"Downhill" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she whispered behind me. She had come to lean again upon the back of the bench. "Am I alone to blame? Can the iron withstand the lodestone? Can the rain help falling upon the earth? Can the stream flow other than downhill?" She sighed. "Woe me! It is I who should be angered that you have made free of my lips. And yet I am here, wooing you to forgive me for the ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... irrespective of gravity. No natural force propels it, and the inference is forthright and inevitable that it is artificially helped to its end. There seems to be no escape from this deduction. Water only flows downhill, and there is no such thing as downhill on a surface already in fluid equilibrium. A few canals might presumably be so situated that their flow could, by inequality of terrane, lie equatorward, but not all....Now it is not in particular ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... give him some temporary encouragement, even though it is over-early. For when I consider the past I do think God will forgive me and you for being a little forward. I have another reason for this, my dear. I feel myself going rapidly downhill, and late affairs have still further helped me that way. And until this thing is done I ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... 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 rutted and they walked in single file until Charles turned, saying, 'This is what I've brought ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... fast as his snow-shoes would permit, and having reloaded, Dave and Barringford followed. They were going downhill once more, but now the elk made a turn and darted into a belt of timber lining the river. Reaching the stream, he paused for a moment, looked despairingly at his wounded and bleeding flank, and then started ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... in some sort connects very diverse topics, is that of 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 what proportions, and by what means hereditary deviations ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... Tavernake," he said, softly. "I could hear no words, but I know that you have been wise. Between you and me," he added, in a lower tone, "she is going downhill. She is in with the wrong lot here. She can't seem to keep away from them. They are on the very fringe of Bohemia, a great deal nearer the arm of the law than makes for respectable society. The man to whom I saw you introduced is a millionaire one day and a thief ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... tomahawks, hunting-knives, rifles, and a good dog. On arriving at the ravine, Hobbs told McIntire to cross over to the other side and climb the hill, but on no account to go down into the ravine, as a grizzly is more dangerous when he has a man on the downhill side. Hobbs then went to where he thought the elk might be if he had died by the bank of the stream; but as soon as he came near the water, he saw that a large grizzly had got there before him, having scented the animal, and was ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... imaginative lines about the demon lover and the waning moon. The darkness, the red wreck of sunset, the yellow and lurid moon, the long fantastic shadows, actually created that sense of monstrous incident which is the dramatic side of landscape. The bare grey slopes seemed to rush downhill like routed hosts; the dark clouds drove across like riven banners; and the moon was like a golden dragon, like the Golden Dragon ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... gate fastened back, and a lodge on the left-hand side. So much he could make out dimly through the November darkness; and as he stood there hesitating, he thought he could see somewhere below him a few other lights burning through the masses of leafless trees through which the drive went downhill. ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... him go with you," said Anthea, "you'll soon see what I mean! How would you like to suddenly see a poor little helpless baby spinning along downhill beside you with its feet up on a bicycle it ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... that he was run away with, determined to do his best to stick on, hoping that by going up some hill or other the pony might be brought up. He forgot how high the forest was situated, and that it was chiefly downhill the pony would have to go. He did stick on, and bravely too, but very frequently he thought it would be in vain, and that he must be thrown off. He felt happier when he saw the attempts made by his friends to overtake him, even though they ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... tumbles were 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 first volley from the English line had mowed his soldiers down like ripe wheat. At the second volley the ranks broke and the ground was thick strewn with the dead. When the English charged, the French fled in wildest panic downhill for the St. Charles. Wounded and faint, Montcalm on his black charger was swept swiftly along St. Louis road in the blind stampede of retreat. Near the walls a ball passed through his groins. Two soldiers caught him from ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... him to her companion, who, it appeared, came from Toronto; and then she explained that they had climbed the mountain so that her friend might see the surroundings of the city. They walked back together until they reached a spot where two roads led downhill, and ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... is only a question of how long it can hold out against its foes. But Rag's life was proof that once a rabbit passes out of his youth he is likely to outlive his prime and be killed only in the last third of life, the downhill third we call ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... suffering any particular discomfort from the enormous increase of his waist. On the next day there was a blizzard, duly predicted by Wilson's twinges of rheumatism, and on the 8th Scott reluctantly records that the dogs were steadily going downhill. 'The lightening of the load is more than counter-balanced by the weakening of the animals, and I can see no time in which we can hope to get the sledges along without ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... "Or run backwards downhill. I'm a passenger in a car of that kind. Near to the top, but not reaching it. So I get out to walk ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... is an intense realisation of the "separateness" of all our souls. The most heroic and human love-poetry of the world is never mere passion; precisely because mere passion really is a melting back into Nature, a meeting of the waters. And water is plunging and powerful; but it is only powerful downhill. The high and human love-poetry is all about division rather than identity; and in the great love-poems even the man as he embraces the woman sees her, in the same instant, afar off; a virgin and ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... all the afternoon before you," replied Mr. Thimblefinger. "Besides it will be downhill all the way. I was just going to tell you a story, but if you really want to go I'll put off the telling of it until some of your grandchildren tumble in the spring when the wet water has run out and the dry water ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... brushwood-pile," said his companion; and all his trouble was at an end. He took a pony, because he understood that this was the Thirty-Mile Ride and he must ride swiftly, and raced through the clattering tunnels and round the curves, always downhill, till he heard the sea to his left, and saw it raging under a full moon, against sandy cliffs. It was heavy going, but he recognised the nature of the country, the dark-purple downs inland, and the bents that whistled in ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... sapling she had held in her hand, and flung the fragments into the road. The Laird was groping in his pocket for half a crown, and thinking meanwhile what answer to make. But disdaining both his reply and his peace-offering, Meg strode defiantly downhill ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... having reached the highest point of our right flank, began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard but where on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer they got to the hollow the less they could see but the more they felt the nearness of the actual battlefield. They began to meet wounded men. One ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... 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 Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... the 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
... right-for they would be worthy forms, who would hand on those traditions which seemed to him so necessary and great. And then there broke on him one of those delirious waves of natural desire, against which he had so often fought, so often with great pain conquered. He got up, and ran downhill, leaping over the stones, and the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... high-pitched voice that she regarded as the hall-mark of good breeding, and, in that silent rush downhill, Medenham could not avoid hearing each syllable. It was eminently pleasing to listen to Cynthia's praise of his car, and he was wroth with the other woman for wrenching the girl's thoughts away ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... instructed, and sanctioning gross sin. If it means only straight, 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 ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... All this, with his social position, his pseudo-heroic poetry, and his dissipated life,—over which he contrived to throw a veil of romantic secrecy,—made him a magnet of attraction to many thoughtless young men and foolish women, who made the downhill path both easy and rapid to one whose inclinations led him in that direction. Naturally he was generous, and easily led by affection. He is, therefore, largely a victim of his own weakness ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... heading for the Citadel gate; beside which—so far away that we saw them as toys—stood a sentry-box and the figure of a sentry beside it. Could he reach this gate? His altered course had taken him a little downhill, to the left of the ridge, and to regain it by the Citadel he must fetch a slight loop. Luckily the bull could not reason: he followed his enemy. But there was just a chance that by running along the ridge the chase might be headed off. The crowd saw this and set off anew, with Master Archibald ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a little figuring on the margin of his map, "we're going downhill pretty fast, it seems to me, as we go north. The Grand Rapids drop only fifty-five feet. From Athabasca Landing to McMurray there is a drop of eight hundred and sixty feet in the two hundred and fifty-two miles. That's going some. And here we drop a hundred ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... 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, distant ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... an engineer, you'll show us why the water doesn't run downhill in our bean patch, as it ought to do," ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... 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 ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... market-place (owing to the number of people punished with amputation of a foot); the people are smarting with a sense of wrong, and are longing for the advent (of the CH'EN family), whom they love as a parent, and towards whom they tend, just as water runs downhill. Under these circumstances, even if they did not want to gain the people over, how can they avoid it? The last surviving member of that branch of the CH'EN family who traced his descent to previous dynasties has still left his spirit in the land of Ts'i, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... witnesses; and great as the noise, and fearful as the horrid gasping of the engine may be, we are not prepared to say that terror may not as naturally be excited in the heart of the most gallant of Houyeneans by the thunder and glitter of a fast coach, rushing downhill at the rate of sixteen miles an hour. In fact, the horse that has ceased—like a young lady after her second season—to be shy, will care no more for a steam-engine than a tilted waggon. And it is decidedly our private and confidential opinion, from a long ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... imagined it. More than once, 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 ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... "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 and thorns ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... 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
... to sea. And a year later I went to prison because a woman I was living with was a jealous cat and got the blame thrown on to me for something I knew nothing about. D'you see? Prison. Never mind the details. When I came out of prison I was going downhill as fast as a barrel; and then I saw an advertisement of Templecombe's for a skipper. I saw him, and told him all about myself; and he agreed to overlook my little time in prison if I signed on with him to look after this yacht. Now you see I haven't got ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... with a 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
... he rolled over and over down the slope, to be stopped from the precipice only by the happy accident of a scrub tree in the way. Frightened by this sight, my animal plunged, and he, too, lost his footing. Had I been riding side-saddle, nothing could have saved me, for the downhill was on the near side; but instead I swung out of the saddle on the off side and landed in a heap on the uphill, still clutching the bridle. That act saved my horse's life, probably, as well as my own. For the sudden weight ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... start and could run downhill better than I could, especially in the dark. It seemed to me that every step I went plunging out into space. My empty stomach became demoralized, the blood rushed to my head. "Gosh dern a cow, anyway!" By the time ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... sip. 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 before ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... him unengaging. With all his 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 the accident, ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... an hour," answered Grandpa Ford. "We'll be there before you know it. It's downhill, and the horses are anxious to get ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's • Laura Lee Hope
... Then he turned downhill, riding fast until we came to a place where rocks lay loose and scattered everywhere, and our horses stumbled among them. There he reined up suddenly, holding up his hand, and shouting through the uproar ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... the door open gently and looked aloft. The night, before so starry, was now clouded over. The troopers—I could hear their horses' hoofs above the whoops and yells of their chorusing—were winding downhill by a sunken way within ten yards of me. A gravel path lay between me and the hedge overlooking it. This I saw by the faint upcast rays of the lanterns they had lit for guidance. I tip-toed across to ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... once," said Bunny. "And I rolled all the way downhill. But I didn't get hurt, for I rolled into a bank ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope
... the law of egoism and competition and struggle for existence; to the law that "might is right,"—tends from the very nature of the case towards decay and disintegration. The movement of material progress is in some sense a downhill movement. No doubt it evokes much seeming virtue, such as is necessary to secure the end; but the motive force is one with regard to which man is passive rather than active, a slave rather than a master, ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... surrounded by the houses of dignitaries, from a quiet road lined with elms, which skirted the wall of the Deanery garden and after several twists and turns among the shadows of great Gothic walls found its way downhill into the narrow streets of the small city. One of the houses in the Close had been handed over to the Theological College, the Principal of which usually occupied a Canon's stall in the Cathedral. Here were the lecture-rooms, and here lived Canon Havelock the Principal, ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... soon forgotten, and the boys dashed off downhill as hard as they could go, neither of them hearing a shout, nor seeing the little monk come panting up, to stand gazing ruefully after them and wiping the great drops of perspiration off ...
— The King's Sons • George Manville Fenn
... territory as Torgul and Jazia had pictured it for him. This had to be part of the ridge wall of the valley in which lay the buildings of the fairing. In these heights was the Shrine of Phutka where Jazia had hidden out. To the west now lay the Rover village, so he had to work his way left, downhill, in order to reach the hole where the Baldies had gone to ground. Ross made that progress with the stealth of ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... make 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
... 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, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... she declared she was going for one more ride downhill, and this time with Jim. "For," she said to herself, "I would like one ride ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... means two Communions with definite resolves, two definite upward stages in life. If you let yourself go till you get back to the crutches of school, you will have gone two very definite stages downhill. ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... up uncertainly, 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
... moved; received the impression but was not sensitive to it; felt the tug but did not respond to the pull. Rather, indeed, was apt to be a little impatient." It is not necessary to expand. Keggo was fast going downhill. Rosalie could have wept to see the downhill signs; but somehow, seeing them, did not weep; was not moved... rather, indeed... impatient. She had herself ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... when dinner was ended. It was a provoking conversation. Even the imperturbable Miss Harrison rose from her place rather sooner than usual. Rameyev went to his own room to get his hour's nap. The young people went into the garden. Misha and Elena ran downhill to the river. They had a keen desire to run one after the other and ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... 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 as she took ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... against the railing and gasped. He wanted to run downhill after the 'rickshaw, but that was impossible; so he went forward with most of his blood in his temples. It was impossible, for many reasons, that the woman in the 'rickshaw could be the girl he had known. She was, he discovered later, the wife of a man from Dindigul, or ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... (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 personally visited Yung-ch'ang. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... country to transport coal from the mines at Summit down to the Lehigh Valley for shipment. An amusing story is told of this railroad, too. It extended down the mountainside in a series of sharp inclines between which lay long stretches of level ground. Now you know when you coast downhill your speed will give you sufficient impetus to carry you quite a way on a flat road before you come to a stop. So it was with this railroad. But the force the cars gained on the hillside could not carry them entirely across these long levels, and ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... 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 ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... out lovely, and if my cough had not been so bad, I should have enjoyed the drive down from Mount Morgan. The pitches were just as steep, but they were nearly all downhill, which made our progress seem quicker and pleasanter. The country looked very pretty; the ferns were quite lovely, and the lilies in full bloom. The pleasure of the drive was further marred by the dreadful odours ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... the downhill side when the wheel collapsed, plunged head first from the seat, landing heavily on the ground. His head coming into contact with the base of the tree, Jasper sank ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... hillside to take the homeward path to his father's place, Playmore. With the challenge and the monstrous good-bye, a stone came flying up the hill after him and stopped almost at his feet. He made no reply, however, but waved a hand downhill, and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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 ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... destiny. For this system of ours allows no room for standing still — nothing can loiter on the road and check the progress of things upwards towards Life, or the rush of things downwards towards Death. The stern policeman Fate moves us and them on, on, uphill and downhill and across the level; there is no resting-place for the weary feet, till at last the abyss swallows us, and from the shores of the Transitory we are hurled into the sea of ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... different matter, and Wilbur found himself wondering how his horse kept his footing. He was not riding Kit, for which he was glad, as in leaving the trail and plunging downhill he had struck some parts of the forest where undergrowth was present, and his favorite mare's slender legs would have been badly scratched. Also the footing grew dangerous and uncertain. There had been many windfalls in the forest, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... 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 ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... good could it do him to be 'noticed' by noisy crowds of people? God his Maker already noticed him. He, Cromwell, was already there; no notice would make him other than he already was. Till his hair was grown gray; and Life from the downhill slope was all seen to be limited, not infinite but finite, and all a measurable matter how it went,—he had been content to plough the ground, and read his Bible. He in his old days could not support it any ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... experience was along a stream of very clear water. It did not appear to be a very large stream, but its remarkable character impressed me as singular. It flowed gently. It was not swift, but glided smoothly along, uphill and downhill the same. Its speed never varied, and this unaccountable characteristic struck me with surprise that waked me. This is my interpretation of my dream," said he: "The clear stream of water represents what the Christian should be. Its transparency symbolizes the clear thought ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... and moves the road-bat so as to push the coulter aside. These operations are done in a minute, and correspond in some degree to turning the rudder of a ship. The object is that the plough, which has been turning the earth one way, shall now (as it is reversed to go downhill) continue to turn it that way. If the change were not effected when the plough was swung round, the furrow would be made opposite. Next he leans heavily on the handles, still standing on the same spot; this lifts the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... otherwise sound? Did he go limping about over the landscape, to attract enemies from afar, and be quickly shot by a man or torn to pieces by wolves? Not he! With the keen intelligence of the wounded wild ruminant, he chose the line of least resistance, and on three legs fled downhill. He went on down, and kept going, until he reached the bottom of the biggest and most tortuous coulee in his neighborhood. And then what? Instead of coming to rest in a reposeful little valley a hundred ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... a marvellously clear day, and not many miles before reaching our destination we looked back upon the downhill route traversed which, so far as one could see, might have been a dead level. At a distance of nearly twenty miles Gafsa was plainly visible—white buildings piercing a dusky line of palms—an hour's ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... into a muddy road downhill," Kippy laughed. "Up there in Little Prairie Bend hit's caved right through the old levee, and they had to loop ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... 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
... happy 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 into an ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... '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 that you should be in charge. We could put some ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... westward. Mr. Olmsted has given a vivid description of the desolate state of parts of Georgia and the Carolinas, once among the richest specimens of soil and cultivation in the world; and even the more recently colonized Alabama, as he shows, is rapidly following in the same downhill track. To slavery, therefore, it is a matter of life and death to find fresh fields for the employment of slave labor. Confine it to the present States, and the owners of slave property will either be speedily ruined, or will have to find means ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... in vain before me? knew I not What stench arises from some purple gears? And how the sceptres witness whence they got Their briar-wood, crackling through the atmosphere's Foul smoke, by princely perjuries, kept hot? Forgive me, ghosts of patriots,—Brutus, thou, Who trailest downhill into life again Thy blood-weighed cloak, to indict me with thy slow Reproachful eyes!—for being taught in vain That, while the illegitimate Caesars show Of meaner stature than the first full strain (Confessed incompetent to conquer Gaul), They swoon as feebly and cross ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... coaching, something of a rehearsal and then that scene went on again, with Ruth and Alice "fleeing" from the pursuers, and the police charging downhill after the men. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... 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
... tracks on Exmoor. The uphill and downhill of Devonshire scorns compromise or mitigation by detour and zigzag. But here geography is on a scale so far more vast, and the roadway is so far worse metalled than with us in England—knotty masses of talc and nodes of sandstone cropping up at dangerous turnings—that only ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... 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 ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... downhill. There was a plain beneath, but up on the hillside only the sheep were feeding contentedly, all with their broad-tailed sterns turned to us. The sun was shining on the white diamond-shaped causeway stones which led ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the emotion that rose in Bull was the sadness he felt when he watched old Maggie stumbling among the rocks. There was something wrong with the forelegs of Maggie, and she was only half a horse when it came to going downhill on broken ground. He had always thought of the great strength that once must have been hers, and he pitied her for the change. He found himself pitying Uncle Bill Campbell in much ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... overflowed, and is overflowing still, though very slowly. Its furrows all curve downward; and it is, in fact, as one of our party said, 'a black glacier.' The pitch, expanding under the burning sun of day, must needs expand most towards the line of least resistance, that is, downhill; and when it contracts again under the coolness of night, it contracts, surely from the same cause, more downhill than it does uphill; and so each particle never returns to the spot whence it started, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... a smell of 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 ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... us like a swarm of assailants, swooping downhill on us, swerving, recoiling, and falling away, rising swiftly above us again for a charge, and then careering at us with abandon on the next declivity of glass. A boat would hesitate above us, poised and rocking on the snowy ridge of an upheaval, and vanish as the Windhover canted ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... above a party of phantom men and girls sliding downhill on their derrieres and ending in a heap at the bottom. A nice change from traveling under their own power. Their maximum speed while swift and incomprehensible to mortals, seemed relatively slow to one of Hell's old timers. Only Nick and his best scout, Cletus, ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... rolled onward, like a ball downhill. Being his teacher, his aunt was his playmate as well. Luba Mayakin used to come, and when with them, the old woman readily became ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... running downhill, crossed a bridge, and came into the town of Plattville. On ordinary nights, doubtless, the place would be quiet enough at this hour; but Saturday was different. Quite a number of persons were on the main street, and cast curious glances ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... over several years; they were much like these first ones. I soon learned, however, that life in the Methodist Church was all uphill or downhill at a smart spiritual canter. In these days it is nearly as easy to be a Methodist as it is ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... 'It is the first time I ever stole anything, and I can tell you I have felt very bad about it ever since. I don't know how it is. I am sure I didn't think once that I should ever come to be a thief. First I took to drinking and then to quarrelling. Since I began to go downhill everybody gives me a kick; you are the first people who have offered me a helping hand. My wife is sickly and my children are starving. You have sent them many a meal, God bless you! Yet I stole the hides from you, meaning ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... Aquila will surely send to slay them, and he will put a worse man in my place." "That may well be true," said he, and gave me his hand. "Better the devil we know than the devil we know not, till we can pack you Normans home." And so, too, said his Saxons; and they laughed as we drove the pigs downhill. But I think some of them, even then, began not to ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... will 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 ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... which commanded a distant view, far and wide, points out to them Italy and the plains of Lombardy on both banks of the Po, at the foot of the Alps, telling them that at that moment they were crossing not only the walls of Italy but of the Roman capital; that the rest of the march was easy and downhill." The situation of Hannibal and his Carthaginians surveying Italy for the first time is in some respects closely analogous to that of Cortes pointing out the Valley of ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... were giving mother a ride on it, and she's too heavy— especially going downhill. She thought we were holding it, but it got away. We yelled to her to put on the brake, but she didn't, and it went bang ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... nothing I 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 ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... in the habit of flying. She ran downhill a few yards flapping her shawl, and then she jumped off into ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... from the golden long ago To the land that we ne'er shall find; And it's uphill here, but it's downhill there, For the road is wise and kind, And all rough places and cheerless faces Will ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... they remained where 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
... passed a humorous remark at his expense—"just like I'll jump you, stranger, if you don't keep your trap closed. I say who can read those secrets, who can harness those forces? The man who can has got the world by the tail and a downhill pull. Now then, for the plot of my story, and it will pay you to do a week of listening in the next five minutes. Awhile ago an eminent scientist, unknown to me or to my partner, Mr. Stoner, came into our office, which is at your backs, one flight up, second door to ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... ash bough there," said the weasel, "and when you are outside the thicket turn to your left and go downhill, and you will come to the timber—and meantime I will send for the dragon-fly, ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... 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
... 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 ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... breathing holes testified. The visit and inspection were as satisfactory as we hoped, and after a short rest and hasty lunch, we started on our return journey, which, as it would be in our old tracks, and for the most part downhill, would be very much easier than the ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... Pomerania, and even from his early school-days dreamed and planned the conquest of the air. His practical experiments began when, at the age of thirteen, he and his brother Gustav made wings consisting of wooden framework covered with linen, which Otto attached to his arms, and then ran downhill flapping them. In consequence of possible derision on the part of other boys, Otto confined these experiments for the most part to moonlit nights, and gained from them some idea of the resistance offered ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... not design it as a toy bass-drum for the children to bang on on the morning of the Fourth of July. I would make a solemn affidavit to the fact that the maker of a baby-carriage never dreamed of its possible use as an impromptu toboggan for a couple of small boys to coast downhill on in midsummer. Yet these things have been used for these various purposes in our own household experience. A megaphone can be used as a beehive, and a hammock can be turned into a fly-net for a horse, but you never think of ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... the 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
... practicing law. I'm a free man now and any political work I do is going to be along the lines of the simple, childish ideas I brought home from college with me. I had begun to feel that all this political idealism was sheer rubbish, but I put the brakes on before I got too far downhill. If a few of us who have run with the machine and know the tricks will turn and help the bewildered idealists, we can make idealism effective. Most of the people don't want a handful of crooks to govern them, but there's a kind of cheap cynicism abroad that discourages the men who ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... Horse that Boers must 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 ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... country is that objects do not always seem to stand square with the world. In approaching a mountain and moving on an up grade the plane of incline is suddenly reversed and gives the appearance and sensation of going downhill. In some inexplicable manner sense and reason seem to conflict and the discovery of the disturbed relation of things is startling. You know very well that the mountain ahead is above you, but it has the appearance of standing below you in a hollow; and the water in the brook at your ...
— Arizona Sketches • Joseph A. Munk
... lighted altars, or like huge gas-jets suddenly turned on. Adam saw one log lying endwise downhill, one side of which was crumbling into coals of fierce and tremulous heat, while from the other side still sprung unsinged a delicate ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... this anxiety. The children were all agog to see the drama out. Would Mr. Samuel recover? And, if not, what would be done to Tom Trevarthen? They discussed this in eager groups. If any of them had an impulse to run downhill and cry the news through the village, Mrs. Purchase's determined slamming and bolting of the playground gate restrained it—that, and perhaps a thought that by running with the news they would start ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Armour. He was acclaimed throughout the length and breadth of his native land, his poems were read by the wise and by the ignorant, he was the poet of Scotland, and the nation, proud of its gifted son, stood ready to honor and follow him. But the old habits were too strong, and Burns took the downhill road. To this element of dissipation we owe his occasional bitterness, railing and coarseness, which make an expurgated edition of his poems essential to one ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... daughter, 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 in a worse plight still, for, ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... poignant, and more permanent than any that can be found elsewhere. Steadily climbing like some mountain railway, it reaches at last the short tunnel on the summit level, and then dashes out into the blinding blaze of a new sunshine. The other goes merrily enough, at first, downhill, but at last it comes to the edge of the abyss, and there it stops, but the traveller does not. He goes over; and nobody can see the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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 beast. Although the night was dark, a strong, lurid glow, which seemed to emanate ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... Jack. I would like your temperate drinker to pause, and reflect upon the fact, that the quantity of brandy or rum that he took at a drink, when he commenced this downhill course, has been gradually increased; so that in the second year, what had been quite sufficient to please his palate and produce all the desired effects in the first, was then insipidly small; and more so in the third year, if, mayhap, he could with any decency lay ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... thus little 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 ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... him at Pride's Fall with a buckboard and a pair of half-broken little Morgans; and away they tore into the woods, scrambling uphill, plunging downhill, running away most of the time to the secret satisfaction of Malcourt, who cared particularly for what ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... his fellows somewhat shamefaced that they had seen that sudden madness in him; but was presently of better cheer than he had been yet. He rode beside Clement; they went downhill speedily, and the wilderness began to better, and there was grass at whiles, and bushes here and there. A little after noon they came out of a pass cleft deep through the rocks by a swift stream which had once been ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... came out into the road not a hundred yards distant, and instantly rode down on us at a run. Before we could get as swift a pace, they were close upon us; and then it was a wild and perilous race downhill for the river, with yells, curses, and pistol-balls flying, I as helpless, meanwhile, as a child. The big roan kept well up to the front near the captain. Looking back, through dust and smoke, I saw our pursuers were better horsed and were gaining. A man ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... 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 ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... must say we usually succeeded. It is wonderful what a young fellow will endure cheerfully for the sake of passing it on to some one else the next year. I remember I was pretty mad when my Eta Bita Pie brethren headed me up in a barrel and rolled me downhill into a creek without taking the trouble to remove all the nails. It seemed like wanton carelessness. But long before my nose was out of splints and my hide would hold water I was perfecting our famous "Lover's Leap" for the next year's bunch. That was our greatest triumph. There was an abandoned ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... the 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. They were both thoroughly ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... enough to bear his own cross," said Jungel, seizing his long crutches. Only "Dancing Gundel" lingered in Miltenberg through sympathy in the fate of the companion who had reached the height of fame, while she, the former "Phyllis," had gone swiftly downhill. It was a Christian duty, she said to the blind boy who begged their bread, not to let Kuni, who had once held so lofty a position, take the last journey without a suitable escort. When she heard that her former companion had received the sacrament, she exclaimed to her blind son, while slicing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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
... Ralph's side, and they started. For half an hour they kept on, then Ralph cried, "Halt. I am certain I am going downhill, it may be because I have changed my direction, or it may be because there is a change in the lay of the ground. What do ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... how much the change really amounted. The Assyrian Empire was no more. This is a momentous fact, not to be esteemed lightly. The final catastrophe has happened only six years before our date; but the power of Assyria had been going downhill for nearly half a century, and it is clear, from the freedom with which other powers were able to move about the area of her empire some time before the end, that the East had been free of her interference for years. Indeed, so near and ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... 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. ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... go downhill. Following some random counsel, he changed the name of it and advanced the price—two blunders. Then he was compelled to reduce the subscription, also the advertising rates. He was obliged to adopt a descending ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... two 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
... curve.... Then some 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 ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... be 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 ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... starshine out-of-doors. Miss Theodosia was too late to see the nurse-angel riding on her star, her little cap and halo awry with the downhill glide through space. She was too late to see her go into the dark little House of Children—but she saw her come out. Distinctly, a misty little blur of white against the velvet background. Miss Theodosia ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... flushed. The moon-jeep crunched and clanked loudly over the trail that led downhill. There was no sound outside, of course. There was no air. But the noise inside the moon-vehicle was notable. The steam-motor, in particular, made a ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... began its long slither downhill, still through a whole necklace of tunnels, which fortunately no longer stank. So down and down, till the plain appears in sight once more, the Arno valley. But then began the inevitable hitch that always happens in Italian travel. ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... dispute waxed warm, and, while they stopped to argue it out at leisure, I went on. My cook, engaged through the kind offices of the Inland Mission, was a man of strong convictions; and in the last I saw of the dispute he was pulling the unfortunate coolie downhill by the pigtail. When he overtook me he was alone and smiling cheerfully, well satisfied with himself for having settled that little dispute. The road became more level, and we ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... last years she had offered less and less resistance to her tendency to let go, to leave loose ends ungathered, to allow opportunities to slip out of her grasp, to be inexact and unsystematic. There was urgent need of a strong hand at Dinard's, if the business was to be kept from running gradually downhill, and Gabriella became convinced, as the days passed, that hers was the only hand in the house strong enough to check the perilous descent to failure. Her plans were made, her scheme arranged, but, as Madame was both jealous and suspicious, she ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... can't nobody find it, unless they're wise enough to follow cow tracks—and of course, we don't expect that of strangers. But if you ever git lost and you're within ten miles of home jest take the first cow trail you see and follow it downhill and you'll go into one end or the other of Hidden Water canyon. Sure, it's what you might call the Hello-Central of the whole Four Peaks country, with cow paths instead of wires. The only thing lackin' is the girls, to talk back, and call you down for your ungentlemanly language, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... 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
... credit of the reporter and makes his veracity to be called in question. For instance it is natural for a stone to roll down hill, it is unnatural for it to roll up hill: but a stone moving uphill is as much the object of sense as a stone moving downhill; and all men in their senses are as capable of seeing and judging and reporting the fact in one case, as in the other. Should a man then tell you, that he saw a stone go uphill of its own accord, you might question his veracity; but you could not say the thing ...
— The Trial of the Witnessses of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ • Thomas Sherlock
... go. Buck learned easily, and under the combined tuition of his two mates and Francois made remarkable progress. Ere they returned to camp he knew enough to stop at "ho," to go ahead at "mush," to swing wide on the bends, and to keep clear of the wheeler when the loaded sled shot downhill at their heels. ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... there 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 ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... I said. "I know exactly what it will do, by instinct. Going uphill it will jamb the wheel so effectively that we shall have to carry the machine bodily. The air at the top of the hill will do it good, and it will suddenly come right again. Going downhill it will start reflecting what a nuisance it has been. This will lead to remorse, and finally to despair. It will say to itself: 'I'm not fit to be a brake. I don't help these fellows; I only hinder them. I'm ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... be at him again. Sultan, without more urging, had made the furlongs fly in gallant style, and it was time to be looking out for my landmarks. Nance had made me letter-perfect in them. Here, on the right, was the woodward's cottage where the road began to run downhill into a bottom dark with ancient elms: there, on my left, in an open space among the boles, the moon showed up a worn, grey column which marked the spot where, in the wild days of the Roses, a Parker Putwell had slain a Blount in unfair fight for a light of love not worth the blood of a rabbit. Nance ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... rests is the present—the ever-fleeting present. It lies, then, in the very nature of our existence to take the form of constant motion, and to offer no possibility of our ever attaining the rest for which we are always striving. We are like a man running downhill, who cannot keep on his legs unless he runs on, and will inevitably fall if he stops; or, again, like a pole balanced on the tip of one's finger; or like a planet, which would fall into its sun ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... said it was time to be going back. She made the remark again and again, but, every time, the princess begged her to go on just a little farther and a little farther; reminding her that it was much easier to go downhill, and saying that when they did turn they would be at home in a moment. So on and on they did go, now to look at a group of ferns over whose tops a stream was pouring in a watery arch, now to pick a shining stone ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... Dale was going downhill headlong to Gadarene catastrophe. He had no eyes or ears or thoughts for any one in the world but for a certain Lola Brandt, a brazen creature from a circus, the shape of whose limbs was the common ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... 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
... inserted through the centre of the wheel, so that long ends extended about a yard on each side. If any straw remained, it was made up into torches at the top of tall sticks. At a given signal the wheel was lighted, and sent rolling downhill. If this fire-wheel went out before it reached the bottom of the hill, a very poor harvest was promised. If it kept lighted all the way down, and continued blazing for a long time, the harvest would be exceptionally ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... thinking, was unlike any that I had ever witnessed in the pulpit, and appeared to me to resemble rather that of a very earnest speaker at the hustings than the usual pulpit style. His sentences seemed to run downhill, with continually increasing speed till they came to a full stop at the bottom. It was, I think, the only sermon I ever heard which I wished longer. He carried me with him completely, for the century was in those days, like me, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... describing reform or conservation are foolish and beside the mark. The Conservative was then the only possible reformer. If a man did not strengthen the remains of Roman order and the root of Roman Christianity, he was simply helping the world to roll downhill into ruin and idiotcy. Remember all these evident historical truths and then turn to the account given by Charles Dickens of that great man, St. Dunstan. It is not that the pert cockney tone of the abuse is irritating to the nerves: it is that he has got the whole hang of the thing wrong. His head ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... now become noticeable, and seems greater on this easterly shoulder of the ridge. We are grateful for the rapid downhill trot, which makes two breezes blow where one breeze blew before. Even that one is less marked on this side of the col, and as we descend, turn by turn, beyond the limits of snow patches and into the zone ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... and Accident.—As Colonel Randolph was driving through our town yesterday and was passing Captain Jones's sample-room, where the colonel lately shot Moses Widlake in the street, the horses took alarm and started violently downhill. The colonel kept his seat till rounding the corner by the Clayville Bank, when his wheels came into collision with that edifice, and our gallant townsman was violently shot out. He is now lying in a very precarious condition. This may relieve Tom Widlake of the duty of shooting the ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... the trail we made," remarked Ted. "It wound around and then climbth the hill. We could thee about where the cabin lay, and I made a bee line downhill ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... they reached the gap, through which a brown stream flowed, and he could see nothing except dim hillsides and the black trough of the hollow. Pete said they must follow the water, and they stumbled downhill among the stones beside the burn. As they descended, a valley opened up and a rough track began near a sheepfold. Although it was dark, Foster saw that they were now crossing rushy pasture, and they had to stop every now and then to open ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... bad stretch; now it'll be downhill an' green fields all th' way." Nye nodded at the narrow opening between two hills lying ahead. "Glad to get this band in on all four legs ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... the 1st October, we continued our journey to Kusatsu. The road was uphill for a distance of 550 metres, downhill for nearly as far, then up again, and ran often without any protecting fence past deep abysses, or over high bridges of the most dangerous construction. It was, therefore, impossible for any wheeled vehicle to traverse it, so ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold |
