"Solid ground" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... narrowed down to a mere brook, and finally that it lost itself in a great green morass of sponge-like mosses, into which we sank up to our knees. The place was horribly haunted by clouds of mosquitoes and every form of flying pest, so we were glad to find solid ground again and to make a circuit among the trees, which enabled us to outflank this pestilent morass, which droned like an organ in the distance, so loud was it with ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Peter to fix the latch of the attic door to-morrow," Aunt Polly said, relieved to be back on good, plain, solid ground. "The attic winders are raised and the wind's rising. It will be slam, slam all night, unless——" she ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... two boys had made ascents, Andy could never remember that his pulses throbbed with one-half the suspense they did now. Not even on that never to be forgotten initial performance, when for the first time they felt the strange sensation of leaving the solid ground in a flying machine, had he been so excited, so nervous, so filled ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... and several journeys by Champlain to Rouen, these difficulties were overcome. There was, indeed, no solid ground of opposition, as none were debarred from engaging in the enterprise who were willing to share in the burdens as well as ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... sleep a wink, while outside vogued the immense tempest. And I communed with myself, thinking: 'I, poor man, lost in this conflux of infinitudes and vortex of the world, what can become of me, my God? For dark, ah dark, is the waste void into which from solid ground I am now plunged a million fathoms deep, the sport of all the whirlwinds: and it were better for me to have died with the dead, and never to have seen the wrath and turbulence of the Ineffable, nor ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... right and wrong in all proposals for the future of womanhood, whether economic, political, educational, whether regarding marriage or divorce, or any other subject that concerns womanhood. A principle for which so much is claimed demands clear definition and inexpugnable foundation in the "solid ground of Nature." Cogent in some measure though the argument would be, we must appeal in the first place neither to the poets, nor to our own naturally implanted preferences in womanhood, nor to any teaching that claims extra-natural authority. ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... the breeze, the day was so hot as to deter Captain Semmes from visiting the shore, despite the inevitable longing, after a confinement on board of more than three months, to find the foot once more planted on solid ground. Some of the other officers, however, explored the island, which they found a barren place enough; the three herdsmen, who constitute the entire population of the country, maintaining themselves after a fashion, by rearing a few goats. They must, indeed, lead a life ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... with the plan. At last, "It's too vile!" she cried passionately. "It's too horrible! It's to sink to what he is, and worse!" Her voice trembled with the intensity of her feelings—as a man, who has scaled a giddy height without faltering, sometimes trembles when he reaches the solid ground. "Worse!" ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... the Hudson River and the East River extended much further inland than now. When an individual got what was called a water grant, it meant land under shallow water, where he had the right to build bulkheads and wharves and to fill in and make solid ground. Out of these water grants was created property now worth hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars. The value at that time was not great, but the prospective value was immense. This fact was recognized in the official reports of the day, which set forth how rapidly the city's population and ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... Santos-Dumont scramble out of his basket and crawl out on the framework, while the balloon swayed in the air. He calmly knotted the cord that had parted and crept back to his place, as unconcernedly as if he were on solid ground. ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... seasons we lost enormous numbers of them. Therefore I "rode bog" every day up and down the river. When I found an animal in the mud I had to rope it by the horns or feet and drag it by main force to solid ground. A stout, well-trained horse was needed. It was hard, dirty work and exasperating, as many of those you pulled out never got up again, and if they did would invariably charge you. No special tackle was used; you remain in the ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... sun brought him to his feet, anxiety and dread in his heart. What could have become of Walter? It took the thoroughly alarmed lad but a moment to reach the wall where his chum had disappeared. He swarmed up it like a monkey and dropped down on the other side. But no solid ground met his descending feet. Instead, he crashed through leafy boughs and landed in a tangled mass of vines. In the second before the vines gave way under his weight, Charley succeeded in grasping a limb and swinging himself in to the trunk of the tree where he found a safe ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... to the fascinating bait. She considered it enchanting to live in a house where she could be acquainted with the cook stove; and Miss Martha felt that she had sheered off the thin ice upon solid ground at last. ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... very cautious, if not silent, where the Scriptures are silent, as it respects the final state of another, whose heart we cannot know, nor what God may have wrought in it. God hath set bounds to our faith, which can nowhere find solid ground to fix upon but in his own written promise. Yet, as I said above, he has set no bounds to his own mercy, and he has made provision for its boundless flow, as far as he shall please to extend it, through the atonement and merits of his own Son, 'who is able ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... the road," replied the man. "I am on solid ground, but what the devil is the good ...
— Marie • Alexander Pushkin
... confiding to him the intimate affairs of her life and those of her family which she did not have the slightest intention of recounting. She heard herself speak with astonishment; but there was no way of returning to solid ground; the very silence of Pierre was like a declivity down which the ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... against her, and feeling in her nearness almost a sense of human protection. His feet seemed to drag under him, and there was a dull aching in all his limbs; the world appeared to be receding from him, and at times he could hardly tell whether he stood upon solid ground. Then he accused himself of being lazy and good for nothing, and with fictitious energy took up the reins and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... moment the size of such an imaginary disaster served curiously to lessen his uneasiness. Pushed to extremities, the idea became merely absurd. He won a sort of comfort from such an outrageous proposition, because it brought him back to the solid ground of reason and the assurance that some things simply do not happen. From this extravagant summit of horror, his fears gradually receded. Such a waking nightmare even quieted his nerves when it was past; for if a possibility presents a ludicrous side, then its horror must diminish by so much. Moreover, ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... back of them is that of a friend to me now. We'll shake again. Good-by;" and I went home feeling as if I had solid ground under my feet. At supper I went over the whole scene, taking off the man in humorous pantomime, not ridicule, and even my wife grew hilarious over her disappointed hopes of the "new-fangled truck." I managed, however, that ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... Representatives, then called the House of Burgesses, and continued in it until the Revolution. On the first dawn of that, instead of higgling on half-way principles, as others did who feared to follow their reason, he took his stand on the solid ground, that the only link of political union between us and Great Britain, was the identity of our Executive; that that nation and its Parliament had no more authority over us, than we had over them, and that we were co-ordinate nations with ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to me that there is so far very little solid ground for any apprehension on the part of the business community that the recent development of banking evolution will tend to any damage to their interests. The banks have grown in size with the growth of industry. As industry has tended more and more to be worked by big battalions, it became ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... not to go on the bridge at times when a train might be expected to cross it, for when the cars passed us, we had much rather be on solid ground. But one day, when we had forgotten the hour; or a train was behind, or ahead of time; or an extra train was on the road—we were crossing this railroad bridge, and had just about reached the middle of it, when ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... the craft was fighting her way through the gale, those aboard ate a midnight lunch, with as good appetites as though they were on solid ground. For, in spite of the fact that they were in the midst of danger, they were fairly comfortable. True the aircraft was tilted upward, for she was still climbing on a steep slant, but they had gotten used to this. The gyroscope stabilizer prevented any ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... horn, a shovel, a pickaxe, his armor, and a dark lantern, and one winter's evening he went to the mount. There he dug a pit twenty-two feet deep and twenty broad. He covered the top over so as to make it look like solid ground. He then blew his horn so loudly that the giant awoke and came out of his den crying out: "You saucy villain! you shall pay for this I'll broil ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... to kill than a cat, and they did not propose to stay in the bog to be shot down. With their cutlasses they hewed off branches of trees and threw these down in the bog, making a sort of rude roadway by means of which they were able to get out on solid ground. But here they found themselves confronted by a large body of Spaniards, entrenched behind earthworks. Cannon and musket were opened upon the buccaneers, and the noise and smoke were so terrible they could scarcely hear the commands ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... Mr. Burns? Lite and I offered to take you out on solid ground, but your man seemed to think we ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... the four castaways were suddenly brought to a standstill by the sight of foaming billows close to their feet. The solid ground ended here. They found themselves at the extremity of a sharp point on ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... indescribably grim and bodeful in those isochronal batterings of the solid ground. The echoes distracted the thoughts—made the ominous center of the sounds a matter of doubt. That uncertainty intensified the threat of what was ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... length passed, we came upon more solid ground, chiefly the open prairie. But now a new trouble assailed us. The weather had moderated, and a blinding snow-storm came on. Without a trail that we could rely upon, and destitute of a compass, our only dependence ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... my compass bearing afresh, and plunged into the scrub. The sensation was of hitting solid ground after a long walk through sand. We seemed fairly to shoot ahead and out of sight. Whenever we came upon earth we marked it deeply with our heels; we broke twigs downwards, and laid hastily-snatched bunches of grass to help the trail we were leaving for the others to follow. This, in ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... accounting for this circumstance. A lawsuit, of whatever nature it may be, is always a difficult and expensive undertaking. It is easy to attack a public man in a journal, but the motives which can warrant an action at law must be serious. A solid ground of complaint must therefore exist, to induce an individual to prosecute a public officer, and public officers careful not to furnish these grounds of complaint, when they ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... the woods. Jack perked up his nose and stared with his mouth wide open. The trees on the right and left set out and ran with all their might, one after another. There must be witchcraft in it. Jack jumped out of the cart and again felt the solid ground under his feet. But he once more stood with his mouth wide open. The trees now stood still, but the cart moved on further and further. "Stop, father, stop, so I can see how the wheels turn," the boy ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... told him that if he received Miss Thoroughbung and refused admission to Miss Tickle he would be cruel. Miss Tickle, for aught that he knew, might have been a friend of her youth. At any rate, they had been constant companions for many years. Therefore, as he had another solid ground on which to stand, he could afford to yield as to Miss Tickle. But as he did so, he remembered that Miss Tickle had accused him of "keeping company," and he declared to himself that it would be impossible to live in ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... found themselves in a disagreeable country, full of bogs and marshes and covered with tall, rank grass. It was difficult to walk without falling into muddy holes, for the grass was so thick that it hid them from sight. However, by carefully picking their way, they got safely along until they reached solid ground. But here the country seemed wilder than ever, and after a long and tiresome walk through the underbrush they entered another forest, where the trees were bigger and older than any ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... getting Skyrider to a doctor quick, without shaking him up too much. And getting the flying machine outa there—though he guessed mebby Skyrider wouldn't want no more flyin' in his. He guessed mebby Skyrider would aim to keep one foot on solid ground hereafter—if he didn't go clean under it. That shore was a bad lookin' head he ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... lost you, it was as if all the solid ground went from under my feet. Look at me now—I am a shipwrecked man clinging to a bit ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... solid ground for man; the deductions he draws from them are a very different matter. Outside the facts of nature all is a question of probabilities, and the most that can be said is that some conclusions are more probable ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... think the past two, well, three years, have been the happiest in my life," Julia said soberly. "My feet have been on solid ground. I not only seem to understand my life better as it is, but all the past seems clearer, too. I thought Jim was like myself, Richie, but he wasn't; his whole viewpoint was different; perhaps that's why we ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... it feels to be on solid ground again," Jack observed, stamping his feet as though he ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... before her feet began to sink in the black, oozy bog. Margaret saw the water bubbling up behind her, and cried to her in alarm to come back; and Rita, finding the earth plucking at her feet, turned willingly toward the solid ground; but return was impossible. She tried to lift her feet, but the bog held them fast, and with the effort, she felt herself sinking, ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... unacquainted; but many witnesses were called, reports were traced to their source and in some instances disproved, and the result of the whole was transmitted by the deputy to the privy-council in a letter which appears satisfactorily to prove that there was no solid ground to ascribe the event to any but natural causes. That the deputy himself was convinced of the correctness of this representation is seen from one of his private letters to Leicester, published long after in ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... fact marked an increase of positive human knowledge of the territory that bears the name of King Edward VII.; and with the geological specimens that we had collected, we were in possession of a tangible proof of the actual existence of solid ground in a region which otherwise bore the greatest resemblance to what we called "Barrier" elsewhere, or in any case to the Barrier as it appears in the neighbourhood of ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... the place of warfare in Nature and the effect of war on the human race. These have long been debated problems concerning which there is no complete agreement. But until we make up our minds on these fundamental questions we can gain no solid ground from which to face serenely, or at all events firmly, the crisis through which ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... only an overwhelming contempt. "I mean," she said, "that to save you—to leave you a chance of getting back to solid ground—Donovan and I deceived Burke. He supplied the money, and ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... land. As the main bank refused to afford us a resting-place, we put off, and rowed as briskly as we could to a small island about half-a-mile from this treacherous shore; but this, too, proved a cheat, for what we took to be solid ground consisted merely of a mass of green shrubs, growing on the ridge of a soft slippery mass of mud just peeping ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... long forky foldings o'er the world; Torrents and broken crags and floods of rain From steep to steep roll down their force amain, In dreadful cataracts; the bolts confound The tumbling clouds, and rock the solid ground. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... broke in earnest over the Hudson Bay territory that day, and despite the efforts of the voyagers they could not rise in the Snowbird above the tempest. Had there been solid ground beneath them they could easily have descended and remained upon terra firma until the storm ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... cowboys who, with ropes around the mired steers, were trying to drag them to solid ground. Other animals, though, were pressing in to make their way to ...
— Cowboy Dave • Frank V. Webster
... have all long since passed away, even the very spot itself has changed; new soil has been formed, and there are miles of solid ground between Mount ta and the gulf, so that the Hot Gates no longer exist. But more enduring than stone or brass—nay, than the very battle-field itself—has been the name of Leonidas. Two thousand three hundred years have sped since he braced himself to perish for his country's ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... of sentiment and charity of spirit, Dr. Ryerson was a man of strong convictions, and he always had the courage of his convictions as well. When it came to a question of principle he was as rigid as iron. Then he planted himself on the solid ground of what he believed to be right, and ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... no bigger than tomtits, and wearing red top-knots on their heads. How welcome were the confiding little creatures to the passengers, who had been rocked at sea for nearly five weeks, and hailed these as sure harbingers of solid ground! They came down to pick up Jay's crumbs of biscuit, and twittered familiarly. The captain offered to have one caught for her, but, after a minute's eager acquiescence, she declined. 'I would like to feel it in my hand,' said she, 'but it is kinder to let ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... the awnings, and sailors, neat and trim in white uniforms that contrasted beautifully with their dark skins, ran to man the graceful white cutter. Pascherette sat in the stern-sheets, cuddled up like a pretty kitten on a crimson silk cushion, and Milo stood erect, as firm as if on solid ground, between passengers and rowers as the boat sped shoreward. As the two craft separated the schooner stood out in veritable beauty, an exquisite thing of gold and ivory, pearl and rose. Venner's eyes lighted with pride at sight of her. Even a ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the nightmare terror of earthquake, when the solid ground underfoot turns traitor. And it shook even the stoutest nerves in the opening weeks of the Great War, destined to shatter their dear and familiar world ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... shallow, usually about two feet, and in Persia the grave is often arched over with soft mud bricks; these weaken and dissolve after the rains and snows of winter, and a cemetery becomes a place of exposed remains and of pitfalls, where an unwary step on what appears solid ground may precipitate one into the undesirable company of a skeleton. By the time Semnoon is reached the day has grown warmer, and the sun favors the cold, dismal earth with a few genial rays, so that the blooming orchards of peach and pomegranate ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... the trembling conscience seeks Some solid ground to rest upon; With long despair the spirit breaks, Till we ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... condition only," said he. "Destroy the indictment against me and my ship. Write a document to the effect that you have found no traces of slaves upon my staunch craft. Say that my boat was driven from her anchor by a tidal wave—and you can put your feet upon solid ground." ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... my knife and caught the tree closer, when it, too, leaned to fall. It hung for a moment over the steep slope, and I could not save myself. The frost had not clamped the over-hang to the solid ground. The last fall rains had cut it under; the first spring thaw would have brought it down, had not my weight ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... then, many summers and winters must have passed; and grasses and sedges, detached from the banks by the water, had filled up the interstices. Then the dust, brought there by the wind, had covered these with a crust of earth, and formed a kind of solid ground for the floating island. Plants had grown along the banks; the trunks of the willows had sent forth vigorous shoots, and, with the reeds, had surrounded the island with a fringe of verdure. The island was only a few feet in diameter; but a man lying, ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... the cramping walls; but when it has, by God's illumination, received light enough to see into the darkness of the soul, and the glory that waits to shine in on it, conceive of the tremendous upheaval, the shock of finding solid ground sink, as gradually or suddenly the conviction comes upon such a one that if she acts upon this new knowledge there is no place for her at home. She ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... pleased with the idea that his father could scarcely refuse him the lease. He would in fact make it worth his while not to do so. Rosie Fay and those who belonged to her might, therefore, feel solid ground beneath their feet, and go on working and, if need were, suffering, without the intolerable dread of eviction. It would be a satisfaction to him to accomplish this much, whatever the dictates of honor might oblige him ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... he really intend to learn "the game"? Had he ever been up in a flying machine? It seemed that Johnny had made two ecstatic trips into the air—for a price—at the San Francisco Fair the fall before, and that his imagination had never quite felt solid ground under it since! Where—or how—could ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... broken. For even the most stolid Russian peasant soldier, whom neither the roar of guns nor the flash of bayonets could move, quaked at seeing whole companies and batteries disappear, in less time that it takes to tell about it, in the morasses of a country without firm roads and a minimum of solid ground. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... soughings of their wings was silent. He pointed to the water at his feet and I saw, not a picture, but a scene so real that I could have sworn it was alive about me. Yes, those who took part in it stood in front of me as though the pool were solid ground that their feet pressed. You were one of them, son, you were one of them," and the old knight paused, supporting himself against the mantel-shelf as though that recollection ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... climbing, too. Only one thing kept us going. The narrow valley twisted, and around each cliff-face we expected the end—either death or solid ground. But not so, or, at least, not for some hours. Riding-boots peeled like a sunburnt face; stones dislodged and rolled down; the sun beat down in early September fury, and still we ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to proceed in the hearing of evidence. The latter circumstance indeed was the more favourable, as the resolution, upon which the witnesses were to be examined, had not been renewed by the Commons. These considerations, however, afforded no solid ground for the mind to rest upon. They only broke in upon it, like faint gleams of sunshine, for a moment, and then were gone. In this situation the committee could only console themselves by the reflection, that they had done their duty. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... pounds upon every inch. Therefore, wherever granite is found we know that it has not been formed by deposit, like limestone and sandstone and slate and other sedimentary rocks, but at a prodigious depth under the solid ground, and by slow crystallizing of molten substances. There must have been from two to five miles of other rock lying upon the stuff that crystallized into granite. A wrinkling in the skin of the earth exposed the ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... Senator Sorghum, "is somewhat like that of a tight-rope walker. I don't want to stop to argue or show off. What I want to do is to get across to solid ground." ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... power, reason, and self-confidence to bear when we come to the marshy places along the road. We can pick our steps and get through the mire and sooner than we believe it possible we can get on the good solid ground; and as we travel, happiness will often come as a reward for our ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... recess she tried to go away by herself, in the hope that her heart might quiet down, and rest itself on some of the new and solid ground on which she had so lately learned to tread. But they followed her: several of the teachers, in a gayety of mood, that was half affected to hide the homesickness of their hearts, and therefore infected no ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... the manner in which it had been foiled, resolved to take precautionary measures against the repetition of any similar attempt. Without loss of time he departed with Bienville, on January 16, 1700, and running up the river, he constructed a small fort, on the first solid ground which he met, and which is said to have been at a distance of fifty-four miles ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Vol. II - The Planting Of The First Colonies: 1562—1733 • Various
... trunk. He was very tired, but I urged him to obey me. And now with the aid of his mother, he managed to lift the rear half of his body and put first one leg and then the other on the plank. A great shout of joy went through the crowd as Kari walked on to solid ground. That instant the monkey jumped down from the tree and fell on Kari's neck; he was very glad to see his friend safe again. But Kari was in no humor for anyone's caresses and he shook Kopee off. The first thing I did was to pull some branches from a tree which Kari ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... and his ears, but who had sufficient faculty left to hate the English, to oppress the people, to be corrupt and venal beyond all conception, and to appoint subordinates as flagitious as himself. 'Bad ministers,' wrote Burnes, 'are in every government solid ground for unpopularity; and I doubt if ever a king had a worse set than has Shah Soojah.' The oppressed people appealed to the British functionaries, who remonstrated with the minister, and the minister punished the people for appealing to the British functionaries. ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... keep watch and ward over everything. The hovels are more underground than above the surface, and often, when the village occupies sloping ground, the upper edge of the roof is practically but a continuation of the solid ground, or at the most there is but a single step-up between them. The goats are of course permitted to wander whithersoever they will, and equally, of course, they abuse their privileges by preferring the roofs to the ground and wandering incessantly about among the sleepers. Where the roof ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Protestantism are much given to glorify the Reformation of the sixteenth century as the emancipation of Reason; but it may be doubted if their contention has any solid ground; while there is a good deal of evidence to show, that aspirations after intellectual freedom had nothing whatever to do with the movement. Dante, who struck the Papacy as hard blows as Wicliff; Wicliff himself and Luther himself, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... horse struck out boldly for the island. The sleeping water-steeds drifted helplessly against him, and in a short time he reached the island safely, and he neighed joyously as his hoofs touched solid ground. ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... as my lord the Prince) laboured in divers parts." When Owyn is represented by Shakspeare as recounting the various successful struggles in which he had tried his strength with Bolinbroke, the poet had solid ground on which to build the ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... ayuda nino," said the Governor to me; I feared we should never play chess any more. "Que tonteria, andar a dormir in una barca, quando se lo podia sobre tierra firma!" (What folly to go sleep in a boat, when it can be done upon solid ground!) ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... it seems to me, will witness a synthesis of thought and faith, a recognition of the fact that it is impossible for reason to find solid ground that is not consecrated ground; that all philosophy and all science belong to religion; that all truth is a revelation of God; that the truths of written revelation, if not intelligible to reason, are nevertheless consonant with reason; and that divine ...
— The Christian Foundation, April, 1880
... shore, Mr. Gerdes and acting assistant Harris taking the eastern side, while sub-assistant Halter observed angles from permanent stations. The angular measurements were made with all kinds of instruments found suitable to the locality. Only a few of the stations were on solid ground, nearly all the shore being overflowed. Frequently the members of the party were compelled to mount their instruments on the chimney tops of dilapidated houses. In other places boats were run under overhanging trees on the shore, in which signal flags were hoisted, and the angles measured ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... plunged below ground. Skale strode first, Spinrobin following with beating heart; he held Miriam by the hand; his steps, though firm enough, made him think of his efforts as a boy when treading water for solid ground out of his depth. ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... he said, removing his plaid travelling cap as he dropped on solid ground. "That was really quite ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... harbor of a great port, and all the merchantmen who live nearest to this port have been informed that the vehicle city would arrive about midweek and remain four days. What a busy time follows after the floating city is fastened to its moorings! Inhabitants go on solid ground to do their trading. Dealers make large purchases ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... desire for a home did not involve a lonely cabin in a far-off valley, on the contrary I wanted roads and bridges and neighbors. My hope now was to possess a minute isle of safety in the midst of the streaming currents of western life—a little solid ground in my native valley on which the surviving members of my ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... of Winchester under the Plantagenets (Vol. I. p. 301), denies that there is solid ground in history for representing Beaufort as depraved, and condemns Shakespeare for having endowed Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, with merit of which he deprived the memory of Cardinal Beaufort. The late Dean Hook, too, in his elegantly written life of Archbishop Chicheley ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... have long ago determined that this condition is true. It would seem that in those ages of long ago the world must have been very different from what it is now, for the seas flowed over vast areas which are now solid ground. Immense trees grew in those times, and the great ferns and palms and tropical plants grew in portions where now they cannot grow because it is too cold. I want to draw some trees and bushes to ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... out all the marvellous discoveries of science, and all those hardly less marvellous, if less certain, conclusions of historical, ethnological, linguistic criticism, in the serene confidence that they are utterly irrelevant to the truth of Christianity.' 'If on such subjects,' he concluded, 'some solid ground be not found on which highly educated, reflective, reading, reasoning men may find firm footing, I can foresee nothing but a wide, a widening—I fear, an irreparable—breach between the thought and the religion of England. A comprehensive, all-embracing, truly Catholic ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... like Sigmund Freud, Boris Sidis, and Morton Prince, they are as scientific as the apparatus of any other laboratory and their findings are as susceptible of proof. We may, then, go forward with the conviction that we are walking on solid ground and that the main paths, at least, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... tubes which might direct their powers downward or laterally upon the earth were capable of instantaneously propelling every portion of solid ground or rock to a distance of two or three hundred yards, while the particles of objects on the surface of the earth were instantaneously removed to a far greater distance. The tube which propelled the bomb was of a force ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... didn't matter now. Without a parachute, he had flung himself from the plane toward the earth below, and his only thought was his loathing, his repugnance, for that too, too solid ground beneath. ...
— What The Left Hand Was Doing • Gordon Randall Garrett
... for her—fears could not draw breath in the radiance that flooded her soul. There were thick gathering clouds in the sky, but she took no note of them save to be glad that she could raise her sunshade. She did not tread the solid ground at all, or have any sense of belonging to the common human family, until she entered the side yard of the brick house and saw her aunt Miranda standing in the open doorway. Then with a rush she came back ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... down, and under my very eyes the solid ground ends, my horrified vision drops hundreds of feet to the bottom of a mighty gash in Cordilleras' flank, and for one sick instant I shut ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... defies definition. It is impossible to determine nicely where the land ends and the sea begins. The railway follows a succession of inland salt lakes and lagoons, with isolated fishermen's cabins, reminding us of lake-dwellings. In some places the hut is approached by a narrow strip of solid ground, on either side surrounded by water, just admitting the passage of a single pedestrian. The scene is unspeakably desolate. Only sea-birds keep the fisher-folk company; only the railway recalls the busy world ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the statue was uninjured. The clock on the shattered Parish Church recorded the fatal hour when it had stopped in the general ruin: 2.42 p.m. As far as I could learn, the earthquake had not taken the form of a trembling motion, but the solid ground had twice risen and fallen eight feet, a sort of land-wave, which apparently was confined to the light sandy Liguanea plain, for where the mountains began no shock had been felt. The fine old church of St. Andrew ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... was afraid of himself; and he had seen with an infinite dread what cold, dark depths yawn about one whom society shakes off as a vile and venomous thing, and who must eventually take evil and its consequences as his only portion. The hot, reeking apartment wherein he toiled was the first solid ground that he had felt beneath his feet for many days. If he could hold that footing, the water might shoal so that he could reach the land. It is true he could always look to his mother for food and clothing if he would comply with her conditions. But, greatly perverted as his nature ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... subscriptions poured in to the extent of one thousand; and Mr. C. on his return, after what might be called a triumph, discovered the elasticity of his spirit; smiling at past depressions, and now, on solid ground, anticipating ease, wealth, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... level of the swamp, at an elevation higher even than that of the embankment. It was as though the man had been sitting on the limb of a tree. David crossed the tracks and found that on the side of the embankment opposite the shed there was solid ground and what once had been a wharf. He advanced over this cautiously, and as he did so the clouds disappeared, and in the full light of the moon he saw a bayou broadening into a river, and made fast to the decayed ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... be a great advantage to the Government to close the inlet, as the heavy guns can then be transferred to the proving-grounds on the Hook by a railroad built on solid ground, and not liable to give way ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 38, July 29, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... saying anything, lest the passion of anger, dislike, indignation—whatever it was that was boiling up in her breast—should find vent in cries and screams, or worse, in raging words that could never be forgotten. It was as if the piece of solid ground on which she stood had broken from the shore, and she was drifting out ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... more easily said than done. Comparative strangers as yet to the country surrounding Bellwood, even when they had got on solid ground out of the muck and mire of the boggy waste, they knew not which way ...
— The Boys of Bellwood School • Frank V. Webster
... high position; but it was not chimerical or theoretical; it was practical and Scriptural; here was solid ground, a rock-foundation. On it were no sidings, no off-sets, no bogs. The truths they held were clear, clean-cut, adamantine, foundational, and unchangeable. Their oath bound them to defend the sovereignty of Christ, the kingdom of God, ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... head came stubbornly around; his gait was broken, he was floundering in the stream. Now Warburton used his heels savagely. He shortened the reins and whacked Mr. Pirate soundly across the ears. Pirate plunged and reared and, after devious evolutions, reached solid ground. This time his head was high in the air, and, try as he would, he could not lower his neck a ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... the effect has been, and must be, when the affairs of life, in courts of law and the relations of society, or the conduct or feelings of individuals, are suffered to be under the control of fanciful or mystical notions. When a whole people abandons the solid ground of common sense, overleaps the boundaries of human knowledge, gives itself up to wild reveries, and lets loose its passions without restraint, it presents a spectacle more terrific to behold, and becomes more destructive ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... and if their reward was intercepted by death, their names have been immortalized by fame. [811] Four towers were scaled; three gates were burst open; and the French knights, who might tremble on the waves, felt themselves invincible on horseback on the solid ground. Shall I relate that the thousands who guarded the emperor's person fled on the approach, and before the lance, of a single warrior? Their ignominious flight is attested by their countryman Nicetas: an army of phantoms marched with the French hero, and he was magnified to a giant ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... to probe with the end of a staff among the ivy. For some time he was met by the solid ground, but presently the butt of the staff went through suddenly, pitching him on his head, amidst a ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... glaciere, near the entrance, was occupied by a columnar cascade, behind which I forced a passage by chopping away some lovely ornaments of ice. Here also the solid ground-ice falls away a little under the surface, leaving a cavern 8 or 9 feet deep, on the rock side of which every possible glacial fantasy was to be found. The stalactites here presented the peculiar prismatic ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... "pruel" that Yaspard hid in the chimney; but the impatience of his companions to learn more would not allow them to wait on his return before descending into the chamber. They could see that there was solid ground some seven or eight feet beneath the opening, and Harry swung down, and soon reported himself as standing on a "decently paved floor;" but he was too cautious to explore farther until some light was thrown on the subject. Not so Tom Holtum. He did not see the fun in waiting for candles, and ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby
... shot Might have consigned to luckless pot, His marksman's name, and half a shilling, His renown in the art of killing. It was a stirring place of trade Where famous spinning tops were made. And splendid water power was found Where now there's nought but solid ground, Covered with numerous loads of wood, A costly item bad or good. In modern times—of old it stood, Maple at ninety cents a cord, Just four and six-pence, by my word! And Julius Burpee, gone! well, well! He kept the old Rideau Hotel, Where man ...
— Recollections of Bytown and Its Old Inhabitants • William Pittman Lett
... a long time to beat back, and we were all glad to feel solid ground under our feet once more. After a few days we started again, but luck was against me on this occasion, and inside of twelve hours I missed the steamer no less than three times, which, in the New Hebrides, implies a delay ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... rested there was for an instant nothing. Exactly nothing—a vacuum. Vessel, falsework, rollers, trucks, the enormous steel I-beams of the tracks, even the deep-set concrete piers and foundations and a vast hemisphere of the solid ground; all had disappeared utterly and instantaneously. But almost as suddenly as it had been formed the vacuum was filled by a cyclonic rush of air. There was a detonation as of a hundred vicious thunderclaps made one, and, through ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... to divine that the banker would not have gone so far in his expression of opinion on any less solid ground than moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large pill he had to swallow, he got it down. "And now," said Mr. Stryver, shaking his forensic forefinger at the Temple in general, when it was down, "my way out of this, is, to put you ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... the noise that floated up to our ears from the crowds below kept us awake for some time, and that night in my dreams I still fancied that I was on the train and that I could hear the surging of the rails beneath me. Glad, indeed, was I the next morning to wake and find that I was once more on solid ground. ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... Zuyder Zee. Thus these two great marshes were a frame—an almost impassable barrier—by which the northern third of the whole territory of the republic was encircled and defended. Throughout this great morass there was not a hand-breadth of solid ground—not a resting-place for a human foot, save the road which led through Coeworden. This passage lay upon a natural deposit of hard, dry sand, interposed as if by a caprice of nature between the two swamps; and was about half ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... glare is that that reddens all the sky, As though hell's legions rode the air and tossed their torches high! Up, men! the alarm drum beats to arms! and the solid ground seems riven By the shock of warring thunderbolts in ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... exacting the same of you, than for any I shall take in recalling my own. I say there has been but one event in my life; it was that which left me an orphan. O girls, we speak of Clara's coming down to the ground; we speak of seeing our way clear, and treading on solid ground; these are expressions of those whose feet only would walk upon the ground, while their hearts and eyes are on a level with those about them, who have never known how hard to the forehead is the ground, when all we love lie beneath it; how one ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child
... change of mental attitude cannot be brought about till we have laid hold of some fact which is sufficient to afford a reason for the change. We require some solid ground for our belief in this higher law. Ultimately we find this ground in the great Truth of the eternal relation between spirit in the universal and in the particular. When we realise that substantially there is nothing else but spirit, ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... were heard, smoke and ashes rose up, and hot stones fell like hail on every side, setting fire to the dead wood which, after so long a rest, had completely grown over the ground, and causing it at night to assume the appearance of one vast mountain of flame. For fifteen hours the solid ground rolled like a wave of the sea. Fort Orange, which had withstood numberless earthquakes for two centuries and a quarter, was almost overwhelmed. The people betook themselves to their boats, for the ocean and land seemed to have exchanged natures; the water ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston |
