"Black hole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... preoccupation with the relief and elation of a drama finished, had their first warning of what was to come in a voice that did not seem like the voice of the tenderfoot as they had heard it, but of another man. And Leddy was looking at a black hole in a rim of steel which, though twenty yards away, seemed hot against his forehead, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... halt before a black hole in the trench wall, like the entrance to a cave, and bent down and shouted into the opening with a ring of indescribable joy in his voice—with a rejoicing that sounded as if it ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... interesting, but talk to me about it after you get a fellow out of this black hole. I thought I felt a snake right then. We used to kill 'em in here, too. Poke the ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... schools, especially in Belfast, are shamefully over-crowded. Classes are held on the stairs, in the cloak-room, the hall, or the yard. For the more fortunate, class-rooms are provided with an air-space per individual only slightly less than that available in the Black Hole of Calcutta. All over the country, children go to school breakfastless and stupid with hunger, and the local authorities have no power to feed them as in England, and in most European countries. Then again, even where the physical conditions ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... my eyes as the mantel swung slowly outward, revealing the black hole beyond. I glanced about helplessly, and sprang to the door of the room to call back Farrell. He was not in the upper hall, but as my eyes swept its length I remembered a half-burned candle in the chamber opposite. By the time I returned with it ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... as you won't be put in the black hole for refractory conduct, No. 19," replied Evans, ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Waves like mountains; then a black hole, black as pitch, and great high walls. After that—I'll tell 'ee dreckly. As for ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... when is it to be, my most admirable Charron?—how much longer?—how many months?' 'Behold my fingers,' said the one who had abused me; 'I put these into those, and then you know. It would have been already, except for the business that you have been employed upon in this black hole. Hippolyte, you have done well, though crookedly; but all is straight for the native land. You have made this Government appear more treacherous in the eyes of France and Europe than our own is, and you have given a good jump to his instep for the saddle. But all this throws ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... as a hole. That was all I saw at first—a great black hole in the dark brown earth of the mountain-side, from which ran down a still darker streak into the waste places far below it. But as I looked longer I saw that it was faced by a ledge cut out of the friable soil, on which I was now able to descry the pronounced white of two or ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... through each window at top: the doors, too, were perforated with numerous holes. In this way, a free circulation was secured, and so arranged, that the nurses could not control it; for some of the old-fashioned nurses would not have opened a window in the Black Hole at Calcutta, for fear the inmates should ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... permission generally to foreigners, and sometimes to some other persons, to sit in these benches. I do not know which officer of the House of Commons superintends the admission of reporters. Ladies are admitted to the Black Hole assigned to them, by orders from the Sergeant-at-arms. I have no doubt that the Speaker and Sergeant-at-arms are responsible to the House for everything relating to the admission of strangers, and without taking upon myself to say what is the authority ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... midway along the side where the fastening was. Archer turned cold at the thought of their predicament, and for a moment even Tom's rather dull imagination pictured the ghastly fate made possible by imprisonment in this black hole. ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... himself, and this space ought to communicate freely with the external atmosphere by means of direct or indirect channels. Hence, a sleeping-room for one adult person should not be less than nine by ten feet in breadth and length and nine feet in height. What occurred in the Black Hole at Calcutta is an excellent illustration of the effect of vitiated air. One hundred and forty-six Englishmen were confined in a room eighteen feet square, with two small windows on one side to admit air. Ten hours after their ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... going to hide, Lady Sarah," chirped the former. "The Boers are on the premises." So saying, he was about to descend into the cavity, and evidently expected the companionship of his tall friend. When I pointed out to them that they would probably suffocate in this modern Black Hole of Calcutta, the little man proceeded to dance round the room, still shouldering his axe, jibbering the while: "I will not go to fight; I am an American. I will not be put in the front rank to be shot by the English, or made ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... of wood through which the tile had been set. Under it a black hole yawned. It was a tunnel made of three-foot aqueduct tiles; and it led straight into Star Pond, ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... the face of a gentleman, I should certainly call demoniacal. The next instant the third figure stepped forward, and before I could move or utter the scream that rose to my lips, Mr. Barrows had disappeared from view in the horrid recesses of that black hole, and only Guy Pollard and that other mysterious one, who I now saw wore a heavy black domino and mask, remained standing on its ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it was followed. The English captives were left to the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. Even for a single European malefactor, that dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too close and narrow. The space was only twenty feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of its floor pierced by the black hole leading down to the next and lowest level, was lighted dimly by lamps and candles standing upon shelves which jutted from the earthen walls. From all the galleries radiating from it, files of men, staggering ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... consisting of a cow for milk, sheep, turkeys, geese, ducks, hens, etc. Got up at 6-1/2, a fine morning. Breakfast at 8, of fish, beef, mutton, omelettes, tea and coffee. A file of New York papers had been left in the night by an American packet. Found the steerage passengers had a place like the Black Hole of Calcutta, the foolish people not consenting to have their ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... dull as can be. 'T was only yesterday he took me to the works, and you'd ha' thought us two Quakers as the spirit hadn't moved, all the way down we were so mum. It's a place to craze a man, certainly; such a noisy black hole! There were one or two things worth looking at, the bellows for instance, or the gale they called a bellows. I could ha' stood near it a whole day; and if I'd a berth in that place, I should like to be bellows-man, if there is such a one. But Jem weren't diverted ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... there was no mud, nothing but tangled sticks through which a breath of fresh air found its way now and then. In spite of this feeble attempt at ventilation I am obliged to admit that the atmosphere of the lodge was often a good deal like that of the Black Hole of Calcutta, but beavers are so constituted that they do not need much oxygen, and they did not seem to mind it. In all other respects the house was neat and clean. The floor was only two or three inches above ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... course. It was built, or rebuilt, by the Aragonese, with four corner towers, one of which became infamous for a scene that rivals the horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Numbers of confined brigands, uncared-for, perished miserably of starvation within its walls. Says ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... looking mournfully at the little black hole made by Mr. Jones's bullet under the swelling breast of a dazzling and as it were sacred whiteness. It rose and fell slightly—so slightly that only the eyes of the lover could detect the faint stir of life. Heyst, calm and utterly ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... you are my guest. I don't know who you are, nor where you came from, but, by gad, I know a man when I see one! From the time you sat in that game to save that poor young fool from being fleeced until you dove into that black hole ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... was John Zephaniah Holwell, a remarkable man, whose name is intimately associated with the early history of British India, one of the few survivors of the Black Hole imprisonment, the successor of {214} Clive as governor, and a writer on many subjects connected with Hindoo antiquities. Swinney enrols ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... formed th' appalling history of the day, For in the wild confusion of the fight, Above six score were captured in their flight; These the victorious Nabob, had immured Within the fortress prison, well secured, Too well, alas! for the contracted den, Known as the "Black Hole of Calcutta" then, But eighteen feet in length by fourteen wide. Could air for twenty men at most provide; And there were four score odd strong, stalwart men, Thrust into that abominable den; Having but two small holes for windows there For the admission of Heaven's blessed air, Crushed in with ...
— Home Lyrics • Hannah. S. Battersby
... sunny, blue expanse of water, driving a white puff of smoke before it. The shell disappeared in the waves about one hundred yards ahead of the Japanese steamer. The next shot struck the ship, leaving in her side a black hole with jagged edges just above ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... lost in infinite distance? To dance, or not to dance, was all the choice men had, and rather than play a part in such a show as fell to his lot, it seemed better to break the strings and let the miserable marionette fall into the black hole ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... party, and hear his manner of playing his own music. If you can bring about such a thing while I am in town, either at Chelsea, or at Mr. Burney's, or at Mr. Salomon's, or I care not where—if it were even in the Black Hole at Calcutta (if it is a good hole for music)—I say, if by hook or crook you could manage such a thing, you should be my Magnus Apollo for the rest of your life. I mention Salomon because we are a little acquainted. He has twice asked me to call upon him, and I certainly will do it when I come ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... she was no longer there? Either her mother would work too hard and would kill herself; or else the poor woman would be obliged to cease working altogether, and that selfish husband, forever engrossed by his theatrical ambition, would allow them both to drift gradually into abject poverty, that black hole which widens and deepens as one goes down ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... that horrid word to the winds just now. There's no ought in the case; I had a holiday yesterday, and I mean to to-day. I mean to take Inna to Black Hole, and round through the woods, on a nutting ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... a door opened in the wall, but a cellar-flap released in the floor. Cool air came up to us from the black hole below. We stooped over that square of darkness as though over a limpid well. With our chins in the cool shade, we drank it in. And we bent lower and lower over the trap-door. What could there be in that cellar which opened before ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... you show some light on the Sabbath? Why are you sitting in a black hole like the devil? Kofrim, uberwerfer!" (You unbeliever! heretic!) shouted ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... twisted her head this way and that. The little door slowly slid back, and when Reddy turned to speak to her again, for he had had his back to her, she was nowhere to be seen. Reddy just gaped and gaped foolishly. There was no Granny Fox, but there was a black hole where she had been working, and from it came the most delicious smell,—the smell of fat hens! It seemed to Reddy that his stomach fairly flopped over with longing. He rubbed his eyes to be sure that he was awake. Then in a twinkling he was ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... a little black hole: like a spot, in his forehead. No sensation was created. M. Massarel shot a second time and made a second hole, then a third time, then, without stopping, he shot off the three remaining shots. Napoleon's forehead was blown away in a white ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... to me then in the minutes that followed that there were thousands of black demons in that black hole. At the first rushing impact I shouted to Harry: "Keep your back to the wall," and for response I got a high, ringing laugh that breathed the ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... of the great wall concealed them from view. Then the two who remained continued the climb yet higher, following the narrow, zigzag path leading up to the entrance of the descending passage. Immediately under the square black hole they stood and glanced ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... about the Sea Monster suddenly having a big black hole in it that we almost forgot to take the bottle when we went home. We did forget Aunt Ailsa's hatpin, and Greg had to run back for it, because he can run faster than any of the rest of us, and Captain Lewis held the ferry for him. Everybody leaned out from the rail and peered up the landing, because ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... the corner of the highroad," he replied, and then they were all silent, with their eyes fixed on the door of the cow house, which formed a sort of black hole in the wall of the building. Nothing could be seen inside, but they heard a vague noise, movements and footsteps and the sound of hoofs, which were deadened by the straw on the floor, and soon the man reappeared in the door, wiping his ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... at the bottom of the flower-pot.] Could I see you! Yonder stump of red cone has exactly the black hole to let through my yellow bill. Apologies,—but it was too tempting! A bird ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... St. David, intelligence was received of the destruction of the English settlement at Calcutta by Surajah Dowlah, the Nabob of Bengal. Although scarcely any resistance had been made, the English prisoners, 146 in number, were all thrust into a close and narrow apartment called the Black Hole, which, in such a climate, would have been too close and too narrow for a single prisoner. Their sufferings during the dreadful night, until death put an end to the misery of most, cannot be described; 123 perished before morning, and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... stranger. Aye indeed, he was a great ould villain! To think of him with lashin's and lavin's of everything an' money untold laid by, an' his only son's widdy livin' down there with a half-witted lodger in a little black hole of a place that was not fit for a pig, let alone a Christian, an' the beautiful little cratur', his grandchild, Roseen, runnin' about barefut, with her dotey little hands an' feet black an' blue wid the cowld—sure what sort of a heart ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... than sin. I say, it is a sin to give in to this system. It is a sin to add our weight to the crowd of artizans who are now choking and strangling each other to death, as the prisoners did in the black hole of Calcutta. Let those who will turn beasts of prey, and feed upon their fellows; but let us at least keep ourselves pure. It may be the law of political civilization, the law of nature, that the rich should eat up the poor, and the poor eat up each other. Then I here ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... fault does not lie in the system itself, but in its application. It is a humane idea carried out inhumanely, so inhumanely that when the Black Hole of Calcutta is forgotten Englishmen will still hang their heads for shame at ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... fact, upon having survived such a collision with the local remembrances of the poor historian, very much in those terms which Mr. Governor Holwell might have used on finding himself 'pretty bobbish' on the morning after the memorable night in the Black Hole of Calcutta: he could hardly believe that he still lived. [Footnote 1] And yet, how had the eloquent historian trespassed on his patience and his weak powers of toleration? Livy was certainly not very learned ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... alone, I did so, in the most adventurous spirit, and began my operations by sliding behind the casks and testing the handle of the little door. It turned, and after a pull or two the door yielded. With my heart in my mouth, I stooped and peered in. I could see nothing—a black hole and nothing more. This caused me a moment's hesitation. I was afraid of the dark—had always been. But curiosity and the spirit of adventure triumphed. Saying to myself that I was Robinson Crusoe exploring the cave, I crawled in, only to find that I had gained nothing. It was as dark ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... it broke off, he lifted it on his shoulder and clambered up the rough bark of the tree to the great black hole where the owls lived. When he looked down into it, there they were in the nest, fluffy and gray, and fast asleep. Very quietly he slipped down, and set the thorn in the side of the nest, with the point sticking out. After that, he ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... terror filled our fellow-passengers. Too ill to protect her helpless brood, my mother saw us carried away from her for hours at a time, on the crests of waves of panic that sometimes approached her and sometimes receded, as they swept through the black hole in which we found ourselves when the hatches were nailed down. No madhouse, I am sure, could throw more hideous pictures on the screen of life than those which met our childish eyes during the appalling three ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... recognition. They said that when the order had been given to confine them in the barracks, the prisoners had all expected to pass the night in comparative comfort. What was their amazement when they were escorted to the Black Hole, a little chamber no more than eighteen feet square, which was only used as a rule for the confinement of one or two unruly prisoners. In vain they protested; their brutal guards forced them, a hundred and forty-six in number, into the narrow space, and locked the door upon ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... work replete with stirring pen-pictures of events in the history of the United States during a critical period of its history. Its description of the principal incidents in the late war, and the suffering of the author and others in that detestable "Black Hole of Calcutta"—the Libby Prison—are most graphic. Willard Glazier's life was not confined to warfare, though he saw service in nearly all the great battles between the North and South. A few years ago ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... was turned towards her right shoulder, the corner of her mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower part of her face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her hands; a kind of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to disappear in that viscous pallor that looks like a thin web, as if spiders had spun it over. The sheet sunk in from her breast to her ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... United States,) put us into a little stone cell and locked us in. We had the whole passenger list for company, but their room would have been preferable, for there was no light, there were no windows, no ventilation. It was close and hot. We were much crowded. It was the Black Hole of Calcutta on a small scale. Presently a smoke rose about our feet—a smoke that smelled of all the dead things of earth, of all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... blue lights on them all, and at the word illuminated all together, there was redoubled bedlam in that abode of Hecate, and the eternal calm of the Boodh became awful. For what deeds of outer darkness, done long ago in that black hole of superstition, so many damned souls shrieked from their night-fowl transmigrations, 'twere vain to question there were no disclosures ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... fruitful question of the novelist, "What will you do with it?" Will you throw its contents on the sand, and go away satisfied with these imperfect glimpses of sea-life? Will you take them home indeed, but consign them to a crowded bowl, to die like the prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta? Or will you give to each a roomy basin with water, and plants to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... he moved, he was followed by a host of the fair and fashionable. The showy equipages of the nobility were in perpetual motion. The parks were a whirlwind of horsemen and horsewomen. The streets were a levy en masse of the peerage. The opera-house was a gilded "black hole of Calcutta." The front of Buckingham palace was a scene of loyalty, dangerous to life and limb; men, careful of either, gave their shillings for a glimpse through a telescope; and shortsighted ladies fainted, that they might ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... hardly had he closed his eyes when he saw by his bedside the wounded soldier—young, fair-faced, blond-haired, with just the first faint shadow of a mustache. His forehead was pale, his lips were livid, his blue eyes were dim, and in his left temple there was a round black hole made by the bullet from his—Napoleonder's—pistol. And the ghastly figure seemed to ask again, "Why did ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... marched off to the "Black Hole." It was a large camp with large frame buildings, which had been erected especially for the purpose. There was one building for the French prisoners, one for the Russians, and one for the British and Canadian contingent. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Had there been a Black Hole within the area of those law regions to consign Ripton to there and then, or an Iron Rod handy to mortify his sinful flesh, Mr. Thompson would have used them. As it was, he contented himself by looking Black Holes ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his right hand flashed to the switch controlling the zone of force. Fast as he was, much happened in the mere moment that passed before his flying hand could close the switch. In the last infinitesimal instant of time before the zone closed in, a gaping black hole appeared in the incandescence of the inner screen, and a small portion of a ray of energy so stupendous as to be palpable, struck, like a tangible projectile, the exposed flank of the Skylark. Instantly the refractory arenak turned an intense, dazzling white ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... wealth of the English traders; and, roused at this moment by the instigation of the French, he appeared before Fort William, seized its settlers, and thrust a hundred and fifty of them into a small prison called the Black Hole of Calcutta. The heat of an Indian summer did its work of death. The wretched prisoners trampled each other under foot in the madness of thirst, and in the morning only twenty-three remained alive. Clive sailed at the news with a thousand Englishmen and two thousand sepoys ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... put his head into that dreadful hole, And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered further, A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole, Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after, Overcame me now ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... away from the edge of the canyon, but there were enough others to do what they were trying to do, and they did it. I stood there, helpless, and saw them shove Taylor off the bridge with their spears. When he finally let go and went turning over and over down into the black hole, my whole insides fanned up into my throat. That sensation has never left me; I wake up nights seeing Taylor as he let go of the bridge, watching him sink, tumbling over and over into that black gash, and I get sick and dizzy just as ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the thin snake begins to ascend; they are coming up now, but not so fast as they went down. It is about ten minutes before the gig emerges from that black hole and bears the Prince and Princess once more into ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... a change in the command of the camp. The old General was superseded by a man whose name will never be forgotten by the British prisoners of Sennelager Camp. They will ever couple him with the infamous instigator of the "Black Hole of Calcutta." ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... All Europe was filled with horror at the history of the one hundred and twenty unfortunate Englishmen that were suffocated in the black hole of Calcutta. Little was it thought that an English nobleman (lord Rawdon) would so soon have repeated that crime, by crowding one hundred and sixty-four unfortunate Americans into a small prison in Camden, in ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... ancient Maiden. She would never talk with any woman when any man was in the room. She descended to the stuffy little salon only in the evening, when the Relicts were gathered to their gambling for sous and the atmosphere was an imitation of the Black Hole of Calcutta. She descended en grande tenue, the grandest ever seen there, frizzled, jewelled, and muffled to the throat in fleecy clouds of white wool. She came all quirks and quivers, all flutters and smiles, for there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... tell you the truth,—I can do it now,—for me it means a jump out of a particularly black hole. You must understand that we're not doing downright badly; we pay our way, but that was about all. I, individually, shouldn't have paid my way for many months longer. God! how I clutched at it! You don't know what it is, Rolfe, to see your ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... or air holes. All the air and light came through the hatch way, a sort of trap door or cellar way. In this floating dungeon, we miserable young men spent our first night, in sleepless anguish, embittered with the apprehension of our suffering cruel death by suffocation. Here the black hole of Calcutta rose to my view in all its horrors; and the very thought stopped my respiration, and set my brain on fire. In my distress, I stamped with my feet, and beat my head against the side of the ship in the madness of despair. I measured the misery of those around me by what I myself ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the one, the joints of his wood-work, and the other, those of his iron-work, tighter and tighter, and if it were possible for them to accomplish fully their manifest design, they would be able to furnish rooms almost as fatal to life as "the black hole of Calcutta." But in spite of all that they can do, the materials will shrink, and no fuel has yet been found, which will burn without any air, so that sufficient ventilation is kept up, to prevent such deadly occurrences. Still they are tolerably successful in keeping out the unfriendly ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... writers have dwelt largely upon the horrors of a series of subterranean chambers, extending beneath the Adelphi Terrace in the West Strand, and locally and popularly known as the "Adelphi Arches." To this day they are a forbidding, cavernous black hole, suggestive of nothing if not the horrors of thievery, or even murder. They are, however, so well guarded by three policemen on "fixed point" duty that at night there is probably no more safe locality in all London than the former unsavoury neighbourhood, a statement that is herein confidently ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... In retribution for the atrocity of the Black Hole of Calcutta, Watson, under instructions from Clive, reduced Chandernagore on the 23rd of March 1757; the battle of Plassey was fought on the 23rd ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... down, over in one corner. Then, shading a very modern flash-light with a fold of his robe, he showed me one of the square flags lifted, and a black hole yawning in ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... waterfalls descended here and there, like narrow, motionless threads. The face of the mountain was rugged and bare. It was strewn with detached boulders, and great, jagged rocks projected everywhere like iron teeth. Tydomin pointed to a small black hole near the base, which might be a cave. ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... leaves his hand. For the steel walls of his craft, the doors, and the companion-ladder all sweat oil, and at every touch the hands must be wiped dry. The doorways are narrow round holes. Through one of the holes aft the commander descends by a breakneck iron ladder into the black hole lit by electric glow-lamps. The air is heavy with the smell of oil, and to the unaccustomed longshoreman it is almost choking, though the hatches are off. The submarine man breathes this air as if it were ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... children, written with no little feeling and fancy, and in a graceful style. The chimney-corner has been abolished by the economical furnace-register, and Santa Claus, if he come at all, must do it like an imp of the pit. The volumes for children to pore over, as they bake by the stove, or stew over the black hole in the floor, have also suffered an economic and practical change. No more fires, no more pretty fancies, seems to have been the doom. Parents who think, as we do, that children inhale practicality with our American atmosphere, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... begins to come in circulation, and then easily pick out their man. And now comes the shameful part. In plain English, the prisoner is tortured until he confesses and (if that be possible) restores the money. To keep him alone, day and night, in the black hole, is to inflict on the Marquesan torture inexpressible. Even his robberies are carried on in the plain daylight, under the open sky, with the stimulus of enterprise, and the countenance of an accomplice; his terror of the dark is still insurmountable; conceive, then, what he endures ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in Bengal. In 1756 the young nawab of Bengal, Suraj-ud-Dowlah by name, seized the English fort at Calcutta and locked 146 Englishmen overnight in a stifling prison—the "Black Hole" of Calcutta—from which only twenty-three emerged alive the next morning. Clive, hastening from Madras, chastised Suraj for this atrocity, and forced him to give up Calcutta. And since by this time Great Britain ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... came from his lips. There was no one else in the room, but his eyes ran swiftly to the visiphone. With careful precision Roger Strang brought the heat-pistol to eye level, and pulled the trigger. Farrel Strang crumpled slowly from the knees, a black hole scorched ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... was opened for work, but there were no workers. The morning after the investigation, when the starting whistle blew there was no line of Indians ready to file into the big, black hole. The huts where they slept were deserted. A strange silence ...
— Tom Swift and his Big Tunnel - or, The Hidden City of the Andes • Victor Appleton
... condition of the packed gallery soon caused her to forget even the final swindle of the corset. The air had rapidly become exhausted. Women clutched at each other; women rapped frenziedly against the heavy, glazed doors; women screamed. It was the Black Hole of Calcutta over again, and yet no one in the blouse department seemed to notice the signals of distress. Lily felt the perspiration on her brow and chin, and then she knew that she, too, must scream and clutch; and she cried out, and the pressure which forced her against the door grew more and ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... "a man as has been down the black hole all day, dingin' away at a coal-face, yi, a sight ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... to Sloper I cannot say. It is certain, however, that he took the lantern and the tailor's supper into the hold and stood over the little man whilst he ate and drank. When the retired tailor had finished his repast he asked Robins if he was to be kept locked up in that black hole all night without anything to ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... madness done And saner souls rise with the morrow's sun. But this incarnate hell that yawns before Your bright, brave soul keyed to the fighter's clench— This purgatory that men call the "trench"— This modern "Black Hole" of a modern war! Yea, Love! yet naught I say can save you, so I lay my heart in yours ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... as he found himself looking into what seemed to be a very deep and black hole; "wasn't it lucky we got the glim going when we did? I guess I'd dropped into that pit if we'd held off any longer. My good little angel must have ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... a black hole that yawns in the middle of a muddy field. I hadn't gone far, either, before I discovers that being your own street light wasn't such an easy trick. I expect a miner has to wear his lamp on his head so's to have his hands free to swing a pick. But I'll be hanged if it's ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... the boy was right. The little black hole of a passage suddenly opened out into light that almost blinded them by its brilliancy. It was a broad track. On the right was the wall of the cliff pierced with little holes, through which they looked down ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... cumulation; glomeration^, agglomeration; conglobation^; conglomeration, conglomerate; coacervate [Chem], coacervation [Chem], coagmentation^, aggregation, concentration, congestion, omnium gaterum [Lat.], spicilegium^, black hole of Calcutta; quantity &c (greatness) 31. collector, gatherer; whip, whipper in. V. assemble [be or come together], collect, muster; meet, unite, join, rejoin; cluster, flock, swarm, surge, stream, herd, crowd, throng, associate; congregate, conglomerate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fellow. Come along, you are just in time to take her home; I must be off, or black hole ...
— Legend of Moulin Huet • Lizzie A. Freeth
... month, after which time they cast anchor beside a harbour-town, and presently swarmed out to sell and to buy, and there they delayed for a term of two months until they had finished their business and they had purchased them what sufficed of provaunt. All this while the Prince lay bound in the black hole deep down in the ship's hold, nor did anyone go near him save a Jew, a man of a certain age.[FN533] And whenever he entered that dismal place he heard the youth reciting from the Koran and he would stand to hearken until his heart ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... he found cover in a deserted tunnel back in the hills. Its timbers sagged with the weight of the years, the yellow mound of its dump was hidden under a mantle of green. Even its mouth, once a black hole in the hillside verdure, was curtained by a veil of creepers. There was game and there was water and there he stayed. At first he rested, then idle and inert lay among the ferns on the top of the dump, staring at the distance, squinting up at ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... "A regular black hole! But wait till I can get you out on to the loch! It's romantic enough out there. But look here, Violet! I've got to come to an understanding with you. Now that we've found each other, darling, we are not going to lose each ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... a black hole in the forecastle of the Silver Heron to await the dawn and to spend the time in making his soul. No words had passed between him and Sir John since his surrender. With wrists pinioned behind him, he had been hoisted ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... gave a cry of terror as we saw Cyprien disappear. As the house crumbled we could distinguish nothing but a tempest, a swirling of waves beneath the debris of the roof. Then calm was restored, the surface became smooth; and out of the black hole of the engulfed house projected the skeleton of its framework. There was a mass of entangled beams, and, amongst them, I seemed to see a body moving, something living ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... call that gorge there"—her pointing finger found the mark again—"The Black Hole. It is always full of shadows in summer, and in winter the slides rumble and crash into it with a noise like the end of the world. Did you ever listen to the slides muttering and grumbling last winter when you were ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... his own chamber, where I had never been before, and showed me how, in the chimney-neuk, was a way into a certain black hole of little ease, wherein, if any came in search for me, I might lie hidden. And, fetching me a cold fish (Lenten cheer), a loaf, and a stoup of wine, whereof I was glad enough, he left me, groaning the while at his ill-fortune, ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... it up hastily, and it went out. His perception of possibilities enlarged, and he felt for and replaced the candle in its candlestick. "Here! you be lit," said Mr. Fotheringay, and forthwith the candle was flaring, and he saw a little black hole in the toilet-cover, with a wisp of smoke rising from it. For a time he stared from this to the little flame and back, and then looked up and met his own gaze in the looking-glass. By this help he communed with himself in silence ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... he sought-the Rue Rochechouart, and the house Fremin had described to him. It was there: an old weather-beaten house, with a narrow entrance and a corridor, in the middle of which flowed a dirty, foul-smelling stream of water; the room of the concierge looked like a black hole at the foot of the staircase, the balusters and walls of which were wet with moisture and streaked with dirt; a house of poor working-people, many stories high, and built in the time when this quarter of Paris was ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... Faust-books, and there is even the trace of one before the oldest Faust-book; at least in the archives of the University of Tuebingen an entry has been unearthed in which in 1587 two students were condemned to the 'Karzer,' or 'Black hole,' for composing a 'Puppenspiel' on the subject ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... man of God." Nevertheless Wilson was chained to a soldier, and, like the well-known David Baird, John Lindsay, and many others, was driven naked, barefoot, and wounded, 500 miles to Seringapatam; where, loaded with irons of thirty-two pounds weight, and chained in couples, they were thrust into a "black hole," and fed so scantily that Wilson declared that at sight of food his jaws snapped together of themselves. Many a time in the morning corpses were unchained, and the survivors coupled up together again. Wilson was one of the thirty-one who lived to be ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... quite as bright as there is any occasion for it to be, that its little lady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is very probable, also, that if you could look into your heart from the sun's point of view, it might appear a very black hole indeed; nay, the sun may sometimes think good to tell you that it looks so to Him; but He will come into it, and make it very cheerful for you, for all that, if you don't put the shutters up. And the one question for you, remember, is not 'dark or light?' but ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... flesh is racked or his heart wounded. It is evil to be in pain. It is evil to carry a heavy heart. It is evil to be stripped of what we have long been accustomed to lean upon. It is evil to be crushed down by loss and want. It is evil to stand by the black hole that swallows the coffin that holds the light of our eyes. It is evil to have the arrows of calumny or hate sticking in our quivering spirits. It is evil to be battered with the shocks of change and doom in the world, to have to toil at ungrateful tasks beyond our strength. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... outsiders turned in, first the second hand and then the foreman, and, plunging into the "Black Hole," made their toilettes du soir. Then active operations commenced forthwith. In one compartment of the kneading-trough was the "sponge," which had been prepared by the foreman early in the evening, and which now, having properly settled, was mixed with the flour for ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... of Kushva, acting on this principle, succeeded in a short time in raising a formidable opposition amongst the workmen in the surrounding districts. When the local school-mistress, a girl of seventeen, found a temporary grave in this sort of Black Hole of Calcutta the wells of Kushva and Taighill became a dreadful portent to the simple ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... clost to some water, somewheres over in Africy, and de man come in a little boat to de sho' and tell dem he got presents on de big boat. Most de men am out huntin' and my mammy and her mammy gits took out to dat big boat and dey locks dem in a black hole what mammy say so black you can't see nothin'. Dat de sinfulles' ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... sat down, partly because Western men never argue a point when that little black hole is staring them in the face, partly because he remembered with a rush that the last time he had fully possessed his consciousness he had been lying in the snow with the cross gripped hard and the toppling mass of the landslide above him. All that had happened between was blotted from his memory. ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick |
