"Tornado" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about dawn, it burst upon them—the memorable hurricane of the 14th November, which did such appalling damage on shore and at sea. Not a tent remained standing on the plateau. The tornado ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... die every year, and vast numbers have their health permanently impaired, on account of inclement weather, to which they are exposed by exclusion from public conveyances. And this merely on account of complexion! What a tornado of popular eloquence would come from our public halls, if Austria or Russia were guilty of any despotism half as mean! Yet the great heart of the people is moved by kind and sincere feelings in its outbursts against foreign tyranny. But in addition to this honorable sympathy for ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... begun to assume a sensual expression, when Patty Cannon, to whom his back was turned, rushed upon him like a tornado, lifted him from his feet, and threw him through the back door into the yard and bolted him out. McLane retreated by ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... to try the confidence in the new system. Yet we find all classes zealously exonerating emancipation, and in despite of tornado, plague, and wasting, still affirming the blessings and advantages ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... significance of the word "norther"—a storm or tornado, usually preceded by a hot, stifling atmosphere, with drifting dust, accompanied by sheet or forked lightning and claps of terrific thunder, followed by wind and rain, sometimes hail or sleet, as if ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... Fukuhara is fifty miles from Kyoto, and to reach the latter quickly from the former in an emergency was a serious task in the twelfth century. Moreover, Kyoto was devastated in 1177 by a conflagration which reduced one-third of the city to ashes, and in April of 1180 by a tornado of most destructive force, so that superstitious folk, who abounded in that age, began to speak ominously ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of the leaders of the ancient Nahuas from their primitive home Chicomoztoc, the land of the Seven Caves. This is what is referred to in the above hymn. In later times Mixcoatl became god of hunting and of the tornado, and his worship ...
— Rig Veda Americanus - Sacred Songs Of The Ancient Mexicans, With A Gloss In Nahuatl • Various
... keep that disgusting fellow off the premises if I have to notify the dog-catcher. (Notices pedestal.) Ever since a tornado knocked that statue off its pedestal, this garden has looked rather bare, so I've put an advertisement into the newspaper, offering five hundred dollars for a suitable statue ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... precipitous banks of the river as best they could. When a portage could not be avoided, it was necessary to carry their armor, provisions, clothing, and canoes through the forests, over precipices, and sometimes over stretches of territory where some tornado had prostrated the huge pines in tangled confusion, through which a pathway was almost impossible. [76] To lighten their burdens, nearly every thing was abandoned but their canoes. Fish and wild-fowl were an uncertain reliance ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... the great reptile. The dragon paid no further attention to him, however, for Tippet's sudden break for liberty had attracted its attention; and after Tippet it went, bowling over small trees, uprooting underbrush and leaving a wake behind it like that of a small tornado. ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... it would—Countrymen, fear not! In the still uncultivated wilds of America, what wonder that among its other giant destroyers, Plague should be numbered! It is of old a native of the East, sister of the tornado, the earthquake, and the simoon. Child of the sun, and nursling of the tropics, it would expire in these climes. It drinks the dark blood of the inhabitant of the south, but it never feasts on the pale-faced ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... door, and away they rushed, like a small tornado, across the porch, down the walk ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... be hanged for letting him out of my sight. Maybe it's all right; maybe he turned and started right back for town—and got there. But I had no business to leave him, and if I can I'll catch up with him yet." He went to the front door, and, opening it, let in a tornado of wind and flood of water that beat him back; sheets of rain blew in horizontally, in spite of ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... plain. The sky suddenly appeared to open and let down whole solid snow-banks at once, which were caught and torn to pieces by the ravenous winds, and the traveller was instantaneously enveloped in a whirling mass far denser than any fog; it was a tornado with snow stirred into it. Standing in the middle of the road, with houses close on every side, one could see absolutely nothing in any direction, one could hear no sound but the storm. Every landmark vanished, and it was no more possible ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... change, wild and fearful, as that of the tropical tornado to a southern landscape, swept over that ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... green baize door she burst into the cafe like a young tornado. Every head turned her way with gaping mouths and protruding eyes of astonishment as she stopped at the caisse and brazenly, in the face of ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... general retreat of the attacking army. Victory was won; and to stay near that gushing tornado of flame, with new explosions bound to occur as the other oxygen tanks let go, must ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... at last, and with trembling, pitiful fingers touched the velvet muzzle. Then suddenly indignation, fierce, overwhelming, headlong, swept over her, crowding out even her horror. She stood up and faced Nap in such a tornado of fury as had never ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... back to the blackness of nothing— that awful nothing, whose outside ring vibrated with fearful flames; the fiery cherubim, winged, taking all possible shapes, and unformed living shapes. A human flamed and changed and vanished. The tornado of whirling, flashing, chaotic life swirled and drove through the darkness of chaos of nothing from nothing—and that great, unknown abyss is God! But the ...
— The Light of Egypt, Volume II • Henry O. Wagner/Belle M. Wagner/Thomas H. Burgoyne
... About 2 p.m. when I went out the Krithia road with several squads of bearers in answer to an urgent but vain message, we were held up half a mile on this side of the dressing station by a perfect tornado of shrapnel just in front of us. I heard afterwards that the road in that part was ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... noted as strange that no rush of air came after each explosion. There was the heavy concussion and then a terrible stillness, the air being perfectly motionless, and this appearing the more strange after the frightful tornado through which they had passed. Silence absolute, and a darkness as thick as that of the great plague of Egypt—a darkness that could be felt. And now, making no headway whatever, the vessel rolled heavily in the tossing waves, which boiled round ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... two or three unfurled sails, bursting with the noise of a cannon, were scattered miles away to lee-ward as if they had been paper. As for the poor fellows in the rigging, the spirit of the storm had already made them his: twenty of our men were swept away by that tornado. ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... shadows are to material forms, As mists to the copious shower As dead calms are to tornado storms That in tropical region lower So are educational fallacies That ignore and decry as naught The value and power that ever lie In ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... her lips this evening. Why don't you talk, child? Does Marion overwhelm you? I don't wonder. Such a tornado as she has poured out upon us! I never heard the like in my life. It isn't all in the Bible; that is one comfort. Though, dear me! I don't know but the spirit of it is. What do you think ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... caravan of negroes hanging on the rear of our column when it arrived in Milledgeville, like a sable cloud in the sky before a thunder storm or tornado. They thought it was freedom now or never, and would follow whether or no. It was really a ludicrous sight to see them trudging on after the army in promiscuous style and divers manner. Some in ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... risping crackle; then came a sharp concussion, that seemed to tear the earth asunder. Miss Defourchet cried aloud: no one answered her. In a few moments the darkness slowly lifted, leaving the old yellow lights and fogs on sea and land. The men stood motionless as when the tornado passed, Doctor Dennis leaning on his old mare, having thrown one arm about her as if to protect her, his stern ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... however, were not so funny to Casey as he stood staring down over the vast emptiness. There was no sign of his pack train, and without it he would be in sorry case indeed. He thought of the manner in which the tornado had whirled him round and round. Caught in a different set of gyrations and then borne out from the center—flung out would come nearer it—the burros and William might have been carried in any direction ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... went the Mermaid. The wind was now blowing with the force of a tornado, and, as the craft had to slant in order to descend, it felt the power of the gale more than if it had scudded before it. But, by skilful use of the directing tube, the professor was able to keep the boat from turning over. As they came further down toward the earth the force ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... not what she had expected. She had been prepared for tempestuous, for overwhelming, wrath. The absence of this oddly disconcerted her. Her own tornado of indignation was checked. ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... children on a raree show. No, by the Living! but, fast as they neared us, we still kept our thunders close bearing upon them, like infernal pointers at a dead set; and as soon as they were come within point blank shot, we clapped our matches and gave them a tornado of round and double-headed bullets, which made many a poor Englishman's head ache. Nor were they long in our debt, but letting go their anchors and clewing up their sails, which they did in a trice, they opened all their batteries, and broke loose upon us with ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... saw that Louisiana was indeed a speck in our horizon, which was to burst in a tornado; and the public are un-apprized how near this catastrophe was. Nothing but a frank and friendly developement of causes and effects on our part, and good sense enough in Bonaparte to see that the train was unavoidable, and would change the face ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... made the most careful preparations for the expedition, and early in the spring, he commenced his march northward into the Indian country. The savages gathered to repulse him at a spot on the Maumee where, years before, a tornado had cut a wide swath through the forest, rendering it all but impenetrable. Here, on the twentieth of August, 1794, he advanced against the enemy, and, throwing his troops into the "Fallen Timbers," in which the Indians were ambushed, routed them out, cut them down, and administered ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... eagerly seeking the whereabouts of the elusive enemy, and almost immediately every searchlight on ship and shore swept round until it rested full upon us, thereafter inexorably following our every movement, while a perfect tornado of shell and rifle-fire hissed and whined about our ears. But for this, it might have been not very difficult for us to have inflicted further damage upon the battleships and cruisers; but as it was, there was only one thing to be done, namely, to effect our escape with the utmost expedition, ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... captain. "Hold on all!" And then there was a shock that threw them prostrate, a writhing and twisting of every plank beneath them, and the tornado had struck the yacht and knocked her ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... a distribution as wide as that, would not acceptably, I should say, have so specialized in the rare substance called "marsh paper." There'd have been falls of fence rails, roofs of houses, parts of trees. Nothing is said of the occurrence of a tornado in northern Europe, in January, 1686. There is record only of this one substance having fallen in ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... whether he has taken to the water, or stands at bay against some craggy bank, or does not choose to come out from some thicket (since neither net nor anything else hinders him from bearing down like a tornado on whoever approaches); still, even so, advance they must, come what come may, to the attack. And now for a display of that hardihood which first induced them to indulge a passion not fit for carpet knights (43)—in other words, they must ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... for the time being, was very enjoyable, in spite of numerous bruises and scratches. Huge pines raised their heads to heaven, others lay prostrate and rotting away, probably thrown down in some tornado. In the distance numbers of trees were lying on the ground, and men were cutting off their branches and burning them in heaps, which slowly smouldered away, and sent up clouds of curling blue smoke, which diffused itself as a thin blue veil ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... to the Cape the August twister and the August tide. The twister seems to be a simultaneous rushing in of tornado-like winds from every quarter and a whirling bluster of elements gone mad. And in that month the high tide is the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the chill smilingly, but Fyne stooped at once to release the dog. He was some time about it; then simultaneously with his recovery of upright position the animal passed at one bound from profoundest slumber into most tumultuous activity. Enveloped in the tornado of his inane scurryings and barkings I took Mrs. Fyne's hand extended to me woodenly and bowed over it with deference. She walked down the path without a word; Fyne had preceded her and was waiting by the open gate. They passed out and walked up the road surrounded by a ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... darkness now that their eyes had grown used to it, and they could see the fleeing forms. They sent a decimating volley after them, and then dropped down on the ridge that they had won. They meant to hold it, and they were fortunate enough to find there many fallen trees swept down by a tornado. ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his feet out of the stirrups. A number of brown hands and arms shot forth to help him. Domini turned back into the cabaret. She heard a tornado of voices outside, a horse neighing and trampling, a scuffling of feet, but she did not glance round. In about three minutes Androvsky joined her. He was limping slightly and bending forward more than ever. Behind the counter on ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... answered. Hardly had the pastor concluded his prayer, when the wind veered round, and soon a violent gale was blowing off shore. In the teeth of the wind, the ships could make no headway. The gale increased in violence until it rivalled in fierceness a tornado. The sea was lashed into fury, and great waves arose, on the crests of which the men-of-war were tossed about like fragile shells. The coal-ship which had been captured was so racked and torn by the heavy seas, that her seams opened, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... people was in tears and sobs, groans and shouts; and at the conclusion of nearly every sweep of the preacher's wonderful flights could be heard above the whole a shrill shout from the hostess, followed by a tornado of amens! When the sermon closed the storm ceased, and the "slain of the Lord were many." Memorable night! The people found neither slumber nor weariness, and when the morning dawned very few had not found a ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... he said this, than, with the suddenness of a tornado, the wind came rushing down upon them; at first, without a drop of rain, but so fiercely that the horses were forced from the track. Again and again it seemed hopeless to drive against it. The lightning flashed more vividly than ...
— The Frontier Fort - Stirring Times in the N-West Territory of British America • W. H. G. Kingston
... the game. As the Trapper had suggested, the buck, with mighty and far-reaching bounds, cleared the shrubby obstructions, and, entering the runway, tore up the familiar path with the violence of a tornado. Onward he came, his head flung upward, his antlers laid well back, tongue lolling from his mouth, and his nostrils smoking with the hot breaths that burst in streaming columns from them. Not until his swift career had brought him exactly in front ...
— Holiday Tales - Christmas in the Adirondacks • W. H. H. Murray
... circumrotation[obs3], circumvolution, circumgyration[obs3]; volutation[obs3], circination|, turbination[obs3], pirouette, convolution. verticity|, whir, whirl, eddy, vortex, whirlpool, gurge[obs3]; countercurrent; Maelstrom, Charybdis; Ixion. [rotating air] cyclone; tornado, whirlwind; dust devil. [rotation of an automobile] spin-out. axis, axis of rotation, swivel, pivot, pivot point; axle, spindle, pin, hinge, pole, arbor, bobbin, mandrel; axle shaft; gymbal; hub, hub of rotation. [rotation ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... storm; and better still, a large cellar like ours, four-and-twenty feet by sixteen, built round with solid coral blocks,—where goods may be stored, and whereinto also all your household may creep for safety, while the tornado tosses your dwelling about, and sets huge trees dancing around you! We had also to invent a lime-kiln, and this proved one of the hardest nuts of all that had to be cracked. The kind of coral required could be obtained only at one spot, about three ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... a perfect tornado of brine into air, glistening; it ricochetted twice, and plunged into the dunes. A ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... came The roaring of a cannon, And earth seemed all aflame. Who causes thus the thunder The doom of men to speak? It is the Baritarian, The fearless Dominique. Down through the marshall'd Scotsmen The step of death is heard, And by the fierce tornado ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... was perfectly acquainted with this section, and made all haste toward a spot which, more than once, had served him as a shelter in such storms as this. It consisted of a number of fallen trees, evidently torn up by some tornado, whose branches were so interlocked and matted that a slight effort of the hand of man had turned into a comfortable security as one need wish who ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... you'll believe it, so onselfish is a woman's heart, even in the midst of her deepest tribulations, and so kinder sentimental, her words sent a faint ray of joy over my heart, some like the pale light of a star shinin' out over a wild western tornado. But before I could reply Ury come runnin' down stairs holdin' Philury, faithful critter that he wuz, and Josiah yelled at him: "Do you go over to Kellup Wind's and bring that cussed fool over here, and if he don't take out that invention of his under ten minutes ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... trigger could check them. "Why don't they stop! Why don't they stop!" John was shouting to himself through burned lips, and again he shuddered with sick horror, when he saw a whole line of men blown away, as if they had been grain swept by a tornado. ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... a blind, unreasoning massacre. It all happened within an hour. It was as if after nightfall a tornado had come out of the west, and without warning had torn and twisted itself through the city, leaving ruin and death in its wake. No Jew that could be found was spared. Saul Levinsky was sitting in his shop looking over some books that had just ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... duty to believe. Our Lord Himself had uttered the most solemn warning against wilful unbelief; the Athanasian Creed only re-echoed His awful words; and the storm which assailed the Creed was really directed against the revealed Truth of God. "This tornado will, I trust, by God's mercy, soon pass; it is a matter of life and death. To remove those words of warning, or the Creed because it contains them, would be emphatically to teach our people that it is not necessary to salvation to believe faithfully ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... Jacob is our Refuge,' and so we may say to the storms of life, and after them to the last howling tornado of death—Blow winds and crack your cheeks, and do your worst, you cannot touch me in the fortress where I dwell. The wind will hurtle around the stronghold, but within there ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... up, and I went on arter her like a tornado, now I tell you. But jist as I was reaching out both hands to drag her back from a wave that came roaring along, it broke, and the undertow sucked her ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... wind shifted to the south-west; and about two o'clock in the afternoon we had a heavy tornado, or thunder- squall, accompanied with rain, which greatly revived the face of nature, and gave a pleasant coolness to the air. This was the first rain that had fallen for ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... several interruptions by the weather, and put in under the lee of a small island in the latitude of 16 degrees 12 minutes, of which we never knew the name, none of our charts having given any account of it: I say, we put in here by reason of a strange tornado or hurricane, which brought us into a great deal of danger. Here we rode about sixteen days, the winds being very tempestuous and the weather uncertain. However, we got some provisions on shore, such as plants and roots, and a few hogs. We believed there were inhabitants on the island, ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... brightness everlasting, Like ten thousand mountains blazing; And the khamsheens wild and fiercely Sweep in burning flakes along them, And torment the weary traveller Who is slowly wading through them, Thirsting for a cooling river. And 'tis there the wild tornado Riseth in its frame of terror, Wild, and fierce, and unrelenting. To the spreading woods and forests Of the black pine and the myrtle, Of the cedar and the red birch, Of the oak tree and the walnut, ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... of them!" smiled Sam, proudly. Then more seriously, "Ah, dad, you old tornado, you! Here you fired thunder at us for a whole year, pretty near broke my mother's heart, and made my boy's little mother old before she ought to be. But you've quit storming now, dad. I know it ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... he came, but a dead lull was seen and felt in the air and in nature; everything was in a holy hush, except the hoarse belchings of the engines, the sizzing and frying of the boilers, and the work of the machinery on the lower deck. At last the storm burst upon us in all its fury; it was a tornado and the women and children began to scream and pray—the mate to curse and swear. I was standing by the captain on the main upper deck, as he was trying to direct the pilot how to steer the boat through that awful storm, when we heard the alarm bell ring out, and the hoarse cry of "Fire! fire! ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... expected a tornado, and wanted to make sure his old houseboat didn't get carried away," laughed George, as he watched the other secure both ends of the Comfort with cables, that he ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... can we drift along in dreamy apathy; our vitality is quickened as by the gusts of a tornado. There have been those who for the first time in their lives were jarred from the even tenor of their way by these impassioned onslaughts. When Beethoven's Symphonies were first played in Paris, it is reported that the operatic composer Boieldieu was much ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... home lighted candles to find their way about the house. No one could see the time of day by the clocks, and white paper looked like black velvet. Many people were terrified and wondered what was coming. Some expected a great tornado; others said a comet was due and feared it portended some great calamity, perhaps a disaster to the armies in the field who were fighting England in the war of the Revolution. Still others, more ignorant and superstitious, were sure that the ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... acclivities of the mountain, the main body of the battalion did not come up with us until twelve o'clock, and before we commenced the descent of the mountain a furious storm commenced, raging with a violence rarely surpassed. The rain fell in torrents, and the wind blew almost with the force of a tornado. This fierce strife of the elements continued without abatement the entire afternoon, and until two o'clock at night. Driving our horses before us, we were compelled to slide down the steep and slippery rocks, or wade through deep gullies ...
— What I Saw in California • Edwin Bryant
... collection serves to demonstrate the persistent, self-denying and constant devotion to culture in France. Times may be peaceful or stormy, seasons may prove disastrous, the withered, thin and blasted ears of corn may devour the seven ears full and golden, the ship of State may be caught in a tornado and lurch alarmingly—all the same "the man in the street," "the rascal many," to quote Spenser, will have a museum in which, with wife and hopefuls, to spend their Sunday afternoons. The local museum is no less ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... madder. I seemed not to be myself at all, but some sort of a wood creature; and just when the trees were looking larger than ever they did before, and the sky higher up, a girl came running down from a sort of embankment where a tornado had made a path for itself and had hurled some great chestnuts and oaks in a tumbled mass. The girl came leaping down the steep sides of this place, her arms outspread, her feet bare, her dress no more than a rag the colour of the tree-trunks. She had on ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... the bush and saw the tramp come tearing round the bend. The rascal saw Chippy disappearing over the bridge, and thought the second fugitive had already vanished. He roared a fresh set of exceedingly impolite remarks and wishes, and came on like a tornado in full career. And as he charged into the narrow gateway, a stout patrol staff slid across, and was laid on the inner sides of the posts. He never even saw it, so madly was he bent on his pursuit, and it did ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... the waters lulled her slumbers. The sun woke her the next morning to a sense of new life. Her room looked down on the cataract, and she had already taken a fancy to this tremendous, rushing, roaring companion, which thundered and smoked under her window, as though she had tamed a tornado to play in her court-yard. To brush her hair while such a confidant looked on and asked questions, was more than Pallas Athene herself could do, though she looked out forever from the windows of her Acropolis over the Blue AEgean. The sea is capricious, ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... My dream, and refashion our clay As the poet may fashion his rhyme? Hark to that mingled scream Rising from workshop and mill— Hailing some marvelous sight; Mighty breath of the hours, Poured through the trumpets of steam; Awful tornado of time, ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... call anything unusual in the tropics," laughed Jack. "I believe you are liable to catch anything at any time here from yellow fever to a tornado. They seem to have them always ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... are those, Colonel?" I asked, as, after a while, we passed a gang of about a dozen, at work near the roadside. Some were tending a tar-kiln, and some engaged in cutting into fire-wood the pines which a recent tornado had thrown ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... feel, with this coal upon it? "How has it happened that there has been no communication?" Why, it has happened from your being the most unapprehensive mortal that ever lived, or from your having your wits whirled out of you by that everlasting New York tornado. As to letters, I wrote the two last, though the latter was a bit of one. As to the circumstances, my withdrawal from your society was involuntary, and painful to me. You should have written at once to your emeritus coadjutor, your senior friend. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... sinister demeanour. His life was happy, as are almost all the lives of methodical students, but one would not have called it exhilarating. His only hours of exhilaration occurred when his friend, Basil Grant, came into the house, late at night, a tornado of conversation. ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... thoroughbreds plunged forward with snorts of indignant protest, answered by Apache's very plebian squeal of rage as he shook his bony little head and struck into a gait such as Beverly had never dreamed a horse could strike. It was like a tornado let loose, and, expert little horsewoman that she was, she found ample occupation for all her wits and equestrian skill, though she managed to jerk out as ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... over the vast Pacific, adopted few extraneous ideas from the world through which he wandered. His primeval instincts still sway his life under other conditions. Marvellous skill in hunting, fishing, boat-building, and navigation in tornado-swept waters, remains to him. The deft weaving of palm-leaf hut and wall of defence creates a village or destroys it at lightning speed. Even now his basket-work home is never built on dry land, if water can be found wherein to plant ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... like a tornado, and distorts like a convex mirror, poisons the mind of Cachita's parent, Don Severiano, and one sultry afternoon, Cachita's black maid, Gumersinda, brings me a billet-doux from her young mistress, which fills ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... not essential that I should go to the hen-house myself, but I was possessed with a sudden desire to face that singing white tornado. So I put on my things, while Dinky-Dunk was at work in the stables. I put on furs and leggings and gauntlets and all, as though I were starting for a ninety-mile drive, and slipped out. Dinky-Dunk had tunneled through the drift in front ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... was there any particular appearance of a squall. But the earnest gaze of the commander and a passenger, towards the shore, drew all eyes in the same direction; and, behold! a smoke was seen rising from the land, which had been mistaken for the cloud that precedes the tornado. It is necessary to prepare for many blows that do not come. In the tornado-seasons (which may be estimated at four or five weeks, about the months of March and November), there are frequent appearances of squalls, sometimes as often as twice or thrice in twenty-four hours. The horizon grows black, ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... either side of that gash life is blasted; wherever that cruel steel is laid the track of it is livid and barren; it cuts down all barriers; leaps all boundaries, be they canada or canyon; it is a torrent in the plain, a tornado in the forest; its very pathway is destruction to whoso crosses it—man or beast; it is the heathenish God of the Americanos; they build temples for it, and flock there and worship it whenever it stops, breathing fire and flame like a ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... the thought, the responsibility, the strain of mind and anguish of soul that he gave to his great task, who can measure? "Here was place for no holiday magistrate, no fair-weather sailor," as Emerson justly said of him. "The new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. In four years—four years of battle days—his endurance, his fertility of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried and never found wanting." "By his courage, his justice, his even temper, ... his humanity, he stood a heroic figure ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... solemn sunset. Even the deepening twilight can not disguise the evidences of a terrible "sea-change." Not a trace of paint or gilding remains on the wave-worn, shattered timbers. Sails rent and cordage strained tell tales of many storm-gusts, or, perchance, of one tornado; and see! her flag is flying half-mast high: the corpse of the Pilot is on board. Let us stand aside, lest we meet the passengers as they land. It were worse than mockery to ask how the ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... as a sort of mob; but the world then saw, and recognized the fact, that it was an army in the proper sense, well organized, well commanded and disciplined; and there was no wonder that it had swept through the South like a tornado. For six hours and a half that strong tread of the Army of the West resounded along Pennsylvania Avenue; not a soul of that vast crowd of spectators left his place; and, when the rear of the column had passed ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... A tornado of artillery fire had swept over it, and of the houses nothing was left but indecencies, shattered walls and naked rafters, beneath which were choked heaps of household furniture, broken beds, battered lamps, and a wicker-chair overturned as in a drunken ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... the Cantankerous Old Lady overwhelmed me with the warmth of her thanks and praises. Nay, more; after breakfast next morning, before we set out by slow train for Schlangenbad, she burst like a tornado into my bedroom at the Cologne hotel with a cheque for twenty guineas, drawn in my favour. 'That's for you, my dear,' she said, handing it to me, ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... circumstance removed all apprehension of any immediate danger from his destroyers. The ruthless warriors of the woods seldom remained long near the spot they had desolated, but passed on, like the tornado, or the tempest. Guert, who was ever prompt when anything was to be done, pointed to a natural hollow in the earth; one of those cavities that are so common in the forest, and which are usually attributed to the upturning of trees in remote ages, and suggested that we should use it as a ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... assured him. "Postmen deliver topside mail and parcels by throwing them on the high-speed garbage boosts and hoping a tornado will blow them to the right addresses." Then he added helpfully, "Maybe the Russians stole it while it was ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... the alteration about to take place in European history was the invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. This holiday excursion of a hairbrained youth was as transient as a border-foray on a large scale. The so-called conquest was only less sudden than the subsequent loss of Italy by the French. Yet the tornado which swept the peninsula from north to south, and returned upon its path from south to north within the space of a few months, left ineffaceable traces on the country which it traversed, and changed the whole complexion of ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... him away from them for ever. That intelligent, worthy, industrious man was ruthlessly plunged into the deep, dark grave of slavery, where tens of thousands perish yearly, and leave no record of their wrongs. "A German emigrant, who witnessed the scene, poured out such a tornado of curses as I never before heard," said Whittier; "and I could not blame the man. He came here supposing America to be a free country, and he was bitterly disappointed. Pity for that poor slave and his bereaved family agonized my heart; and my cheeks burned with shame that my country deserved the ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... great outside world we're parsimonious, recognising the fact that the coronation of King Edward VII. is a matter of much less import to our community than the holocaust which was responsible for the destruction of Sir Higginbottom's new hen-house. Similarly a West Indian tornado involving losses running up into hundreds of thousands of dollars sinks into relative insignificance as compared with the local weather forecast and its probable effect on crops not worth ten thousand; ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... continued as scorching as ever, became excessively oppressive. The sky was always dark and the rain never ceased. Sometimes a rift was seen in the clouds in the distance, it would rapidly increase in size, taking a funnel shape, and then a tornado would burst, like a tempest in miniature, lasting only three or four hours, but of extraordinary violence. During one of these the Belle-Poule had to scud along under bare poles at the rate of twelve knots an hour. The weather was excessively ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... character, Count Louis was wise in the management of his estates, encouraged printing at Rougemont, and sharing the love of pomp and beauty of the Savoy court, was an amateur in architecture and as enthusiastic in his religion as he was in all things else. When a tornado followed by a disastrous fire destroyed a part of the city and the chateau of Gruyere, he planned and partially executed an extensive enlargement of his ancestral manor, rebuilding it in the later ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... each step in the pedigree is debated graphically. Volume after volume is referred to. At the slightest hitch out come Patent Rolls, Close Rolls, Fine Rolls, Pipe Rolls, and records of almost every description. Presently the room has the appearance of having been struck by a tornado. Volumes are lying about everywhere, and in every conceivable position. The floor is covered with them, all the chairs are in use, three Patent Rolls are lying open and face downwards on the mantelpiece, there are ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... the little figures, fascinated; they stood for some vast and tremendous force outside, which could not be controlled or even comprehended,—some merciless, annihilating force, like the lightning or the tornado. And he had put himself at the mercy of it; it might do its will with him! "Tr. C. 59 5/8" read the little pasteboard; and he had only six points of safety. If at any time in the day that figure should be changed to read "53 5/8"—then every dollar of Montague's ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... of Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street, just as that tornado broke, he tried to cross the street. He got in a jam of cars, and of course the windshields were all mussed up with rain, and the chauffeurs couldn't see anything ahead—and they don't know whose car it was. The police say it was just four ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... tiptoe to peer into the glass over the mantel, and the storm in her face quickened the storm in her heart. Raging jealousy entered and possessed her. It whirled about like a tornado, scattering before it all that was orderly, that was lesser and weaker than itself. Marie Kerr was taken up in the grip of it, and driven along upon a headlong course which she ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... orator imputed to him the grossest corruption and most ravenous greed for money. He remarked:—"He is changeable in every thing but corruption; there, and only there he is systematic, methodical, immutable. His revenge is furious as a tempest, or a tornado; but his corruption is a monsoon; a trade-wind, blowing uniformly from one point of the compass, and wafting the wealth of India to the same port, in one certain direction." In his speech, however, in indulging his wit and irony, Sheridan ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... happened when she was giving an impromptu concert. She was singing the Jewel song from Faust so ringingly that the Chinese snipers must have heard it, for immediately they opened a heavy "fire," which grew to a perfect tornado, and sent the listeners flying in terror. Perhaps the enemy thought it was a new war-cry, which ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... harangue, diatribe, tirade, screed, philippic, invective, rhapsody, plea. Spruce, natty, dapper, smart, chic. Stale, musty, frowzy, mildewed, fetid, rancid, rank. Steep, precipitous, abrupt. Stingy, close, miserly, niggardly, parsimonious, penurious, sordid, Storm, tempest, whirlwind, hurricane, tornado, cyclone, typhoon Straight, perpendicular, vertical, plumb, erect, upright. Strange, singular, peculiar, odd, queer, quaint, outlandish. Strong, stout, robust, sturdy, stalwart, powerful. Stupid, dull, obtuse, stolid, doltish, sluggish, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Stark's a widow." Those "boys," without bayonets, their artillery shooting stones for balls, were little more than a mob. But with confidence in him, on they rush, up, over, sweeping Baume's Hessians from the field like a tornado. The figure of General Schuyler comes before us—quieter but not less noble, an invalid, set to hard tasks with little glory. His magnanimous soul forgets self in country as he cheerfully gives all possible help to Gates, his supplanter, ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... person who always comes out on top whether he wins or loses," said Fielding, striding up the long room at the moment. "You've not seen him play cricket yet, Miss Moore. He's a positive tornado on the cricket-ground. To-morrow's Saturday, isn't it? Where are ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... quite prostrate, his huge bulk, as he lay upon the ground, seeming that of a fallen hero. Thus in the vegetable as in the animal world, the female has the greater power of endurance. Man, in spite of his conceded superiority of physical strength and supposed mental supremacy, bows before the tornado of life, while woman ofttimes stands erect and fearless amid the storms and ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... youthful paradise around, And all the broad and boundless mainland, lay Cooled by the interminable wood, that frowned O'er mount and vale, where never summer ray Glanced, till the strong tornado broke his way Through the gray giants of the sylvan wild; Yet many a sheltered glade, with blossoms gay, Beneath the showery sky and sunshine mild, Within the shaggy arms ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... shadow lurks somewhere back of your eyes," he continued, lazily. "One moment you are all sugar and cream to a fellow, and the next you are an incipient tornado. I think you might distribute your frowns a little among the people you know, and not give them all ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... upon which latter point, and those cognate to it, readers ought not to be ignorant, if now fallen indifferent on so many other points of the Affair. What a loud-roaring, loose and empty matter is this tornado of vociferation which men call "Public Opinion"! Tragically howling round a man; who has to stand silent the while; and scan, wisely under pain of death, the altogether inarticulate, dumb and inexorable matter which the gods call Fact! Friedrich did read his terrible Sphinx-riddle; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... lovingly flowed their life in its interior light and beauty, that cares and anxieties seemed scarce to touch their states. True, these came to them in the guise of those calamities and disappointments, that so often sweep as the destructive tornado over the lower lives of the earth-loving children of men. But as their affections were spiritual, they were not wounded by the earth-sorrows. Their treasures were laid up above, where "moth and rust doth not corrupt." Paul realized this when he saw Rosa hold her ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... at home, though possibly he might take the air, and probably the beer, of Heliopolis in the evening. However, his good intentions were ruthlessly upset, for at that moment the interior of his desert domicile was swiftly converted into a swirling tornado of dust and dirt. Blankets, towels and hay departed upwards, and all was turmoil. In five seconds the air was calm again, but not so the eight inhabitants ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... herself in a passion of hysteria face downward on the bed and a tornado of weeping swept over her. Rooted, he stood as though face to face with an immense dawn, but with eyes that dared ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... tornado seemed to have fallen upon Peakslow's buildings. The stable was unroofed, and the ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... in a spiteful falsetto key, and the rain lashed the old tavern as if it were a balky horse that refused to move on. The windows rattled in the worm-eaten frames, and the doors of remote rooms, where nobody ever went, slammed to in the maddest way. Now and then the tornado, sweeping down the side of Mount Agamenticus, bowled across the open country, and struck the ancient ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... signature (perhaps her Spanish Majesty can't afford clerks); but when she perceives whom they threaten to banish from behind her chair, she declines honouring them with her autograph. The Duchess thus learns her secret. "She, too, love Henrico? Well I never!" About this time a tornado of jealousy may be expected; but court etiquette prevents it from bursting; and the Duchess reserves her revenge, the Queen sits down to her embroidery frame, and one is puzzled to know what is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 30, 1841 • Various
... hidden enemy that they were compelled to retreat. "The savages were formed in three lines, within supporting distance of each other, and extending for two miles, at right angles with the river." The fallen trunks of the trees, blown down by a tornado, made a fine covert for the red men and prevented any favorable action by the cavalry. Wayne was instantly alert. He formed the Legion into two lines, one a short distance behind the other, and began the fight. He soon perceived from the weight of the savage fire and the extent of their lines ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... wonder what the Le Noirs, father and son, will say when they find that the heiress is flown and a 'beggar,' as uncle flatters me by calling me, will be here in her place! Whe—ew—ew—ew! There will be a tornado! Cap, child, they'll murder you! That's just what they'll do! They'll kill and eat you, Cap, without any salt! or they may lock you up in the haunted room to live with the ghost, Cap, ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth |
