"Torrent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to oppose himself to the torrent of openly expressed opinion, the mortified youth withdrew to a distance, and, hastening among the rude tumuli we have described, as being scattered about the edge of the bank, stood watching, with folded arms and heaving chest, the gradually receding ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... cedars is on their summit; and many of that beautiful species of white cedar which droops its branches like the weeping-willow grow in the clefts of the rock, and in some places almost dip their dark foliage in the torrent. The rock is of a dark grey limestone, and often presents a wall of unbroken surface. Near the hotel a flight of very alarming steps leads down to the bed of the stream, and on reaching it you find yourself enclosed in ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... Asia Minor, now dwindled under Turkish misrule into a wretched village. He was heir to great estates; the glens and forests round him were his own: and that was the use which he made of them. On the other side of the torrent, his mother and his sister, a maiden of wonderful beauty, lived the hermit life, on a footing of perfect equality with their female slaves, and the pious women who ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... as death; the sweat ran in streams down upon his naked breast; his words came like a torrent when he tried to ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... eleven o'clock at night. Finding himself, at nine o'clock, the senior officer in the field, he, in that capacity, withdrew the troops from their advanced position, and concentrated them at the point where they were to pass the night. At eleven, beneath a torrent of rain, destitute of a tent or other protection, and without food or refreshment, he lay down on an ammunition wagon, but was prevented by the pain of his injuries, especially that of his wounded knee, from finding any ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cataract, exactly at the spot from whence in former days the Table Rock used to project from the land over the boiling caldron below, there is now a shaft, down which you will descend to the level of the river, and pass between the rock and the torrent. This Table Rock broke away from the cliff and fell, as up the whole course of the river the seceding rocks have split and fallen from time to time through countless years, and will continue to do till the bed of the upper lake is reached. You will descend ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... weary!" she sighed, as her billowy Hair she unloosed in a torrent of gold That rippled and fell o'er a figure as willowy, Graceful and fair as a goddess of old: Over her jewels she flung herself drearily, Crumpled the laces that snowed on her breast, Crushed ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... vanished, the eyes became as quick, passionate, and leaping as a dark torrent. He was more violently alive than she had ever seen a man. Had it been a woman she would have felt—as Cecilia had felt with Mrs. Hughs—the indecency, the impudence of this exhibition; but from that male violence ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and mountains she passed, and again over mountains; hearing only the cries of wild deer and the sound of torrent-water. ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... times, when there is peace in the land, and the wet season has made the unbridged rivers impassable, whole companies of travellers camp on either side of some river—a silver thread in the dry season, a rushing torrent now. But the r'kass knows every ford, and, his long pole aiding him, manages to reach his destination. It is his business to defy Nature if necessary, just as he defies man in the pursuit of his task. He is a living proof of the ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... up at Jackson—to be famous long after the war as the seat of a bitter mountain-feud. At noon the next day, they struck "the Nahrrers" (Narrows), where the river ran like a torrent between high steep walls of rock, and where the men stood to the oars watchfully and the old squire stood upright, watching every movement of the raft; for "bowing" there would have meant destruction to the raft and the death of them all. That night they were ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... hand for the note, when something hit him violently in the back. It was the magazine hurled by the burly Englishman, who followed up the assault by a torrent of abuse. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... possessed—not indeed in its entirety, but to an extent which made them, as they say, "one with the Reality of things." The greater the artist is, the wider and deeper is the range of this pure sensation: the more sharply he is aware of the torrent of life and loveliness, the rich profusion of possible beauties and shapes. He always wants to press deeper and deeper, to let the span of his perception spread wider and wider; till he unites with the whole of that Reality which he feels all about him, and of which his own life is a part. He ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... that it meets. Or we speak of a "storm of anger," because what takes place in a person's soul in such a state is similar in some way to the confusion and force of a storm in Nature. Again, an expression like a "torrent of words" is made possible by our familiarity with the quick pouring forth of water in a torrent. By this expression, of course, we wish to suggest a similar quick rushing of words. Other expressions of this kind are "a wave of anguish," the "sun of good fortune," and there are hundreds ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... well might the Dane have rolled back the sea from his footstool, as Warwick and his disordered troop (often and aye, dazzled here by Oxford's star, there by Edward's sun, dealing random blows against each other) have resisted the general whirl and torrent of the surrounding foe. To add to the rout, Somerset and the on-guard of his wing had been marching towards the earl at the very time that the cry of "treason" had struck their ears, and Edward's charge was made; these men, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and all the populace was active. Banners floated from all the windows, and a gay procession was parading along the quay, marching under the echoing roof of the long wooden bridge which crossed the green torrent of the river. Numberless little boats were darting to and fro on the smooth surface of the Lake, and through them all her own, bearing Felicita's coffin, sped swiftly on its way to the landing-stage, on which, as if standing there amid the hubbub to receive it, her sad ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... they make their nearest course to the sea. In the wet season the valleys and low lands by the sea are overflown with water; and then the small drills that run into the sea are great rivers; and the gullies, which are dry for 3 or 4 months before, now discharge an impetuous torrent. The low land by the seaside is for the most part friable, loose, sandy soil; yet indifferently fertile and clothed with woods. The mountains are chequered with woods and some spots of savannahs: some of the hills are wholly covered with tall, flourishing trees; others but thinly; ...
— A Continuation of a Voyage to New Holland • William Dampier
... illustrated still further his sympathy for the humbler races of animals. One of the sudden freshets which come to the Ohio, caused commonly by heavy rains melting the snow in the valleys of its tributary streams, had raised the river to an unusual height. The yellow torrent rushed along its channel, bearing on its surface logs, boards, and the debris of fences, shanties, and lumber-yards. A steamboat, forced by the rapid current against the stone landing, had been stove, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... had set free the heart, and a torrent of feelings and memories surged up,—disordered, turbulent, yet strangely unified by the simple nature, the few aims of the being that held them. The waters of the past had been gathering these past weeks, and now she found peace in their release, in the abandonment of herself through ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and death. She wants the earth in her love—but her lover is strange and hears persistently a call that is not of earth. The woman tries to hold him. All earth beauty is about her—her love a perfume, a torrent. The voice of destiny speaks to her that it must not be. She rebels. The story rushes on, many voices coming to her re-stating the inexorable truth that he ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... of civilization had penetrated this portion of the country. The gloomy wilderness frowned every where around, pathless and savage. From the tangled morass in which he reared his wigwams he dispatched runners in all directions, to give impulse to the torrent of conflagration and blood with which he intended to sweep the settlements ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... that moment the presence of Henriette irritated her. She wanted to be alone, leaning to watch this ever-shifting torrent of humanity. This balcony belonged to her room. She had revenged herself for the upper berth by securing a room much better placed than Henriette's. But if Henriette intended ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... listen at last," she said, then poured out a flood of entreaties. He was swept from every mental hold, drowned in the torrent of her petitions, baffled and bewildered at one moment, filled ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... to his perspicacity to discover the parcels of truth rolled by the old servant in the torrent of his divagations." ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... news about getting down the Lemhi River, on which they were camped, and the big river below—the Salmon River. But with the old man for guide, he went about seventy miles, into the gorge of the Salmon River, before he would quit. But he found that no man could get down that torrent, with either boat or pack train. He gave it up. They were nearly starved when they got back at the Indian camp, where Lewis and the other men were trading. Sacagawea had kept all her people from going on east to the buffalo country, though now they none ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... developing this plan, the landlord and two able-bodied men arrived on the scene, all looking rather serious and alarmed. Jensen met them with a torrent of description and explanation, which did not at all tend to encourage them for ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... this war in order to give vent to the restless humours which are beginning to work. I said so to Lord Bathurst, and he replied that 'he thought so too, but that the present Emperor was a man of great firmness,' as if any individual authority or character could stem the torrent of determined action impelled by universal revolution of feeling and opinion. He said the late Emperor was so well aware of this that he died of the vexation it had caused him, which was aggravated by the reflection that he was in great measure ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... into such a torrent of bad language in Portuguese, Arabic and English that I fear the rest of my ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... trying the conclusions that had been drawn therefrom by the most rigorous and searching logic,—and then, assailing the credibility of the testimony brought forward to prove the habitual cruelty of his client, he gave utterance to a withering torrent of invective and sarcasm, in which the character of the main hostile witness shrivelled and blackened like paper in a flame. Then—having been eight hours on his feet—he began to avail himself of that last dangerous resource which genius only may use,—the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... we were made to feel our helplessness. We had thought ourselves saved, and we were still at the mercy of the river. I even regretted that the women were not on the roof; for, every minute, I expected to see them precipitated into the boiling torrent. But when I suggested regaining our refuge they ...
— The Flood • Emile Zola
... useless—preferred before her, caused sharp and bitter emotions. The flagrant injustice of his treatment galled, as much as his unmerited contempt humiliated her. For a little while her feelings bore her along on their rough but silent torrent, while the hot winds of evil heated her veins with fire, and caused a hot flush to burn on either cheek. Ho! how exulted the tempter now; he had long laid in wait for her soul, and now, while it oscillated and wavered, how triumphant he was; how defiantly he lifted his lurid ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... pitch-pine and gave a fairish light, but not so much as tarred rope would have done; but it was enough for me to be able to make out the face of the cliff, and I saw a break by which I could get up for a good bit anyhow. It was where a torrent came down when the snows were melting, and as soon as I had got to the bottom I made straight up. There were rocks piled at its foot, and I got to the top of ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... as a cushion below. With difficulty we extricated ourselves and horses, and descending the mass of carcasses, we at last succeeded in reaching a few acres of clear ground. It was elevated a few feet above the water of the torrent, which ran through the ravine, and offered to our broken-down horses a magnificent pasture of sweet blue grass. But the poor things were too terrified and exhausted, and they stretched themselves down upon the ground, a ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... nose and narrowed her eyes. Then ruthlessly she drowned his reply in a torrent of music. Like mad she played, rocking her slender body back and forth along the key-board; holding rigid her fingers, her hands, and the muscles of her arms. The bass notes roared like the rumbling of thunder; the treble flashed like the dart of lightnings. Abruptly she muted the instrument. Silence ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... torrent wracks me. But Hymen's torch, held downward, shall drop out, And for it, the mad Furies swing their brands About ...
— The Noble Spanish Soldier • Thomas Dekker
... with him and he with her, he had played blindly into their hands, and through him she should have fallen into their power! It brought a sickening chill, a sort of hideous panic to Jimmie Dale—and then fury, anger, in a torrent, surged upon him, and there came a merciless desire to crush, to strangle, to stamp out this inhuman band of criminals that, with intolerable effrontery to the laws of God and man, were so elaborately and scientifically ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... earthly paradise; on the other, a narrower private one, a mere cart track, grass-grown, cool, and shady, leading down to the mill stream that ran behind the grounds, brawling and seething and swelled by the spring rains into quite a respectable torrent. Down this path Dora always took me to walk when she wanted me to say anything uncommonly foolish, which could serve her as food for laughter, and down this path again we must always go when that ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... embarrassed. The result of their labors was, accordingly, as narrow as the pathway of the faithful into the Mahometan paradise,—so slender, indeed, that Blondin should have been selected as the only candidate who could hope to keep his balance on it, with the torrent of events rushing ever swifter and louder below. It might sustain the somewhat light Unionism of Mr. Pendleton, but would General McClellan dare to trust its fragile footing, with his Report and his West Point oration, with his record, in short, under his arm? Without ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... forge is usually placed on the bank of a brook, or rather of a torrent, which supplies the fall of water necessary for the motive power by means of a flume about a hundred meters in length. In most cases the forge is surrounded on all sides with a forest which yields the wood necessary for the manufacture ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 430, March 29, 1884 • Various
... much wider, and in flood times rendered the Overboro' road almost impassable; for before a bridge was built it spread widely and crossed the highway—a rushing, though shallow, torrent fifty yards broad. The stumps of the willows that had grown by it could still be found in places, and now and then an ancient 'bullpoll' was washed up. This grass is so tough that the tufts or cushions it forms will last in water for fifty years, even ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... Chien mourns over Monaco, she turned toward the arbour in which the cure had told her to wait. Most of the big gold and copper grape-leaves had fallen now, but some were left, crisped by frost until they seemed to have been cut from thin sheets of metal; and over the mass of knotted branches rained a torrent of freshly opened roses. They and their foliage made a thick screen, and Mary could not see the inside of the arbour; but as she reached the entrance Vanno stood just within, waiting for her, very pale, but with a light on his face other than the sunlight which streamed over him. Then Mary knew ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a flat fish save those who buy—near those dreariest of academic groves, the Praca Academica, at the east end proper, or what an Anglo-Indian would term the 'native town.' Here we see the joint mouth of the torrent-beds Santa Luzia and Joao Gomes which has more than once deluged Funchal. Timid Funchalites are expecting another flood: the first was in 1803, the second in 1842, and thus they suspect a cycle of forty years. [Footnote: The guide-books make every twenty-fifth ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... of the great Black Forest of Germany babbled in playful melody no more, but rushed on with deafening din, mingling their torrent roar with the wild creaking of the huge oaks, the rustling of the firs, the howling of the affrighted wolves, and the ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... decided to attempt escape while they had strength. Wearily they climbed the steep and rugged path that led them to freedom. Starting early in the morning, they reached the summit, two thousand five hundred feet above the raging torrent, at nine o'clock at night. They were ready to drop in their tracks, yet hope inspired them to renewed exertions. They struggled on fifteen miles more ere they staggered into a farm-house on the ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... an hour the messenger returned. He was wildly excited and poured a torrent of native gibberish into the attentive ears of Tabu-Tabu and the king. He pointed several times to the point of his jaw, rubbed the small of his back, and once he touched his nose; whereupon Mr. Gibney was aware that the said organ had a slight list ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... diving ducks as the shell roared down, struck with a horrible crash one of the buildings in a side-street just off the square, burst it open, and flung upward and outward a flash of blinding light, a spurt of smoke, a torrent of flying bricks and broken stones. Through the rattle and clatter of falling masonry and flying rubbish there came, piercing and shrill, the sound of a woman's screams. They choked off suddenly, and for some seconds there were no sounds but those of falling fragments, ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... different pictures of myself holding the fish up. There were trout everywhere. The difficulty was to stop the boat long enough to get them. In fact, we did not stop, save in an occasional eddy in the midst of the torrent. We whipped the stream as we flew along. Under great boulders, where the water seethed and roared, under deep cliffs where it flew like a mill-race, ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... longer reported speeches as delivered. They were revised and raised to greater powers of vituperation and abuse. Instead of a convincing, logical speech, their champion hurled a "torrent of scathing denunciation," "withering ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... set, and often coated with an impenetrable enamel; but an inclined plane of a more or less gentle gradient wound from base to summit to give access to the latter. When a storm burst upon one of these towers, this plane became in a moment the bed of a torrent, for its outer edge would, of course, be protected by a low wall. The water would pour like a river over the sloping pavement and strike violently against each angle. Whether it were allowed to flow over the edges of the inclined plane or, as seems more probable, directed ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... universal apostacy from their religion and allegiance, could, in so short a time, have produced such a prodigious and total alteration; and that the memory of those, who out of duty and conscience have opposed that torrent which overwhelmed them, may not lose the recompence due to their virtues, but having undergone the injuries and reproaches of that, might find a vindication ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... the angry boiling waters. The rocks on each side have been blasted so as to form a path by which you may walk up to the first fall; but this path was at times very narrow and you have to cling to the chain which is let into the rock. The heavy storm of the day before had swelled the torrent so that it rose nearly a foot above this path; and before I had proceeded far, I found that the flood swept between my legs with a force which would have taken some people off their feet. The rapids below the Falls are much grander than the Falls themselves; there was one down ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... servants of my young mistresses upon her errands, and if they pleaded their prior duty to obey the calls of another, would demand that they should be forthwith whipped for their insolence. If the young ladies remonstrated with her, she met them with a perfect torrent of invective and abuse. In these paroxysms of fury she always spoke in French, with a vehemence and volubility, which strongly contrasted with the calmness and firmness of the young ladies. She would boast of what she had done in New-Orleans, and of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... vessel lying beside the quay; for I continued to trust that in getting out from the dock some accident or mischance might occur to spoil our sport. But no; there she lay, rolling and pitching in such a way that, even at anchor, they could not stand on the deck without holding. Amid the torrent of compliments for the perfection of all my arrangements, and innumerable sweet things on my taste in the decoration and fitting up of my cabin, I scarcely felt myself afloat for some minutes, and we got under weigh amid ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... the burial, Back like a bursting torrent all men fled Back to the city and the sacred wall. But Paris stood, and lifted not his head. Alone he stood, and brooded o'er the dead, As broods a lion, when a shaft hath flown, And through the strong heart of his mate hath ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... water; and, on the other, examine the deposition of sediment in the sea, and the imbedding of animal and vegetable remains in new strata. He might ascertain, by direct observation, the action of a mountain torrent, as well as of a marine current; might compare the products of volcanos poured out upon the land with those ejected beneath the waters; and might mark, on the one hand, the growth of the forest, and, on the other, that of the coral ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... affairs in prehistoric Tuscany. You can't shuffle off your own century. For between the broad plain and the range of hills where the Viale dei Colli now winds serpentine on its beautiful way round the glens and ravines, the Arno runs, a broad torrent flood in times of freshet: the Arno, unbridged as yet (in the days I speak of) by the Ponte Vecchio, an impassable frontier between the wide territory of prehistoric Fiesole and the narrow fields of some minor village, long since forgotten, on the opposite bank. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... as through a furious torrent all bodies are carried, being by their nature united with and co-operating with the whole, as the parts of our body with one another. How many a Chrysippus, how many a Socrates, how many an Epictetus has time already swallowed up! And let the same thought ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... mills, then, on the bridge," he muttered. And he opened the door with care and went out. With a dreadful sense of coming evil he went along the Corraterie and took his way down the steep to the bridge which, far below, curbed the blue rushing waters of the Rhone. The roar of the icy torrent and of the busy mills, stupendous as it was, was not loud enough to deaden the two words that clung to his ears, "Too late! Too late!" Nor did the frosty sunshine, gloriously reflected from the line of snowy peaks to eastward, avail to pierce the gloom in which he walked. For Louis Gentilis, if ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... birthplace. They were a quiet, civil, obliging, simple-minded set—if not inviting strangers to settle amongst them, never rude or repelling to them; equitable in dealings, and strange to all disturbance or outrage. What they are now is no more easy to say than what a rivulet is when a torrent has carried away its banks and swept its bed. Two thousand navvies, the outsweepings of jails and the galleys, have come down to the works; a horde of contractors, sub-contractors, with the several staffs of clerks, inspectors, ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... Mr. Tatt when Matthew, appearing in the character of a client at the desolate office door, actually announced himself as the sole surviving son of old Joshua Grice, flowed out in such a torrent of congratulatory words, that Mat was at first literally overwhelmed by them. He soon recovered himself, however; and while Mr. Tatt was still haranguing fluently about proving his client's identity, and securing his client's right of inheritance, silenced the solicitor, by declaring as bluntly ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... speech flowed on, he looked sidelong at her, in a trouble of fear and wonder; then, at length, absently, trying to put his mind elsewhere and to leave her voice as the muted murmur of a distant torrent. He succeeded fairly well in this, for Lorena combined admirably in herself the parts of speaker and listener, and was not, he thankfully noted, ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson
... he walked swiftly on, pretending not to have noticed them: but oh! his eyes roved wildly to each side of the road for a chance of escape. He saw none. To his right was a precipitous rock; to his left a profound ravine with a torrent below, and the sides scantily clothed with fir-trees and bushes: he was, in fact, near the top of a long rising ground called "La Mauvaise Cote," on account of a murder committed there two ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... on—the shuffling of the conversation gradually subsided. He got into the mass of his subject; his weakness became strength, his hesitation was turned into energy; and, bringing the whole volume of his mind to bear upon it, he poured forth a torrent of the most close and conclusive argument, brilliant with all the exuberance of an imagination which ranged over all nature for illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of them with the same unerring dexterity, ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... poetry, we are saturated in it, intoxicated with it, something solemn, grand, mysterious is happening to us.... Punin, by preference, kept to poetry, musical, sonorous poetry; he was ready to lay down his life for poetry. He did not read, he declaimed the verse majestically, in a torrent of rhythm, in a rolling outpour through his nose, like a man intoxicated, lifted out of himself, like the Pythian priestess. And another habit he had: first he would lisp the verses through softly, in a whisper, as it ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... could not afford them could at least afford best. The sages had found a bench beside the walk where the statue of Daniel Webster looks down on the confluence of two driveways, and the stream of motors, going and coming, is like a seething torrent either way. ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... beast as usual; to decoy him he bought a sheep's heart. While Gargousse was eating, he passed a cord through the end of his chain, and fastened it to a tree; and when he had the scoundrel of an ape once tied fast, he poured on him such a torrent of blows! a torrent that fire could not ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... Committees joined in urging ratification, as did the entire State delegation in Congress, who had voted for submitting the amendment. The resolution was introduced and by the rules went over for one day. All looked promising when suddenly its advocates found themselves in a torrent of opposition, due to the injection of the fight that was being made for the governorship and interference from outside the State. The Maryland Legislature sent a committee to urge its rejection and anti-suffrage leaders from all over the country ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... more repressed habits of modern times can give no idea of the wild fervor of a religious revival among a people so passionate and susceptible to impressions as the Italians. It swept society like a spring torrent from the sides of the Apennines, bearing all before it. Houses were sacked with religious fervor by penitent owners, and licentious pictures and statuary and books, and all the thousand temptations and appliances of a luxurious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... hollow spar, Between his lips Zophiel in triumph bore. Now, earth and sea seem shaken! Dashed afar He feels it part;—'tis dropt;—the waters roar, He sees it in a sable vortex whirling, Formed by a cavern vast, that 'neath the sea, Sucks the fierce torrent in. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... puma leaped from Shaddy's back up one of the great branches nearest to the next tree, whence he poured down a fierce torrent of feline defiance upon his more powerful enemy; while Shaddy rose and shook himself just as the rising sun sent a glow of light in the heavens, and illuminated the savage drama commencing ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... repulse, to violate the laws of prudence, and even of justice. The triumph of the party, which he deserted and opposed, has fixed a stain of infamy on the name of Julian; and the unsuccessful apostate has been overwhelmed with a torrent of pious invectives, of which the signal was given by the sonorous trumpet [2] of Gregory Nazianzen. [3] The interesting nature of the events which were crowded into the short reign of this active emperor, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... breaking; all the passion of her hot nature was roused; she felt herself unfairly, unjustly, treated; insulted on the very day that was to have crowned her pride. She could not control herself, nor could she accept her defeat: she stamped her foot on the ground, and poured out a torrent of objurgation, accusing Jean of treachery, demanding to know whence he had produced her rival, appealing to the elders to revise the judgment. Then, suddenly ceasing, as she saw by the looks of those around her that while in some her fate created pity, in others ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... they were well out of hearing of 'Lias, she fell on the boy with a torrent of words, gripping him the while with her long thin hand, so that only violence could have released him. Her eyes flamed at him under the brown woollen shawl she wore pinned under her chin; the little emaciated creature became a fury. What did he come there for, 'moiderin 'Lias wi his ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had looked upon things which until then had been withheld from his vision. She walked over to the chair, and laid her hand where his head had rested. Then, all at once, the tension within her seemed to snap and she flung herself within its capacious, wide-reaching arms, in a torrent of tears—the ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... appearance of howdahed elephants and royal banners dimly seen through the haze, plainly intimated the return of Tippoo to Bangalore; while shouts, and irregular discharges of musketry, announced the real or pretended rejoicing of the inhabitants. The city gates received the living torrent, which rolled towards them; the clouds of smoke and dust were soon dispersed, and the horizon was ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... for any active line—turn newspaper editor; I should say you are perfectly qualified, and this day's adventure may be the foundation of your fortune,' thereupon I turned round and rode off. The fellow followed me with a torrent of abuse. 'Confound you!' said he—yet that was not the expression either—'I know you; you are one of the horse-patrol, come down into the country on leave to see your relations. Confound you, you and the like of you have knocked my business on the head near Lunnon, and I suppose ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... waterfalls, descending now in a broad sheet of whitened foam, then separating into several streams, and again narrowing to a swift current through the rocky confined channel. The visitor will pause by its whitened torrent, loth to depart from ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... him. He touched his hat and drove off, leaving her alone in the long empty street. She wandered away westward, toward strange thoroughfares, where she was not likely to meet acquaintances. The feeling of aimlessness had returned. Once she found herself in the afternoon torrent of Broadway, swept past tawdry shops and flaming theatrical posters, with a succession of meaningless faces gliding by ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... The torrent-torn face of the earth; the vast rearrangement of the Drift materials by rivers, compared with which our own rivers are rills; the vast continental regions which were evidently flooded, all testify to an extraordinary amount of moisture first raised up from the seas and ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... secretary, swept off his feet by this torrent of uncommon and mystical language, and passing a moist hand through his feathery hair. He was not entirely ignorant, of course, of the alleged use of sound in the various systems of so-called magic that have influenced ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... wind had arisen until it was a gale, and it began to rain. Gently at first the drops came down, until at length there was a torrent of water descending from the overhead clouds. But those in the Falcon ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... against the flagstaff, and his gory head sank back upon his breast as though he were about to faint. Then suddenly he lifted it, and with clenched and quivering fists, held high in the air, he broke out into such a torrent of blasphemy and cursing that even the Boers fell back for a moment, dismayed into silence by the force of the fury wrung from ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... in a long, serviceable-looking boat, with a wild, handsome, dark-haired son, and a silent, solemn old man for his crew. He himself is lean, wrinkled, hungry-looking; his eyes are restless with excitement, and his tongue overwhelms us with a torrent of words, spoken in a strange accent, but singularly free from provincialisms and bad grammar. He informs us that we must have been set to the northward in the night by a current, and goes on to acquaint us with so many other things, with such a fidgety sparkling of the eyes and such ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... cigar. Servants passed in and out removing the things from the table. Presently they were left alone. The heavy breath of the palm trees floated in upon them; the fruit of the passion-flower hung temptingly at the window; they could hear the sound of a torrent just behind the house. The day was droning luxuriously, yet the eyes of both, as by some weird influence, were fastened upon the hill; and presently they saw, at the highest point where the road was visible, a horseman. He came slowly down ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of our work a calamity occurred, which was very nearly becoming a catastrophe. By the giving way of a dam, after some heavy rains, the little stream which threaded its silvery way past Spring Hill swelled without any warning into a torrent, which, sweeping through my temporary hut, very nearly carried us all away, and destroyed stores of between one and two hundred pounds in value. This calamity might have had a tragical issue for me, for seeing a little box ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... not proceeded very far when we were fortunate enough to fall athwart a tiny stream, with just the merest trickle of water in it now, but which was evidently, in the rainy season, a roaring, raging torrent. The bed of this stream was full of small boulders, that served very well as stepping-stones, and as we knew we could not go astray if we followed the course of the stream, and as we knew, moreover, that by so doing we should be constantly rising, and as, further, we ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... his telescope; the great ships were laboring over the waves; the toiling eagerness of commerce, the fierce spirit of revolution, were only ebbing in brief rest, and sleepless statesmen were dreading the possible crisis of the morrow. What were our little Tina and her trouble in this mighty torrent, rushing from one awful unknown to another? Lighter than the smallest centre of quivering life in the water-drop, hidden and uncared for as the pulse of anguish in the breast of the tiniest bird that has fluttered down to its ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... lie over and creak so loudly, as we cleft the foaming waves, that I expected to be upset every instant; and I blamed Jack in my heart for his rashness. But I did him injustice; for although during two seconds the water rushed inboard in a torrent, he succeeded in steering us sharply round to the leeward side of the rock, where the water was comparatively calm and the ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... realized, for when he found that his appeal would not be successful, he got into quite a frantic condition. He threw himself on his knees, and held up his hands, wringing them in plaintive supplication, and poured forth a torrent of entreaty, with the tears rolling down his cheeks, and his whole face and form expressive of ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... waves. In Pisa, at such an hour, the Arno is the emblem of Despair. Swollen with melted snow from the mountains, it has gnawed its miserable clay banks and now creeps along, leaden and inert, half solid, like a torrent of liquid mud—irresolute whether to be earth or water; whether to stagnate here for ever at my feet, or crawl onward yet another sluggish league into the sea. So may Lethe look, or Styx: the nightmare ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... river rose four feet in one hour at midnight, flooding out the 18th Hussars, who are bivouacked by its banks, and carrying away the bridge that had been built by the Imperial Light Horse. Many horses and mules were swept down-stream by the roaring torrent, and drowned before anybody could attempt to ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... moment fancy you could appreciate my feelings? Do you imagine that the little tingle of sympathy which you might experience were I to say that, instead of pushing me from her, I felt her clasp tighten about me,—would tell you anything of the great torrent of hot blood that deluged my heart as she lay there in my arms, quivering ecstatically at every kiss? No! a thousand times no! Therefore have I thought best to say nothing about it. Our love can keep its own secrets.—But alas! this ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... wherever the rocks protect the mist from the sunbeam, and suffer it to water the earth, there the laurel and other richest vegetation fill the hollows, giving a better glory to the sun itself. For sunshine, on the torrent spray, {60} on the grass of its valley, and entangled among the laurel stems, or glancing from their leaves, became a thousandfold lovelier and more sacred than the same sunbeams, burning on the ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... whom many a regretful sigh was heaved, and the evil Loki, whom none could regret. In the course of the feast, however, this last-named god appeared in their midst like a dark shadow, and when bidden to depart, he gave vent to his evil passions in a torrent of invective against ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... Kirkstone mountain, the storm had wetted me through and through, and before I reached the top it was so wild and outrageous, that it would have been unmanly to have suffered the poor woman (guide) to continue pushing on, up against such a torrent of wind and rain: so I dismounted and sent her home with the storm in her back. I am no novice in mountain mischiefs, but such a storm as this was, I never witnessed, combining the intensity of the cold, with the violence of the wind and rain. The ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... flowed in a rough torrent over Southern Europe they effaced civilization. But this Saracen wave of conquest bore on its crest—but only on its crest—art, refinements, and culture of a type unknown to Europe. The twilight of the Middle Ages was illumined by a revival of Greek culture at Constantinople, ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... made nearly thirty years ago, is a delight, almost a marvel; the style, the torrent of simile, the vivid thought, rank it as a classic. But M. Taine's is less a book of travel than a work of art; in the iridescence of the descriptions, you lose the reflection of the things described. Even hand-books, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... the Talmud and the Scriptures were equally impotent to quell the torrent of the worthy woman's eloquence when she felt that the occasion demanded her timely interference; in vain Kalimann supported his side of the question by citing from the book of Job: "The gold and the crystal cannot equal it, and ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... madness to his rival! His father absent on an embassy; Himself a stranger almost; wholly friendless! A torrent, rolling down a precipice, Is easier to be stopt, ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... until they were close to the high cliff whence the stream gushed out. Here they found that the ravine was wider, and at the bottom of it a patch of sand and boulders showed that there was foothold beside the roaring torrent. ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... not much less stunned by this reply than if she had been struck with lightning. Practised as she had long been in commanding her passions and inclinations, a torrent of ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... wraps she possessed. To keep up the spirits of the children she started a hymn, "Oh, come let us sing." Amidst the roar of the elements they caught the tune, and gradually their terror was subdued. When the torrent ceased she was in a high fever. She dosed herself with quinine, and as the shadow of death is never very far away in Africa she made all arrangements in case the end should come. But her temperature fell, and in two days she was ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... must describe its everyday work in some detail. But I wish I could also give the reader an adequate picture of the surge of activities raised by the first plunge of the Department into Irish life and thought. After a time the torrent of business made channels for itself and went on in a more orderly fashion; practical ideas and promising openings were sifted out at an early stage of their approach to the Department from those which were neither one nor the other; time was economised, work distributed, ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... John when her feelings were ruffled. She had planned and waited till the last moment, afraid of herself and afraid of her husband. She looked at him as he paced back and forth, back and forth, with a torrent of longing swelling up in her and threatening to bring her tears. She must find a way to ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... that we should look closely to the apes and monkeys for language, both by voice and sign. In 1891 there was a flood of talk on "the speech of monkeys," and it was not until about 1904 that the torrent stopped. At first the knowledge that monkeys can and do communicate to a limited extent by vocal sounds was hailed as a "discovery"; but unfortunately for science, nothing has been proved beyond the long-known fact that primates of a given species understand the meaning of the few sounds ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but shabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a black handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all directions flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated ribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... of hissing, roaring flame. Jurgis shrank back appalled, for he thought it was an accident; there fell a pillar of white flame, dazzling as the sun, swishing like a huge tree falling in the forest. A torrent of sparks swept all the way across the building, overwhelming everything, hiding it from sight; and then Jurgis looked through the fingers of his hands, and saw pouring out of the caldron a cascade of living, leaping fire, white with a whiteness not of earth, scorching the eyeballs. ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... mountains that formed a grand towering background in all Fred's sketches of the White House. Its bed was rugged and broken—a deep cutting, which the water had made on the hill-side. Here was quite a forest of dwarf-trees and shrubs; but so small were they, and so deep the torrent's bed, that you could barely see the tree-tops as you approached the spot over the bare hills. In dry weather this burn tinkled over a chaos of rocks, forming myriads of miniature cascades and hosts of limpid little pools. During heavy rains it ran ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... the road. Then a gust of wind and a torrent of rain beating upon the leaky roof drowned all other sounds. Emily ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Susette was not my nurse, yet I knew she could scold in such a bewildering torrent of French as did sometimes frighten me; and as I could see nothing but the calm, beautiful starlit sky over the sleeping sea, I dropped the blind, and sprang back into bed. It made a noise as I dropped it, and for some time the fear of being ...
— My Young Days • Anonymous
... hide his vexation at this torrent of words, which begins when they are still half way from home, and has no sea to empty into. When Caroline is in her room, she goes on ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... nearly hopeless to push my way through the wood, I followed the course of a mountain torrent. At first, from the waterfalls and number of dead trees, I could hardly crawl along; but the bed of the stream soon became a little more open, from the floods having swept the sides. I continued slowly to advance ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... tale, while Richard half-chanted the music-speech of the most musical of poets, telling of the roaring wind that the mariner did not feel, of the flags of electric light, of the dances of the wan stars, of the sighing of the sails, of the star-dogged moon, and the torrent-like falls of the lightning down the mountainous cloud—for so Barbara, who had seen two or three tropical thunder-storms, explained to ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... destruction; melodious birth-songs will come from the fires of the burning phoenix," assuring us that the progress of the race is certain, even if nations are doomed to a decline and fall whenever conservative forces are not strong enough to resist the torrent of ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... to succumb. Cornered by the loyal forces, he was driven up against the Vaal River in flood. With his pursuers on the one side and the raging torrent on the other, he was drowned in an ill-starred attempt to escape across that treacherous river. Parties were sent out to drag the river and search for the body, and a reward of 50 Pounds was offered to the finder. Mrs. Beyers left Pretoria ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... not been in the crowd above a minute before I felt myself carried along the street, as if by the force of a mighty torrent. I was hemmed in on every side by a seething mass of men and women, some of whom were praying and singing, while others used many profane words, and uttered threats which would not be seemly for me to write down. I quickly learned that the people were making their way toward the ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... consequence, upbraided by some as a coward; but when a fellow-bishop, Papianus, ventured to ask an explanation of a course of proceeding which apparently betokened indecision, Cyprian treated the inquiry as an insult, and poured out upon his correspondent a whole torrent of invectives and reproaches. He is God's bishop, and no one is to attempt, by the breath of suspicion, to stain the lustre of his episcopal dignity. "I perceive by your letter," says he, "that you believe the same things of me, and persist in ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... affection between these two—first and last of a family of six—was enhanced by their very unlikeness. Lance had the elan of a torrent; Paul the stillness and depth of a mountain lake. Lance was a rapier; Paul a claymore—slow to smite, formidable when roused. Both were natural leaders of men; both, it need hardly be added, 'Piffers'[3] in the grain. They had only returned in March from active service, ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... from the memory of mankind. Turkey, jeered at even by Spain, flouted even by Italy , yet potentially the most powerful nation for evil upon the earth, would spread as by magic over Roumania and Austro-Hungary, and pour through the Alpine passes like a torrent of fire upon Germany and France. Back of the much contemned "Sick Man of the East"—whom combined Christendom has failed to frighten—are nearly two hundred million people, scattered from the Pillars of Hercules to the Yellow Sea, all ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... swirled in a torrent against the window, and casually glancing outside at the tossing gardens he ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... reducing the Kaiser's ranks, and of hastening the day when, with weakened numbers, Germany could no longer resist the onslaught of the armies of France and Britain and Belgium. Here, then, in front of Verdun, the French had but a mere handful in their first-line trenches—a mere handful—upon whom that torrent of shells was rained. Just a scattered, yet noble band, ready to hold up the assault ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... At one source[O] their waters blend, Soon to draw apart, and plainward Each its separate way to wend. When once more their waters mingle In a channel deep and wide, All the flotsam comes together That is borne upon the tide: Ships, and trunks of trees, uprooted In the torrent's wild career, Meet, as 'mid the swirling waters Chance their random way may steer. Yet the shelving of the channel And the flowing water's force Guides each movement, and determines Every floating fragment's course. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... diamond-tinted spray, and send up to the cliffs a ceaseless roar which echoes and reechoes down the canon? How awe-inspiring seems the answer to this question, when we think upon it seriously! The subtle force which draws this torrent down is the same power that holds the planets in their courses, retains the comets in their fearful paths, and guides the movements of the stellar universe. What is this power? We call it gravitation; ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... moments for the Cotes du Rhone. With him Sauterne was to Medoc what Catullus was to Homer. He would sport with a syllogism in sipping St. Peray, but unravel an argument over Clos de Vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of Chambertin. Well had it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the peddling propensity to which I have formerly alluded—but this was by no means the case. Indeed to say the truth, that trait of mind in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... he," she said, in the midst of a torrent of sobs and tears. "It's a dooty. They says if you does your dooty all will come right in the end. It may be, but I don't see it no further than ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... dropped would strike the water below. On the west a stream came rippling over the stones between bluffs high and massive enough for a deep rapid river—bluffs of wild majesty worn into varied outlines, as though a mighty torrent had once surged between them, forcing the very rocks to crumble before its headlong career. But now only a gentle stream wandered through the broad bed, here shallow over the sand, there darkling in a still pool, now making a green willow-shaded island, and now a deep ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... tries by art and skill To stem the torrent of a woman's will: For if she will, she will; you may depend on't— And if she won't, she won't—and there's ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... who knew nothing of the world save the happiness of a tranquil family life. The next day, I told them that I had changed my mind, and should not go away, but should establish myself in Berlin. Of course, I received a torrent of gibes on my fickleness; for they did not understand my feelings in respect to the responsibility that I feared to ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska |
