the ship was on her beam-ends, and the sea and sky were white as milk as the wind ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... close up to him suddenly. "O, Major Carew"—and there was an infinite pleading in her voice—"Billy and I thought you cared for her, and we believed she cared for you. Don't let her wreck her whole life now.... Don't stand by and let her marry a man she does not love. Go to her before ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... dead on the doorstep,—'e probably shot 'imself about midnight,—and Llewellyn comes rollin' in a couple o' hours later, an' stumbles over 'is bloody corpse. 'E's tired, but 'e gets a lantern, an' sees the kid there, like a bleedin' wreck on the reef. It fair knocks 'im out, an' 'e sits down on the same step, an' when the kanaka comes in the mornin' to sweep up, 'e fin's ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... vanes, one half-dozen gull vanes, one dozen medium-sized mills, one dozen small mills, three sailors, etc., etc., as set forth upon that order. One of the crows fell to the floor and he accidently stepped upon it and snapped its head off. He was gazing solemnly down at the wreck when the door behind him opened and a strong blast of damp, cold wind blew in. He turned and found that Mrs. Armstrong had opened the door. She entered and ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the Scipios and Caesars, the heroes of Tacitus and Livy. Our other Romans are effigies of the closet and the museum; this alone is a man of the streets, the forum, and the capitol. Such special prominence is well reserved, amid the wreck of ages, for him whom historians combine to honor as the worthiest of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... founder of the house, With its red gates abutting to the road? — A palace, though its outer wings are shorn, And domes of glittering tiles. The wall without Has tottered into ruin, yet remain The straggling fragments of some seven courts, The wreck of seven fortunes: roof and eaves Still hang together. From this chamber cool The dense blue smoke arose. Nor heat nor cold Now dwells therein. A tall pavilion stands Empty beside the empty rooms that face The pine-browed southern hills. ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... and mine also, fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to be paper. It was lying half buried in the sand, a corner sticking up. Near the spot where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull of what appeared to have been a ship's long-boat. The wreck seemed to have been there for a very great while; for the resemblance to boat timbers could scarcely ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... rising—Sioux signals, as they knew at once—and right down here before their eyes, midway between the shining river and the foot of the northward slope, perhaps two thousand yards out—a little more than a mile—was coming toward them a four-horse wagon, its white top a wreck, its struggling team lashed by the whip of the driver and the quirts of half a dozen dusky outriders, while others still circled and shouted and urged them on, while afar back on the east bank of the ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... from which the rockets had been seen to rise. The vessel's search-light was brought into action, and the skipper told off a man to sweep the sea ahead with its powerful beam, so that the exact position of the wreck might be located at the earliest possible moment; for during the last few minutes no rockets had been sent up, which ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... the verbs shall and will is a rock upon which even the best speakers come to wreck. They are interchanged recklessly. Their significance changes according as they are used with the first, second or third person. With the first person shall is used in direct statement to express a simple ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin
... the Roman Empire under the Antonines the soil, the race, the language, were alike exhausted. The anarchy of the third century brought with it the wreck of the whole fabric of civilisation; and the new religion, already widely diffused and powerful, was beginning to absorb into itself on all sides the elements of thought and emotion which tended towards a new joy and ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... story, got on the track of the rascal who had tried to swindle her and forced him to make restitution; what part the radio played in bringing the fellow to terms; how they detected and thwarted the plans of Buck Looker and his cronies to wreck their sets; are told in the first volume of this series entitled: "The Radio Boys' First Wireless; Or, Winning ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... up so rapidly between her and Ferrier. While he acknowledged its beauty and delicacy, the very thought of it, even at this moment, filled him with an irritable jealousy. The new bond had arisen out of the wreck of those he had himself broken; Ferrier had turned to her, and she to Ferrier, just as he, by his own acts, had lost them both; it might be right and natural; he winced under it—in a sense, resented ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of Life, I loved thee well, And mused betimes upon thy strand, till rolled Ashore from Daylight's wreck her gilded spars, And Night, in thee, a chandelier of stars Had hung, to light the grots where mermen dwell, The deep-sea grots of amethyst ...
— Across the Sea and Other Poems. • Thomas S. Chard
... is to say, the Elcuanam word for that suddenly unpopular color. He began to feel bitterly toward Big Flower, the cause, it seemed, of so much trouble, and even toward his departed parent, whose name, so long after his death, was such very bad medicine as to wreck ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... were yet too young to recognize their loss the great calamity of her life had come. Then by degrees the wreck of her fortune had gone to pieces, and now at last the home of her own people, deeply mortgaged, was about to pass from her forever. Much that was humbling had fallen to her in life, but nothing as sore as this final disaster. At length she rose, took a lighted candle from the table, and walked ...
— Mr. Kris Kringle - A Christmas Tale • S. Weir Mitchell
... Dudley, that "caterpillar of the commonwealth," who lost his head in the first year of Henry VIII. as a reward for the grist which he brought to the mill of Henry VII.; his father, the mighty Duke of Northumberland, who rose out of the wreck of an obscure and ruined family to almost regal power, only to perish, like his predecessor, upon the scaffold, had bequeathed him nothing save rapacity, ambition, and the genius to succeed. But Elizabeth ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... they were swept along in near peril of wreck, through flying sea-smoke and plagues of hail, they heard a strange unearthly music rising and falling in the blast. Some said it was Angels sent to strengthen them; others said it was wild birds ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... the north shore of the cove were considerably higher than on the other side. The wreck lay close in, driven high upon the narrow shelf of rocks and sand at the base of the sheer ascent. Sand had heaped up around her hull and flung itself across her deck like a white winding-sheet. Surprisingly, the vessel was a very small one, a little sloop, indeed, ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... prey from the hand; the loop went over the runaway's head; the hunter was brought almost to a dead stop; the other animal went up into the air, then fell to his knees, then over on his side. Sedgwick and Browning sprang to him, unfastened him from the wreck, got the reins and secured his head, then took off the lariat, let him up, and tied him to the hedge by ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... Anthony, wrestling with it before a mirror. "If they don't come soon, 't will be wreck, demmit! I wish to ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... country. Probably the goods were stored somewhere or perhaps seized by some creditor. But I really can't say definitely without looking the matter up. There are some books and prints now left in the house out of the wreck. We shall probably put them in a sale, only they have been overlooked. The whole lot will ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... secondly, in believing that his own life, root and branch, had been withered by opium? For it will not follow, because, with a relation to happiness and tranquillity, a man may have found opium his curse, that therefore, as a creature of energies and great purposes, he must have been the wreck which he seems to suppose. Opium gives and takes away. It defeats the steady habit of exertion, but it creates spasms of irregular exertion; it ruins the natural power of life, but it developes preternatural paroxysms of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... entertainment—with wonderful accounts of railway accidents— and of one in particular that happened on a pitch-dark night when fires had to be made to light the workers as they toiled fearfully amongst the wreck of the trains, searching for the mangled and mutilated, the dying and the dead, while the air was filled with horrid ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... yea, I've suffered anguish From the very hour when, as the spring Of nature dragged my anchors loose, the soft Entreaty of a lover's sigh did blow Concurrent with my tide, and swept me out Into a troubled sea. Now, battered on the rocks of hard opinions, My most untimely wreck is quite complete; Yet spare the hulk for that ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... at a little country church, about 70 miles by rail from the institution where he attended. He went Saturday, returning on Monday. One Saturday the train ran off the track. All day long they worked at the wreck. At last, finding it too late to make connection with the other railroad, he took the down train back to the institution. What should be done? A promise to preach forty miles across the country had been made. There was also an appointment six miles beyond for an afternoon ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... as raging seas are wont to rore, When wintry storme his wrathfull wreck does threat The roaring billowes beat the ragged shore, As they the earth would shoulder from her seat, And greedy gulfe does gape,[*] as he would eat 185 His neighbour element in his revenge: Then gin the blustring brethren[*] boldly threat To move the world from ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... powerful will, disrupted these magnetic relations; he tore apart the unseen filaments that bound them; and, the sustaining influence gone, he fell—a mighty wreck—on the bleak ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... perturbation, after I had sent Miss Gage to her, until I could know the result of their interview. When I saw the girl come away from her room, which she did rather trippingly, I went to her, and found her by no means the wreck I had expected the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Andrew Ffoulkes had gleaned that same evening, it seemed to him that in order to hide their defalcations Heron and the four commissaries in charge of little Capet had substituted a deaf and dumb child for the escaped little prisoner. This miserable small wreck of humanity was reputed to be sick and kept in a darkened room, in bed, and was in that condition exhibited to any member of the Convention who had the right to see him. A partition had been very hastily erected in the inner room once occupied by the Simons, and the child was kept behind ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... brow. The head in front, which is that of a private citizen of excellent character, named Smith, I obtained in Florida nearly fifty years ago. At the same time I obtained the other, which is that of a French count who lost his life on the coast of Florida by wreck when engaged in a contraband slave trade with Cuba. In the count we observe much less elevation and much greater depth. He is especially ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various
... Dick, after denouncing the fellow as he deserved, proceeded to business in as emphatic a fashion as Jack had done the preceding year. He was equally thorough, perhaps more so, for he not only left the place a wreck, and the proprietor senseless, but "laid out" two brawlers who happened to be present and were imprudent enough to try ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... genuine power, commanding by turns genuine love and genuine hate, and always, till then, obedience and the respect of reason. It was her father who appeared tragically ridiculous; and, in turn, the whole movement against her grew grotesque in its absurdity. Here was this antique wreck, helpless, useless, powerless—merely pathetic —actually thinking that he had only to mumble in order to make her 'understand'! He knew nothing; he perceived nothing; he was a ferocious egoist, like most bedridden invalids, ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... grow dim, nor will our love and gratitude ever decay. Do you see this celestial form leaning on her anchor, and while the raging waves of a restless sea dash against her, feel unmoved? Do you observe her aspect firm, and her eyes turned towards Heaven? And wouldst you wish to cast her down and wreck her on the quicksands of dismal doubt? Go, brother, to the chamber of sickness, where life's waning embers can no longer warm the dying heart, there hear from cold and quivering lips this hope expressed, I long to be with Christ, I long to be at rest. Would you blast this amaranthine flower? ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... every one on a wild rush. The day's doing had packed the always-crowded money lane. The newsboys were shouting afternoon editions. "Terrible panic in Wall Street. One man against millions. Robert Brownley broke 'the Street.' Made twenty millions in an hour. Banks failed. Wreck and ruin everywhere. President Snow of Asterfield National a suicide." Bob gave no sign of hearing. He strode with a slow, measured gait, his head erect, his eyes staring ahead at space, a man thinking, thinking, ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... try to arrange my thoughts, but could not; the past seemed swept away and buried, like the wreck of some drowned land after a flood. Ploughed by affliction to the core, my heart lay fallow for every seed that fell. Eleanor understood me, and gently and gradually, beneath her skilful hand, the chaos began again to bloom with verdure. She and Crossthwaite used to sit and read to me—from the ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... Virginia colony. His quick perception instantly discerned the wants of the settlers, and he provided for them a ship well stored with provisions and furnished with boats to serve in emergency. But a violent storm drove his fleet to sea and reduced to wreck the vessel intended to sustain the settlers. Their resolution gave way; it seemed as though divine and human power were united against them, and, in utter despondency, they entreated Drake to receive them in his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of the shanty came a multitude of night sounds. The moon had risen, and what had been a dusty country road was now a streak of silver in the hot light. The purple flush on the judge's face, where the dignity that belonged to age had gone down in wreck, deepened. The sparse, white frost above his ears was damp with sweat. He removed his stock, opened his shirt at the neck, and cast aside his coat; then he lighted a blackened pipe, filled his glass, and sank back in his chair. The long hours ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... spreading. Cole arrives first, and as I come thrashing through the bushes he sits on a rock munching some burnt flour. He announces with an unsteady voice: 'Well, she's gone.' We say not much, nothing that indicates poor courage, but go about to find what we can in the wreck, and pack up for a tramp down river. In an hour we have picked out everything useful, including my money, nails, thread and damaged provisions, and are on the way down river hoping to pass the rapids ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... disrupts the earth. Slowly it began its readjustment. There was no other life to give aid or sympathy; and just as they had suffered alone, so now the forest people struggled back into life alone, building up from the wreck of what had been, the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... human machine, a malady which may be designated as the heart-sickness of the unfortunate. However serious this invisible but real disorder might already be, it could still be cured by a happy issue. But a fresh obstacle, an unexpected incident, would be enough to wreck this vigorous constitution, to break the weakened springs, and produce the hesitancy, the aimless, unfinished movements, which physiologists know well ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... the most absurd stories were in circulation. It was stated that a man came out of the wreck of the Palace Hotel with his pockets filled with human fingers and ears taken from the dead inmates for the rings and earrings. As no one was injured in the hotel, it was wholly imaginative. A man near the Park met another who related the shocking occurrence of two men having ...
— San Francisco During the Eventful Days of April, 1906 • James B. Stetson
... and were a father And prospered in your plans, and all was well. Nay, more—'tis proved you had a generous heart, And had been kind to your poor countrymen, The homeless emigrants who gather here, Like men escaped from sore calamities, Where only life is saved from out the wreck. And one of these, an early friend, who died Beneath the kindly shelter of your roof, Left to your care his precious orphan child— His only child, his motherless, his daughter. And you received the gift, and vowed to be A father to the ...
— Godey's Lady's Book, Vol. 42, January, 1851 • Various
... Forge had indeed borne fruit. With a slight numerical superiority Washington had fought the British in the open field, and fairly defeated them. "Clinton gained no advantage," said the great Frederic, "except to reach New York with the wreck of his army; America is probably lost for England." Another year had passed, and England had lost an army, and still held what she had before, the city of New York. Washington was in the field with a better army than ever, ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Consider what it will be to drag on years of your life with a woman, no longer perhaps externally attractive, whom you could never possibly respect or love for her own internal qualities! Don't go and wreck your own life, and your brothers' lives, for any mistaken and Quixotic notions of false honour! You mayn't like to throw her over, after you've once been inveigled into saying "Yes" (and the feeling, though foolish, does your heart credit); but reflect, my dear boy, such a promise, so obtained, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... Whatever energy the soul expends must first be "taken into it from without." We are not Creators, but creatures; God is our refuge and strength. Communion with God, therefore, is a scientific necessity; and nothing will more help the defeated spirit which is struggling in the wreck of its religious life than a common-sense hold of this plain biological principle that without Environment he can do nothing. What he wants is not an occasional view, but a principle—a basal principle ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... of either of the three great novels. The landlady, an incredibly mean and heartless shrew, inflicted daily annoyances and extortions on her wind-bound victims. The squalid building, partly constructed of wreck-wood, could scarce house the party. The food supplies, other than those the visitors brought with them, were chiefly 'rusty bacon, and worse cheese,' with very bad ale to drink. And on the first afternoon, the house was found to be so damp ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden |
