"Descent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The Caliphs of the Abbaside Dynasty traced their descent from Mohammed. Benjamin here refers to the Caliph El Mostanshed. The Caliph is aptly compared to the Pope. In addition to his temporal authority at Bagdad, he exercised as Leader of the Faithful—Emir ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... The descent from Patmore and poetry to New York is somewhat abrupt, not to say precipitous, but we made it in safety; and so shall you, if you will be agile. New York is a pleasant little Dutch city, on a dot of island a few miles southwest of Massachusetts. For a city entirely unobtrusive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Minto descent, Stevenson claims to have 'shaken a spear in the Debatable Land and shouted the slogan of the Elliots.' He evidently knew little or nothing of his relations on the Elphinstone side. The Logie Elphinstones were a cadet branch of Glack, an estate acquired by ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... is not clear whether all members of a family which traced descent, real or putative, from a trade-father, actually carried on that trade. If so, we should have examples of a workmen's guild. Certainly many men who carried on a trade were "sons" of the trade-father, but apparently not all. The Code notes the adoption of a child by an artisan who teaches him his ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... but she could not help confessing to herself that her residence in the capital could not be agreeable to him. The highest Spanish officials and military commanders lived there, as well as the ambassadors of foreign powers, and it was not desirable to remind them of the maternal descent of the general who now ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... point to his having reached a considerable altitude, which is intelligible enough. It is, however, difficult to believe his further assertion that by the use of his single oar he succeeded in working himself down to within a few hundred feet of the earth. The descent of the balloon must, in point of fact, have been due to a copious outrush of gas at his former altitude. Had his oar really been effective in working the balloon down it would not have needed the discharge of ballast presently spoken of to cause ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... open for him to mount to the topmost round of the social ladder; true, too, the operatives in manufactures and the agricultural laborers here live on a far higher plane than in Europe; but the elements of degradation as well as of elevation are present in our land, and "easy in the descent" to the infernal regions. Let us be warned ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... on which the Hauser family were going to return to Loeche, as winter was approaching, and the descent was becoming dangerous. Three mules started first, laden with baggage and led by the three sons. Then the mother, Jean Hauser and her daughter Louise mounted a fourth mule, and set off in their turn, and the father followed them, accompanied by the two men ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... warmest assurances of his pacific dispositions. "I am much pained," said Alexander, "with this procrastination. I am so full of sincerity myself, that it seems to me a very strange matter, this hostile descent by Drake upon the coasts of Spain. The result of such courses will be, that the King will end by being exasperated, and I shall be touched in my honour—so great is the hopes I have held out of being able to secure a peace. I have ever been and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... exceedingly quiet scene, and I smelt it where I sat. How secure the robbers had felt themselves, and how reckless of identification! Mid-day, a public road within hearing of a ranch, an escort of a dozen regulars, no masks, and the stroke perpetrated at the top of a descent, contrary to all laws of road agency. They swarmed into sight from their ramparts. I cannot tell what number, but several I had never seen before and never saw again; and Mr. Adams and yellow and black curly looked so natural that I wondered ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... the descent of Snowhill, we passed by the miry pens of Smithfield; we travel through the street of St. John, and presently reach the ancient gateway, in Cistercian Square, where lies the old Hospital of Grey Friars. I passed through the gate, my fair young companion on my arm, and made my way to the rooms ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... home of his adopted father, he conceived the design of imposing upon his new companions the story of his Virginian birth—though born in reality in one of the Middle States. He had heard so much of Virginian aristocracy, of the pride of tracing one's descent from one of the first families of Virginia, that he thought it a pardonable deception if it increased his dignity and consequence. He was ashamed of his parentage, which was concealed under the somewhat patrician name of Clinton, and as he chose to change his birth-place, ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... of the instrument called the Constitution of the United States there is no obscurity; it has no fabled descent, like the palladium of ancient Troy, from the heavens. Its origin is not confused by the mists of time, or hidden by the darkness of passed, unexplored ages; it is the fabric of our day. Some now living, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... (as the most sensible people in the country) against a class of shallow empirics, who have managed to glide unchidden into our homes and our families, to chill the one and to estrange the other. Surely, surely, we were unworthy of our descent, could we see unmoved our lovely English girls, whose modesty was wont to be equalled only by their beauty, concentrating all their desires and their energies on a good match; or our reverend English matrons, the pride and honour of the land, employing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... best way is to slander Valentine With falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent, Three things that women highly ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... clever and naive, and attractive in every way. The death of her French father in Paris leaves her an orphan, and she goes to London to live with an aunt of Scotch descent. Her impressions of the people, the happenings and the places she becomes familiar with, peculiarities of customs and every little thing of interest are all touched upon in a charming and original manner, while in places there is irresistible humor. Throughout there is a good solid love story, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the coach-door ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... the sea, then the Yalu was crossed; and while one division of the army was pouring into Manchuria, threatening Niu-Chwang and beyond that Mukden, a second division landed at Pitsewo, making a rapid descent upon Port Arthur, the chief stronghold of China, which was captured ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... 1688, who surrendered their own rights and bound themselves to obey King William and his heirs, might indeed choose to be slaves; but that could not lessen the right of their children to be free. Wrongs cannot have a legal descent. Here was a bold and triumphant answer to a sophistical argument; but it served Paine only as a preface to his exposition of the American constitution, which was "to Liberty what a grammar is to language," and to his plea ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... we ascend a high ridge and then begin our descent into the southern branch of the wady of Ajlun. After winding about for some time among the rocks and brush in the dry bed of this wady we finally halt at Ain Jenneh, a good, strong fountain issuing from under a great rock. We are yet in the upper reaches ...
— My Three Days in Gilead • Elmer Ulysses Hoenshal
... was floating through the mind of Mrs. John Arthur, who was progressing in her convalescence very rapidly now, and who had, on this day, made her second descent to the drawing-rooms. ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... with his face to the west, drinking in the air; then tightening his belt, he caught the pliant body of a sapling and swung loose from the rock. As the tree flew back, his dog sprang after him. The descent was sharp. At times he was forced to cling to the birch-tops till they lay flat on ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... eyes to the fact, Jack," said Adams one evening, when his chief was making ready for his regular descent upon the Rosemary. "We shall have to put night shifts at work on that shale-slide if we hope ever to get past it with ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... descent from William of Orange. He had no genealogy to prove it, but on Venus there was no one who could ...
— Wind • Charles Louis Fontenay
... discordant yelling and barking that I began to fancy we must indeed present a woeful spectacle, or we never should be saluted by such vindictive sounds. Still, not a shadow of a human being did we discover, and I began to think that the bushrangers had made a descent, murdered those connected with the farm, and then escaped, when I was suddenly convinced of my error by hearing the report of a musket, and an ounce ball whizzed by my head and struck the ground about ten rods ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... with the fingers of the other. Nobody questioned him in this neighborhood. The beard, which had taken two months to grow, disguised his face, and he had given his name as McCaffery, allowing his landlord and others who heard it to make the natural assumption that he was of Irish descent. ...
— A World by the Tale • Gordon Randall Garrett
... course, there would be more likelihood of their falling in with that most ferocious and bloody pirate, Jose Leirya, as he was called, or Jose de Leirya, as he loved to call himself—for he was said to claim descent from a grandee of Spain, although those who knew the man were well aware that his birth and parentage ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... as barely to allow of a struggling river to make its way betwixt the rocky sides. In some places, the valley makes a straight reach four or five miles in extent, but in others, winds and turns about in abrupt and varied curves; its descent is now gradual, and now rapid, where the stream dashes over ledges of rock or cuts its way through some rough and stubborn pass. Nearly all the ravines and smaller valleys that open into it bring down their contributions of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... of half a century, or until about the year 1640. I admit, however, that the evidence for assigning him so long a life rests solely on the supposed identity of the figure known as "Il Vecchietto," in the Varallo Descent from the Cross chapel, with the portrait of Tabachetti himself in the Ecce Homo chapel, ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... They turned and ran at break-neck speed down the slope, vanishing with a swiftness that rendered it almost impossible for Deerfoot to bring down either of them had he been so disposed. Rapid as was their charge up the slope, their descent was a great ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... at a small dreary looking office with the name Sheene & Co: in guilt letters on the window. Two men evidently the clerks, were watching with intense excitement the descent of the two ladies from the cab, their faces being pressed upon the iron ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford
... serried backbone of the Cumberland ridge through a sky of mountain clarity, the sun seemed hesitating before its descent to the horizon. The sugar-loaf cone that towered above a creek called Misery was pointed and edged with emerald tracery where the loftiest timber thrust up its crest plumes into the sun. On the hillsides it would be light for more than an hour ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... to be better acquainted with this house, to have a larger knowledge of its topography than the ascent and descent by means of an electric lift would allow him. Dr. Fall offered no objection, and led the way down the red ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... difficulties under which they were erected are remembered. Every article used in their construction had to be brought either on the backs of men or mules; and there were few native craftsmen capable of performing the necessary work. Many families proud of their ancient descent were settled in the town, and its society was therefore superior to that of any of the surrounding places. In Popayan is a large square, of which I shall have to speak by-and-by, with the cathedral on one side, and the residences of some of the principal people ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... the clerks through a lath-and-plaster wall and by means of a speaking tube, atoned by its vivacity for its lack of ceremony. When the stairs had finished creaking under the descent of Mrs Codleyn's righteous fury, Mr Duncalf whistled sharply twice. Two whistles meant Denry. Denry picked up his shorthand note-book and ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... annoyance of the monarch on the mainland, who finally determined at all costs to recapture the stronghold facing his capital. Fancying himself perfectly secure in his "Little Gibraltar," now deemed impregnable by a combination of art and nature against any hostile descent, Lowe made light of any possible expedition from Naples, and when Neapolitan warships actually appeared as though making to land troops at the Marinas on either side of the saddle of the island, the British ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... long, weary hill of illness and pain, reached the top, panting and almost spent, rested there, and began the easy descent on the other side that led to recovery and strength. But something was lacking. That sunny optimism that had been Emma McChesney's most valuable asset was absent. The blue eyes had lost their brave laughter. A despondent droop lingered in the corners ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... all the great New England writers of this age was to make individuals freer, more cultivated, more self-reliant, more kindly, more spiritual. Puritan energy and spirituality spoke through them all. Nearly all could trace their descent from the early Puritans. It is not an infusion of new blood that has given America her greatest writers, but an infusion of new ideals. Some of these ideals were illusions, but a noble illusion has frequently led humanity upward. The transcendentalists could not fathom ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... was twenty-three years of age. He was of Spanish descent, and it was only within the last two generations that English blood had mingled with the Dune stock. He was of no great height, slim and dark. His hair was black, his complexion sallow, and on his upper lip he wore a small dark moustache. His ears were small, his mouth ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... like a bench upon the side of the continent, and is known as the continental plateau. The water over the plateau is comparatively shallow. Upon one side the land rises, while upon the other there is a rapid descent into the deep Pacific. The surface of the plateau is in general fairly smooth, but in places mountains lift their summits above ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... to the power of female beauty, nor averse from excess in wine. Yet neither wine nor beauty could ever seduce the cautious and frugal libertine, even in his earliest youth, into one fit of indiscreet generosity. Though of noble descent, he rose in his profession by paying ignominious homage to all who possessed influence in the courts. He became Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and as such was party to some of the foulest judicial murders recorded ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with me, that if all the Huguenots were as tedious as Mr. WATTS PHILLIPS'S private Huguenot, the massacre of St. BARTHOLOMEW was a pleasing manifestation of a very natural and commendable indignation on the part of their much-suffering fellow-citizens not of Protestant descent. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 16, July 16, 1870 • Various
... descent upon New Providence, and, after capturing the place and taking away a large quantity of munitions of war and stores, it left and coasted along the coast from Cape Cod to Cape Charles, making many captures. On ...
— The True Story of the American Flag • John H. Fow
... upon the descent, was prepared to climb down handsomely. "It isn't all right; it's all wrong. I was simply fiendish to you, and I ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... oath; and it is generally admitted to be only another form of "rota," which now signifies a "regimental company." In both words the underlying idea is that of a body of men united by an oath. "Tribu" were possibly gentile groups, united by common descent, and included individuals connected by marriage. Perhaps our words "sects" or ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... "you must not think me meddlesome—officious. I can no more wait for your permission to help you than if you were drowning. Perhaps for good reasons within me, I know, better than you, that you-and he—are on a slippery incline, and that whether you can stop your descent and creep back to higher ground than either of you has slipped from is not to be told by the fineness of your promises or resolves. I cannot tell; you cannot tell; only God ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... met his doom, although he had descended full sixty feet. His fall was broken by several leafy trees, through which he went like an avalanche; and a thick solid bush receiving him at the foot, checked his descent entirely, and slid him quietly off its boughs on to the grass, where he lay, stunned, indeed, but ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... delegation from Dauphiny, the chair being taken by one of its members, M. Roche, in virtue, as he explained to the crowded audience in the large hall of the Horticultural Society in the Rue de Grenelle, of his descent 'from a representative of the Estates of Dauphiny in 1789.' The work of the assembly was divided between four committees, one on moral and religious interests, one on public interests, one on commercial and industrial interests, ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the Vienna Congress was riddled with intrigue. [Footnote: Sir Charles Dilke discussed the whole question of Napoleon's escape from Elba in an article in the Quarterly Review, January, 1910, entitled "Before and After the Descent from Elba."] ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... drew the gliding wagons seemed to move more slowly than bullocks in other places. Frank and his friend drove in a wagon to the monastery, high up on the mountain, and then took their places on a little hand sledge, which was drawn by two men with ropes, who took them down the sharp descent at a run, dashing round corners at a pace which made Frank hold his breath. It took them but a quarter of an hour to regain the town, while an hour and a half had been occupied in the ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... admitted to the ranks of the nobility. Thus a book (the Seishi-roku), published in 814, which has been aptly termed the "peerage of Japan," shows that, at that time, nearly one-third of the Japanese nobility traced their descent to Chinese or Korean ancestors in something like equal proportions. The numbers are, China, 162 families; Kudara, 104; Koma, 50; Mimana, 9; Shiragi, 9; doubtful, 47. Total, 381 Chinese and Korean families out of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Egypt. They might have been Tuiscon, his son Mannus and Herman, son of Mannus, according to the genealogy of Tacitus. Menes is held to be the most ancient king of the Egyptians; 'Theut' was with them a name for Mercury. At least Theut or Tuiscon, from whom Tacitus derives the descent of the Germani, and from whom the Teutons, Tuitsche (that is, Germani) even to-day have their name, is the same as that Teutates who according to Lucan was worshipped by the Gauls, and whom Caesar took pro Dite ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... of this great city has escaped by the Chimnies, and continues to sail about in the air, till having lost the heat which gave it volatility, it falls in a dry shower of extremely fine black dust to the ground, obscuring the atmosphere in its descent, and frequently changing the brightest day ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... tastes—with roving eccentric habits—had, in the course of life, picked up much harmless wisdom, but, perhaps from want of worldly prudence, failed of fortune. Contented with an obscure retreat and a humble livelihood, he might naturally be loth to confide to others the painful history of a descent in life. He might have relations in a higher sphere, whom the confession would shame; he might be silent in the manly pride which shrinks from alms and pity and a tale of fall. Nay, grant the worst—grant that Waife had suffered in repute as well as fortune—grant ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to be a still deeper descent. After the publication of Camilla, Madame D'Arblay resided ten years at Paris. During those years there was scarcely any intercourse between France and England. It was with difficulty that a short letter could occasionally ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... < chapter xxvi 26 KNIGHTS AND SQUIRES > The chief mate of the Pequod was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a Quaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an icy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being hard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood would not spoil like bottled .. ale. He must have been born in some time of ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... he concluded, and in another instant his light form was on the ground. Turning with the most admirable coolness, he gave the bottom of the ladder a trip with one of his feet, and laid the only means of descent prostrate on the earth. Then, looking up at the wondering Wilder, he nodded his head familiarly, repeated his adieu, and passed with a swift step from beneath ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... termed, as this obstruction is nothing more than a gradual descent for a distance of about a mile and a half, where the water, forcing its way over a rugged rocky bottom, presents the appearance of a rapid. Below this the country is of various aspects—hills, bottom-land, and high rocky bluffs; and towards the mouth, cotton-wood trees, (populus ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... revenged!" whispered Count Hojada, a near relative of Szekuly's. "The sovereign who, like Joseph, heaps obloquy upon a nobility, some of whom are his equals in descent, is lost! The emperor shall remember this hour, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... the car skidded and lurched from one side of the narrow roadway to the other; once the embankment crumbled for an instant as a rear wheel raced for a foothold and gained it just in time. Thundering below, Barry could hear the descent of the dirt and small boulders as they struck against protruding rocks and echoed forth to a constantly growing sound that seemed to travel for miles that it might return with the strength of thunder. Then for a moment the ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... states that in Brazil there are six hundred thousand enfranchised persons, either Africans or of African descent, who were either slaves themselves or are the descendants of slaves. He says they are, generally speaking, 'well conducted and industrious persons, who compose indiscriminately different orders of the community. There are among them merchants, ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child
... been obliged to content himself with putting all his voluminous notes into Tudor's hands. He afterwards obediently signed the report, and received his reward for doing so. Alaric never divulged to official ears how Neverbend had halted in the course of his descent to the infernal gods. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... who mock at good. A man must have gone a long way down hill before he begins to gibe at virtue and godliness. But the descent is steep, though the distance is long; and the 'simple' who begins to do what is wrong will come to sneer at what ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... tall, muscular man, with a long, fair beard, and blue eyes as clear and deep as the summer sky. He was a worthy representative of the old Norse sea king, from whom he was descended, and his descent was shown in his great love of the sea. He was the chief pilot of the port of Stromness, and no man knew so well as he all the dangerous currents and shoals of the Orcadian seas. There was not a flow or a sound between the North and South Ronaldsays, or from Bore ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... towers themselves seemed as much a part of nature as the trees and bushes were. Branches thrust themselves through apertures in the crumbling stone. Southward from the foot of the knoll rose the mountains, eastward and westward extended an undulating natural platform that interrupted the descent of the mountain side. Northward the ground fell in a steep precipice to the left bank of the Creuse, along which ran a little-used road from Clochonne, which was northeast, ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... I had carefully kept and secreted the saw received from my Goree friends, we possessed a most valuable implement; so that it was resolved to attack a bar the moment we had been mustered and locked up on that auspicious night. At eleven, a descent into the court beneath the window was to be commenced, and, if this proved successful, there was no doubt we could reach the beach across the parade. But the sentinel still required "polishing" out of the court-yard! This was a tremendous obstacle; still, Germaine once more put on his fancy-wings, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny to the waters of the Mississippi, a distance of nine hundred miles, enclosing in their upper courses the island of Blannerhassett, below the mouth of the Little Kanawha, the island of Zane, near Wheeling, and leaping in a descent of twenty-two feet in a distance of two miles the Falls opposite the present city of Louisville. The lofty eminences which crowned its banks, the giant forests of oak and maple which everywhere approached its waters, the vines of the frost-grape ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... now presented itself for Edward to assert his power in Scotland. Two claimants, both of Norman descent, had come forward demanding the crown.[1] One was John Baliol; the other, Robert Bruce, an ancestor of the famous Scottish King and general of that name, who will come prominently forward in the next reign. He decided in Baliol's favor, but insisted, before doing so, that the latter ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... was clearly intended to embody the deepest and maturest thoughts of the author in regard to "the proper study of mankind," both individually and collectively. The nature of man, how it is affected by diversity of circumstances, by nationality, descent, rank and occupation, by the relations of class to class, of society to the individual, of personal will to a controlling destiny,—this may be said to form the motive of the volume; and though such action as there is in it takes place chiefly at the court of one ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... portion of Paul Jones' adventurous life when he was hovering off the British coast, watching for an opportunity to strike the enemy a blow. It deals more particularly with his descent upon Whitehaven, the seizure of Lady Selkirk's plate, and the famous battle with the Drake. The boy who figures in the tale is one who was taken from a derelict by Paul Jones shortly after this particular cruise was ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... this rocky descent! So! Here we are on the floor of the vasty deep! What a glorious race-course! The polished and printless sand spreads away before you as far as the eye can see, the surf comes in below breast-high ere it breaks and the white fringe of the sliding wave shoots up the beach, but leaves room for the ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... They stood face to face—the self-made man and the girl who could trace her descent from a Norman baron. He was broad-built, grim, determined. She ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... that no one would suspect campers were about. The trail leads down a steep descent. How stately it is between the huge stems of the trees, along our beautiful creek, cool and clear as crystal, and filled with trout and other fishes. There I sit in the sun and allow the water to ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... the rash of sweat on his forehead. The bronze of his cheeks was darkened by the accession of blood. His black eyes glittered, and his nostrils were distended and eager. They were large nostrils, tokening his descent from savage ancestors who had survived by virtue of deep lungs and generous air-passages. Yet, unlike MacDonald, his voice was firm and customary, and, unlike Kearns, his hand did not tremble ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... pursued it at full speed. The snow was nearly level with the top of the stone walls, and the wind carrying it diagonally from the road, it rolled over the little ridge of stones which remained above the drifts, and then swept across the field, down a long descent, like a feather before ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... her in his arms as if she were a little child, and, carrying her thus, returned to his guest. "Here—here she is!" he cried breathlessly. "Behold her! Now you may look on her face—now the whole world may behold her countenance and read in it her illustrious descent. This is my idol—my goddess, for whom I have lived, for whom ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... Catalogue of Women and the Eoiai, preserved only in scanty fragments, attempt to fix in canonical form the cloudy mixture of dreams and boasts and legends and hypotheses by which most royal families in central Greece recorded their descent from a traditional ancestress and a conjectural God. The Works and Days form an attempt to collect and arrange the rules and tabus relating to agriculture. The work of Hesiod as a whole is one of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... moment of dead silence, just before the crash that accompanied the descent of the curtain, he had scored for the C trumpet, muted and pianissimo, a phrase in the rhythm of the first three bars of the Marsellaise, but going up on the open tones and sustaining the high G, so that it carried ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... next morning knew as much as I did. An escape of gas which could not be stopped sent the balloon hurtling to the earth. Spero threw everything movable out of the car in a vain attempt to lighten it and break the force of the descent. The balloon still kept falling; then Iclea, with a wild courage born of love, saved Georges' life by leaping out of the car. Relieved of her weight, the balloon rose up, but Spero had now no wish to live. He jumped out with a wild cry, and his body crashed on the edge of the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... such a strange act remained to be seen. It appeared unlikely that any of the Sioux were daring enough to attempt a descent of the chimney; but that such was really his purpose became clear ...
— The Story of Red Feather - A Tale of the American Frontier • Edward S. (Edward Sylvester) Ellis
... did not suggest even a thought of peril. I had always been accustomed, by the practice of gymnastics, to keep up my school-boy powers as a daring and expert climber; and knew that my head, hands, and feet would serve me faithfully in any hazards of ascent or descent. I had already got one leg over the window-sill, when I remembered the handkerchief filled with money under my pillow. I could well have afforded to leave it behind me, but I was revengefully determined that the miscreants of the gambling-house should miss their ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... Beaurepaire lived in the chateau of that name in Brittany. His family was of prodigious antiquity; seven successive barons had already flourished on this spot when a younger son of the house accompanied his neighbor the Duke of Normandy in his descent on England, and was rewarded by a grant of English land, on which he dug a mote and built a chateau, and called it Beaurepaire (the worthy Saxons turned this into Borreper without delay). Since that day more than ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... kith and kin, leaving kith and kin behind us; and after thousands of years the language and traditions of those who went East, and those who went West, bear such an affinity to each other, as to have established, beyond discussion or dispute, the fact of their descent from a ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... "created to be immortal," "an image of God's eternity." It cannot signify simply physical dissolution, because this is found as well by God's servants as by the devil's. Its genuine meaning is, most probably, a descent into the black kingdom of sadness and silence under the earth, while the souls of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... indeed beautiful. Springing from a long line of American descent, she was one of those wonderful working-class blooms which occasionally appear, defying all precedent of forebears and environment, apparently without cause or explanation. She was a beauty in color, the blood spraying her white skin so deliciously as to earn for her the apt description, ...
— The Game • Jack London
... the lake, and which had the quaint appearance of a tiny chateau of the middle ages, we claimed it, at once, as the very spot suited for the temporary residence of your scenery-hunters. We all agreed that nothing could possibly suit us better, and we went down the descent, among vineyards and cottages, not building "castles in the air," but peopling one in a valley. It was determined to dwell in that house, if it could be had for love or money, or the thing was at ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ask that! I think she must be of Spanish descent. She's so quiet, so religious, and has a very dark complexion. And yet wonderful light ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson
... Understanding between the Prince and Princess Relations between William and English Parties His Feelings towards England His Feelings towards Holland and France His Policy consistent throughout Treaty of Augsburg William becomes the Head of the English Opposition Mordaunt proposes to William a Descent on England William rejects the Advice Discontent in England after the Fall of the Hydes Conversions to Popery; Peterborough; Salisbury Wycherley; Tindal; Haines Dryden The Hind and Panther Change in the Policy of the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... steep, and I laughed to think how terrified they would be if they could see me; but this afternoon as I had thrown off restraint, I chose the first place where descent was possible, and let myself down along a rather wide crevice where some earth had gathered, and a few bushes were growing. I went fast too, for I meant to go just as far as I could before I was rounded up and brought into camp. Between the two ridges ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... it there in a jiffy," interrupted Bart, hastening his descent, and the next instant dodging away in the dark beneath the foot ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... hangs on the south wall of the Ante-Chapel near the door—a Descent from the Cross—is by Anthony Raphael Mengs. It was given to the College in 1841 by the Right Hon. Robert Henry Clive, M.P. ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott
... and abolished into black non-entity by the first question which recalled me to actual life, as suddenly as if one of those iron shop-blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but honest shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden and unexpected descent, and left outside upon the sidewalk) had come down "by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... high table-land whose sides were so steep that not even a pack mule could make the descent, and he had been obliged to retrace the trail for a great distance, losing ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... to him than the vision of a fair young spirit striving consciously after ethereal perfection, but overweighted unconsciously by the bonds and fetters of human infirmity and passion, and dragged at last headlong down the abysmal descent to perdition?" "Abysmal" ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... increased—his reputation as a lawyer and a judge, proving himself to possess considerable knowledge of the common law as well as of equity. He died in London on the 15th of February 1899. He married in 1858 Clara Jessie, daughter of Chief Baron Pollock, and left children who could thus claim descent from two of the best-known English legal families ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... already lay dead on the ground under the nest where it had fallen, and another came down during the day, though happily without injury. This one was not very bright, or perhaps his baby wits were dazed by his sudden descent. He made no objection to staying in my hand as long as I liked to look at him, and when I placed him on a low branch, as a hint that it was safer there, he declined to accept my advice, but flew off and came to the ground again. He was a scraggy ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... distance, a range of fine mountains—and between them stretched as rich a valley, both in fertility and beauty, as the eye of man could rest upon. The ground before the door fell by an easy and gradual descent, until a little further down it reached a green expanse of level meadow, through which a clear river wound its lingering course, as if loth to pass away from between the rich and grassy banks that enclosed it. It was, in fact, a spot ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... that it is easier to go downhill than to go up. This is not true. I say it with the deepest earnestness. After the first five hundred feet of descent, progress down became agonizing. The something that had gone wrong with my knees became terribly wrong; they showed a tendency to bend backward; they ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and the common world, as it was accessible through the medium of the outer office—to which Mr Dombey's presence in his own room may be said to have struck like damp, or cold air—there were two degrees of descent. Mr Carker in his own office was the first step; Mr Morfin, in his own office, was the second. Each of these gentlemen occupied a little chamber like a bath-room, opening from the passage outside Mr Dombey's door. Mr Carker, as Grand Vizier, inhabited the room that was ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... been quite entertained with his history of the descent of the river with your ancestors. He seems to remember every incident, and says your father was wounded at the Muscle Shoals ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... "morning-glories," "dancing like a breeze," "Daphnes" (instead of laurels), and many more, which he hoped would be "permanently engrafted on the mother-tongue." There were other entries to be made,—"customs of the Westerners," their "descent," "taxation," "climate" (as affected by the Great Lakes), "population in 1900," and so on. There were books, books, books, to be read, referred to, ordered. There was even a little taxidermy to be done, and the "native birds" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... box—though the Virgin knows that he would have found little enough therein. My father, however, is a proud man, a gallant knight and tried soldier of the oldest blood, to whom this man's churlish birth and low descent——Oh, lackaday! I had forgot that he was of the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... four years ago that he and his companion were ranging in the forest in quest of game. His companion took a poisoned arrow and sent it at a red monkey in a tree above him. It was nearly a perpendicular shot. The arrow missed the monkey, and in the descent struck him in the arm a little above the elbow. He was convinced it was all over with him. "I shall never," said he to his companion, in a faltering voice, and looking at his bow as he said it, "I shall never," said he, "bend this bow again." And having said that, he took off his little ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... at every step; there were no houses there; only a few rabbits tamely playing in the outskirts of the coverts. A jay screamed in the clump of trees at the hill-top; it seemed the proper kind of voice for a waste like that. Still further on, I sat down to rest at the brink of the great descent, which led, as I guessed, as I could almost see, to the plain where Taunton lay, waiting for the Duke's army to garrison her. There were thick woods to my right at this point, making cover so dense that no hounds would have tried to break through it, no matter how strong a scent might lead ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... daring voyages in the history of American exploration was Major John Wesley Powell's descent through the Grand Canon of the Colorado River, in 1869. The river had been discovered three hundred years before his memorable journey, but Major Powell was 5 the first to explore the magnificent gorge through which it ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... by Mr. Rolfe, whose posterity are at this day in good repute in Virginia, and inherit lands by descent ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... of charity's like the light o' the sun, by which all things are cherished. It is the brightness of the soul, and the glorious quality which proves our celestial descent. Our other feelings are common to a' creatures, but the feeling of charity is divine. It's the only thing in which man partakes of the nature ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... her great-grandmother by John III's lady (who, being of Knickerbocker descent, laid great stress on family names), added to the somewhat doubtful accomplishments of a fashionable finishing school a great part of what her own daughter, years later, learned at the then popular woman's college. Nor was other ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... far as he was aware, Professor Agassiz was the only leading naturalist "who did not take into his very conception of a species, explicitly or by implication, the notion of a material connection resulting from the descent of the individuals composing it from a common stock, of ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... On the descent of the German Emperor into Lombardy, the great vassals who acknowledged him, made knighthood, among titles of more solid import, the price of their allegiance.[1] Thus the chronicle of the Cortusi for the year 1354 tells us that when Charles IV. 'was advancing through the March, and ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... mainly along the coast or in the fertile valley of the Ouse and its tributaries; for Elmet and Loidis, two Welsh principalities, long held out in the Leeds district, and the people of the dales and the inland parts, as we shall see reason hereafter to conclude, even now show evident marks of Celtic descent. Together the two chieftainships were generally known by the name of Northumberland, now confined to their central portion; but it must never be forgotten that the Lothians, which at present form part of modern Scotland, were originally a portion of this early English kingdom, and are still, perhaps, ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... like thunder, mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber, for now the axe-men were at work cutting down those trees which seemed to be most crowded with nests, and seemed to fell them in such a manner that, in their descent, they might bring down several others, by which means the falling of one large tree sometimes produced two hundred squabs, little inferior in size to the old ones, and almost one mass of fat. On some single ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... will supply a parallel. As to the inference which Mr. Nichols (Pilgrimages, p. 120.) draws from the name Acrensis, that Becket was born at Acre, I must observe that it introduces a theory which is altogether new, and not only opposed to the opinion that the Archbishop was of English or Norman descent on both sides, but essentially contradictory of the legend as to the fair Saracen who came from the East in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... the best authority in support of the opinion you desire to have established, which ought, and generally has, great weight in all cases. And, first, I have all antiquity on that side, which the more near it is to its origin and divine descent, the more clearly, perhaps, on that account, did it discern the truth in these matters. This very doctrine, then, was adopted by all those ancients whom Ennius calls in the Sabine tongue Casci; namely, that in death there was a sensation, and that, when men ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... earnestly petitioned clerk consented, and Billy was the first to hasten into the room. He stood rapturous while Lin buckled the belt round his scanty stomach, and ingeniously buttoned the suspenders outside the accoutrement to retard its immediate descent to earth. ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... down her back. She looked piteously for comfort, and, meeting only smiles, drew herself up with what was intended to be an air of haughty disdain; but it is difficult to look haughty when with every moment fresh hairpins are falling to the ground, and with the descent of fresh coils your hat is continually assuming a ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Bobby's audacity. He found himself on the ground, but, alas! in his rough descent Nobbles had been dashed from his grasp over the wall upon the high-road, and his anxiety over his darling's ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... who had built for himself a house upon a high elevation of land, and had labored many years, yea, the most of his lifetime, in conveying trees, plants, and flowers with which to decorate his grounds, came one day in his descent upon a youth who sat by the ...
— Allegories of Life • Mrs. J. S. Adams
... knew the necessity for exertion, and they worked accordingly. The top was knocked off, and carried down to the water; the spar was then cut round, and rolled after it, not without trouble, however, as the trestle trees were left on; but the descent of the sands favoured the labour. When on the margin of the sea, by the aid of hand-spikes, the head was got afloat, or so nearly so, as to require but little force to move it, when a line from the boats was fastened ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... friendly message to Alboquerque, who in answer required him to relinquish his crown in favour of him whom he styled the lawful prince. He then represented to him the injustice of attempting to force him from the possession of what was his, not only by right of conquest but of hereditary descent, as was well known to the governor himself; that he was willing to consider himself as the vassal of the king of Portugal, and to grant every advantage in point of trade that they could expect from the administration ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... steps descended along the wall first of all towards the balcony, and then just below the end of it they turned, so that any man going down to the well would have his face towards the people on the balcony for half the descent and his back towards them during the ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... Seeking, in her ignorance, a better side to that life, she listened with avidity to the old woman's tales of the departed glories of the Rajahs, from whose race she had sprung, and she became gradually more indifferent, more contemptuous of the white side of her descent represented by a feeble and ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... therewith he warned Phaethon of all the dangers that beset the way,—the great steep that the steeds must climb, the numbing dizziness of the height, the fierce constellations that breathe out fire, and that descent in the west where the ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... minutes on the platform before I ventured to commence the wary descent of the broad, carpeted stairway. I had convinced myself that the second story was empty, though a lighted lamp swung in the upper entry, as well as in that below, throwing a flood of radiance on the scene with which ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... the minister; "ashes to ashes," in the midst of the warm, the resplendent, the palpitating day. One of Gordon's nephews—a shock of tow hair rising rebellious against an application of soap, stubby, scarred hands, shoes obviously come by in their descent from more mature extremities—who had been audibly snuffling for the past ten minutes, burst into a lugubrious, frightened wail. Through the solemn, appointed periods of the minister cut the sibilant, maternal promise ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... seen near the ships. It is usual for these animals to descend head foremost, displaying the broad fork of their enormous tail above the surface of the water; but, on this occasion, the ice was so close as not to admit of this mode of descent, and the fish went down tail foremost, to the great amusement ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... Mediterranean stock in mainland, Azores, Madeira Islands; citizens of black African descent who immigrated to mainland during decolonization number ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... utility, but their duties nowadays are but few, and consist almost solely of tracing pedigrees for that portion of the community whom our American cousins designate as "shoddy," but who, having "made their pile," would fain be thought of aristocratic descent. In such a Radical town as Birmingham, the study of or and gules, azure and vert, or any of the other significant terms used in the antique science of heraldry, was not, of course, to be expected, unless at the hands of the antiquary or the practical heraldic engraver, both scarce ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... over the bed of rolls so as to allow of its ascent and descent by means of springs, substantially as and for the ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... accounts were given as to his birth, parentage, and early history. The general opinion seemed to be that his father had been a noted coiner in New York,—an Irishman of the name of Melmody,— and, in one memoir, the probability of the descent was argued from Melmotte's skill in forgery. But Marie, though she was thus isolated, and now altogether separated from the lords and duchesses who a few weeks since had been interested in her career, was ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... descent upon Carrick, there, in the midst of his family possessions, to set up his banner in Scotland. The lands had been forfeited by Edward and bestowed upon some of his own nobles. Annandale had been given to the Earl of Hereford, Carrick to Earl Percy, Selkirk to Aymer de Valence. The castle ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... earliest times. It is supposed by some to have been founded upon conquest, the first three castes being composed of a foreign race, who subdued the natives of the country and reduced them to an inferior caste. Others trace it to the fondness of perpetuating, by descent from father to son, certain offices ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... that the passengers might see the fine glacier at its head, and ventured to within half a mile of the berg-discharging front, which is about three quarters of a mile wide. Bergs fell but seldom, perhaps one in half an hour. The glacier makes a rapid descent near the front. The inlet, therefore, will not be much extended beyond its present limit by the recession of the glacier. The grand rocks on either side of its channel show ice-action in telling style. The Norris Glacier, ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... he met Mrs. Hollis returning from a funeral. With a sudden descent from his ethereal mood he pounced upon her and, in spite of violent protestations, danced her madly down the walk and deposited ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... mines containing minerals, or metals, essential to our wants and our progress in all arts and industries; and I then briefly explained the manner in which, while exploring one of those mines, I and my ill-fated friend had obtained a glimpse of the regions into which we had descended, and how the descent had cost him his life; appealing to the rope and grappling-hooks that the child had brought to the house in which I had been at first received, as a witness of the ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... laughed in his face and went to see, and learning the truth carried the story into Romney, whence it spread to London and brought down a mob of horse and foot and messengers, and from one end of England to the other the descent and the audacity of it were a nine days' wonder. However, by that time the nest was cold and the birds long flown, and Birkenhead, with one more plume in his crest, was preening ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... decided to take one more ride and then start for the station. But on that ride an accident occurred. The bobs on which the boys were seated collapsed midway of the descent, and threw the coasters into a heap in the ditch. None of them was seriously hurt, though the loose stones among which they were thrown were not sufficiently cushioned by the snow to prevent some bruises, and abrasions of the ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... now," went on Bud, as he again took an observation and noted that the flood was still on the descent, "how long we shall have to ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker |
