"Downhill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and invigorated by nothing but the light, but, having that at least to strengthen us, we made at once for the main range, knowing very well that, once we were over it, it would be downhill all the way, and seeing upon our maps that there were houses and living men high in the further Andorran valley, which was not deserted like this vale of the Aston, but inhabited: full, that is, ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... (p. 180): "The generally received theory that 'the great descent which leads towards the Kingdom of Mien,' on which 'you ride for two days and a half continually downhill,' was the route from Yung-ch'ang to T'eng-Yueh, must be at once abandoned. Marco was, no doubt, speaking from hearsay, or rather, from a recollection of hearsay, as it does not appear that he possessed any notes; but there is good reason for supposing that he had ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... there was sensitiveness left in the thick nose, humour in the eyes, though they so often watered; the face had gone to flabbiness at last, but not without some lines and dents, as if the head had resisted the body for a space before the whole man rolled contentedly downhill. ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... calm, but her mind was working rapidly: The wagon was in the lean-to! Could she get him into it? The road was downhill.... Almost ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... brothers went on till they came to the top of a high mountain, where there lay a very great round rock, or a mighty boulder. And being full of fun, they turned it over with great sticks, saying to it, "Now let us run a race!" Then it rolled downhill till it stopped at the foot, they rushing along by it all the time. And when it rested they jeered it, and bade it race with them ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... moment our own mare took fright; we were abruptly swung forward, and, had I not—mindful of the Colonel's warning—been "sitting tight," I should undoubtedly have been thrown out. We dashed downhill at a terrific rate, our mare mad with terror, and on peering over my shoulder I saw, to my horror, the white steed tearing along not fifty yards behind us. I was now able to get a vivid impression of the monstrous ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... cough suddenly increased, and he began to go downhill so rapidly as to cause much uneasiness to his friends. General Keith urged him to go up to a little place on the side of the mountains which had been quite ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... train ran downhill with brakes on and steam shut off, he put his head out of the window and one by one saw the old familiar landmarks in the dusk. They stared at him like dead faces in a dream. Queer, sharp feelings, half poignant, half sweet, stirred in ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... have been lying there almost under the feet of our men, if they did not actually join the ranks for a time to escape detection. But a sound greeted their ears at that moment, and knowing what it meant, they scampered downhill without waiting to hear more. It was a ringing British cheer followed by strident commands to "Fix bayonets and give the devils cold steel." Begun by Major Karri Davis, the order ran along from Imperial Light Horse to Carbineers, who had not a bayonet amongst them, ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... attainments he had preserved unspoiled a certain natural modesty, which led him to attribute his advancement to accident or fate. He once told me that he owed all his success in life to the fact that, as a country boy in Ohio, while driving his father's cart downhill at daybreak, he fell asleep and was jolted off his seat, breaking his leg. During the weeks of enforced seclusion that followed he taught himself to read, and developed a studious turn of mind, which, his leg having been permanently weakened by ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... a picturesque group near; these belonged at one time to the stables, now removed. Not far off is the bamboo garden, in a flourishing condition, with large clumps of feathery bamboos bravely enduring our rough climate; in another part is a succession of terraces, through which a stream runs downhill through a number of basins linked by a circling channel; the basins are covered with water-lilies, and the whole is laid out in imitation of a Japanese garden. Alpine plants are specially tended in another ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... Mrs. Batty was right: it was like walking with a dumb man. They left the wood and walked downhill beside a ploughed field, and in the shelter of a high wall. An open lane brought them to a gate, the gate opened on a rough road through yet another wood of larch and spruce and fir. The road was deeply ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... behind! In a moment my mind was made up; and, leaving the gasping young groom to look after the horse and cart, I set off to run too. It was only a chance, of course; but in this weather the train might be late. It was all the way downhill. I thought I could do it, and I did. My feet were balled with snow; I was hotter than I had been for years; I was completely out of breath; but when I puffed into the little road-side station, five minutes after the train was ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... come out of the shop, and enter the car, and be borne swiftly away into the downhill of palpable dusk, with Ursula and Birkin! What an adventure life seemed at this moment! How deeply, how suddenly she envied Ursula! Life for her was so quick, and an open door—so reckless as if not only this world, but the world that was ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... taken with the best grace we could muster. I surprised myself during the afternoon, when my turn came as forerunner, by covering two and a half miles at a jog-trot without a break. The grade was slightly downhill and the sledges moved along of their own accord, accelerated by jerks from the dogs, gliding at right angles to the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... the same day I had an interview with the ex-Khedive Ismail, who had gone downhill. He always had a certain difficulty in collecting his ideas and putting them into words, but on this occasion it went farther than I had previously known. He wished to impress on me the necessity for defending Egypt against the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... save hunger to fear so long as they were in the open country. They marched on, breaking into a trot whenever their course led downhill, during the whole of the day on which their retreat began. Each man still had a small supply of meat left, and portions of this they ate raw as they proceeded. At dusk the foremost of the Balotsi were some distance behind, and after marching for about two hours longer the ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... wouldn't mind being there in London now! Howsomdever, old ship'—I added on to what I was saying, seeing that the fellows laughed and cheered up a bit at Magellan's comical way—'if we ever hopes to get there we must trudge on now. Our course is all downhill, thank goodness, and perhaps we'll meet with a river at last— as soon as we get down to ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... light. It seemed as light as day, only soft, mellow, and the air held a transparent sheen. He ran up the bare ridges and down the smooth slopes, and, like a goat, jumped from rock to rock. In this light he knew his way and lost no time looking for a trail. He crossed the divide and then had all downhill before him. Swiftly he descended, almost always sure of his memory of the landmarks. He did not remember having studied them in the ascent, yet here they were, even in changed light, familiar to his sight. What he had once seen was pictured ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... swiftly descended, and raced after the guide. He came upon the goat at last, but winded as he was, and with the sweat in his eyes, he shot too high, cutting the skin above the spine. The goat plunged downhill and the hunters plunged after him, pursuing the elusive animal ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... foot of the street on which the Bobbsey house stood. The street went downhill to the tracks, and the railroad passed through what Charley had called ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... least, was our conclusion, from the absence of any subsequent motion or movement on board, the deck being as steady now as any platform on dry land, although rather downhill on one side, from the vessel heeling ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... half shout got through to alert the men on the jungle floor. True to their nature, the rock apes, now streaming downhill, were coughing their challenges, advertising their attack. And it was only that peculiarity of their species ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... poultry demanded consideration. As we left them behind, the agitation of two led horses necessitated a still further reduction of speed. We lost such time as I had made, and more also. Still, we were going downhill, and, as if impatient of the check, the car sprang forward.... We rose from the bottom with the smooth rush of a non-stop elevator. As we breasted the rise, I saw another and steeper dale before us. The road was ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... with the disappearance of the focus for its concerted bloodlust. The police asked many questions but none of the right ones. Finally, Cam, Ev, and Curt escaped to the waiting limo and started the long slow crawl downhill. ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... morning. He took his guest up a rough mountain road in a light carriage drawn by two ponies, and when some distance from the plain below, turned the carriage round and allowed the ponies to run away—as it seemed—downhill. In the terror of approaching disaster, the atheist was lifted out of his reasoned convictions and prayed aloud for help, when the colonel reined in his ponies, and with the remark that the whole drive ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... directly west and in a mile reaches Tillington, which has a Transitional church modernized and practically rebuilt by the Earl of Egremont; here are several interesting tombs and brasses. A divergence two miles further will take us downhill across the Rother to Selham (with a station close to the village). The Norman and Early English church has a chancel arch with finely carved and ornamented capitals. Proceeding westwards between high banks of red sandstone our road soon approaches Cowdray Park, across which it runs without ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... always in an atmosphere of fried oil and roasted chestnuts and baked pine-cones; and presently turn left into a still narrower street, with tailors and boot-makers and smiths all at work in the open air; and pass through the Piazzetta Mondragone, and turn again to the left, but this time downhill; then lose yourself amid filthy little alleys, where the scent of oil and chestnuts and pine-cones is stronger than ever; then emerge on a little terrace where there is a noble view of the bay and of Capri; then turn abruptly between walls overhung with ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... sometimes felt more of pity than of amusement as she sat with an expression of terror on her face, helplessly watching certain unruly individuals taking their bits in their teeth and galloping madly downhill. On one occasion, when he sat beside her, a young man, who shall be nameless, was suddenly heard to remark in the midst of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... about it in those dear, damp days beyond recall to make me independent of the pawnshop, to say the least. And, having cleaned up a good pot with whisky running down men's gullets, I reckoned I'd see what I could do with water running downhill. Do you get me ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... feared that Aubrey would have badly flunked any quizzing on the chapters of Somebody's Luggage which the bookseller had read aloud. His mind was swimming rapidly in the agreeable, unfettered fashion of a stream rippling downhill. As O. Henry puts it in one of his most delightful stories: "He was outwardly decent and managed to preserve his aquarium, but inside he was impromptu and full of unexpectedness." To say that he was thinking of Miss Chapman would ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... mistress of the house. She went to the market, paid the bills, superintended the cook and the washwoman, and rejoiced with exceeding great and fiendish joy when she saw how rapidly everything was going downhill, downhill irresistibly and as sure as ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... to the corner of Whitehall. It was hardly worth while taking a cab to Bond Street, and I intended to cross in front of King Charles's statue. It is an awkward place, and a lot of 'buses, cabs, and vans were bowling along downhill from the Strand and St. Martin's Church. I waited a moment on the kerbstone, watching for a favourable opportunity, when suddenly I was pitched head foremost in front of a passing 'bus. My escape from instant death was solely ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... the skin against septic infection and favors the introduction of the hand and arm. The hand should be inserted with the thumb and fingers drawn together like a cone. Whether standing or lying, the mare should be turned with head downhill and hind parts raised as much as possible. The contents of the abdomen gravitating forward leave much more room for manipulation. Whatever part of the foal is presented (head, foot) should be secured with a cord and running noose before it is pushed back ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... wordless; he gets pale, but sharp an' deadly; an' his notion is to fight for a finish. Peets is haughty an' sooperior on the few o'casions when he onbends in battle, an' comports himse'f like a gent who fights downhill; the same, ondoubted, bein' doo to them book advantages of Peets which elevates him an' lifts him above the common herd a whole lot. Enright who's oldest is of course slowest to embark in blood, an' pulls his weepons—when he does ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... action. His words were jest, yet they held a hint of earnest. With her heart at her throat Carley stepped on the first rock, and, poising, she calculated on a running leap from stone to stone. Once launched, she felt she was falling downhill. She swayed, she splashed, she slipped; and clearing the longest leap from the last stone to shore she lost her balance and fell into Glenn's arms. His kisses drove away both her panic ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... girls realized that it was getting too dark even to distinguish the path at all. They stumbled blindly on through the heather, conscious only that they were going downhill, but whether they were really retracing their steps or not, it was impossible to tell. Spot, whose spirits had failed him, followed at their heels. Faster and faster fell the darkness; the girls linked arms to avoid getting separated. ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... ever counted," the boy said. "Some miles she goes faster, and some miles she goes slower. A good deal depends on whether it's uphill or downhill." ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... said the wife of Mr. Cheeseman, "though a going-downhill kind of royalty, perhaps, and yet he might be glad, Mrs. Shanks, to come where the butter has the milk spots, and none is in ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... considering this principle of selection. Of the principle itself, he remarks that it is neither a theory nor an hypothesis, but the expression of a necessary fact; that to deny it is very much like denying that round stones will roll downhill faster and farther than flat ones; and that the question of the present day in natural history is not whether there be natural selection, or even whether forms are derived from other forms, but to comprehend how, in ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... sea there is, within certain degrees of latitude and longitude, an uphill and a downhill, made by the convexity of the globe, we, perhaps, may have reached the meridian of the great voyage, and may have begun to feel the inclination which will set us forward more swiftly to the end. The power of the great consummation will be waxing ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... end of the perambulator, and looked at that other fellow's baby. In the shade of the hood, with the frilly clothes, it seemed to him lying with its head downhill. It had scratched its snub nose and bumpy forehead, and it stared up at its mother with blue eyes, which seemed to have no underlids so fat ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... but profoundly moving. Village masons could still create in stone at the time when Jacques Coeur was building himself the first "residence worthy of a millionaire" that had been "erected" since the days of Honorius. But that popular art pursued the downhill road sedately while plutocratic art went with a run is a curious accident of which the traces are soon lost; the outstanding fact is that with the Renaissance Europe definitely turns her back on the spiritual view of life. With that renunciation the power of creating significant form ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... and steadily things had gone downhill with me for a long time, till, in the end, I was so curiously bared of every conceivable thing. I had not even a comb left, not even a book to read, when things grew all too sad with me. All through the summer, up in the churchyards or parks, where I used to sit and write my articles ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... of Bogoyavlensky Street. At last the road began to go downhill; his feet slipped in the mud and suddenly there lay open before him a wide, misty, as it were empty expanse—the river. The houses were replaced by hovels; the street was lost in a multitude ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... dinner in the shade of a tree by the wayside. A hundred yards from the road was a dense copse of undergrowth and bushes on the edge of the forest. Off to the east flowed the majestic Rhine, a league distant, and to the north ran the road like a white ribbon, stretching downhill to the valley and up again to the top of another hill, ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... that again, Tom, because we have no means of knowing how they got the money. Some of them are often supplied with larger amounts than seem to be good for them. Unless you know positively, don't start the snowball rolling downhill, because it keeps on growing larger every time some one ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Snowbound - A Tour on Skates and Iceboats • George A. Warren
... invited to the wedding, nor was he even at church. The first year of Anders' marriage the only cow he owned was found dead beyond the north side of the house, where it was tethered, and no one could find out what had killed it. Several misfortunes followed, and he kept going downhill; but the worst of all was when his barn, with all that it contained, burned down in the middle of the winter; no one knew how ...
— A Happy Boy • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... a strong seaway, the omnibus crossed Seventh Avenue and sped downhill toward Sixth with dangerous momentum. Shortly, however, this began to be modified by the brakes, a precaution against mishap which even the fugitive must approve. Ahead loomed the gaunt structure of the Sixth Avenue "L," bridging the roadway at so ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... nights in the shaft. Each morning on awaking I discovered that I had slipped a couple of yards downhill. I made further full acquaintance, too, with the completeness of the doctor's snoring capabilities. Down in that shaft he must have introduced a new orgy of nasal sounds. It commenced with a gentle snuffling that rather resembled the rustling of ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... that it's downhill, Percy, or we should never find our way to the water's edge. If we keep descending, we must be ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... swung his legs and hips to one side or the other, as occasion required, and, after hundreds of glides had been made, he became so skilful in maintaining the equilibrium of his machine that he was able to cover a distance, downhill, ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... have a pretty hard time this next 100 miles I expect. If it was difficult to drag downhill over this belt, it will probably be a good deal more difficult to drag up. Luckily the cracks are fairly distinct, though we only see our cairns when less than a mile away; 45 miles to the next depot and 6 days' ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... changed at the A & P," Jerry decided. And went so fast in that direction that the bag holding the potatoes fell out of the cart and broke and Jerry lost two of them down a sewer. After that he went more slowly, though he found it hard to make the heavy cart go downhill slowly. It made his ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... was a minister's daughter, and I don't remember ever havin' been deserted by my sweetheart when I was young and trusting. If I was to draw a picture of my life it would look like one of those charts that the weather bureau gets out—one of those high and low barometer things, all uphill and downhill like a chain of mountains in ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... a gap between two high hills, there appeared a tiny speck of greenish ice. Rapidly it increased in size. A gigantic glacier came sliding downhill. Huge stones were being pushed into the valley. With the noise of a dozen thunderstorms torrents of ice and mud and blocks of granite suddenly tumbled among the people of the forest and killed them while they slept. Century old trees ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... and singing, the people turned and went downhill. The Harvester gathered the Girl in his arms and carried her to the lake. He laid her in his boat and taking the oars sent it along the bank in the shade, and through ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... could bring about, I have learned nothing. How wondrous is this! Now, that I'm no longer young, that my hair is already half gray, that my strength is fading, now I'm starting again at the beginning and as a child! Again, he had to smile. Yes, his fate had been strange! Things were going downhill with him, and now he was again facing the world void and naked and stupid. But he could not feed sad about this, no, he even felt a great urge to laugh, to laugh about himself, to laugh about this ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... good look round where the lane curved away now, and ran downhill past the big sand-pit at the dip; and then on away down to where the little river gurgled along, sending flashes of sunshine in all directions, while the country rose on the other side in a beautiful slope of furzy common, hanging ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... seeking to alight on a field which appeared to him, as he was high above it, to be level as a billiard table, a pilot has found, when it is too late, that the ground has sloped so steeply that his machine, after landing, has run on downhill and ended by crashing into a ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... ran downhill to where there was a spring, and kept hauling pails and buckets of water up the hill, and, pouring it into the engine, ran down again. Olga and Marya and Sasha and Motka all brought water. The women and the boys ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Once you've made a thousand pounds you can swim along a bit, but the first hundred, I shall never forget it! Afterwards it is just the same; the proportions are changed, that is all. The first twenty thousand is very uphill work, the second is on the flat, the third is going downhill—it brings itself along." ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... heart shortens the longest road, and Joan, whose return journey from the holy well was for the most part downhill, soon found herself back again in Penzance. The fire of devotion still actuated her movements, and she walked fearlessly, doubting nothing, to the post-office. There would be a letter to-day; she knew it; she felt it in her consciousness, as a certainty. And when she asked for it and mentioned ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... speed and force, breaks into a huge comber, and directly before this the surf-board swimmer is propelled with a speed which we timed and found to exceed forty miles per hour. In fact, he goes like lightning, always just ahead of the breaker, and apparently downhill, propelled by the vehement impulse of the roaring wave behind him, yet seeming to have a speed ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... except upon one sharp incline about 200 miles from Valentia, I am not quite sure that it would even be necessary to put the skid on, so gentle are the ascents and descents upon that long route. From Valentia the road would lie downhill for about 200 miles, to the point at which the bottom is now covered by I,700 fathoms of sea-water. Then would come the central plain, more than a thousand miles wide, the inequalities of the surface of which would be hardly perceptible, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... we could walk to Oppenau in one day, now that we were in practice; so we set out the next morning after breakfast determined to do it. It was all the way downhill, and we had the loveliest summer weather for it. So we set the pedometer and then stretched away on an easy, regular stride, down through the cloven forest, drawing in the fragrant breath of the morning in deep refreshing draughts, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and walked swiftly away. She went downhill with more haste than dignity, turned to her right, and struck out through the woods ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... runs into the Fraser. This lake drains into that little lake. There's another lake east of here, according to the story; and when we get there we'll strike a deep, clear creek which will take us pretty soon into the Parsnip River. From there it's all downhill." ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Trail • Emerson Hough
... or level—that is, successful and easy—the saying enforces the not less solemn truth that sin deceives as to its results, and that the path of wrong-doing, which is flowery and smooth at first, grows rapidly thorny, and goes fast downhill, and ends at last in a cul-de-sac, of which death is the only outlet. We are not to trust our own consciences, except as enlightened by God's Word. We are not to listen to sin's lies, but to fix it well in our minds that there is only one way which leads ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... You will be delighted. It will be so very pretty." I thought of Dr. Johnson and the herdsman with his "See, such pretty goats." [See Boswell's Tour to the Hebrides, Sept. 1 1773. "The Doctor was prevailed with to mount one of Vass's grays. As he rode upon it downhill, it did not go well, and he grumbled. I walked on a little before, but was excessively entertained with the method taken to keep him in good humour. Hay led the horse's head, talking to Dr. Johnson as much as he could and, (having heard him, in the forenoon, ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... The boy spat it out, and made a face, then, pushing the barrel before them, they began to roll it downhill to the beach, Emmeline running ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... he said. He would have let me go slower, but my spirit was up, and I was off again as fast as before. The air was frosty, the moon was bright; it was very pleasant. We came through a village, then through a dark wood, then uphill, then downhill, till after an eight miles' run, we came to the town, through the streets and into the market-place. It was all quite still except the clatter of my feet on the stones—everybody was asleep. The church clock struck three as we drew up at Dr. White's door. John rang the bell ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell
... over I shall repent and take up godly ways. For the present I am a lost soul, and given over to Satan. Andy, the lie I told yesterday about the river road was the beginning of my downfall. How easily we glide downhill." ...
— Then Marched the Brave • Harriet T. Comstock
... great deal called on to handle abrading and sometimes frozen ropes, you will want a pair of heavy buckskin gauntlets. An extra pair of stout high-laced boots with small Hungarian hob-nails will come handy. It is marvelous how quickly leather wears out in the downhill friction of granite and shale. I once found the heels of a new pair of shoes almost ground away by a single giant-strides descent of a steep shale-covered thirteen-thousand-foot mountain. Having no others I patched them with hair-covered rawhide and a bit of horseshoe. It sufficed, ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... trouble at home. Since the death of his good old mother and of Felix Underwood, Sir Adrian Vanderkist had been rapidly going downhill; as though he had thrown off all restraint, and as if the yearly birth of a daughter left him the more free to waste his patrimony. Little or nothing had been heard direct from poor Alda till Clement was summoned by a telegram from Ironbeam Park to find his sister in the utmost danger, ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who it was," said Annie in answer to his query;" so I will make a favour of telling you. Do you remember the Rev. Mr. Darner, rector of Downhill Market?" ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... that had been on the road previous to the construction of the railways across the Pyrenees. One particular coach I travelled in was practically a box on four wheels, with a very narrow seat running on each side, and very low in the roof. Going downhill the horses—such as they were—went as fast as they could, and every time we struck a hole in the road down went the box, up we banged our heads against the roof, and then we collapsed quietly on to the floor, beautifully ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... along a country road. You turn to the city, and see children, dwarfed by distance into pigmies, at play about suburban doorsteps; you have a glimpse upon a thoroughfare where people are densely moving; you note ridge after ridge of chimney-stacks running downhill one behind another, and church spires rising bravely from the sea of roofs. At one of the innumerable windows you watch a figure moving; on one of the multitude of roofs you watch clambering chimney-sweeps. The wind takes a run and scatters the smoke; bells ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... said: "We are the only Idealists left." This remark may have been made in a moment of careless impulse, but if it is taken at its face value, the moment it was made that moment his idealism started downhill. A grasp at monopoly indicates that a sudden shift has taken place from the heights where genius may be found, to the lower plains of talent. The mind of a true idealist is great enough to know that a monopoly ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... home was all downhill. The scouts swung along gayly. The prospect of penetrating Lonesome Woods shortened the miles. What would they find? What ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... Captain Zelotes began by being what he considered diplomatic. Having assured his wife before leaving home, and the alarmed Miss Donaldson subsequently, that there was to be no trouble whatever—everything would be settled as smooth and easy as slidin' downhill; "that feller won't make any fuss, you'll see"—having thus prophesied, the captain felt it incumbent upon himself to see to the fulfillment. So he began by condescendingly explaining that of course he was kind of sorry for the young man before him, young folks were ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... that's exaggeration—well, that was the way I spent four years in Moscow. I can't tell you, my dear sir, how quickly, how fearfully quickly, that time passed; it's positively painful and vexatious to remember. Some mornings one gets up, and it's like sliding downhill on little sledges.... Before one can look round, one's flown to the bottom; it's evening already, and already the sleepy servant is pulling on one's coat; one dresses, and trails off to a friend, and may be smokes a pipe, drinks weak tea in glasses, ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... she continued, 'by the help of Brooks, who knew his master's ways, I have pottered on, to my own wonderment; but Brooks is past work, my downhill-time is coming, high farming has outrun us both, and I know that we are not doing as Humfrey would wish by his inheritance. Now I believe that nothing could be of greater use to me, the people, or the place, than ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... allowed me to roll him downhill, crawling and puffing up again each time, with perfect good humor; how he climbed a young sapling after my Panama hat, which I had "shied" into one of the topmost branches; how after getting it he refused to descend until it suited his pleasure; how when he did come down he persisted ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... movement, the moist, pungent odour of the woodland, the rhythmical trot of the horses, the rattle of the splinter-bar chains as the traces slackened going downhill, above all the presence of the man beside him, were pleasantly stimulating to Richard Calmady. The boy was still a prey to much innocent enthusiasm. It appeared to him, watching Ormiston's handling of the reins and whip, there was nothing this ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... all this, when, nearly at the top, I was thrown up the hill of the stairs as if it had suddenly become downhill. My feet flew from stair to stair to escape falling, and I flew, or fell, apparently upward, until, at the top, I hung on for dear life while the stern of the Elsinore flung skyward ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... footgear is the most common cause, as shoes which are too narrow across the toes, or not long enough, or those with high heels which throw the toes forward so that they are compressed by the toe of the boot, especially in walking downhill. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... I went now downhill into an overgrown water-course (very much like the one in which I used to sleep and eat away back by the artillery big gun). Here were willows and brambles with ripe blackberries, and wild-rose bushes with scarlet hips. "Just ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... years that followed. From time to time I saw her, always with some wonder, for she preserved to the end that delicate and superb quality which so distinguished her. The scandal of the brawl was the small thing that was needed to turn Bertin's course downhill; almost from that day one could mark his decline. It was not a matter of incidents; it was simply that within a year most of us were passing him without recognition, and there was talk of debts that troubled him. He had deteriorated, too; whereas of old ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... they do not lose flesh; on the contrary, they are inclined to grow stout; and she really began to grow corpulent. It came so gradually that she had no idea of it until it was too late. Bang! The downhill journey is ever a fast journey, and in her case it was accom-plished with startling rapidity. She tried every remedy—in vain! She kept the best table in the whole town, but she starved herself, and the more she ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... I find myself overshadowed by the thought that I do not want to do worse, to go downhill, to decline. I do not feel at all sure that I can write a better book, or so good a one indeed. I should dislike failing far more than I like having succeeded. To have reached a certain standard makes it incumbent ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... air. With the people it was as if all their gods had crashed and the heavens still stood. Order and law had passed away from the universe; but the sun still shone, the wind still blew, the flowers still bloomed—that was the amazing thing about it. That water should continue to run downhill was a miracle. All the stabilities of the human mind and human achievement were crumbling. The one stable thing that remained was Goliah, a madman on an island. And so it was that the whole population of San Francisco went forth ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... may think of it. His Pleasure is not in Praise but Production; the last makes him now and then a little feverish; the other, or its want, never. Just at last, 'twas hard Work to us both; he was like a Wheel running downhill, that must get to the End before it stopped. Mother scolded him, and made him promise he would leave off for a Week or so; at least, she says he did, and he says he did not, and asks her whether, if the Grass had promised not to grow she ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... endless hours of the weary day drag on like a terrible nightmare, but a descent into a profound ravine of these mountain solitudes at length enables the driver to start the team at a rate which makes it impossible for them to stop, and he vaults lightly into his place as we spin merrily downhill. Our troubles are not over, for on the next upward grade the old game of rearing, backing, and futile attempts at buck-jumping, begins again. Despairing eyes rest on a thatched booth at the roadside, containing a row of bottles ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... late in the afternoon when the Professor and I took our way towards the east whence I knew Jonathan was coming. We did not go fast, though the way was steeply downhill, for we had to take heavy rugs and wraps with us. We dared not face the possibility of being left without warmth in the cold and the snow. We had to take some of our provisions too, for we were in a perfect desolation, and so far as we could see through the snowfall, there was not even ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... anxious to go. It was getting late, she said, confusedly. She had better be at home; and she hastily took her leave. As soon as she stood outside the house, she made one big spring, and never stopped running, downhill and then up, till she stood on her own door-step; and then she suddenly reflected that she was not expected to come back so soon, and that her brothers were sure to make some unpleasant remarks on her quick return; so she tried to think what she could do with herself for ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... of morning still was over all the high country when they got astir and began to care for the horses on their picket ropes and to finish the cooking of their remaining food. Then, each now leading his horse, they began to thread their way downhill. Over country where now they had established the general courses, it was easier for such good mountain travelers to pick out a feasible way down. They crossed the canyon at about the same place, but swung off more to the right, and early in ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... patrol, fire fighting or back firing. On favorable ground, where some choice is offered, much may be done by falling timber inward so as to leave few tops near the uncut timber and by the location of skidroads. So far as practicable fire lines should be on the tops of ridges, for, being slower to go downhill than up, fire is more easily discouraged just as it reaches a crest. Bottoms of gulches are next in ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... had arrived at what is called in polite literature, the grand meridian of life, and was proceeding on his journey downhill with hardly any throat, and a very rigid pair of jaw-bones, and long-flapped elephantine ears, and his eyes and complexion in the state of artificial excitement already mentioned, he was mightily ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... merely suggests that these mysterious agencies," he said quietly, "may be due to some kind of life we cannot understand. Why should water only run downhill? Why should trees grow at right angles to the surface of the ground and towards the sun? Why should the worlds spin for ever on their axes? Why should fire change the form of everything it touches without really destroying them? To say these things follow the law of their being explains ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... hill-brow. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Pan is near: Joy runs trembling back to fear. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! All my blood Knocks through the heart whose every thud Chokes me, blinds me, drains my madness. As one half-drowned, I feel life's gladness Ooze from each pore. Towards the sun Downhill I reel that fain would run. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Thornless seem Briars that part as in a dream. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Hazel-boughs Hurt not though ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... into the open again and moonlight and dust—past a motor by the roadside, its owner, in court dress, sweating at its works—dust, moonlight, and black silk—a Whistler by Jove! Now we pass a slow going gharry, and now two young hatless soldiers in a high dog cart pass us under the trees, downhill at a canter, an inch between us, and half an inch between their off wheel and the edge of the road, and the sea ten feet beneath. Then along the lines of tents, with their curtains open and occupants going to bed.... We too must experience that tent life, but not in town if ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... up Allister, and we were off for the manse. As soon as we were out of the yard, however, we met Turkey, breathless. He had given Mrs. Mitchell the slip, and left her searching the barn for him. He took Allister from Kirsty, and we sped away, for it was all downhill now. When Mrs. Mitchell got back to the farmhouse, Kirsty was busy as if nothing had happened, and when, after a fruitless search, she returned to the manse, we were all snug in bed, with the door locked. After what ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... stomach next to Rhes, looking through a screen of leaves, downhill towards the perimeter. They were both wrapped in heavy furs, in spite of the midday heat, with thick leggings and leather gauntlets to protect their hands. The gravity and the heat were already making Jason dizzy, but he ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... the lower part of the hillside until hunger drove him back to camp. And, as it sometimes happens that what a man fails to come upon when he seeks with method and intent he stumbles upon by accident, so now Hollister, coming heedlessly downhill, found the corner stake he was seeking. With his belt-axe he blazed a trail from this point to the flat below, so that he could ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... right on the main point, but not a stone of the many he smelled under turned him out a cougar or a big-horn. Hunting was over for that day, and so much time had been consumed that Two Arrows felt like running to make it up. He did but walk, however, and as the road was now all the way downhill, like a bad man's life, he walked easily. The great gorge widened until its broken walls stretched away to the right and left, and the eager-hearted explorer came out from among the scattered rocks at a point from which he could suddenly see a great ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... DOWNHILL I came, hungry, and yet not starved; Cold, yet had heat within me that was proof Against the North wind; tired, yet so that rest Had seemed the sweetest ...
— Poems • Edward Thomas
... his nodding horses uphill and downhill through his native village across the border; and in Drauburg, in Lavamuend, in Voelkermarkt, and Klagenfurt, all the inn-keepers waited for him as the bringer of joy. And he was the lad for that. He sang all the way along the windblown road, and from all the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... Jeffrey, after one long, sharp look at the oncoming horseman, pulled in quietly to the side of the road. And Ruth did the same. She was too well trained in the things of the hills not to know that if there was trouble, then it was no time to be weakening horses' knees in mad and useless dashes downhill. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... returned to Rayburn—and as we now knew the way, and as almost the whole of it was downhill, our return was accomplished rapidly—some of the joyous strength that we had gained seemed to be imparted to him. He opened his eyes as we stooped over him, and there seemed to be more life in them than there had been through all ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... Though God knows—'twas a wise enough rascal! At all events Klavs liked to feel himself on the highroad, and the longer the trip the happier he would be. He took it all with the same good temper—up hills where he had to strain in the shafts, and downhill where the full weight of the cart made itself felt. He would only stop when the hill was unusually steep—to give Lars Peter an opportunity ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... moon, for no one argued with her. Grim led the way-off the highroad now, and down dark defiles that set the camels moaning, while their riders yelled alternately to Allah and apostrophized their beasts in the monosyllabic camel language. Camels hate downhill work, especially when loaded, and fall unless told not to in a speech they understand, in that ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... Amsterdam, in the Eighties. It had been a shining new development once, but it was beginning to slide downhill now. The metal on the windowframes was beginning to look worn, and the brickwork hadn't been cleaned in a long time. Where chain fences had once protected lonely blades of grass, children, mothers and baby carriages held sway now, and the grass was gone. Instead, the ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... road, and that we would race each other, walking, to see who got home first. They agreed to this, and set off together at a great rate; but as soon as they were out of sight behind the hedge I buckled my satchel to my shoulders and started running to warn Marah. It was all downhill to the brook, and I knew that I should find Marah there,—for he had said that he was coming earlier than usual that afternoon to finish off a model boat which we were to sail after tea. I ran as I had never run before—I thought ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... infinitely prefer living anywhere else. The place is too remote from civilization. A spot one might enjoy, perhaps, on the downhill side of sixty; but in youth or active middle age every sensible man should shun seclusion. A man has to fight against an inherent tendency ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... was a splendid service of express trains running from London to Worcester without a stop, and coming downhill into the Vale, through the tunnel and towards Evesham, the speed approximated to a mile a minute. I was talking to one of my men, a hedger, working near the line which bounded a portion of my land, when one of the express trains came dashing along and passed us with a ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... shorter, downhill almost all the way, the horses going along at a good steady trot, knowing they were ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... a subject of proverbial delay, I must remind my reader of the progress of a stone rolled downhill by an idle truant boy (a pastime at which I was myself expert in my more juvenile years), it moves at first slowly, avoiding by inflection every obstacle of the least importance; but when it has attained its full impulse, and draws near the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... and I remember a classmate of mine saying, "Why, man, can't you let anything alone?" I said, "I let everything alone that you can show me is not itself moving in the wrong direction, but I am not going to let those things alone that I see are going downhill"; and I borrowed this illustration from an ingenious writer. He says, "If you have a post that is painted white and want to keep it white, you cannot let it alone; and if anybody says to you, 'Why don't you let that post alone,' you will say, 'Because ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... the shelf, and have one more fling. I'm stiff! I'm stiff! And, ye gods, I'm only four-and-thirty! I always thought I'd go till sixty at least. I entered Parliament just to keep going; but that's only a steady progress downhill—a sort of frog's march in which you kick and are kicked, but don't do much besides. I'm a fighter, kiddie. I wasn't made to ornament the shelf. I'm not a hero; only an ordinary, restless, discontented mortal. They told me this ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... earth in the air—a reek of upturned mould; but what that may have been I cannot say. I soon started downhill and, presently, striking a path to the north, entered the chestnut woods and was at my hotel an hour after midnight. That is my story and I propose to-day to revisit the spot. I shall engage the local police who have orders to assist us—that ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... nations. Once there was—I am willing to admit that possibility. Once, from all accounts received, the English rose was the fitting emblem of the English woman, but now, since the world has grown so wise and made such progress in the art of running rapidly downhill, is even the aristocratic British peer quite easy in his mind regarding his fair peeress? Can he leave her to her own devices with safety? Are there not men, boastful too of their "blue blood," who are perhaps ready to stoop to ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... a thousand times in as many feet last night," Scotty commented. "It's easy by day, but don't try it by night." He led the way through clear spaces between the thorny patches, always going downhill. ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... Balancin loved hunting, and it was his custom to spend several mornings every week chasing the boars which abounded in the mountains a few miles from the city. One day, rushing downhill as fast as he could go, he put his foot into a hole and fell, rolling into a rocky pit of brambles. The king's wounds were not very severe, but his face and hands were cut and torn, while his feet were ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... slid gently downhill Hannah tried with all her strength to stop it. She had a shrewd latent business sense and this she vainly tried to instil in her husband. The children, stirring in their sleep in the bedroom adjoining that of their parents, would realize, vaguely, that she was urging him to try ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... her house work, and makin' seventy-five yards of rag carpet. And she thought onions wouldn't be so wearin' on her as turkeys, for onions, she said, will stay where they are put, but turkeys are born wanderers and hikers. And they led her through sun and rain, swamp and swale, uphill and downhill, a-chasin' 'em up, but she made well by 'em. Well, in puttin' in her onion seed, she overworked herself and got a crick in her back, so she couldn't stir hand nor foot for two days. And bein' only just them two, her husband had to stay home to ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... is based solely on the ever-fleeting present. Essentially, therefore, it has to take the form of continual motion without there ever being any possibility of our finding the rest after which we are always striving. It is the same as a man running downhill, who falls if he tries to stop, and it is only by his continuing to run on that he keeps on his legs; it is like a pole balanced on one's finger-tips, or like a planet that would fall into its sun as soon as it stopped hurrying onwards. ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... inclination, slope, slant, crookedness &c. adj.; slopeness[obs3]; leaning &c. v.; bevel, tilt; bias, list, twist, swag, cant, lurch; distortion &c. 243; bend &c. (curve) 245; tower of Pisa. acclivity, rise, ascent, gradient, khudd[obs3], rising ground, hill, bank, declivity, downhill, dip, fall, devexity|; gentle slope, rapid slope, easy ascent, easy descent; shelving beach; talus; monagne Russe[Fr]; facilis descensus ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Those that flame from the hill slope above Portland station only succeed in emphasizing the general bleakness of their surroundings. At Easton clock tower a street called "Straits" turns left and east and presently a broad road leads downhill to the right to the gates of Pennsylvania Castle, built, it is said, at the suggestion of George III by John Penn, Governor of Portland, and a descendant of the great Penn in whose honour it was named. A narrow passage by the castle wall ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... existed in London; at night the streets were infested with brutal ruffians, and, as late as Queen Anne's time, by bands of "fine gentlemen" not less brutal, who amused themselves by overturning sedan chairs, rolling women downhill in barrels, and compelling men to dance jigs, under the stimulus of repeated pricks from a circle of sword points, until the victims fell fainting from exhaustion. Duels were frequent, on the slightest provocation. Highwaymen abounded both in the city and without, and, unless ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... "Shall I give her the money, shall I keep it?" and her heart would thrill, and then sink, and inside her she kept saying, "There is no harm in it?—It is all the same in the end." And then, almost before she knew what she was doing, she had taken the easy, crooked, downhill path, with its rocks ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... man is hampered and thwarted in a great work by annoyances and disasters, he behaves like an Arab horse on a heavy march. At first it moves at a brisk trot, uphill and downhill, and it goes faster and faster as its strength begins to flag. And when at last it is thoroughly out of breath and ready to drop, it breaks ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... I've never been inside. But stop a moment—you haven't heard the half of it yet! There's a road comes downhill to the shore, between the churchyard wall—there's a heap of greyish silvery-looking stuff, by the way, growing on the coping—something like lavender, with yellow blossoms—Where was I? Oh yes, and on the other side of ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... go, li'l' hawss," he chatted on. "Downhill all the way soon an' then a drink to wash out yore mouth an' the best feed in Caroca fo' the pair ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... a small rise at Sherman," he rises to explain, " and another still smaller at the Alleghanies; all the balance is downhill to the Atlantic. Of course you'll have to 'boat it' across the Frogpond; then there's Europe - mostly level; so is Asia, except the Himalayas - and you can soon cross them; then you're all 'hunky,' for there's no mountains to speak of in China." Evidently Alkali ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... career of vice, his reformation from which is the next thing to a miracle. All this came upon him in consequence of keeping bad company. Learn from it to avoid evil company and betting. The boy that suffers himself to bet the smallest amount, has already entered the downhill road of the gambler's career. And there is no evil that can be named but he may be drawn into, who begins to keep bad company. You might as well expect to go into lazarhouse, without being infected, as to go into bad company, and not ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... is flat, but the path runs downhill. Consequently we soon find ourselves tramping along below the ground-level, with a stout parapet of clay on either side of us. Overhead there is nothing—nothing but the blue sky, with the larks singing, quite regardless of ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... shrug. "You can't get lost. If you should lose your bearings, just walk downhill and you'll come to food and water. Follow the shore line until you get back, either direction. And, I reckon, the way things go now, you ain't goin' to hurt yourself. We won't worry about you none. We're all gettin' along all right, so you ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... find that we have been busy," rejoined Clark. "The barge will go down well loaded in the spring. They'll have the best of it—downhill, and over ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... good. I had to show your father and you that I had not thrown away all your kindness. So I quit travelling that downhill road on ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... they were, was a stimulus that made everyone put forth all his energies. Beds, furniture, cooking utensils—first the stores of the Dobryna, then the cargo of the tartan—all were carried down with the greatest alacrity, and the diminished weight combined with the downhill route to make the labor proceed ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... ear of my companion, and we both leaped to our feet in a second. 'Separate! separate!' he shouted, and as we did so, the bear chose me for his meat. I ran downhill as fast as I could, but he was gaining. 'Dodge around a tree!' screamed Young-Man-Afraid. I took a deep breath and made a last spurt, desperately circling the first tree I came to. As the ground was steep just there, I turned a somersault one way and the bear the other. I picked ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... lay at the further end of the street called Finkleway. It was a queer, open space which sloped downhill from the centre of the ridge on which the middle of the town was built to the valley through which the little river meandered. Save where the streets, and the road leading out to the open country and Ellersdeane cut into it, it was completely enclosed by old houses of the sort which Starmidge had ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... remember her father had been a crooked man. And her mother had known it. He had dragged her to her ruin. That degradation had killed her. Ellen realized that with poignant sorrow, with a sudden revolt against her father. Had Gaston Isbel truly and dishonestly started her father on his downhill road? Ellen wondered. She hated the Isbels with unutterable and growing hate, yet she had it in her to think, to ponder, to weigh judgments in their behalf. She owed it to something in herself to be fair. But what did it matter who was ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... at the same time I heard a sobbing or crying from the same woman. I opened my door and held out my lantern, and just as far as the light would reach I saw a woman: she turned her head when the light sheened on her, and then hurried on downhill. I hung up the lantern, and was curious enough to pull on my things and dog her a few steps, but I could see nothing of her any more. That was where I had been when you came up; and when I saw you I thought you ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... once," said Bunny. "And I rolled all the way downhill. But I didn't get hurt, for I rolled into ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... above it, but vulnerable to fire, both from Lennox Hill, a slightly higher eminence on the other side of a Nek to the south-east, and from a salient protruding from the northern extremity of the hill. From the wall bounding the upper terrace, however, other walls, running downhill, intersected this face of the mountain at right angles, and served as low traverses affording some protection from flanking fire. These formed the enclosures of Smith's farm, a group of tree-encircled buildings around an open space at the base of the mountain, near its centre, and some 400 feet ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... close of the storm, do a good deal of the work; thawing and freezing of the water contained in the mass of detritus help the movement, for, although the thrust is in both directions, it is most effective downhill; the wedges of tree roots, which often penetrate between and under the stones, and there expand in their process of growth, likewise assist the downward motion. The result is that on ordinary mountain slopes the layer ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... thousand dollars ought to be ample to put the ranch on a paying basis. And don't blame your dad for collecting it now, when it will do the most good. I could see no benefit in waiting and suffering, and letting you get farther downhill all the while, making it that much harder to climb back. Go at once to your claim, and do your best—that is what will make your dad happiest. You will get well, and you will make a home for you and Vic, and ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... eight at night before his toil was rewarded and he issued at last out of the forest on the firm white high-road. It lay downhill before him, with a sweeping eastward trend, faintly bright between the thickets; and Otto paused and gazed upon it. So it ran, league after league, still joining others, to the farthest ends of Europe, there skirting the sea-surge, here ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... had ever before seen driven. They could not all get through that narrow gateway to the corrals. Pan wondered how his few riders could have done so well. Luck! The topography of the valley! The wild horses took the lanes of least resistance; and the level or downhill ground favored a broad direct line toward the fence trap Pan ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... that will freshen in a few days. About six days ago she seemed weak in her hind legs and on going downhill would drag or stumble for 10 or 12 feet, then catch herself and ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... that point, and there, to your wonder and your surprise, at your feet nestles the loveliest of smiling canyon-like valleys, filled with trees, aspen, oak, and pine, with here and there a tent or red roof gleaming through the green, and a noisy brook hurrying on its way downhill. By a steep scramble you reach the lower level, birds singing, flowers tempting on every side, and the picturesque, narrow trail leading you on, around the ledge of rock, over the rustic bridge, till you reach ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... that?" asked Mirabell. "There isn't any snow now, though there was some for Christmas. How can you make a sliding downhill thing without snow?" ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... by the fire, which had come from a ruin above, had spread downhill on the opposite side of the valley. Charred posts still stood like lone teeth in a skull to mark what must have once been one of the stockade walls of a post. But all they now guarded was a desolation from ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... King is going downhill as before, but seems to be a long time in the descent. All kinds of intrigues are going on about change of Ministry, and all kinds of hopes and fears afloat. Nothing is more improbable than that I should be made a Bishop, and, if I ever had the opportunity, I am now, when far removed from it, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... named. A lonely little station set down in the midst of thick woods, and a road that wound slightly downhill and away among the trees were all that met the eye. They strolled down this road, passing occasional homes. These were usually well back from the road and almost concealed among the trees. In fact, in some places ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne |
