"Avalanche" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our left was the crevasse into which Dr. Hamel's three guides were precipitated by an avalanche in 1820; they are still entombed in the ice, and some future explorer may, perhaps, see them disgorged lower down, fresh and undecayed. They can hardly reach the surface until they pass the snow-line of the glacier, for above this line ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... looked lovelier the nearer she got to it, and very rare and exquisite she found it to be, as soon as she had it in her hands. It was not till she had examined and rejoiced over it, that addressing herself to go back, Wych Hazel found her retreat cut off. Not by any sudden avalanche or obstacle, animate or inanimate; as peacefully as before the wind waved the ferns on the great stepping stones of cliff and boulder by which she had come; but—the agility by which with help of vines and twigs she had let herself down these declivities, was not the strength that would mount ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... veritable avalanche of Syrian sheep, scrambling to right and left as they parted behind Momus and Laodice and eddying around the young shepherd who stopped at seeing the pair. His yell died away at once, though the effort of sliding down a frozen, rocky slope ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... enthroned at the wheel, had almost forgotten that any shadow rested on the hilarity of the day. He had been dubbed a good fellow, a true sport, a benefactor to the school—every complimentary pseudonym imaginable—and had glowed with pleasure beneath the avalanche of flattery. As the big car with its rollicking occupants had spun along the highway, many a passer-by had caught the merry mood of the cheering group and waved a smiling salutation ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... up the bag and looked at it. It must have been unfastened, for the next instant there was an avalanche on the snowfield of the counterpane—some money, a wisp of a handkerchief, a tiny booklet with thin leaves, covered with a powdery substance—and a necklace. I drew myself up slowly and ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the cavernous basin in the cliffs leaves only just room for the line of houses between the lake in the middle and the precipice behind. Only a few years later an avalanche overwhelmed the house of Captain Williams, and he and his family perished in it. During the days I was at the mine the news travelled by grapevine telegraph that the Mission doctor from England ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... setting, their lower parts dark and sullen, their upper parts tinted red in this light whose intensity was doubled by the reflecting power of the waters! We scaled rocks that crumbled behind us, collapsing in enormous sections with the hollow rumble of an avalanche. To our right and left there were carved gloomy galleries where the eye lost its way. Huge glades opened up, seemingly cleared by the hand of man, and I sometimes wondered whether some residents of these underwater regions would suddenly ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... that close to the corner a large lump of rock and earth was breaking away, a cleft was opening, so that presently, it seemed possible at any moment, the mass would fall headlong into the blue deeps below. This impending avalanche was not in my path along the Bisse, it was no sort of danger to me, but in some way its insecurity gave a final touch to my cowardice. I could not get ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... complicated creatures we little human animals are! An avalanche of love hadn't destroyed my hunger. A knife-thrust in my vanity killed it in an instant; and I can't believe this was simply because I'm female. I shouldn't be surprised if a man might feel exactly ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... moving. Their ears had by this time become sufficiently well acquainted with the peculiar sound of the rushing snow-masses to know that this was the noise that heralded their progress, and to feel sure that this was an avalanche of no common size. Yes, this was an avalanche, and every one heard it; but no one could tell where it was moving, or whether it was near or far, or whether it was before or behind. They only knew that it was somewhere along the slope which they ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... himself, "we must lose no time; we must make our hay while shines the sun. One month more and an avalanche of printer's type shall roll down on Rome from those Apennines, and lay us waste that ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... difficult at any time to account for the workings of Fate or to follow the course of its agents. The track of an earth-worm destroys a dam; the parting of a wire wrecks a bridge; the breaking of a root starts an avalanche; the flaw in an axle dooms a train; the sting of a microbe depopulates a city. But none of these unseen, mysterious agencies was at work—nothing so ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... listened. There came from below the far sound of falling waters. Nearer at hand a goat bleated keenly. A dull, muffled sound, vast and mysterious, rose slumberously. I remembered that I was near to the great Alps. Without doubt it was the rumble of an avalanche. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... be able to upset some of my arrangements," said Peter, "but in upsetting them, his own would be under the avalanche." ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... other extremity, the ants who laboured at the thumb and its environs, continued with violent jerks to draw the glove towards its destination; and when it had come so near the sloping edge, that the locomotive power became its own, it slid, like an avalanche, to the bottom of the mound, drawing nearly the entire population along with it. Never were pismires so terrified before; nor did arrow ever swifter cleave the air, as these insects scrambled over the blades of grass and chips of wood. The agility with which they ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... "spring-water pumped upon their nerves," she good-naturedly overlooked their grimances and groans, and continued the hydropathic treatment even in her second book, hoping some good effects from the shock. Of one intensely gratifying fact she could not fail to be thoroughly informed, by the avalanche of letters which almost daily covered her desk; she had at least ensconced herself securely in a citadel, whence she could smilingly defy all assaults—in the warm hearts of her noble countrywomen. Safely sheltered in their sincere and devoted love, she cared little for the shafts that rattled ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... force which underlies German movements. Luther, for good and for evil, is the most typical of Germans, and the Luther who made his mark in the world—the shrewd, coarse, superstitious peasant who blossomed into genius—was an avalanche of emotion, a great mass of natural human instincts irresistible in their impetuosity. When we bear in mind this general tendency to emotional expansiveness in the manifestations of the Teutonic soul we need feel no surprise that the present ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... first pebble of the avalanche, Malone knew suddenly—the avalanche that was somehow going to destroy him. "You forced your thoughts into my mind, then," he said as coolly as he could. "Just as you forced decision ...
— Occasion for Disaster • Gordon Randall Garrett
... under several of these criticisms there is a HATRED against me, against me personally, a deliberate slandering, the cause of which I am seeking. I do not feel hurt, but this avalanche of foolishness saddens me. One prefers inspiring good feelings to bad ones. As for the rest, I am not thinking any more about Saint-Antoine. That is ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... many-tinted foliage with his departing light, that slowly turned to rose-colour ere the shades of evening crept over all, and the stars began to peep out, one by one. We could trace from the summit to the base of a lofty mountain the course of a stupendous avalanche, which had recently rushed down into the sea, crushing and destroying everything in its way, and leaving a broad track of desolation behind it. It must for a time have completely filled up the narrow channel; and woe to any unfortunate vessel that might happen ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... eye-glass. He called our attention to every chasm, gorge and waterfall, as if we had been wholly incapable of seeing or appreciating anything without his aid. As for me, I did not feel like disputing his susceptibility. I was suffering an uneasy apprehension of an avalanche—not of snow, but of trunks and boxes from the topheavy diligences ahead of us. However, we reached the top of Mont Cenis safely by means of thirteen mules to each coach, attached tandem, and we stopped at the queer relay-house there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... that women have thought more and accepted the responsibilities of voting to a greater extent than was ever expected of them. During the week I was accorded a welcome home in the old Academy of Music, Rundle street, where I listened with embarrassment to the avalanche of eulogium that overwhelmed me. "What a good thing it is, Miss Spence, that you have only one idea," a gentleman once said to me on my country tour. He wished thus to express his feeling concerning my singleness ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... brick and struck it repeatedly against the stone that closed the entrance, hoping that the noise would spread through the house. But an avalanche of small stones, loosened by the blows, at once fell upon him, knocking him down again and fixing ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... haggard realism of his narrative. The cabin must have been air-tight—it was as close as possible—yet we heard the shrieking of the wind as it tore through the rigging, and the long hiss of the waves rushing past us with lightning speed. Sometimes an avalanche of foam buried us for a moment, and the Petrel trembled like a living thing stricken with sudden fear: we seemed to be hanging on the crust of a great bubble that was, sooner or later, certain to burst and let us drop into its vast, black chasm, where in Cimmerian ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... has suffered severely at the hands of the invaders. She is living quite alone in the chateau with the servants since her son was taken and the avalanche of troops swept over the frontier at this point. The house has been full of officers from the "first days" and she thinks one of them was the "Kronprinz" from his photograph and because his brother-officers always addressed him as Excellency. After one frightful day, when the soldiers ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... the influence of pressure passes into the form of ice. In some cases nature does this on a large scale. Where mountains are sufficiently elevated to raise their heads above the snow line we know they are white all the year around with snow. What is not blown away, evaporated, or, as an avalanche, precipitated to lower heights, must accumulate from year to year. But the weight pressing on the lower portions of this snow-field must soon be considerable, and at length become so great, that the snow ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... had led his army across the great mountain barrier of the Alps, and poured down like an avalanche upon the fertile plains of Italy. The Corsican determined to repeat this brilliant achievement and emulate Hannibal's career. Several passes across the mountains seemed favorable to his purpose, especially those of the St. Bernard, the Simplon and Mount Cenis. Of these the ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... half open, and seemed incapable of being moved in either direction, but had seen nothing except a broken pail and a pile of brushwood; the flat arch over this door was broken, and the door itself half buried in a heap of blackened stones and mortar. Here was the avalanche whose fall had so terrified the household! The formless mass had yesterday been a fair proportioned and ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... is a fearful mystery; but understood, she is a simple and beautiful piece of mechanism; and the earthquake may not be more disastrous than the flood or the avalanche when science and experience have taught men to avoid the localities of danger, and to watch the hour of its approach, that they ...
— Strange Visitors • Henry J. Horn
... was a sharp crack overhead, followed by a tremendous rattle and crash. Then down upon the buggy descended what, to Graves, appeared to be an avalanche of scratching, tearing twigs and branches. They ripped away the boot and laprobe and jammed him back against the seat, their sharp points against his breast. The buggy was jerked forward a few feet and ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... coming like some machine- controlled avalanche of armed men. Every report brought them a little nearer Paris. Ah, monsieur, they had numbers, those Germans! Every German mother has many sons; a French mother ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... Chevalier and his friends were without resources. In consequence of leading a wild life and sacrificing himself for his party, he had spent his entire fortune, and was overwhelmed with debts. The lawyer Vanier, who was entrusted with the management of his business affairs, lost his head at the avalanche of bills, protests and notes of hand which poured into his office, and which it was impossible to meet. The lawyer Lefebre, a fat and sensual free-liver, was equally low in funds, and laid on the government the blame of the confusion into which his affairs had fallen, though it had been ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... But that avalanche had somewhat unnerved him, for he had been looking out for a place to camp, and it now seemed madness to think of coming ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... instances where it is possible to check the statement, the untrustworthiness—almost without exception—of the reports of numbers, which are swelled by the unscrupulous invention of the annalists with avalanche-like rapidity. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the world over for its unique location, rivaled only by that of Marseilles, and we have now the responsibility to use this natural asset, for which many envy us. The Exposition will start an avalanche of improvements along artistic lines which will be given increasing momentum by the development of ...
— The Art of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... a glance of recognition; and at the same moment the order to charge burst in a loud ringing voice from his lips. Couching my lance, I gave my steed the rein, and our small but compact body advanced like an avalanche against the foe. In vain those who had fired attempted to reload; their bayonets were all they had to depend on. Had they been British troops, the case would have been different; but as they saw the ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... fierce the heathen cry arose across the Indian plain, And 'twas Home, for the bravest there would never be again, The raw recruits were restless, and they counted not the cost, And the Colonel shouted, 'Steady lads, stand fast, or else we're lost.' A rush! 'twas like an avalanche! a clash of steel and red! A shock like mountain thunder, then the reg'ment turned and fled. 'Give me the drum, take the fife,' said Jake, 'And with all your might and main, Play the old step now, for the reg'ment's sake As they scatter along the plain. We'll play them up to the front once ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... Snow Peak—mighty name My dusky tribes revered when time was young! Their god was I in avalanche and flame— In grove and mead and songs my rivers sung, As blithe they ran to make the valleys fair— Their Shrine of Peace where no avenger came To vex Tacoma, lord of ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... treaty with Prussia, by which each party bound itself to aid the other, should its territory be invaded. England thus sought a guaranty against France, and Prussia against Russia. She had need. Her King, Frederic the Great, had drawn upon himself an avalanche. Three women—two empresses and a concubine—controlled the forces of the three great nations, Austria, Russia, and France; and they all hated him: Elizabeth of Russia, by reason of a distrust fomented by secret intrigue and turned into gall by the biting tongue of Frederic ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Guard alone, off to the right, seems untouched, and on it comes. Suddenly the sound of a bagpipe is heard. The Scots are awake. From the trenches an avalanche rushes forward ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... building-trades). He groped his way along by it to the station of the next officer, who warned him of the deadly consequences of disobedience. Thence he made his way onward, holding to the Clue of Faith—until he touched a trigger of some sort, which let down upon him an avalanche of tinware and such light and noisy articles, which frightened him so that he started to run, and was dexteriously tripped by the Deacon Militant and a spearman, and caught in a net held by two others. A titter ran ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... that loved it would haunt the place! But he could not surely be permitted! for it might postpone a thousand years his discovery of the emptiness of a universe of such treasures. Now he was moldering into the world of spirits in the heart of an avalanche of the dust of ages, dust material from his hoards, dust moral and spiritual from his withering ...
— The Elect Lady • George MacDonald
... in a strange, stammering, tearless way, opening the dry flood-gates over which rattled an avalanche of words—bitter, breathless phrases rushing brokenly from lips that ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... me, but I think you cannot have considered the consequences of such an act. If he discovers your secret interference in his affairs, he will have grounds for suspicions, and they will grow like an avalanche. And besides, in doing this you have thwarted his will and irritated him still more. You must have felt yourself how the mind rebels when one's deepest desires are thwarted and one's ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... by Mamie. He had wondered vaguely—turning over many things in the fidget of his thoughts—if Mamie WERE as pretty as Woollett published her; as to which issue seeing her now again was to be so swept away by Woollett's opinion that this consequence really let loose for the imagination an avalanche of others. There were positively five minutes in which the last word seemed of necessity to abide with a Woollett represented by a Mamie. This was the sort of truth the place itself would feel; it would send ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... of all—have had to expend large sums of money, and great amounts of time and trouble, to free themselves from a persecution as unparalleled as it was vicious and cruel. Those who, having neither fame nor fortune to lose, speak lightly and think not at all of the sorrows which were launched avalanche-like upon the devoted heads of the Tichbornes and their connections, would do well to ponder over what such personation as that of Arthur Orton means to its immediate victims. It means a sudden derangement of all the ties and sympathies ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... animal, which, frenzied by terror, and maddened by the stinging sleet, refused to obey, and would only rear and kick. Suddenly the ice under the sleigh sank down, and a flood of water rolled over it, followed by an avalanche of ice-blocks which had tumbled from the ridge. With a wild snort of terror, the horse turned, whirling round the sleigh, and with the speed of the wind dashed back toward the shore. As the sleigh came near, I saw the driver upright and trying to regain his command of the horse, and at that instant ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... listened with loudly beating heart. He realized that he had found an opening to the surface, and was wildly exultant over the discovery, but could hardly believe that the noise of the sliding material, which had sounded to him like an avalanche, should not have aroused the savages. So, for some minutes, he listened, and then, reassured by the continued silence, ventured to climb up to the open air. He had but a few feet to go, and once at the surface instantly recognized his surroundings. ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... better if he had looked through the walls and discovered Bea the sole student with time to burn—or to talk, for that matter. Trot along, Beatrice, and tell him that Gertrude is coming the moment she has dug her way out of this avalanche of manuscript. I can't possibly spare her for half an hour yet. Go and distract his mind from his unnatural sister by means of ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... course, and where the forest-covered hillside had been there was a great scar, out of which a torrent burst at high pressure, which in half an hour carved for itself a deep ravine, and carried into the valley below an avalanche of stones and sand. Another hillside descended less abruptly, and its noble groves found themselves at the bottom in a perpendicular position, and will doubtless survive their transplantation. Actually, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... it was this branch that caused the turmoil as the craft passed through it, causing everything to be torn from the roof; trunks, bags, and chicken-coops, in a disordered mass. I had received no warning and hardly had collected my senses before this avalanche was upon me. Seizing the branches as they came, I held on for dear life. I tried to scramble over them to the other part of the roof, but having fallen asleep on the ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... of the services rendered by these noble dogs of Saint Bernard in saving life among the snowy regions of the Alps. It is recounted that one of these dogs preserved twenty-two lives. He at length lost his own in an avalanche, when those he was endeavouring to ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... the white room that afternoon, the small sister was ready with an avalanche of queries. "Why ain't the hospital big enough as 'tis? What do they need an edition for? Why won't Robinson Danbury give them any money, and why do they think he ought to? What's the matter with the churches and how do they bleed ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Gothic king, in his distant camp, beheld with joy the intrigues and factions which deprived the emperor of his best and last defender, and prepared for a new invasion of Italy. He descended like an avalanche upon the plains of Italy, and captured the cities of Aquileia, Concordia, and Cremona. He then ravaged the coasts of the Adriatic, and following the Flaminian way, crossed the Appennines, devastated Umbria, and reached, without ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... passing behind intervening spurs or ridges of the mountain, or becoming hidden in the cloud-mists which lay heavily about its base; but the sound continued to roll back upon us for some time, like the roar of distant artillery. I could no longer wonder at the terror with which the cry of an avalanche is said to fill the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... Whene'er we part, my trembling heart forebodes That you will ne'er come back to me again. I see you on the frozen mountain steeps, Missing, perchance, your leap from crag to crag. I see the chamois, with a wild rebound, Drag you down with him o'er the precipice. I see the avalanche close o'er your head, The treacherous ice give way, and you sink down Entombed alive within its hideous gulf. Ah! in a hundred varying forms does death Pursue the Alpine huntsman on his course. That ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... and established another tradition for British valour, the air of England became charged with an ominous feeling that something was wrong at the front. The German advance in the west had been well nigh triumphant. Reckless bravery alone could not prevail against the avalanche of ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... the side of the ship, raised his hand to show that he wished to speak to the chief. But the island men rushed on like an avalanche and started to storm the ship. Snatching up arms, poles, rope-ends—whatever they could find—the men on board beat down upon the heads of the savages as they climbed up the ship's slippery side. One man after another sank wounded on the deck. ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... I leave the subject of Belgium, what have we done for Belgium? Have we saved her soil from invasion? Were we at her side with half a million men when the avalanche fell on her? Or were we safe in our own country praising her heroism in paragraphs which all contrived to convey an idea that the Belgian soldier is about four feet high, but immensely plucky for his size? Alas, when the Belgian soldier cried: "Where are ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... services freely to the government. These were the "dollar a year men" whose productive genius was to bear fruit in the clothing, arming, provisioning, munitioning and transportation of four million men and the conquest of Germany by a veritable avalanche of war material. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... away in panic. Then a little red-faced trooper came tearing down the line shouting, "Face the other way boys; face the other way." And those panic-stricken men turned and rolled an irresistible avalanche of heroes upon the Confederate lines. What made them turn about? It was something which I can neither define nor analyze—the personal power of Sheridan. It is the secret of every great leader of men. Now Sheridan had imparted more than ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler
... poetry originated like avalanches, in the drift and flow of tradition. They were, however, ready to consider that kernel as being of the smallest possible dimensions, so that they might occasionally get rid of it altogether without losing anything of the mass of the avalanche. According to this view, the text itself and the stories built round it are one and the ...
— Homer and Classical Philology • Friedrich Nietzsche
... subservient to his will? He wondered. Everything depended upon that. If not, then he might as well try to stay the forces of a mighty avalanche with his breath, as halt the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... the cliff, of course. It must have made a big drift there and tumbled down—regular avalanche, you know—just as I tried to look out. Why! the place out there is filled up yards deep! We'd never be able to dig out in ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... the eye but that of mountain tops covered with perpetual snow and ice—a world dead and deserted, where the familiar voices of nature were almost unknown; where no bird carolled its love-song from the waving branch; where no sound was to be heard save the muttered thunder of the avalanche, the roaring of the cataracts which poured forth from the melting glaciers and made courses for themselves through heaps of rough stones; and now and again the harsh and discordant scream of a solitary vulture that with outspread wings circled slowly aloft, ...
— Harper's Young People, November 11, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... observer had studied the eyes sufficiently to notice this defect, he was generally incapacitated for criticism; and even the scar on her cheek was thought by some to add piquancy to her smile. The youthful editor of "The Fiddletown Avalanche" had said privately that it was "an exaggerated dimple." Col. Starbottle was instantly "reminded of the beautifying patches of the days of Queen Anne, but more particularly, sir, of the blankest beautiful women, that, blank you, ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... suspended in mid-air at a giddy height, along interminable balconies without parapets; and below, the cliffs dropped avalanche-like, fell straight, bare, without a patch of vegetation or a tree. In places they looked as if they had been split down by the blows of an axe—huge growths of petrified wood; in others they seemed sawn ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... stretching myself out at full length under the tree, I remained quiet for two or three minutes. Then a slight rustling sound was heard, and I looked eagerly round for her. But the sound was overhead and caused by a great avalanche of leaves which began to descend on me from that vast leafy ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... the hall all night, was swept into the dust-bin next morning; and the Captain's sly arrangement, involved in one catastrophe with greater hopes and loftier designs, was crushed to pieces. So, when an avalanche bears down a mountain-forest, twigs and bushes suffer with the trees, and all ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... suggested an avalanche of falling boxes. The Elder blew out his candle, lit a bull's-eye lantern which he kept handy by his bed, and, throwing up the window, challenged ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... one among many witnesses in my way whom it was necessary to remove. A lively altercation between us (in which Percival, previously instructed by me, refused to interfere) served the purpose in view. I descended on the miserable man in an irresistible avalanche of indignation, and swept him ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... "on a flat ground, the projectile will remain motionless when it has once touched; whereas on a declivity it would roll like an avalanche, and not being squirrels we should not come out safe and sound. So it is ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... The black avalanche had disappeared. There were women weeping behind the coffin carried by the black phantoms, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... man-eaters that were coming. Our strange proceedings in Cusarare, namely, the photographing, had already been reported and made the Indians uneasy. The terrible experience of our runaway guide seemed to confirm their wildest apprehensions, and the alarm spread like wildfire, growing in terror, like an avalanche, the farther it went. We found the ranches deserted on every hand, women and children hiding and screaming whenever they caught a glimpse of us. At every turn our progress was impeded. Wherever I came I was abhorred as the man who subsisted on ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... of the awful midnight, the voice of an avalanche answered from the distant mountains, and ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... convoy. He had contrived his negotiations with a wonderful skill and foresight. His whole object had been secrecy, and this had been difficult. To shout the wealth of the camp in Leeson Butte would have been to bring instantly an avalanche of adventurers and speculators to the banks of Yellow Creek. His capital was limited to the small amount he had secretly hoarded while his comrades were starving, and the gold he had taken from his claim. The latter was his chief asset not from its amount, but ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... the first instance, by his friendship with Minna Herzlieb. Bettina, left to draw her own conclusions, at once identified herself with "Oreas" in the sonnet, and reproached herself for having plunged, like a mountain avalanche, into the broad, full current of the poet's life. From the letter of September 17th it is plain that Bettina indulged, in all seriousness, the fanciful notion that her inspiration was, in a sense, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... France. "He has gone," writes Callieres, "after quarrelling with everybody." The various points in dispute were set before the king. An avalanche of memorials, letters, and proces-verbaux, descended upon the unfortunate monarch; some concerning Mareuil and the quarrels in the council, others on the excommunication of Desjordis, and others on the troubles at Montreal. ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... Russian officers under him, submit all his plans to their vote, then abide by their decision. Yet he alone must carry responsibility for blunders. And as the days went on, details of instructions rolling out from admiralty, senate, and academy were like an avalanche gathering impetus to destruction from its weight. He was to establish new industries in Siberia. He was to chart the whole Arctic coast line of Asia. He was to Christianize the natives. He was to provide the travelling academicians with luxurious equipment, though ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... of life do not penetrate to the sphere in which our beliefs are cherished; as it was not they that engendered those beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them; they can aim at them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without weakening them; and an avalanche of miseries and maladies coming, one after another, without interruption into the bosom of a family, will not make it lose faith in either the clemency of its God or the capacity of its physician. But when M. Vinteuil regarded his daughter and himself from the point of view of the world, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... the national heart and mind and conscience, stricken and bowed by a calamity whose pathos penetrates every house-hold in Christendom, cries to these warning words, "Amen! Amen!" Like the slight sound amid the frozen silence of the Alps that loosens and brings down the avalanche, the solitary pistol-shot of the 2d of July has suddenly startled this vast accumulation of public opinion into conviction, and on every side thunders the rush and roar of its overwhelming descent, which will sweep ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... "I am emboldened to speak openly to you. M. Danglars is my banker; M. de Villefort has overwhelmed me with politeness in return for a service which a casual piece of good fortune enabled me to render him. I predict from all this an avalanche of dinners and routs. Now, in order not to presume on this, and also to be beforehand with them, I have, if agreeable to you, thought of inviting M. and Madame Danglars, and M. and Madame de Villefort, to my country-house at Auteuil. If I were ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... on, you know," said Tom. "We may be glad of any sort of a shelter. I am afraid we are interfering with your comfort, Philip; but really, we couldn't help it. The storm's awful outside. Mrs. Caruthers was sure we should be overtaken by an avalanche; and then she was certain there must be a crevasse somewhere. I wonder if one can get anything ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... other in terror, the goats trembled, and Bello crept farther under the rock. "The avalanche!" gasped Leneli, shaking with fright. "Father thought there wouldn't be any more this spring! Oh, I wish we ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... by the window The rushing winds go, To the ice-cumber'd gorges, The vast seas of snow! There the torrents drive upward Their rock-strangled hum; There the avalanche thunders The hoarse torrent dumb. —I come, O ye mountains! Ye torrents, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... like a brigade of charging cavalry, tramping all before them. Forward they swept in blind panic, as relentlessly destructive as an avalanche, and no more easily stopped ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... a hundred doors of memory; into Pauline's mind was discharged avalanche after avalanche of dreadful thoughts. "No! No!" she protested. "How infamous to think such things of my best friend!" But she tried in vain to thrust suspicions, accusations, proofs, back into the closets. Instead, ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips
... dumb at the foot of the steps. The whole situation had rushed upon him like an avalanche. Harbert had filed his charges and the hasty visit of the reporter proved that David Cable was an instrument in them. The blood surged to his head; he staggered under the ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... down the slope below he thought the snow seemed broken—by footprints, was it? With the expectation of a discovery strong upon him, he crept along a wide ledge of the crag, now and then stumbling and sending an avalanche of snow and ice and stones thundering to the foot of the cliff..He missed his way more than once. Then he would turn about, laboriously retracing his steps, and try another level of the ledges. Suddenly before him was the ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... spirit, which you may prove by getting under an avalanche; but I do most emphatically agree that spirit cannot exist without matter. 'Divorced from matter, where is life?' asks Tyndall, and ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... feet flew up, her head went down, and she tripped the grocery clerk. His long pole crashed into the neat pile of boxes arranged on the shelves and a shower of oatmeal, cornstarch, macaroni and other cereals fell in an avalanche. ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... interrupted by an avalanche of words that must have been dammed up in me for all the fifteen years of my life for that special occasion, and I delivered them with an eloquence that must have equaled that famous valedictory of Colonel Stockell's at the Byrd Academy, the year ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... General is reported to have been overwhelmed by an avalanche of snow, and at Easter-time a number of patriotic English people were offering, in view of the usefulness of the stuff for military purposes, to forgo their ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 18, 1917 • Various
... terror and confusion—a condition greatly assisted by the slippery nature of the ground. Then, with wild shouts, and brandishing their iron-studded clubs and their formidable halberts and scythes, down the mountain-side rushed, with the fury of their native avalanche, the heroic Confederates; and falling on their foes literally slew them by thousands. Many hundreds of the Austrians perished in the lake, the men of Zurich alone making a stand, and falling each where he fought. Few succeeded in effecting their escape from what was little ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... sunlight like silver, battle-flags fluttering in the air. In front, the skirmishers were fighting savagely; on the left a score of cannon were thundering, shells screaming out their horrid warning, as they leaped from the smoking guns. But this living avalanche swept on in stern silence, as if there breathed within it a great soul, which scorned to speak or strike but once. A single glance took in the inspiring scene. I gazed but a moment, and then ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... side, and perhaps fallen over the edge of a cliff and cannot get back again. He has been bleating loudly to call his mother to him, for he is too little to know he may attract enemies as well as friends; and his cries have been heard by the eagle, who comes down like an avalanche, and, seizing him firmly in its great talons, carries him away higher and higher to the nest in the cliff. Then there is a whirr and swoop, and the mother or father eagle, whichever it is, alights on the rough platform in the cliff ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... was a poor man; that his vessel was all the property he had in the world; that one of the men lost overboard in the squall was his own brother, and the other his wife's brother; and misery had suddenly come upon him in an avalanche. By the exertions of Martyn and others from the Josephine, a portion of the sails and standing rigging of the galiot had been saved, so that only about one fourth of the value of the vessel had been sacrificed by ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... something that he lacked and would always lack; and, whenever the ubiquitous, dry celibacy of the Thespian smoking-room oppressed him, his thoughts drifted to Agnes Waring and a doll's house somewhere on the Eaton estate, with one table, two chairs and an avalanche of green silk cushions in the drawing-room. . . . He was not in love with her; but, when Sybil telephoned to find whether he was coming to the country for the week-end, he had resolved to retouch his conception of Agnes. For the first time in his life he could not only afford to marry; ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... his instinctive loquacity, had expressed what none of the rest would have considered politic to hint. It was like the giving way of the pebble that starts the avalanche. Soon they were deep in tales of lynchings. Peter knew only too well the trend of their talk, the "XXX" men were feeling the public pulse, as it were. Now, according to the unwritten code of the plains, lynching was "meet, right, just, and available" for the cattle-thief. And Peter ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... slide had taken place in an unfrequented part of the mountain, above an inaccessible canon, and reflection assured him his companions could not have reached that distance when it took place, a feverish impulse led him to descend a few rods in the track of the avalanche. The frequent recurrence of outcrop and angle made this comparatively easy. Here he called aloud; the feeble echo of his own voice seemed only a dull impertinence to the significant silence. He turned to reascend; the furrowed flank ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... now. We swooped all unexpected on the rear of the Wassmuss men, taking ourselves by surprise as much as them, for we had thought the fight yet miles away. Echoes make great confusion in the mountains. It was echoes that had kept the Wassmuss men from hearing us, although we made more noise than an avalanche of fighting animals. Straightway we all looked for Wassmuss, and none found him, for the simple reason that he was not there; a prisoner we took told us afterward that Wassmuss was too valuable to be trusted near the border, where ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... crying behind her hands, and, in spite of the fury into which he had lashed himself, a great pity took hold of him. He felt as if everything were slipping away from him, and he was trying to stand on an avalanche. But he told himself that he would not waver, that he would hold to his purpose, that he would stand firm as a rock. Heaving a deep sigh, he walked to and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the mountain, and there is no living person within twelve miles of it. There used to be a populous village named Aralik, with 5000 inhabitants, a little above it, but in 1840 an earthquake shook Mount Ararat, and in four minutes an immense avalanche had buried this place so completely as to leave scarcely any vestige of its site. Not a single person escaped, which is not to be wondered at, considering the mass that fell. Stones of twenty or thirty tons were carried as far as fifteen to twenty miles into the plain. It has left a tremendous ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... invader comes, he moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his path. The peasantry sink before him. The country, too, is too poor for plunder, and too rough for a valuable conquest. Nature presents her eternal barrier on every side, to check the wantonness of ambition. ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... next, he had fallen upon the packing-case. This had been already seriously undermined by the operations of Gideon; a few well-directed blows, and it already quaked and gaped; yet a few more, and it fell about Morris in a shower of boards followed by an avalanche of straw. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it is a reply presuming money, the most fleshly of objects, to modify or any way control religion, i.e., a spiritual concern. This in itself is already monstrous, and pretty much the same as it would be to order a charge of bayonets against gravitation, or against an avalanche, or against an earthquake, or against a deluge. But, suppose it were not so, what incomprehensible reasoning justifies the notion that not we are to be paid, but that he is to be paid for a change not concerning or affecting our ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... picking a pathway. Indeed this was quite necessary, for here a great pan of ice, thirty yards square and eight feet thick, glided upon another of the same tremendous proportions to rear into the air and crumble down, a ponderous avalanche of ice cakes and snow. He must leap nimbly from cake to cake. He must take advantage of every rise and fall of the heaving swells which disturbed the great blanket winter had cast upon ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... his, that great oceanic avalanche of learning and piety and obscenity and gigantic merriment, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... appalling dangers and endless difficulties, losing men and animals at every step. But these troubles were trifling compared with those which they were now to endure. They suddenly found that the track before them had entirely disappeared. An avalanche had carried it bodily away for about three hundred yards, leaving only a steep and impassable slope covered ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... their load of snow that they were bowed as if with fruit. And the track led on and the air was so still that the cracking of a bough was like the blow of a hammer, and the sliding of a load of snow from a branch like the fall of an avalanche. Nor did they speak as they went. They listened, nor could ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... as a shadow among shadows. The wild and solitary ice-peaks he sometimes scaled seemed to him the unsubstantial phantasmagoria of a troubled sleep. He wondered with a dull amazement if the crevasses which yawned before him would swallow him up, or the shuddering violence of an avalanche bury him beneath it. His life had been as a tale that is told, even to its last ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... to cut off long corners by scrambling over the steep black rock and smooth ice, and all the while the cold, soft mist wisped in and out around me. After a thousand feet of this I came to the top of the Grimsel, but not before I had passed a place where an avalanche had destroyed the road and where planks were laid. Also before one got to the very summit, no short cuts or climbing were possible. The road ran deep in a cutting like a Devonshire lane. Only here the high ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... nearly to Cap Rouge, a distance of six miles. During the winter the fall of an avalanche from the brow of the Cape on the houses beneath is a not unfrequent occurrence. In former years, in the good time of ship-building, the laying the keel of a large vessel in the ship-yards often brought ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... occurred a diversion. Virginia cast fifteen votes for Franklin Pierce. The schemers had launched their project. But it was not until the forty-ninth ballot that they started the avalanche. Pierce then received all but six votes. Two Ohio delegates clung to Douglas to the bitter end. With the frank manliness which made men forget his less admirable qualities, Douglas dictated this dispatch to the convention: "I congratulate the Democratic party upon ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... reached us that a great avalanche of snow has fallen upon the Monastery of St. Bernard, and has destroyed the left wing of the building, though happily without ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... girls had danced through one London season in different ball-rooms, Rachel's parents died, her mother first, and then—by accident—her father, leaving behind him an avalanche of unsuspected money difficulties, in which even his vast fortune ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... fascinating seemed the prospect of reaching the very pinnacle, that I could not withstand the impulse of making the effort to get there. Over the loose stones I scrambled, clinging with hands and feet as best I could, whilst an avalanche of rocky fragments slid, tumbled, and ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... because Christ had commanded me to stand there. A little while before the break of day the Savior appeared and told me to go. I started to run, but when I got alongside the old depot there burst from it the combined screams of millions of incarnate devils. I can hear in fancy still the avalanche of voices which rolled from those lost myriads. I ran into the first house to which I came. Its saw at a glance what was the nature of my terrible trouble, but he had no power to help me. I beheld the face of a black ...
— Fifteen Years in Hell • Luther Benson
... narrow escape from serious injury, if not, indeed, from death. The great, gaping mows were being filled with hay, which was pitched in any way, and not, of course, packed firmly. Consequently, it was in some places like snow upon the Alpine slopes—ready to fall in an avalanche, at ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... always shifting, so that the next person who makes the ascent may find a comparatively easy path. We had other dangers too, such as this: twice the guides said to me, "Ne parlez pas ici, Monsieur, et allez vite," the fear being of an ice avalanche falling on us, and we heard the rocks and ice which are detached by the wet falling all about. The view from the top, if the day is fine, is about the most magnificent in the Alps; and as in that case I should have descended easily on the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... trembling with a strange excitement. I took my drills and my gun under my arm and set off with slack knees down the hillside. I took the shortest way, marking the smoking track left by my avalanche. Asop followed me, shaking his head all the time and sneezing at ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... the Pharmaceutical across the way the words "what price?" would have precipitated a ready avalanche of figures. ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... confusion and uncertainty. The very heavens were blotted out, and the frightened column stood and listened to the raving tempest that made the pine trees above it sway and groan, as if lifted from their rock-rooted places. But suddenly a still more alarming sound was heard—'An avalanche! an avalanche!' shrieked the guides, and the next moment an awful white form came leaping down the mountain, and striking the column that was struggling along the path, passed strait through it into the gulf below, carrying thirty dragoons and their ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... more than its original brightness; but since then it has only increased in lustre with the course of time; and for centuries to come (I speak it with the greatest confidence) it will, like an Alpine avalanche, continue to gather strength at every moment of its progress. Of the future extension of his fame, the enthusiasm with which he was naturalized in Germany, the moment that he was known, is a significant earnest. In the South of Europe,[13] ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Napoleon from Elba, after a brief ten months' detention, the adherence to him of the French army, and the consequent dethronement of Louis XVIII. The Congress at once dispersed, forgetting all its differences, while the great monarchs united once more in pouring such an avalanche of troops into France and Belgium that Napoleon stood no chance of retaining his throne, whatever military genius he might display. After his defeat at Waterloo the allies occupied Paris, and this time exacted a large war indemnity of L40,000,000, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... next moment Dick went down beneath the blows of several Italians. But Buttons rushed with his razor to rescue Dick. Three men glared at him with uplifted weapons. Down came the Senator's clubbed rifle like an avalanche, sweeping their weapons over the cliff. They turned simultaneously on the Senator, and grasped him in a threefold embrace. Buttons's razor again drank blood. Two turned upon him. Bang! went the Doctor's pistol, sending one of them shrieking to the ground. Bang! Once ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... those vast fields of snow seemingly in a state of dead rest, in the higher Alps, through many winters still secretly gaining bulk and encroaching inch by inch all unobserved upon the doomed valley below; then, at the dropping of a mere pebble, the ice begins to slide, nor does the dread avalanche pause for the sobs of the dying. So behind Bismarck's amazing preparedness his ofttimes long deferred but inevitable destruction of his enemies seems to be something that he borrows from the avalanche. It is at once massive and inexorable, the power given to but few master-spirits in the ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... from the nailing up of these Theses that the history of the Great Reformation dates; for the hammer-strokes which fixed that parchment started the Alpine avalanche which overwhelmed the pride of Rome and broke the stubborn power which had reigned supreme for a ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... third on a piece of plank. Gradually the children stole away up the canyon to where there was another chute, somewhat smaller than the one across the dump; and down this chute, for the rest of the afternoon, they poured one avalanche of stones after another, waking the echoes of the glen. Meantime we elders sat together on the platform, Hanson and his friend smoking in silence like Indian sachems, Mrs. Hanson rattling on as usual with an adroit volubility, saying nothing, but keeping the ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... loneliness was not for long. An avalanche of Aunt Lydia entered the room, quite filling it with her fluttering presence. Tante Lydia's morning cap was quite as youthful as that of her niece, her flowered wrapper as belaced and befurbelowed as the lingiere could make it, ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... signs of danger, and signalled for their withdrawal. But the lust of blood was awake in them, and they were drunk with the joy of fighting. They followed and followed till the Turks, out of that awful avalanche of death, became conscious that a thousand Thetian horsemen were not an invincible force. Their fight was checked, they were almost immediately surrounded, their leader fell shot through the heart, and a miracle was required ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... of these images are present in our minds except in combination—the sight and sound of the crashing avalanche are one; so are the flash and report of the huntman's gun that came so ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... apparitions were only in the imagination of nervous people'. He himself saw the phantasm seven or eight times in his bedroom, and twice in the library. On one occasion it lifted up the mosquito curtains and stared at Mr. Harry. As in the case of meeting an avalanche, 'a weak-minded man would pray, sir, would pray; a strong-minded man would swear, sir, would swear'. Mr. Harry was a strong-minded man, and behaved 'in a concatenation accordingly,' although Petrus Thyraeus says that there is no use in swearing at ghosts. The phantasm seemed to be about thirty-five, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... wherever he went. The secret of his power lay in his ability to concentrate his forces upon a single point. After finding the weak place in the enemy's ranks, he would mass his men and hurl them like an avalanche upon the critical point, crowding volley upon volley, charge upon charge, till he made a breach. What a lesson of the power of concentration there is in this man's life! He was able to focus all his faculties upon the smallest detail, as well as upon an empire. But, alas! Napoleon was himself ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... even a plea of extenuating circumstances. Voorhees was young, ambitious, and anxious to display his oratory. He arranged with his colleagues at the beginning that he should make a speech, and he spent several hours in his room at the hotel in the preparation of an oratorical avalanche. It became generally known that Dan was going to out-do himself, and the expectation of the community was at its highest tension. The little old court-house was crowded. The ladies were out in full force. Voorhees came in a little late, glowing with the excitement of the occasion. It had been arranged ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... harps; and this gentle and mournful music may be heard in gushes the whole night through. This music, of course, ceases when each tree becomes laden with snow; but yet there is sound, in the midst of the longest winter night. There is the rumble of some avalanche, as, after a drifting storm, a mass of snow, too heavy to keep its place, slides and tumbles from the mountain peak. There is also, now and then, a loud crack of the ice in the nearest glacier; and, as many declare, there is a crackling to be heard by those who listen ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... Ferdinand (aside) What an avalanche of reproach! (Aloud) Let us try, Gertrude, both of us, to behave wisely in this matter. Above all things, let us try to avoid base accusations. I shall never forget what you have been to me; I still entertain towards you a friendship which is sincere, unalterable and ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... boats. But the roar of the flames drowned his cries, and the boats, which had moved out to windward, could not see him. Foot by foot crept the fire; but the stiff wind which finally came over the stern did its work well, and the red avalanche began to slant toward the bow. This meant respite. But he knew that at the very best it could be only a ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... Conference of Saint-vincent de Paul. In the midst of the seance, he appeared almost inspired, and recited "La Charite dans Bordeaux"—the grand piece of the evening. The assembly rose en masse, and cheered the poet with frantic applause. The ladies threw an avalanche of bouquets at ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... him blandly: "My poor friend, if you considered Cerberus to be three dogs anyhow, why did you in your examination a moment since refer to the avalanche of caninity, of which you so affectingly speak, ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... misinterpreted the other's motive, and raising his bull whip struck Number Thirteen a vicious cut across the face, at the same time levelling his revolver point blank at the broad beast. But before ever he could pull the trigger an avalanche of muscle was upon him, and he went down to the rotting vegetation of the jungle with five sinewy fingers at ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with level-fronting spears And moveless helms before that shining host, Whose gay attire abashed the morning light, And then struck spur and charged, while from the mass Of rushing terror burst the awful cry, GOD AND THE TEMPLE! As the avalanche slides Down Alpine slopes, precipitous, cold and dark, Unpitying and unwrathful, grinds and crushes The mountain violets and the valley weeds, And drags behind a trail of chaos and death; So burst we on that field, ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... casually as if dismissing once and for all an avalanche of contradictions. Dorn hesitated. It was one of his days of disquiet; and he had left a note with Rachel saying he would be home at eight. It ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... the work of destruction, while the white foam of its eddies presents a fearful contrast to the prevailing blackness of the surface. Over the last declivity it leaps, hissing, foaming, crashing like an avalanche. The stone wall for a moment opposes its force, but falls the next, with a mighty splash, carrying the spray far and wide, while its own fragments roll onwards with the stream. The trees of the orchard are uprooted in an instant, and an old elm ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... things rather than in words, and so conditioned that no uncertain answer can be given. Nature says that all matter gravitates, not in words, but in the swing of planets around the sun, and in the leap of the avalanche. And men have devised ingenious machines through which Nature may tell us the invariable laws of gravitation, and give some hint as to why it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... paths man might never tread. But hearken: in the quiet weather Do all the streams flow down together?— No, 'tis a sound more terrible Than tho' a thousand rivers fell. The everlasting ice and snow Were loosened then, but not to flow;— With a loud crash like solid thunder The avalanche came, burying under The village; turning life and breath And rest and joy and plans ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... reconstruction of society, with larger views of human destiny, with a virgin continent for them to be worked out in, the American should expect to be misunderstood by the civilizations of the past, based on a quagmire of pauperism and ignorance, or overhung by an avalanche of revolution. Other peoples, emerging from, a condition of serfdom, retaining many of the instincts of a conquered race, get what liberty they have by extorting it piecemeal from their masters. Magna Charta was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... not disputed. Those to whom the application for the money was made took all things into consideration and determined that it was not worth it; that it would be better to let things slide. They slid. If those gentlemen had foreseen the full volume of the avalanche that was coming, I think that the money would have ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... go through an avalanche—she'd wade through mountains of snow, to see me," cried Richard eagerly, "and ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... timber, sledge roads—everything—with it. The point near the bridge held for some time, until the weight behind forced some part down and crunched its way through in one irresistible push; the other part rose over the resistance and rolled like an avalanche over and over, smashing itself into huge blocks which were forced into a rampart fifty feet high, when the enormous weight broke the ice platform on which it was piled, and the whole moved majestically off towards the Volga. Then one experienced the peculiar ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... assent, though Abud seemed startled. Many times had Keston and I speculated on the danger of an avalanche at this point, and wondered why the Station had been built in such an exposed place. Once indeed we had ventured to suggest to the aristo Council the advisability of removing the Central Control to some other point, but the cold silence that greeted our diffident ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... men came running from the postern arch. The five were upon us like an avalanche. One pinned my arms while another gagged me. Two held M. Etienne, a third ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle |
