"Fastness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I played in the fall of the year 2419, when the rugged Americans, with science secretly developed to terrific efficiency in their forest fastness, turned fiercely and assumed the aggressive against a now effete Han population, which for generations had shut itself up in the fifteen great Mongolian cities of America, having abandoned cultivation of the soil and the operation of mines; for these ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... were to be discerned in the river[6] down almost to the present times. The Britons had made the best of the situation; but the Romans plunged into the water, tore away the stakes and palisadoes, and obtained a complete victory. The capital, or rather chief fastness, of Cassibelan was then taken, with a number of cattle, the wealth of this barbarous city. After these misfortunes the Britons were no longer in a condition to act with effect. Their ill-success in the field soon dissolved the ill-cemented ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... had slipped the leash. She was a robber baroness; she dwelt in a rocky "fastness"—whatever that was—surrounded by a crew of outlaws as desperate as any that ever drew cutlass and dagger, and she ruled them not only by native strength of character, but also by the aid of other forces, for she was on friendly terms with the more prominent wood sprites, fairies, and the like, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Fort Edward, where General Webb lay with five thousand men, the startling news had just been received that the French general, Montcalm, was moving up the Champlain Lake with an army "numerous as the leaves on the trees," with the forest fastness of Fort William Henry as ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... of peace vanishes, transfigured into a choleric and formidable man of war. Still, she does not come out of her absorption to look at him: her eyes are steadfast with a mechanical reflection of Richard's stead-fastness.) ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... defend us," says an honest letter from Surinam, in the "Annual Register" for Sept. 5, 1772. Fortunately for the safety of the planters, Baron presumed too much upon his numbers, and injudiciously built a camp too near the seacoast, in a marshy fastness, from which he was finally ejected by twelve hundred Dutch troops, though the chief work was done, Stedman thinks, by the "black rangers" or liberated slaves. Checked by this defeat, he again drew back into the forests, resuming his guerrilla warfare against the plantations. Nothing could dislodge ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... changed swiftly to black night that rushed past the two clinging figures and enveloped them in a wall of silence. Then out of the mysterious fastness came the dull glow of what looked like a distant planet. It grew and enlarged till it reached the size of a silver dollar. Little pin-points of light soon began to appear on all sides of it, very much ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... between her and freedom. The very remembrance sheered off his morbid introspection. She made a difference. How strange for him to realize that! He felt grateful to her. He had been forced into outlawry; she had been stolen from her people and carried into captivity. They had met in the river fastness, he to instil hope into her despairing life, she to be the means, perhaps, of keeping him from sinking to the level of her captors. He became conscious of a strong and beating desire to ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... was afforded by our view of the Wartburg, which we passed during the only sunlit hour of this journey. The sight of this mountain fastness, which, from the Fulda side, is clearly visible for a long time, affected me deeply. A neighbouring ridge further on I at once christened the Horselberg, and as we drove through the valley, pictured to myself the scenery for the third act of my Tannhauser. This scene remained so vividly ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... saw the lady who was to be his wife in the hunting-field. She was Miss Garscube of Garscube, an only child and an heiress. She was a fast young lady when as yet fastness was a rare development:—a harbinger of the fast period, the one swallow that presages summer, but does not make it—and as such much in the mouths of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... shook his head. 'It was all kinds of fastness with me, I can assure you!' he said. He raised his hands in some excitement as he said this, and instantly rolled out of the saddle, and fell headlong ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... the royal march of Spring Carpets your mountain fastness over,— Till chattering birds are on the wing, And buzzing bees are in ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... natives. They saw that nothing could be gained by fighting the Indians. They were but a small company in a strange land, and a thousand miles and more from the sea; their object was gold, not conquest. Should they go on their way, leaving the unfriendly chief in the security of his fastness? By so doing would they be leaving an enemy in their rear? On the other hand, should they bring him to his knees, and teach him to respect and fear the name of England? How would their line of conduct operate on the minds of the natives? The point was a delicate one. Some were for pushing ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... more fortunate even than their fellow pueblo dwellers. The forested mesas, so different from the arid cliffs farther south and west, possessed constant moisture and fertile soil. The grasses lured the deer within capture. The Mancos River provided fish. Above all, the remoteness of these fastness canyons from the trails of raiders and traders and their ease of defense made for long generations of peace. The enterprise innate in the spirit ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... the Garden, the First Woman looked into the eyes of the First Man and knew that God had made her to be his mate. Suddenly a white cliff loomed up on the beach before them and from its depths came a tremendous knocking, as though some one were endeavouring to escape from a hopeless fastness of stone. ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... apparently Abishai, Benaiah, and Eleazar, heard the wish. Between their mountain fastness and the dearly loved spring lay the host of the Philistines; but their love for their leader feared no enemies. It was not only water that he longed for, but the water from the fountain which he had loved in his childhood. They descended from their chasm, broke through the midst of the enemy's ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Faith; well knowing that to dispute the information of her brother, was in effect to close his mouth. "Now tell me of Conanchet, the present Narragansett Sachem—he who hath leagued with Metacom, and hath of late been driven from his fastness near the sea—doth ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... mystery here), 'and some time, if I can ever pursue my investigations in peace, you will knock at this door and I shall have vanished! But I shall know of your visit, and the very sound of your footfall will reach my ear, even if I am inhabiting some remote mountain fastness!' ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... flower-beds upon which the creeper-covered house looked forth, into many a leafy nook and shrub-bound fastness the phantom little form ran happily. Where the trees grew tall and close above an undergrowth of shepherd's-parsley and blue-bell had been a favourite resort of the child's. When the eyes of the young man followed him there, and saw him stop beside the smooth trunk ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... these uncouth places pig-tailed Chinese pirates worked side by side with border ruffians and broken men from Europe, talking together in a mixed dialect, mostly oaths, gambling, drinking, quarrelling and murdering like wolves; how the plumed hereditary lord of all America heard, in this last fastness, the scream of the "bad medicine waggon" charioting his foes; and then when I go on to remember that all this epical turmoil was conducted by gentlemen in frock coats, and with a view to nothing more extraordinary than a fortune and a subsequent visit to Paris, it seems to me, I own, as if this ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... It has always been a land of conflict. In 1540—339 years ago —De Soto, in that energetic but fruitless search for gold which occupied his later years, penetrated to this region, and found it the fastness of the Xualans, a bold, aggressive race, continually warring with its neighbors. When next the white man reached the country—a century and a half later—he found the Xualans had been swept away by the conquering Cherokees, and he witnessed ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... was many, many "sleeps" from his friends with hordes of marauding hostiles intervening, and so induced him to remain with them in hiding until the rebellious tribes were driven from the reservations and Red Dog himself fled to their fastness. Then again had McGrath to remain in hiding, secreted by his humble friends, and there he lay when Winthrop's bugles sounded the charge and his own old troop came dashing in. He was so worn, ragged, and ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... to convert a blanket into a tent, the instinct for "shanties"—which all boys universally manifest—we are told that these forms of play are but the echo of remote ages when our ancestors sojourned in caves, lived in tents, or dwelt in the mountain fastness. In this same way the advocates of this theory seek to explain the strange and early drawings which the young lad has for wading, swimming, fishing, boating, and other forms ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... and the darkness that is peopled by Mimir's brood, from the ultimate silent fastness of the desolate deep-sea gloom, and the peace of that ageless gloom, blind Oriander came, from Mimir, to be at war with the sea and to jeer at the sea's desire. When tempests are seething and roaring ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... had to be found from the start, and he always managed to produce the article required at the shortest notice. As a matter of fact, he had laid hands upon a tame professor, whom he kept immured in a fastness somewhere in the attics, and who was always prepared to vouch for the proficiency of anybody in any language when required to ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... with what it must have cost if executed after the ordinary manner. The aqueduct was formally opened for traffic in 1805. "And thus," said Telford, "has been added a striking feature to the beautiful vale of Llangollen, where formerly was the fastness of Owen Glendower, but which, now cleared of its entangled woods, contains a useful line of intercourse between England and Ireland; and the water drawn from the once sacred Devon furnishes the means of distributing prosperity over the ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... but so much time had been wasted in delays, that Carson feared they would only find the mutilated bodies of the poor captives. In a few days after leaving Las Vegas, the retreat of the savages was discovered in the fastness of the mountains, where they had fortified themselves in such a manner that they could resist ten times the number of their pursuers. Carson, as soon as he saw them, without a second's hesitation, and giving a characteristic yell, dashed in, expecting, of course, that the men would ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... robin, hunger-silent now. Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer; The chipmunk, on the shingly shag-bark's bough Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear, Then drops his nut, and, cheeping, with a bound 40 Whisks to his winding fastness underground; The clouds like swans drift down the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... planted his guns on the Giant's Grave. We know little of the history of that giant, except that he carried off the wife of another giant who lived on the Great Island opposite, and held her here in his fastness amid the pine trees against all efforts to wrest her from him. A huge rock that he hurled back in one of these fights is still to be seen on the ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... "chiefly Irish and Welsh." With this immense force he routed Wallace at Falkirk on the 22nd of July, and reduced him to his original rank of a guerilla chief, wandering with his bands of partizans from one fastness to another. The Scottish cause gained in Pope Boniface VII. a powerful advocate soon after, and the unsubdued districts continued to obey a Regency composed of the Bishop of St. Andrews, Robert Bruce, ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... and ruddy cheeks, and beneath his curved and most tranquil brows. In form he was symmetrical, straight and pliant as a young fir tree when the sweet spring sap fills its veins. So he came to that assembly, in the glory of youth, beauty, strength, valour, and beautiful shame- fastness, yet proud in his humility and glittering like the morning star. Choice youths, his comrades, attended him. The kings held their breaths when he drew nigh, moving white knee after white knee over the green and sparkling grass. ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... attention to some products of the coal-tar industry which are free from these defects of aniline dyestuffs, and for which it is claimed that they far surpass logwood, fustic, cudbear, etc., as to fastness against light, and excellently stand fulling. We allude to the alizarine dyestuffs, which have long since been introduced and are largely employed in cotton dyeing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 530, February 27, 1886 • Various
... of day; or as a sledge Drawn over snowy plains; where not a hedge Breaks this Aurora's dancing, nothing but The one cold Esquimaux' unlikely hut That swims in the broad moonlight! Lo, a wedge Of the clean meteor hath been brightly driven Right home into the fastness of the north! Anon it quickeneth up into the heaven! And I with it have clomb and spreaded forth Upon the crisp and cooling atmosphere! My soul is all abroad: I cannot ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... your summers. Why can you not be content with the ordinary highways, where people travel comfortably in good boats and rail cars? Why must you leave tolerably convenient hotels, regular meals, and agreeable, proper people, to bury yourself in some mountain fastness, where the inns are poor, the food plain, and the people—well! such as are totally unfit associates for ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Old Market. This piazza, though it had been the scene of a provision-market from time immemorial, and may, perhaps, says fond imagination, be the very spot to which the Fesulean ancestors of the Florentines descended from their high fastness to traffic with the rustic population of the valley, had not been shunned as a place of residence by Florentine wealth. In the early decades of the fifteenth century, which was now near its end, the Medici and ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... great treasure and power from this time forth; still thou art not happy without love and one to share thy fortune. I will tell thee then of a lovely bride who lies guarded round by fire in a rocky forest fastness. She sleeps and waits for one who shall dare the flames for love. The glorious maiden's name ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... waited for reinforcements, and Washington improved the time to fall back to Northcastle, five miles, where, in the rocky fastness, he could defy the whole British army. To add to his advantages, the day on which the British commander decided upon an attack, after the arrival of reinforcements, a violent rain set in, and continued through the day, rendering an attack impossible, so that the Americans ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... and in his hair I hid my face, burn-ingly flushing with present feeling as much as with shame, my bosom glued to him; he carried me once round the couch, on which he then, without quitting the middle-fastness, or dischannelling, laid me down, and began with pleasure-grist. But so provokingly predisposed and primed as we were, by all the moving sights of the night, our imagination was too much heated not to melt us of the soonest; and accordingly I no sooner felt the warm spray darted up my inwards-, ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... enlaced with creepers of endless variety, out from which the sheltering tree stood like a huge, green, smoothly rounded buttress, formed by nature to support the green wall which surrounded her forest fastness. ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... for its own sake, and none were ever able quite to penetrate into the inner fastness of his personality. Those who came nearest to it were probably Hasfeldt and Ford, whose persistent good-humour was an armour against a reserve that chilled most men. Of all Borrow's friends it is probable that none understood him ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... this third battle, for the ships fought together upon the water. The Saxons withdrew before the Britons, so that from beyond the Humber even to Kent they were deceived in their hope. The heathen fled in their galleys to an islet called Thanet. The Britons assailed them in this fastness, and so long as it was day, harassed them with arrows and quarrels, with ships and with barges. They rejoiced loudly, for the pagans were caught in a corner, and those not slain by the sword were fain to die of hunger. For this reason, the Britons raised a mighty ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... hint of danger. And the time will come when it can hear with equanimity that the fortress has gone to ruin, and that fighting is no longer in fashion. The mountain tribe will have learned to love the fatness of the valley, while thinking of those mother ribs of its mountain fastness which are ever waiting to prop up its life. Just so put a wooden sword into the hand of the Hohenstieler, and let him brag of war, learning meanwhile the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... with such force, and in such near proximity to his hinder parts, that in a great measure it checked his fiery ardour, and induced most of his more timorous following to climb with most perturbed activity over the rocks. The ancient more slowly followed, and then from behind the fastness of his rocky shield, he spoke spears and boomerangs to us, though he used none. He, however, poured out the vials of his wrath upon us, as he probably thought to some purpose. I was not linguist enough to be able to translate all he said; but I am sure my free interpretation ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... and fettered soul! the freed and royal soul! It alone is king. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in! Tremble, O Tyrant, in your mountain-fastness! Tremble, Deceiver, in your cavern under the sea! Your victim is your accuser. Your sin has found you out. Your crime cries to Heaven. You have condemned and killed the just. You have murdered the innocent in secret places, and in the noonday sun the voice of their blood ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... upon his feet now, gazing, white and trembling, at the fate which had overtaken him even in the fastness of the labyrinthine jungle. Instinctively he turned to flee; but Tarzan of the Apes reached out a strong hand and ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... land growth, was thickly sprinkled over with willows, whence its name, "Willow Marsh." Across this isthmus Proctor hastily threw his regiment of about nine hundred regulars, while Tecumseh, with his brigade of about two thousand warriors, ambushed himself in the fastness of the swamp. On this occasion, as had he, indeed, on every other occasion of the kind, the Indian leader displayed a degree of generalship which stands without parallel in the annals of savage warfare. Pivoting his brigade on the right of the English regiment, he stretched it out in a ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... warming him with fallen wood, but giving him shelter in days of sore trouble, when my lord of the chateau, with all his troopers and trumpets, had been beaten from field after field into some ultimate fastness, or lay over-seas in an English prison. In these dark days, when the watch on the church steeple saw the smoke of burning villages on the sky-line, or a clump of spears and fluttering pensions drawing nigh across the plain, these good folk gat them up, with all their household ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the rival factions of the district. They lived as their fathers had lived before them, on opposite sides of the little stream, the branches of which crept through the alder and gum thickets between them, and contributed to make the district almost as impenetrable to the uninitiated as a mountain fastness. The long log-cabin of the Cove-Millses, where room had been added to room in a straight line, until it looked like the side of a log fort, peeped from its pines across at the clearing where the hardly ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... advisable to deny her identity or that of the child; the only explanation that he could put upon the matter was that, after all, the white woman who had accompanied his son and the Swede into the jungle fastness of the interior had ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... included by him. Karl the Great lies in the Unterberg, near Salzburg, and also in the Odenberg, where Woden himself, according to other legends, is said to be. Siegfried, the hero of the Nibelungen Lied, dwells in the mountain fastness of Geroldseck. Diedrich rests in the mountains of Alsace, his hand upon his sword, waiting till the Turk shall water his horses on the banks of the Rhine. On the Gruetli, where once they met to swear the oath which freed their country, ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... scrupulousness is very ill-bred, if you'll excuse my saying so, Rose. We are not supposed to know anything about fastness, and wildness, and so on, but to treat every man alike and not be fussy and prudish," said Emma, settling her many-colored streamers with the superior air of a woman of the world, ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... a wider and deeper bed since the cloudburst on the heights. Small trees, brush, and rocks had been uprooted by the force of the stream, but its current was now receding. One might walk along the edge of the brook into this hillside fastness. ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... my guest in that wilderness fastness. I gave her the two chambers in best preservation, one of them being immediately over the chief entrance and overlooking the courtyard. My own abode was in the northern turret, looking down the steep wooded declivity that fell to the road from Clochonne ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... This bragging land of freedom that enthralls me Is still the fastness of a secret king Who treads the dark like snow, of old king Sleep. He works with night, he has stolen death's tool frost That makes the breaking wave ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... the improvvisatore. "Scarce one of them but will cross himself and say his prayers when he hears in his mountain fastness the matin or the ave maria bells sounding from the valleys. They will often confess themselves to the village priests, to obtain absolution; and occasionally visit the village churches to pray at some ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the last two years, and the more important I think the "mission" of every quiet, refined, self-respecting woman—the more mistaken I think those who would forfeit it by noisy self-assertion, masculinity, or fastness. In all this wild West the influence of woman is second only in its benefits to the influence of religion, and where the last unhappily does not exist the first continually exerts its restraining power. The last morning came. I cleaned up my room and sat at the window watching ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... it is also a poor work, badly constructed, and for the most part carelessly written. In essence it is a mere tract against Puritanism, and in form a sort of Arabian Nights' Entertainment in which the hero plays the part of Haroun-al-Raschid.] whose anger has no stead-fastness; but the gentle forgivingness of disposition that is so marked in Vincentio is a trait we found emphasized in Romeo, and again in Hamlet and again in Macbeth. It is, indeed, one of the most permanent characteristics ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... where she crouched somewhat sheltered by a rock, and clasping her within my arm lay there nor dared to stir until the mad fury of the wind abated somewhat. Then, side by side, on hands and knees, we gained our rocky fastness, and closing the door, which was screened from the direct force of the tempest, I barred it with the beam I had made for the purpose, and stood staring at my companion and she on me, while all the world about us roared and clamoured loud ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... to the east, first with the effect of fire upon their crests, and then as a great, slowly-whitening ball soaring high into the fathomless heaven. The girl stood framed in the open window, and the moonlight painted her face to the purest ivory, and toyed with the rich brown fastness of her hair, and gleamed from a single ornament at her throat. And she thought of the young horseman galloping to town; wondered if he had yet set out on his homeward journey, and the eerie depths of the valley communicated ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... 'em at it, my dear," he told his spouse, in his fastness under a gnarled tree root. "However, there's no objection to the children having a look if it amuses them." He cast a discriminating eye round the larder, and frowned heavily. "Hell! you don't mean to say that we've got that damned ham bone again," ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... glaciers, its bottom paved with raw gold. Old-timers, it was said, whose very names were forgotten in the frosts of earlier years, had dived into the icy waters of Surprise Lake and fetched lump-gold to the surface in both hands. At different times, parties of old-timers had penetrated the forbidding fastness and sampled the lake's golden bottom. But the water was too cold. Some died in the water, being pulled up dead. Others died later of consumption. And one who had gone down never did come up. All ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... came to a halt, and held a council of war. Some conjectured that the band of Indians, whose trail they had discovered in the neighborhood of the stray horse, had been lying in wait for them in some secret fastness of the mountains; and were about to attack them on the open plain, where they would have no shelter. Preparations were immediately made for defence; and a scouting party sent off to reconnoitre. They soon came galloping ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... effort would be made to carry the post by assault. Early on the morning of the 26th captain M'Cune reached the fort in safety. In the afternoon of that day, the enemy practised a well devised stratagem for the purpose of drawing general Clay and his troops from their fastness. On the Sandusky road, just before night, a heavy firing of rifles and muskets was heard: the Indian yell broke upon the ear, and the savages were seen attacking with great impetuosity a column of men, who were soon thrown into confusion; ...
— Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet - With a Historical Sketch of the Shawanoe Indians • Benjamin Drake
... as these dim shapes passed to the left there came again the sight of the expanse across which the disarmed men in red had been marching. And then the black ruins, and then again the beleaguered white fastness of the Council. It appeared no longer a ghostly pile, but glowing amber in the sunlight, for a cloud shadow had passed. About it the pigmy struggle still hung in suspense, but now the red defenders ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... storms confined them to the castle. Rude as was their work, the constant observation and choice of subjects were an unsuspected training and softening. It was not in vain that they lived in the glorious mountain fastness, and saw the sun descend in his majesty, dyeing the masses of rock with purple and crimson; not in vain that they beheld peak and ravine clothed in purest snow, flushed with rosy light at morn and eve, or contrasted with the purple blue of the sky; ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... however, Tad sat down in a rocky basin, to enjoy to the fullest the sense of being alone in the mountain fastness. His quiver was full of arrows, and the strong, business-like looking bow lay ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... however her heart might have been swerved for a season to its natural inclination of love, had never yet admitted a lover, for, when it came to that last alternative of open or closed doors, she had immediately been seized with an impulse of flight into her fastness of childhood and maidenhood. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... expelled from philosophy by a single victory. It retreats slowly, defends every inch of ground, and often, after it has been driven from the open country, retains a footing in some remote fastness. The essences of individuals were an unmeaning figment arising from a misapprehension of the essences of classes, yet even Locke, when he extirpated the parent error, could not shake himself free from that which was its fruit. He distinguished two sorts of essences, Real and ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... as well as geographical point of view—which thrusts itself forward over the general line into British territory, and which can never fail to attract the attention of the frontier traveller. This is the rocky fastness of Kafir Koh. From red salt hills south of Bahadur Khel the three-headed peak of Kafir Koh is seen standing up like a monument in the southern distance: nor is it less a conspicuous feature when viewed ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... the Senior Surgeon burst out laughing,—boisterously, hilariously like a crazy school-boy. Bluntly from an overhanging ledge of rock the echo of his laugh came mocking back at him. Down from some unvisioned mountain fastness the echo of that echo came wafting faintly ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... a relief," he said, waving a graceful hand in a neatly limited gesture, which everybody's eyes followed, his own included. "It is a relief and a retreat. The windows open, the blinds closed—that is as it should be. It is a retreat, a fastness, a bastion against the heat's assault. For me, a quiet room—a quiet room and a book, a volume in the hand, held lightly between the fingers. A volume of poems, lines metrical and cadenced; something by a sound Victorian. We have no ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... going about with any revolver. Not if I know it!" He was playful but determined. He startled her, for the altercation lasted two hours. On the other hand he had never said a word about the photograph of Jules Defourcambault, and had never seen it. Somewhere, in some mysterious fastness, the mysterious ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... widely to the west, but the Votaress bore northward across the foot of the reach, and soon it was plain that she was about to enter a "chute," whose vividly green, low, wooded shore on her larboard bow was a large island: an island of swamp and jungle, ancient fastness of an Indian prophet, hiddenly swarming with all the ravening and venomous brute, reptile, and insect life possible to the region. Prophet's Island, it was, yet no senator, bishop, general, judge, or squire was ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... overflow. The higher part of the level ground afforded a stance for an old house, of singular structure, with a terraced garden, and a cultivated field or two beside it. In former times, a Danish or Norwegian fastness had stood here, called the Black Fort, from the colour of a huge healthy hill, which, rising behind the building, appeared to be the boundary of the valley, and to afford the source of the brook. But the original ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... a tree with the swift surety of an executioner, and in revenge for his many arboral murders the woodland had taken captive his mind, captured and chained it as Prospero did Ariel. The resounding footsteps of Progress driven on so mercilessly in this mad age could not reach his fastness. It did not concern him that men were thinking, investigating, inventing. His senses responded only to the sonorous music of the woods; a steadfast wind ringing metallic melody from the pine-tops contented ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... Rudolph been stunned by the blow dealt him by Cuthbert, he would himself have headed the pursuit, and in that case the foresters would have had to fight hard to make their retreat to their fastness. The officer in command of the mercenaries, however, had no great stomach for the matter. Men were hard to get, and Prince John would not have been pleased to hear that a number of the men whom he had brought with such expense from ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... Casas learned that the principal reason for recalling him, was the President's desire to establish a surer peace with the cacique Enrique; although the latter had made no attack on the Spaniards since the agreement of 1529, he had not disbanded his followers, but remained in an inaccessible mountain fastness, a permanent source of unrest to the Spaniards with whom he showed no intention of entering ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... had become familiar with the channels through the swamps for long distances from their fastness, and had even established a trade with the people lying to the northwest of the Fen country. They learnt that the Romans boasted they had well nigh annihilated the Trinobantes and Iceni; but that towards the other tribes that had taken part in the great rising they had shown ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... weary of the long struggle, were willing to return to the bosom of the Church if only the cup (calix), and thus communion under both kinds (sub utraque), were guaranteed to them, with two or three secondary matters. Not so the Taborites, who drew their name from a mountain fastness which they fortified and called Mount Tabor. These, the Ultras, the democratic radical party, separating themselves off as early as 1419, had left Huss and his teaching very far behind. Ignoring the whole historical development of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... quietly put his foot inside, and, without the knowledge of the watch, went lightly on tiptoe to the house into which the bandits had gone to carouse. And when he had reached its hall, he sat down under the porch overhanging the door. Now the strength of their fastness made the warriors feel so safe that they were tempted to a debauch; for they thought that the swiftly rushing river made their garrison inaccessible, since it seemed impossible either to swim over or to cross in boats. For no part of the river ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... obtained communication with the Grecian continent and isles? What more probable than that the maritime and roving Phoenicians entered the seas of Greece, and were tempted by the plains, which promised abundance, and the mountains, which afforded a fastness? Possessed of a superior civilization to the hordes they found, they would meet rather with veneration than resistance, and thus a settlement would be obtained by an inconsiderable number, more in right of intelligence ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... afterwards his foes pursued him actively from fastness to fastness, determined to run him down, and at length, on September 6, 1859, surprised him on the plateau of Gounib. Here the devoted band made a desperate resistance, not yielding until of the original four hundred only forty-seven remained alive. Schamyl, the lion of the Caucasus, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... strikingly beautiful and with whom he had talked, in all, but ten minutes. But, as we recognise, he went so far as to wish that the human belongings of a person whose high spirit appeared to have no taint either of fastness, as they said in England, or of subversive opinion, and whose mouth had charming lines, should not be a little more distinguished. There was an effect of drollery in her behaviour to these subjects of her zeal, whom she seemed to ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... many careers to which his life, with hers, might be dedicated. Visions also, though he knew them too bright to last, floated before him and made his being tingle—visions of great works done among the toiling masses, of comfort and health invading the fastness of degradation, and the fire of faith shining on eyeballs that had long ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... old days there had been a sort of antagonism between Bella Latour and Maurice Leigh. They had necessarily seen a great deal of each other, and liked each other after a certain fashion; but Maurice had thought Bella too flighty, and inclined to fastness; and Bella had been half-seriously, half-playfully disposed to resent his judgment of her. But now, either because of the complete change in her character which the last few months had wrought, or from ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... undoubtedly one of the head men of their gang. If Jimmie the Monk is mixed up in it that is the connecting link between these fellows and the East Side. And it's back to the East Side that the trail nearly always leads, for over in the East Side of New York is the feudal fastness of the politician who tells the public to be damned, and is rewarded with a fortune for his pains. The politician protects the gangster; the gangster protects the procurer, and both of them vote early and ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... and silent solitude. There was noise enough about him, in all conscience, for every sentence that fell from Hare's lips was punctuated by a salvo; but the tumult beat itself to stillness against the closed fastness of his mind. ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... But, as the bride, with her bridesmaids, was journeying towards Calos, escorted by a chosen band, they were assailed by a wild and warlike race, inhabitants of an island called Sarrope, in the midst of a great lake, who put the warriors to flight, bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness, espoused them all, and, as we are assured, "loved ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... jest by wearing a smart Paris hat with a high cerise crown. She said it had once belonged to the fastest woman in South Africa, who had given it to her as a joke, but she did not mention the lady's name, nor say in what her "fastness" consisted. This was characteristic of visitors at Ho-la-le-la: they sometimes stated facts, but never talked scandal. When April asked them to call her by her own name, instead of "Diana," they did so without comment, accepting her as one of themselves, and asking ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... tried to puzzle out what use to make of this man. One thing was clear enough: the Lion of Petra was well informed. It was nothing less than fact that on no account could an expedition be undertaken against him for a long time. And it was fair, therefore, to presume that in his Petra fastness the robber chief would be feeling confident, and would be that much more difficult ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... boys went in afoot, and were never seen again. The Mexicans held him in superstitious terror, believing that he could not be killed; and he passed another year in the cattle-land, known and feared now as the "Monarch of the Range," killing in the open by night, and retiring by day to his fastness in the near hills, ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of Fort Pitt with one thousand provincials and five hundred regulars. Crossing the Alleghany, he made his way in a north-westerly direction until Beaver Creek was reached, and then turned westward into the unbroken forest. The Indians of the Muskingum valley felt secure in their wilderness fastness. No white soldiers had ever penetrated to their country. To reach their villages dense woods had to be penetrated, treacherous marshes crossed, and numerous streams bridged or forded. But by the middle of October ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... against? Something might be done by torpedoes; but, so far as our past knowledge goes, man has no means of seriously diminishing the numbers of any animal of the most rudimentary intelligence that made its fastness in the sea. ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... with a crash, and a form was securely planted on its ruins. High above the babel Moossy could be heard crying encouragement, and demanding whether the "mices" had been caught, but nothing would induce him to come down from his fastness. When things were at their highest, and gay spirits like Speug were beginning to conclude that even a big snow fight was nothing to a mouse hunt, and Howieson had been so lifted that he had mounted a desk, not to catch a mouse, but to give ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... with the little town, and adding a still greater look of old- worldness, are the arched walls of the old chateau-fort. As evening closes in, the fascination of the scene deepens; spire and roofs, shadowy hill and stern mountain fastness, are all outlined in pale, silvery tones against a pure pink and opaline sky, the greenery of near vine and peach-tree all standing out in bold relief, blotches of greenish gold upon a dark ground. I must describe our inn, the most rustic we had as yet met with, nevertheless ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... March, 1306, Bruce was crowned king. His enemies immediately attacked and defeated him, and he was obliged to take refuge in the mountains of the Highlands. Here he was hunted like a wild animal, and was obliged to flee from one fastness to another. One of the most malignant of his enemies was Lord Lorn, a kinsman of the Red Comyn. At one time Bruce and his few followers were retreating through a narrow pass, when he was set upon by Lorn ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... with no readily visible inlet, cutting and grinding its cavity as it develops in size and strength, yet it is not safe. Fate follows in insignificant guise, drills a tiny hole through its shell, and the toilsomely excavated refuge becomes a sepulchre. Even in the fastness of the coral "that grim sergeant death is strict in his arrest." All is strife—war to the death. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty among men, what quality shall avert destruction where ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... troops. The moral effect of this expedition has been:—1st. To spread a wholesome respect for our arms among the neighbouring nations, who, seeing that tribes so warlike and honoured among them have been broken to pieces without daring to fight a battle, even when posted in the celebrated fastness of Truckee, will form a just idea of the British power. Indeed, I have already received, within the last few days, letters from neighbouring tribes, asking me to attach their territory to Scinde, to be under the British rule, and thus ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... imprisoned on the Lake of Garda; but managing to escape in man's clothes to Mantua, she thence sent news of her misfortunes to Canossa. Azzo lost no time in riding with his knights to her relief, and brought her back in safety to his mountain fastness. It is related that Azzo was afterwards instrumental in calling Otho into Italy and procuring his marriage with Adelaide, in consequence of which events Italy became a fief of the Empire. Owing to the part he played ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... infinitely easier than it was last fall, when the rocks and fallen timber had so much obstructed our march." But with the best of fortune, at least five days must be spent in getting through this dreadful fastness. Unfamiliar as they were with the route, the chances against getting through at all were tenfold. "During these five days, too, we have no chance of finding either grass or underwood for our horses, the snow being so deep. To proceed, therefore, under such ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... extremely dreary tract of country." It was in the immediate neighbourhood of the wild country to the north, half forest, half bog, the wood and hill of Aharlo, or Arlo, as Spenser writes it, which was the refuge and the "great fastness" of the Desmond rebellion. It was amid such scenes, amid such occupations, in such society and companionship, that the poet of the Faery Queen accomplished as much of his work as was given him to do. In one of his later poems, he ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... till he had confessed that he had betrayed them to the preventives; then they had gagged him, hustled him downstairs to a waiting closed carriage, and then they had quietly driven him on, undisturbed, to their fastness in the cliff. It was sad to see a man fallen so low, a man who had been at the University, and master of a school. It was sad to see him, his flabby face all fallen in and white from excess of fear, ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... great fastness of Protestantism was a place of more importance. Eighty years before, during the troubles caused by the last struggle of the houses of O'Neil and O'Donnel against the authority of James the First, the ancient city of Derry had been surprised by one of the native chiefs: the inhabitants ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... prostituting sublime justice to a weak sense of compassion, I waved her back to her fastness until after we ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... some of the Homoousian bishops who were living in banishment in the Thebaid. After this advance of the barbarians the interesting city of Petra, which since the time of Trajan had been in the power or the friendship of Rome or Constantinople, was lost to the civilised world. This rocky fastness, which was ornamented with temples, a triumphal arch, and a theatre, and had been a bishop's see, was henceforth closed against all travellers; it had no place in the map till it was discovered by Burckhardt in our own days without a human being dwelling ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... judgment of values is to be transformed, and if human nature never changed, much that now flaunts itself in the sunshine would be creeping in the shade. This transformation of judgment is a matter of recognizing things for what they are. When pomp, extravagance, exclusiveness, frivolity and fastness, greed, place-hunting and vulgar envy are looked on with the same eyes as aberrations in other provinces of life, then we shall not indeed have abolished all vice, but the atmosphere will be purified. Look at our sturdy Socialists of the November days[34] and proselytes of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... hurriedly made in a hummocky fastness of pine and birch, where we found few comfortable bedding-places. In the morning we passed several ice-ledges along shore, the survivals of the severe winter, and, presently, met a canoe with two men from Peace River, crestfallen "Klondikers," who had "struck it rich," they said, with a ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... to him of his country. Here had come visiting Russian princes from the eastern field, the King of England, the Prince of Wales. No obscurities—except myself—had ever penetrated so far into the fastness of ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... young lieutenant, was then with his regiment in some almost inaccessible fastness of the Indian Empire. Captain Monk (not concealing his lamentation and the cruel grief it was to himself personally) wrote word to him of the fiat concerning poor Hubert, together with a peremptory order to sell out and ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... the best June sunlight if the materials are placed within ten inches of a 28-ampere arc. It has been computed that in several days of continuous operation of this arc the same fading results can be obtained as in a year's exposure to daylight in the northern part of this country. Inasmuch as the fastness of colors in daylight is usually of interest, the artificial illuminant used for color-fading should be spectrally similar to daylight. Apparently the white flame-arc fulfils this requirement as well as being ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... earth, showing red amid the vivid green of the grass-grown plain, was all that was left as evidence of the tragedy; while Maceo and his four thousand patriots were wearily wending their way back to their mountain fastness, the richer by two six-pounder field guns, a thousand stand of arms, with a considerable quantity of ammunition, and the entire spoils of the ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... is all in the hands of God; again and again one returns to that, as the bird after its flight in remote fields returns to the familiar tree, the branching fastness. One should learn, I am sure, to live for the day and in the day; not to lose oneself in anxieties and schemes and aims; not to be overshadowed by distant terrors and far-off hopes, but to say, "To-day is given me for my own; let me use it, let me live in it." One's ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... branch off a poon tree he whittled away the minor stems. A strong stick was needful to explore that leafy fastness thoroughly. ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... coup. How the diabolo I, such an innocent stranger youth, had ever learned Spanish Gypsy—the least knowledge of which in Spain implies unfathomable iniquity and fastness—was beyond all comprehension. So I departed full of ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... began to fear, however, that the missing boat might have been cut off. Away dashed the gallant fellows after her. Whatever might happen, I resolved not to attempt to escape myself unless I could bring off the rest of the boats or the survivors of their people with me, though, from the fastness of my own boat, I might possibly have effected that object. My men behaved admirably, though exposed to so hot a fire; not a murmur escaped them at the delay, while they lay on their oars waiting for the appearance of the missing boat. The other two ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... by ridge and boulder, Umber and yellow scarred, Out to the utmost precipice, To the point that was ocean-barred, Till we looked below on the fastness Of the breeding eagle's nest, And Cape Wollomai opened eastward And ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... broad natural bank, some thirty feet high. The careful negotiation of a tiny path, followed by a plunge into a thicket, where the stubborn protests of boughs had to be overruled, landed them in a dwarf clearing, which the density of the surrounding bocage rendered a fastness. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... situation that had placed him at enmity with her kinsfolk, yet he realized there was no help for this. The Morgans were a law unto themselves. Hardened men with a hardened code, they lived in their fastness like Ishmaelites. Counselled by their leader, old Duke Morgan, brains of the clan and influential enough to keep outside the penalties of the law themselves, their understanding with the outlaws of the Sinks was apparently complete, and the hospitality of one or another of ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... that impassable fastness (the world) which has purposes for its gadflies and mosquitoes, grief and joy for its cold and heat, heedlessness for its blinding darkness, cupidity and diseases for its reptiles, wealth for its one ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... their names and fed from her plate at meal-times. Of these I remember only Roger, a gorgeous fellow with a beautiful voice and strong will of his own, who would occasionally defy his mistress from the secure fastness of a high picture-frame, but always surrendered at last, and came to listen to his lecture ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... school, and even before, when first the age of self-consciousness dawned upon him, he had seen himself as he believed others saw him—a queer, awkward, ill-made boy, slow at his work, shy with his fellows, incapable at games. Walled up in this fortress of himself, this gloomy and forbidding fastness, he had altogether failed to find the means of access to others, both to the normal English boys among whom his path lay, and also to his teachers, who, not unnaturally, found him sullen and unresponsive. There was no ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... dozen or more, still the wolves continued round the tree. It was in a dense part of the forest, through which the beams of the sun did not penetrate, or the creatures, disliking the bright light of day, would probably have retreated to their fastness. Hour after hour passed by, the air became unusually sultry and hot, even in the forest. Donald was growing, at the same time, very hungry, and though, as yet, he had rather enjoyed the adventure, he now began to feel seriously anxious about his safety. He had but ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... broken here and there by small islands, among which Brownsea is conspicuous. Here we stood leaning over the northern battlement contemplating the face of a delightful country, smiling in peace,—from the stern and rugged fastness ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... uninterruptedly, like Cuzco and Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu would have retained its ancient name, but during the centuries when it was abandoned, its name was lost. Examination showed that it was essentially a fortified place, a remote fastness protected by natural bulwarks, of which man took advantage to create the most impregnable stronghold in the Andes. Our subsequent excavations and the clearing made in 1912, to be described in a subsequent volume, has shown that this was the ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... Dartmoor. Then research and imagination rebuild the eternal rings of granite and, erecting upon them tall domes of thatch and skins on wattle ribs, conceive the early village like a cluster of gigantic mushrooms, whose cowls are uplifted in that rugged fastness through the night of time. We see Palaeolithic man sink into mother earth before the superior genius of his Neolithic successor; and we note the Damnonian shepherds flourishing in lonely lodges and preserving their flocks from the wolf, while ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... schools after business hours, and thus prepare for the great life struggle which is before them. Such boys are apt to do well in the world. Many, however, after being released from the stores, imitate the ways of the clerks and salesmen. They affect a fastness which is painful to see in boys so young. They sport an abundance of flashy jewelry, patronize the cheap places of amusement, and are seen in the low concert saloons, and other vile dens of the city. It is not difficult to predict the future of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Insensibly, he found himself listening to her as one would to a child, and then, a moment later, she would bring out some cynical scrap of wisdom, evidently the fruit of bitter experience, which sounded strange coming from her lips. Yet, despite the utter unconventionality, there was no hint of fastness about her, and even when she touched by implication on her way of life, she did so with a kind of frank simplicity, hiding nothing and trying to ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... ranchos up in Durango, where the elopers will be quite safe in a mountain fastness, and they will arrive there by craft, not buying through tickets, doubling now ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... said, lay in reaching his tribe which was quite strong enough in their mountain fastness to beat off any ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... confidences are innocent enough. Pepys began to write in cipher some time before there was any purpose in it save the common prudence of a secretive man. Having built, however, this secret and solitary fastness, he gradually became more daring. He had discovered a room to the walls of which he dared speak aloud. Here we see the respectable man liberated. He no longer needs to be on his official behaviour, but may play the part of a small Nero, if he wishes, behind the safety of shorthand. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... we saw the fair face of that great rock Capri— already scarred and gashed by the gun emplacements and hiding-places that were to make it a fastness—we reckoned nothing of the imminent slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung about in puffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst the grey; but, indeed, I made a text of that and talked. There, you know, was the rock, still beautiful for all its scars, with its ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... the tree was torn from the mass, which, mutilated and defaced on the one side, still spread on the other its ample and undiminished boughs. [A pair of chestnut trees, destroyed, the one entirely, and the other in part, by such a mischievous and wanton act of revenge, grew at Invergarry Castle, the fastness of Macdonald of Glengarry.] ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott |
