"Ripple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... paths bareheaded girls, and matrons, and officers in uniform strolled leisurely. From the vine-covered cottage of Admiral Preble, set in a garden of flowering plants and bending palmettos, came the tinkle of tea-cups and the ripple of laughter, and at a respectful distance, seated on the dismantled cannon, were marines in khaki and bluejackets ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... force to still give the place of social honor and to found the parent's hopes on the first-born. To all concerned it was a birth of no special significance. Outside of the family it was a matter of no moment. Births were frequent. The Brownsville people heard of it, and passed on to forget, as a ripple in the Monongahela flashes on the careless sight for a moment, then the river rolls on as before. Ephraim Blaine was proud of another son; the little brother and the smaller sister hailed a new brother. The mother, with a deep joy which escaped not in words, ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... warehouses—ancient haunts of colonial commerce and scenes of continental struggle—rest there in dusty quiet, hearing but murmurs of the noisy merchant-world without; and the fair bay lies silent among those green hills that slope southward to the Sound. Methinks I hear the ripple of its moonlit waves as in the summer night it upbore our gallant boat and its fair freight; the far-off music stealing o'er the bright waters; the distant rattling of some paid-out cable as a newly arrived bark anchors ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... everything; such warm tints it might almost have been the Mediterranean and the Riviera. A few fishing-boats passed in the distance, but there was nothing to break the great stillness—not even the ripple of the waves, as the sea was too far out. It was a curious sensation to be sitting there quite alone—the blue sea at my feet and the cliff rising ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... morning of July the 23rd, 1865, he suddenly awoke out of a profound sleep, and thought he heard a boy call out, 'There is a man overboard.' He sprang from his bed, threw up the window, but not a person could he see, not a sound could he hear, not a ripple on the water could he discern, to indicate danger. He concluded he had been dreaming, but when about to leave the window he saw one of his fellow workmen running with the grappling iron. The old Spanish proverb says, 'that when a man's house is on fire ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... "Rilla"? She did not mind Walter's version, but nobody else was allowed to call her that, except Miss Oliver now and then. "Rilla-my-Rilla" in Walter's musical voice sounded very beautiful to her—like the lilt and ripple of some silvery brook. She would have died for Walter if it would have done him any good, so she told Miss Oliver. Rilla was as fond of italics as most girls of fifteen are—and the bitterest drop in her cup was her suspicion that he told Di more ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... followed this awful speech could be felt. The Prime Minister gasped, flushed to the eyes, and half rose to dismiss Dawson from the room. He himself thought for a moment that all was lost, when through the tense atmosphere ran a ripple of gay laughter. It was the First Lord who, with instant decision, had taken the only means to save his new friend Dawson. He has a delightfully infectious silvery laugh, and the effect was electrical. ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... fancies, he was never quite without imagination. His thoughts had travelled easily back to a few weeks ago. He saw Virginia sitting there, watched the delightful smile coming and going, the large grey eyes that watched him so ceaselessly, the little ripple of pleasant conversation, which he had never dreamed that he could ever miss. After all, what a child! As a matter of justice, and he told himself that it was justice only which had power to sway his judgment, what right had he to blame her for ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... standing in a circle, each a link in an endless chain; it is but a mirage; those who look down know that they are dancing on a silken thread stretched over an abyss that swallows up all who fall and shows not even a ripple on its surface. What foot is sure? Nature herself seems to deny you her divine consolation; trees and flowers are yours no more; you have broken your mother's laws, you are no longer one of her foster-children, the birds of the field become silent ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... attacked his most cherished hopes for the future development of his native town, failed in any wise to depress him, or check the prodigal casting of his optimistic daily bread on the placid social waters where, as the years multiplied, his enthusiasms scarce made a ripple. ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... "Four Sketches," of which the "Etude Melodieuse" is as good as is necessary in that overworked style, wherein a thin melody is set about with a thinner ripple of arpeggios. The "Romanza" is lyric and delightful, while the "Scherzino" is delicious and crisp as celery; it is worthy of Schumann, whom it suggests, and many of whose cool tones and ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... as speedily as I could to where I had last seen the lighted torch, and as I got further and further into the cave, the sound of running water grew more distinct, until I heard it just at my feet. It was not the singing ripple of a shallow rivulet, but the sonorous sound of a deep stream that, so far as I could make out, ran athwart the cavern. I went down on my knees and put my hand in the water to feel which direction it took, for I did not now doubt that my companion had fallen in, and was even now struggling ...
— The Pilots of Pomona • Robert Leighton
... equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence—not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; not a ripple upon the surface of shining pool—his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... rather Holland-like with its miniature bridges and canal. Then to Exmouth, with its flowering "front," its tiny "Maison Carree" (which would remind one more of Nimes if it had no bay windows), and its exquisite view across silver river, and purple hills that ripple away into faint lilac shadows in the distance. Then we struck inland, to Exeter, and at Exeter we stopped two days, in the very oldest and ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... that day it had been raining slightly—a dismal, drizzling, discouraging rain. Most of the wagons had been left at the lake, and the mules and oxen had been packed with provisions and necessary articles. Even at this day some of the survivors are unable to repress a ripple of merriment as they recall the manner in which the oxen bucked and bellowed when the unaccustomed packs were strapped upon their backs. Stanton had stoutly insisted upon taking the mules over the mountains. Perhaps he did not wish to return to Capt. Sutter without the ...
— History of the Donner Party • C.F. McGlashan
... soil. She was the natural blossom of that corruption, delicate in the sunshine, her white shoulders expanding in youthfulness, her whole being so fraught with the gladness of life, that she leaped from her stem and darted upon his mouth, scenting him with her long ripple of laughter. ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... down to the beautiful river, whose waters are green and very much the color of the Niagara River. I cast the fly over on the water, and instantly a large fish came up, took the fly, and went down again so easily and gracefully that he scarcely made a ripple on the water until he felt the pull of the line. That was when I forgot everything connected with camp—Faye, horse thieves, and Indians! I had no reel, of course, and getting the big fish out of the water was a problem, for I was standing ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... out and strolled by the river, that river of which no one ever seems to grow weary. She wandered about the level meadows, where the last of the wild-flowers were blooming, or she sat on the bank, watching the ripple of the water, the slow smooth passage of pleasure-boat or barge, and the day was long but not dreary. It was so new to her to be idle, to be able to fold her hands and watch the stream, and not to fear reproof because ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the next day broke, I saw that we were running in among reefs, which I could tell by the ripple of the otherwise calm water breaking over them. Ahead was a low sandy shore, mangrove-bushes lining some portion of it, with palms and plantains, and a few other tropical trees, rising beyond them. As we sailed on, threading the glass-like channels, the sun ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... the river that wus sweepin' along under sun and moon, bearing on every wave and ripple the glory ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... of her time in the fields and woods, with the birds and blossoms and trees; and she liked best of all to wander along the banks of the River Peneus, and listen to the ripple of the water as it flowed among the reeds or over the shining pebbles. Very often she would sing and talk to the river as if it were a living thing, and could hear her; and she fancied that it understood what she said, and that ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... Danube at Donaueschingen: it is nothing to this; the fountain of Vaucluse one can understand—it breaks out from a cave in the mountainside, like scores of others; this is otherwise—a river rising with no fuss, no display, no noise, without even a ripple. ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... children too? You sentimental ass, Arthur!" Clarges laughed. It was a funny laugh, a kind of inane ripple that nevertheless tickled everybody who heard it. "But it's too smoky here. Come up stairs to the drawing room. There's a jolly big drawing room with a piano, and we can say what we want to, everyone ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... gentle sea; Each winding cranny of the rock may be Enjoyment's wealth. There, is a world of thought, Of joys unbounded for a heart as free, A universe of life if only sought; Each breath, each dreaming ripple is with music fraught. ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... in her quaint arm-chair— Never was lady more sweet and fair! Her gray locks ripple like silver shells, And her brow its own calm story tells Of a gentle life and a peaceful even, A trust in God and ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... pit of the river toward me, quietly and without stride or step, gliding over the water like a mist or the vapour of a calm white frost; and he stopped at the ripple where the shore began, and he looked at me very peacefully. And I felt neither fear nor doubt of him, any more than I do of this ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... the two ambitious fishermen pushed off in the bark canoe. Ethan held the paddle, for he was a master-hand at this sort of work, and could propel such a light running boat with the deftness of an Adirondack guide, hardly a ripple being stirred, with the paddle never once ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... effect, and so tickling—this grim old veteran revealing in himself the Eternal Child who hides behind us all—that the Frenchmen at their guns, hearing in the silence the sudden ripple of a boy's laughter, whispered among themselves that the Englishman ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... of an old chateau. In the bright light the costumes of the players made a mass of rich colour. Mademoiselle stood, prettily defiant. A ripple of music burst from the orchestra, and died away in a stately movement. With a merry laugh the revellers posed for the dance. They bowed low in courtesy—joined hands—advanced—retired. Then Raoul's violin alone continued the measure, as, one by one, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... would meet. Jim would find her in Kells's hands. Then there would be hell, Joan thought. The possibility, the certainty, seemed to strike deep into her, reviving that dread and terror. Yet she thrilled again; a ripple that was not all cold coursed through her. Something had a birth in her then, and the part of it she understood was that she welcomed the adventure with a throbbing heart, yet looked with awe and shame and distrust at this new, strange side ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... part immediately upon the sandstone of the Vindhya range; and it must have been deposited on the sand, while the latter was yet at the bottom of the ocean, though this range is now, I believe, nowhere less than from fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the level of the sea. The marks of the ripple of the sea may be observed in some places where the basalt has been recently washed off, beautifully defined, as if formed only yesterday, and there is no other substance to be seen ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... subsequent developments, was the first move in the historic controversy that has resulted in the extraordinary exposures that are being made as this book goes to press. When that first pebble was thrown, the surface of the insurance pond was as placid as a mountain lake, unruffled by a ripple, and in it were reflected the benignant faces of the noble philanthropists who consented to spend their days conserving the interests of the widows and the orphans of America. The people had grown so ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... say if United States troops entered the town of Wellesley and raped numerous students at the college, the officers subsequently taking away with them the young ladies who happened to suit them? Yet things of this sort hardly caused a ripple in the country then under the Insurgent flag, and I learned of this particular incident by accident, although I have ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... along, weed-choked, under white hawthorn hedges, and beneath the great roots of oak and elm, shall we pick out full many a goodly trout. There, in yon stop-hole underneath that tree, not ten feet broad or twenty long, where just enough water trickles through the hatches to make a ripple, are a brace of noble fish, no doubt; and one of them you may be sure of, if you will go the proper way to work, and fish scientifically with the brace of flies I have put on for you—a governor and a black alder. In the first place, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... almost as soon as the rain which causes them. Looking out again near the hour of midnight, they see his prediction verified. The late swollen and fast-rushing stream has become reduced to nearly its normal dimensions, and runs past in gentle ripple, while the moon shining full upon it, shows ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the bold Sir Bedivere: "I heard the ripple washing in the reeds, And the wild water lapping ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... tables were already set above and below it. The bright arms and shields on the walls shone below the heads of deer and wolf and boar, and the gust of wind that came in with us flew round the wall, making a sort of ripple of changing colour run along the bright woven stuffs that covered them to more than a man's height from the floor. No one in all East Anglia had so well dight a hall as had Elfric, the ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... the vast floor of that cavern the slow, eerie ripple of motion grew. The scattered lumps melted and flowed together, converging in wavelets of blue ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... avowal a ripple of laughter burst through the room. Jeanne had just awoke, and her eyes were riveted on her doll pacing up and down the table. Monsieur Rambaud, enthusiastic over the success of his tinkering, still kept his hands stretched out for fear lest any accident should ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... and the holding of his hand might last a long while—for he might think of naught save her—and long it lasted forsooth, and still she spake no word, though whiles a little sweet chuckle, as of the garden warbler at his softest, came from her lips, and the ripple of her raiment as her swift feet drave it, sounded loud to his eager ears in ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... filled by a fat, middle-aged woman, neither blonde nor brunette, with a large, serene face. Upon it was written a frank confession that she had never in her life had an original thought capable of creating a ripple of interest. She was Mrs. Sidney, rich, of an "old" family—in the New York meaning of the word "old"—both by marriage and by birth, much courted because of her position and because she entertained a great deal both in town and at a ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... chords harmonic all the finely fretted dome, Blue, white, purple, gold, and crimson, fringe, melt, ripple into foam. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the edge of the timber, Vil Holland turned his horse slowly about and headed him up the ravine. At the notch in the hills he slipped to the ground and, throwing an arm across the saddle, removed his Stetson and let the night wind ripple his hair. Standing alone in the night with his soul-hurt, he gazed far downward where a tiny square of yellow light marked ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... some pretty women whom I meet from time to time. Pleasant, airy, complimentary, the little flakes of flattery glimmering in their talk like the bits of gold-leaf in eau-de-vie de Dantzic; their accents flowing on in a soft ripple,—never a wave, and never a calm; words nicely fitted, but never a colored phrase or a highly-flavored epithet; they turn air into syllables so gracefully, that we find meaning for the music they make as we find faces in the coals and fairy palaces in the clouds. There is something ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... progressively more infrequent. You have slipped down into a merely animal stratum of existence; you live to-day because you lived yesterday, and you do not forecast to-morrow. Perhaps you learn to assuage and deceive the hunger of your immortal soul by forcing your attention upon the petty ripple of daily events and duties, until you present, to the outsider, the appearance of a commonplace, non-tragic person, bearing no noticeable scars of the crime which society perpetrated on you. You ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... really. But she had achieved a reputation for wit which insured applause for even her feebler efforts. Nap Ballou, the foreman, never left the escapement room without a little shiver of nervous apprehension—a feeling justified by the ripple of suppressed laughter that went up and down the long tables. He knew that Tessie Golden, like a naughty schoolgirl when teacher's back is turned, had directed one of ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber
... goes on watch, and we lie listlessly under our awning, praying for a breeze. On the face of the blazing vault there is not a single cloud, on the face of the waters not a ripple. The sea is a vast pond of paraffin. The hot gases from the funnel rise vertically, and the sun quivers behind them. The flaps of the windsail hang dead, the sides of the canvas tube have fallen in like the neck of a skinny old man. Slowly the sun mounts over our heads and the air grows ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... great masses of the golden, beautiful hair between his slender fingers. He allowed it to ripple through them. He felt its weight and ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... if I were in a dream. The people were unreal—stretching away from me in long, sloping rows, their white faces staring at me from the darkness beyond the great lights. And there was a little ripple that ran through them as I went out, as if a great many people, all at the same moment, had ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... the floating Custom House at Gravesend, and onwards, skirting the little creeks and mudbanks where the Thames widens to the sea—when every sound of the tide flapping heavily at irregular intervals against the shore, and every ripple, were fraught with the terror of pursuit—exemplifies in the most striking way the rapidity and instinctive ease of Dickens's ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... respond. Sky, sea, beach, and village, lie as still before us as if they were sitting for the picture. It is dead low-water. A ripple plays among the ripening corn upon the cliff, as if it were faintly trying from recollection to imitate the sea; and the world of butterflies hovering over the crop of radish-seed are as restless in their little ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... gradually growing swifter in their motion, until their brilliant colors blended and intermingled in a beautiful prismatic effect. It was like a wonderful rainbow dance, only the colors changed as the pigeons moved about, and they opened and closed their wings in such a way, that they seemed to ripple and flow as water does ...
— The Pigeon Tale • Virginia Bennett
... now must I fall? Is it now?" Star-fleck'd on the stem of the brier as it gathers and falters and flows, Lo! its trail runs a ripple of fire on the nipple it bids be a rose, 20 Yet englobes it diaphanous, veil upon veil in a tiffany drawn To bedrape the small virginal breasts yet unripe for the spousal of dawn; Till the vein'd very vermeil ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... extending both above and below the surface of the oil of turpentine, the currents can be better observed, and will be seen to rush down the wire, proceeding directly from it towards the mercury, and there, diverging in all directions, will ripple its surface strongly, and mounting up at the sides of the vessel, will return ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... down on the front seat, and Charley rowed him over as if he were afraid of making a ripple on the water. He and Jeff were almost holding their breath with excitement over what their fat friend ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sort of endless ripple, now telling of water-weeds and bank-flowers and birds, now lingering pleasantly over some of the traditions and old-world lore of which the Thames furnishes such a ...
— M. P.'s in Session - From Mr. Punch's Parliamentary Portrait Gallery • Harry Furniss
... astonishment of Mike, who could not help regarding me as one from whom fortune met the most ungrateful returns. At every new turn of the road he would endeavor to attract my attention by the objects around,—no white-turreted chateau, no tapered spire in the distance, escaped him; he kept up a constant ripple of half-muttered praise and censure upon all he saw, and instituted unceasing comparisons between the country and his own, in which, I am bound to say, Ireland rarely, if ever, had ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... there; men lazed and fought on its convenient spaces; women wandered on the serious business of food-getting. The camps stood a pace or two above high-water mark in the meagre shelter of sighing casuarinas, and were often changed, for there were six miles of gently curving, ripple-embroidered shore on which to rest. To this day most of the traffic is regulated by the tide. High water drives the wayfarer to the loose, impeding sand, over which the great convolvulus sends its tireless tentacles, to be thrown ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... gentleness, of resignation, and in the deep quiet they stared at him. Not a hand was lifted in applause. Slowly the big, awkward man slouched back across the platform and sank into his seat, and yet there was no sound of approval, of recognition from the audience; only a long sigh ran like a ripple on an ocean through rank after rank. In Lincoln's heart a throb of pain answered it. His speech had been, as he feared it would be, a failure. As he gazed steadily at these his countrymen who would not give him even a little perfunctory applause ...
— The Perfect Tribute • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... roaming, where the crested waves are foaming, And the shy mermaidens combing locks that ripple to their feet; When the Gloaming is, I never made the ghost of an endeavour To discover—but whatever were the hour, it would ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... the room was open a little and the music, a waltz, came in a soft ripple from the drawing room. It was rhythmic and languorous, and Harry's feet would have moved to its tune at any other time, but he was too deeply absorbed in the conjectures and certainties that they were drawing with their ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... their absence had been spoken of in a general way, since Jim Swope had gone on the warpath, but in his secret soul Rufus Hardy had a presentiment which made claim-jumping look tame. There was a chastened gayety in the voices, a silvery ripple in the laughter, which told him what Creede with all his cunning could never guess; they were voices from another world, a world where Hardy had had trouble and sorrow enough, and which he had left forever. There was soldier blood in his veins and in two eventful years he had ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... why you mustn't. Oh, help me, for I am unhappy!" She controlled a little upward ripple of her throat. "She, the Guides say, is a great Light, but I am to be a greater. They sent her to find me, and they directed her to keep me as she has—away from the world. When she first told me that, I was terrified. She had to sit beside me and hold my hand until I went to ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... about the middle of the night. The stars shone brightly, and there was but a slight ripple ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... ahead cracked, fell in a heap of pulverized plaster. The car bucked as a blast sent a ripple down the street. A manhole cover popped up, clattered a few feet, dropped from sight. Brett swerved, gunned the car. It leaped over rubble, roared along the littered pavement. Brett looked in the rear-view mirror. A block behind them the street ended. Smoke and dust ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... of encountering anyone who would disturb his meditation and his enjoyment of nature's beauty. Through the mellow days of the declining summer, he lived amid trees and flowers, slowly recovering health and peace in places where a bird's note, or the ripple of a stream, or the sighing of the wind, were the only sounds under ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... a double canoe. But I dare not take you ashore here; there are too many rocks, and it is impossible to see the ripple on them in this mist. We should sink the canoe. No, you must get in and I must paddle you home to Bryngelly, that's all. Now that I know where I am I think that I can find ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... saw that no one stirred, and that they were all moved by the story of the old blind grandmother, grieving over the golden curl that was all that was left to her of the child who was her sunshine. When she mimicked the agent's voice and manner, the ripple of appreciation which passed around the table gratified her more than the applause which followed. It showed that she had made what Sandford Berry would have called ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... energies congealed, though but for an instant or two. Then he threw off hat and coat, and stood alert and resolute to dive to Julius's rescue when he rose, while those who manned the yacht prepared to cast a buoy and line. Not a ripple or flash of water passed unheeded; the flood of sunshine rose fuller and fuller over the world; moments grew to minutes, and minutes swelled to hopeless hours under the doctor's weary eyes, till it seemed ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... he discerned the outline of a rustic bridge, and guided by the sound of plashing waters, directed his footsteps towards it. Then above the murmur of the stream he heard the ripple of a girl's ecstatic laughter, followed by what appeared to be high words between two men, and then more laughter, followed by more ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... and roll of bread, with the query and "2" beyond, all point to the fact that the consultant will have little complaints and grumbles to put up with, and there will be some doubt as to which of two people is most to blame. But it will be only a small ripple upon the otherwise smooth surface of ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... there was none. Soon the party gains the summit of the range, before which winds the valley of the Black with miles of placid stream in view. Quite different is this from White river, which is ever hurrying, rushing along. The Black flows within its grassy banks for long distances with scarcely a ripple; then a whirling rapid is passed, beyond which glides another long stretch of ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... so, indeed, that they occasionally tempt the larger cetacea into the Gulf of Manaar. In the calmer months of the year, when the sea is glassy, and for hours together undisturbed by a ripple, the minute descriptions are rendered perceptible by their beautiful prismatic tinting. So great is their transparency that they are only to be distinguished from the water by the return of the reflected light that glances from their delicate and polished surfaces. Less frequently ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... dark, the yard was thronged with people. They listened with smiles or a faint ripple of merry feeling ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... massive, a score of feet above them, swayed to and fro, gently, like the ripple of wheat in light summer airs. But Corliss gazed at it unheeding. Just to lie there, on the marge of the mystery, just to lie there and drink the air in great gulps, and do nothing!—he asked no more. A dervish, whirling on heel till all things blur, may grasp the essence ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... silent. Millie breathed sharply, and a ripple struck with a faint slap on the yacht's side. Then: "One can't allow that," he continued in a lower voice, as if arguing with himself; "arbitrary, wanton; impossible to accept ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... was necessary to be sure of fine weather and a favorable night before these orders could be carried out. The king opened his window; the pale-gold hues of the evening were visible on the horizon through the vistas of the wood, and the moon, white as snow, was already mounting the heavens. Not a ripple could be noticed on the surface of the green waters; the swans themselves, even, reposing with folded wings like ships at anchor, seemed inspirations of the warmth of the air, the freshness of the water, and the silence of the ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... an hour longer when they beheld the bluish-green foliage of tamarisk bushes and the towering palm-trees; at last, the most welcome of all sounds in the wilderness fell on their listening ears—the ripple of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... heard, and a ripple of laughter ran through them. As suddenly as they had gathered, they ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... our minor war gains in the temporary disappearance of cranks and faddists, some of whom have sunk without a ripple. And though the Press Censor's suppressions and delays and inconsistencies provoke discontent in the House and out of it, food for mirth turns up constantly in unexpected quarters. The Crown Prince ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... on the bench permitted the slightest ripple of anxiety to disconcert his steadfastness of gaze just then pandemonium was ripe for breaking in his courtroom. But the judge looked down with imperturbable calm as though this were the accustomed procedure of his court, and when a margin of pause had intervened to give his words greater ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... rank with rotting weeds, Close by the pines there at the highway side; No ripple on its green and stagnant tide, Where only cold and still the horse-leech breeds— Ugh! might not here some ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... standing and waiting, and when Miss Vroom left her for a moment to speak to a friend, Kate had taken a seat upon a great, unoccupied stone bench which stood near Cobb door. Still under the influence of her high idealization of the scene she lost herself in happy reverie. Then a widening ripple of laughter told her that something amusing was happening. What it was she failed to imagine, but it dawned upon her gradually that people were looking her way. Knots of the older students were watching ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... face as if shame, surprise, wonder, and joy filled her heart too full and made a few happy tears drop on the hands so worn with hard work, when they ached to be holding a pen and trying to record the fancies that sung in her brain as ceaselessly as the soft sough of the pines or the ripple of the brook murmured in her ear when she sat here alone. She could not express the vague longings that stirred in her soul; she could only feel and dimly strive to understand and utter them, with no thought of fame ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... Few dissipations ripple the gentle flow—which it were more descriptive perhaps to call stagnation—of life in that model village. From week-end to week-end scarcely a boat puts forth from the shelter of its weed-coated pier; for though Kirris-vean wears the aspect of a place of fishery, it is in fact nothing of ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... without fear of being thwarted by the brush; then into a black, well-like pool, ten or fifteen feet deep, with a smooth, circular wall of rock on one side worn by the water through long ages; or else into a deep, oblong pocket, into which and out of which the water glides without a ripple. ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... eyed; the aged pastor's wrinkled cheeks and furrowed brow and streaming silver beard; and the carved-ivory features of the governess, borrowing no color from the soft folds of her rich merino dress. As daylight ebbed, the ripple danced up to the ceiling and vanished, like the pricked bubble of a human hope; the mocking-bird hushed his vesper-hymn; and Edna closed the book and ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... voice was cut short by a mingled roar and ripple of laughter, and Miss Audrey Craven paused before announcing herself. Through the half-open doorway she saw a girl standing before an easel. She had laid down her palette and brushes, and with bold sure strokes of the pencil was sketching against time, leaning a little backwards, ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... and higher, chased by the shadows; and then, after lingering for a moment on their crests of honeysuckle and juniper, passed away, and the whole became sombre and grey. The sea-gull sprang upwards from where he had floated on the ripple, and hied him slowly away to his lodge in his deep-sea stack; the dusky cormorant flitted past, with heavier and more frequent stroke, to his whitened shelf high on the precipice; the pigeons came whizzing downwards from the uplands and the opposite land, and disappeared amid the gloom of their ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... Walter at their head, to choose a rock convenient for a table, under the shelter of the rocks on the sands across the bay. Thither, when Walter returned, we bore our Connie, carrying her litter close by the edge of the retreating tide, which sometimes broke in a ripple of music under her, wetting our feet with innocuous rush. The child's delight was extreme, as she thus skimmed the edge of the ocean, with the little ones gambolling about her, and her mamma and Wynnie walking quietly on the landward side, for she wished to have ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... and the brown bodies of the rowers pushing long oars glow in the halo of soft light; other figures resting on their decks are wrapped up in rose and white and green draperies, and each soft colour is reflected quivering in the ripple from ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... came across the lagoon, cleaving, checkering, and fretting the silence with a lacework of sound even as the moon was fretting and cleaving the water, a ripple of music, a voice breaking itself in a shower of little scales ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the melancholy Gascoigne followed them, looking as if he had gathered up all the gloom of the deserted spot and was bearing it as a burden of inestimable treasure. But still they rambled on, and soon found themselves in a rocky dell through the midst of which ran a streamlet with ripple and foam and a continual voice of inarticulate joy. It was a wild retreat walled on either side with gray precipices which would have frowned somewhat too sternly had not a profusion of green shrubbery rooted itself into their crevices ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... anything of them, in the end. Of course, it would have been different if they could have got hold of you in the beginning. But now," said Pinney, forgetting what he had already said of it, "the whole thing has blown over, so that that letter of yours from Rimouski hardly started a ripple in Boston; I can't say how it was in Hatboro'. No, sir, I don't believe that if you went back now, and your friends stood by you as they ought to,—I don't believe you'd get more than a mere nominal sentence, ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... as a mere welter of confused forces. If goodness, or aspiration, or any godlike thing arose, for a moment—like some shipwrecked soul with hands out-stretched above the waves—swiftly it sank again submerged, leaving only a faint ripple on the ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... face she looked fifty. In that face there was no childishness whatever. It was a thin, peaked, sallow face, with a discontented expression; her features were small and pinched, her hair, which was of inky blackness, fell on her shoulders in long, straight locks, without a ripple or a wave in them. She looked like an elf, but still this elfish little creature was redeemed from the hideousness which else might have been her doom by eyes of the most wonderful brilliancy. Large, luminous, potent eyes—intensely black, and deep as the depths of ocean, they seemed ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... interval; indeed, if one may believe certain persons, the population has increased from thirty to ninety thousand in—I forget how few years. The arsenal brings movement into the town; it has appropriated the lion's share of building sites in the "new" town. Is it a ripple on the surface of things, or will it truly stir the spirits of the city? So many arsenals have ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... two vessels lay side by side, in complete readiness for sea, our ensigns hanging from the peaks, and our tall spars reflected from the glassy surface of the river, which, since sunrise, had been unbroken by a ripple. At length, a few whiffs came across the water, and, by eleven o'clock, the regular north-west wind set steadily in. There was no need of calling all hands, for we had all been hanging about the forecastle the whole forenoon, and ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... light will dawn," said Madame Froment; she was sitting on the foot of the bed in the dark near Clerambault; he leaned forward and took her hand. It was as if a thrill widened through the room, like a ripple ...
— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain
... snow, gathering from the highest Alps, trickles through a natural channel hidden under the trees and eaten through the rock, escaping below through a gap without a sound. The watery sheet overhanging the fall glides so gently that no ripple is to be seen on the surface which mirrors the chaise as you drive past. The postboy smacks his whip; you turn past a crag; you cross a bridge: suddenly there is a terrific uproar of cascades tumbling together one upon another. The water, taking a mighty leap, ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac
... And the small ripple spilt upon the beach Scarcely o'erpassed the cream of your champagne, When o'er the brim the sparkling bumpers reach, That spring-dew of the spirit! the heart's rain! Few things surpass old wine; and they may preach Who please,—the more because they preach in vain,— Let us have Wine and Woman,[161] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... in. The big Nubian sat at one end, cross-legged, a rifle on his knees. At the stern sat a brown boy. And so Arlee sank into the tired sleep that claimed her, and did not wake until the warm sunshine in her tiny window and the ripple of water against the sides told her that another morning was at hand and that they were on the ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... Advocate was in prison, and the earth seemed to have closed over him. Hardly a ripple of indignation was perceptible on the calm surface of affairs, although in the States-General as in the States of Holland his absence seemed to have reduced both ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
