"Grotto" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the holy places where the Nativity took place. You descend a staircase into the crypt, which must have formed part of the old khan, or inn, where Mary brought forth our Lord. The centre of attraction is a large grotto, with an altar and a silver star under it, and around the star is written, "Hic de Virgine Maria Jesus Christus natus est." The manger where the animals fed is an excavation in ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... departing from it when five stones rapped up against the door from the inside. He reopened the door and saw them lying there upon the floor. Sir William Barrett had meanwhile come down, but had seen nothing. His stay was a short one. I afterwards made four visits of about two hours each to the grotto, but got nothing direct, though I saw the new brickwork all chipped about by the blows which it had received. The forces appeared to have not the slightest interest in psychical research, for they never played up to an investigator, and yet their presence and action have ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... left. He climbed out of the little grotto where he had concealed himself and moved toward the spot where he knew the air lock to the caverns underneath the planetoid's surface was hidden. Then again, he concealed himself and waited, while he continued to breathe deeply of the highly oxygenated air in his suit. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of the "grotta del toro" at Trapani. [The Authoress of the Odyssey, Chap. VIII.] "Il toro macigna un tesoro di oro." [The bull is grinding a treasure of gold] in the grotto in which (for other reasons) I am convinced Ulysses hid the gifts the Phoeacians had given him. And so the grotto is called "La grotta del toro" [The grotto of the bull]. I make no doubt it was originally called "La grotta del tesoro" [The grotto of the treasure], ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... get-at-able at all. He will, if given suitable offerings, reveal the future to Bubis, but Bubis only. His priest is the King of all the Bubis, upon whom it is never permitted to a white man, or a Porto, to gaze. Baumann also gives the residence of another important spirit as being the grotto at Banni. This is a sea-cave, only accessible at low water in calm weather. I have heard many legends of this cave, but have never had an opportunity of seeing it, or any one who ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... in the expedition I was undertaking, as they had never attempted any one like it. They knew, however, the perils of the glaciers, for every day they risked their lives among them. But Bohren, who had ventured the farthest, had not passed beyond the grotto ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Henry. And they went back to the house and spent the rest of the morning in their play-room: and I am sure that they were very happy in a quiet way, for Henry was making a grotto of moss and shells, fixed on a board with paste; and Emily was just beginning to make a little hermit to be in the grotto, till they both changed their minds a little, and turned the grotto into a gipsy's hut, and instead of a hermit an old woman was made ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... the bay. To the westward, at the distance of about a mile or two from the centre of the town, is a famous passage through a hill, like the tunnel of a railway, which is considered a great curiosity. This passage is called the Grotto of Posilipo. You will see its place marked upon the map. The wonder of this subterranean passage way is its great antiquity. It has existed at least eighteen hundred years, and how much longer nobody knows. It is wide enough for a good broad road. When it was first cut through, it was only ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... after I was borne upon the surge—the bark glided on with rapidity—I saw nothing but a dark rock, which seemed for a second to be weighing on my chest. Then on a sudden I found myself in a grotto so marvellous that I uttered a cry of astonishment, and started up in my admiration with a bound which endangered the frail bark on which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... moment, turning round to him, "I want to get away, on to the sea. Will you row me out, into the Grotto of Virgil?[*] It's so dreadfully white here, white and ghastly. I can't talk naturally here. And I should like to go on a little farther, now I've begun. It would do me good to make a clean breast of it, dear brother confessor. Shall we take ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... with a great show of firmness, but who could resist the tears and entreaties of anyone so pretty as Placida? It came to this in the end, that she transported the Princess just as she was, cosily tucked up upon her favourite couch, to her own Grotto, and this new disappearance left all the people in despair, and Gridelin went about looking more distracted than ever. But now let us return to Prince Vivien, and see what his restless spirit has brought him to. Though Placida's ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... in t' garden, an' t' grotto, Where sweet vegetation anon will adorn; Tha smiles on the lord no more than the cottar, For thi meanest o' subjects ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... amusement soon grew quite absorbing, and her "cubby," as she called it, rapidly became a pretty grotto, where she lived like a little mermaid, daily loving more and more the beauty of the wonderful sea. Finding the boat too sunny at times, the boys cut long willow boughs and arched them over the seats, laying hemlock branches across till a green roof made it cool and shady inside. There ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... they went, through the crowded streets; past the palaces, cathedrals, gardens; past the towers, castles, and quays; till at last there arose before them the mighty Grotto of Posilipo. Through this they drove, looking in astonishment at its vast dimensions, and also at the crowds of people who were passing through it, on foot, on horseback, and on wheels. Then they came to Pozzuoli, the place where St. Paul once landed, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... town; and a wiry shepherd, placing himself before the entrance to the grotto, and using his staff as a spear, said: "Men of Bethlehem, ye cannot enter; the ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... little wildly. "I do wish we might have a more secluded nook for our talk." Nancy, however, who was now prepared for the worst, did not offer more seclusion and her lover continued. "I wish we had some grotto where I could lead you. I would have it on the Libyan shore. Overhead would be the azure sky. Before us, stealing up the golden beach, would be the Mediterranean. What a colourful scene! Soft breezes would lull you to my mood, and on their spicy-laden breath ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... I am going to make a collection, and I should like to class them all, and, by the time La Luna comes back, I want to have hundreds and hundreds, and I will take them to ornament my garden, or they will look lovely arranged all round the big hall; or, Mama, dear, we might make a grotto, think how lovely it would be! So let us little girls do nothing but pick up shells. Do, dear ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... be revisiting the sea on whose waves the cab had swum; but now she was under the sea, in a watery gulf, terribly deep; and the sounds of the world came to her through the water, sudden and strange. Hands seized her and forced her from the subaqueous grotto where she had hidden into new alarms. And she briefly perceived that there was a large bath by the side of the bed, and that she was being pushed into it. The water was icy cold. After that her outlook upon things was for a time clearer and ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... and fairies; and numerous throughout Western Britanny. One or more large and massive flat stones, overlaying great slabs planted edgeways in the ground, form a rude and sometimes very capacious chamber, or grotto. The superstition which cleaves to these relics of a forgotten antiquity, stamps itself in the names given to many of them by the peasantry:—Grotte aux fees, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... collected this dainty and attractive little fern on the limestone cliffs of Mt. Horr, near Willoughby Lake, Vt. It grew in a rocky grotto whose sides were kept moist by dripping water. How we liked to linger near its charming abode high on the cliff! And we liked also to speak of it by its pleasing, simple name, "Pellaea gracilis," now changed ...
— The Fern Lover's Companion - A Guide for the Northeastern States and Canada • George Henry Tilton
... the bricks, it seems to have even more than a Roman desolation, it confusedly suggests Spain and Africa—lands with no latent risorgimenti, with absolutely nothing but a fatal past. The legendary wolf of Rome has lately been accommodated with a little artificial grotto, among the cacti and the palms, in the fantastic triangular garden squeezed between the steps of the church and the ascent to the Capitol, where she holds a perpetual levee and "draws" apparently as powerfully as ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... these years, Odysseus was always weeping, and his sweet life ebbed away in longing for his home. But all the sentiment is taken out of this by the words which follow: [Greek: epei ouketi aendane numphae] "because the nymph pleased him no more!" Even so Tannhaeuser tired of the pleasures in the grotto of Venus, and begged to be ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... should fancy her life ordained for a lot, whether of bliss or woe, that should accord with the romance and reverie which made the atmosphere she breathed. Frequently she would climb through the thickets that clothed the neighbouring grotto of Posilipo,—the mighty work of the old Cimmerians,—and, seated by the haunted Tomb of Virgil, indulge those visions, the subtle vagueness of which no poetry can render palpable and defined; for the Poet that ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... particular one little grotto for which I have an especial affection: the memory of it has often, in times of depression and melancholy, during the years of ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... Park to know a geyser? Alas! in that case, many of us poor school-teachers must go through life geyserless. Wondrous tales and oft heard I in my school-days of glacier, iceberg, canyon, snow-covered mountain, grotto, causeway, and volcano, but not till I came to Grindelwald did I really know what a glacier is. There's many a ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson
... such respect for them that they considered it impious to molest a state, wholly occupied in the worship of the gods. There was a grove, the middle of which was irrigated by a spring of running water, flowing from a dark grotto. As Numa often repaired thither unattended, under pretence of meeting the goddess, he dedicated the grove to the Camenae, because, as he asserted, their meetings with his wife Egeria were held there. He also instituted a yearly festival to Faith ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... Diverging from this central walk were two narrower paths which, winding in and out in eccentric figures, led, on the one hand, to a rustic summer-house overgrown with honeysuckle and trumpet-vine, and on the other to a tiny grotto constructed of shells and set in a tangle of periwinkle. Along one side of the house, and protected by a stout locust paling overrun with grape-vines, lay the garden, where flowers and vegetables flourished contentedly side by side, the hollyhocks and tall white lilies, the hundred-leaved ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... shouldn't we go to Corsica? While you are hunting I can sketch—I should love to have that grotto Captain Ellis talked about, where Napoleon used to go and study when he was a ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... seen in the upper levels, from which the waters retired soonest, and the heaviest and most beautiful is in the Blue Grotto, on the eighth level where the water remained longest and its diminished volume became most heavily charged. In many places, however, there is another heavy variety known as pop-corn box work, which seems to be an impure lime carbonate not so finely crystallized as ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... in the blood-vessels of the brain, is to produce sleep and stupor; hence the drunkard breathes thick, and snores spasmodically, and after this state, ends in confirmed apoplexy and death—just as dogs become insensible when held over the Grotto del Cane, in Italy, where they inhale this deleterious gas. But in addition to this it has been clearly proved, that alcohol does enter into the substance of the brain, for it has been detected by ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... the vagrants' time was spent in play. They ascended the cliff towards the grotto of Saint John. They shared in many a contest. They dared each other to do things—possible and impossible. There were climbings of rocks, and daring leaps, with many perils and escapades, according to the nature of boys at play. ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... wishes," he continued. "The Nautilus is imprisoned in this grotto, the entrance of which is blocked up; but, although egress is impossible, the vessel may at least sink in the abyss, and there ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... to a small house in the Avenue de Paris, and were admitted first into a small garden ornamented by a grotto, a fountain, and several nymphs in plaster-of-Paris, then up a mouldy old steep stair into a hall, where a statue of Cupid and another of Venus welcomed us with their eternal simper; then through a salle-a-manger ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dear Colonel confided to her that she was to be his niece and Aunt Ermine's handmaid, sent her to consult with Tibbie on her new apartment, and invited Augustus to the most eligible hole in the garden. The grotto that Rose, Conrade, and Francis proceeded to erect with pebbles and shells, was likely to prove as alarming to that respectable reptile as a model cottage to ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sweet little lawns opening and opening beyond one another, the whole surrounded by impenetrable woods." Following the taste of his times in landscape gardening, he adorned his lawns with artificial mounds, a shell temple, an obelisk, and a colonnade. But the crowning glory was the grotto, a tunnel decorated fantastically with shells and bits of looking-glass, which Pope dug under a road that ran through his grounds. Here Pope received in state, and his house and garden was for years the center of the most brilliant society in England. Here Swift came on his rare visits from Ireland, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... The grotto of the Holy Child was in her charge, and, knowing that one of our Mothers greatly disliked perfumes, she never put any sweet-smelling flowers there, not even a tiny violet. This cost her many a real sacrifice. One day, just as she had placed ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... to get them; at least, we did. Nancy here had perfect confidence in him. She said he had such dog-like eyes, and we were both perfectly certain they would be served when the steamer stopped at the Blue Grotto——" Miss ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... cavern, grotto, grot, den, catacomb, crypt. Associated words: speleology, spelean, stalactite, stalagmite, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... lived chiefly for several winters in the retirement of the Florida orange grove, which she always enjoyed. Her sympathy was strong with the new impetus benevolent work in cities had received, and she helped it from her "grotto" in more ways than one. Sometimes she would write soothing or inspiriting letters, as the ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... exhausted with fatigue, he lies down in a grotto at the foot of the mountain, where he passes a night full of agitation ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... almost made up his mind to leave the shore, and to seek his sister inland, when once more he heard the voice that had so charmed him, and beheld the bloody skin lying on the sand, and the bath, now filled with water, in the grotto. Little sleep had he that night, and before dawn he hid himself behind the rocks, determined not to move from the place till the fish should ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... Sir JOHN, misled by wicked sprites, Searched for the Queen! until, by some kind chance, He wandered through a grotto by the sea, Where silver pendules from the ceiling hung And gossip ripples whispered at the door. Here, on a seat from solid crystal hewn Sat OENE,—BERTHO at her feet,—her hand Nestled amid the ringlets of his hair, Like some white dove amid the wav'ring shade; Her eyes bent softly ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... come from my grotto to look upon the greatest king in the world. Shall the land or the water furnish a new spectacle for his amusement? He has only to speak,—to wish; nothing is impossible to him. Is he not himself a miracle? And has he not the right ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... In its usual grotto Quest found the usual group, was welcomed automatically, sat down at one of the tables, and ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... that, spite of sense and nature, reigns, And poisons genial love, and manhood stains! Pollio! the pride of science and its shame, The Muse weeps o'er thee, while she brands thy name! Abhorrent views that prostituted groom, The indecent grotto, or polluted dome! There only may the spurious passion glow, Where not one laurel decks the caitiff's brow, 100 Obscene with crimes avow'd, of every dye, Corruption, lust, oppression, perjury. Let Chardin[8], with a chaplet round his head, The taste of Maro and Anacreon plead, 'Sir, Flaccus ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... see how the world looked outside, I drew back the heavy curtains. It was eight o'clock in the morning and a flood of daylight poured into the room. It was so perfectly blue, seen by the glare of the lamps, that it reminded me of the Capri grotto. And there stood Aniela, with that blue haze around her white shoulders. She looked so lovely that all my resolutions tottered and fell to pieces; I felt positively grateful to her for this glimpse of beauty, as if it were her doing. I pressed her hand more tenderly than I had ever ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... writing at a place called Reisenberg which is an hour's distance from Vienna. I once stayed here over night; now I shall remain a few days. The house is insignificant, but the surroundings, the woods in which a grotto has been built as natural as can be, are splendid ...
— Mozart: The Man and the Artist, as Revealed in his own Words • Friedrich Kerst and Henry Edward Krehbiel
... . . . Frontispiece Breaking Waves Incline at Mauch Chunk The Head of the Toboggan Slide. The Big Trees The Matterhorn The Punch Bowl, Yellowstone Geysers. Formation of the Grotto Geyser Bee-Hive Geyser Pulpit Terrace and Bunsen Peak "The Breakers," Santa Cruz, Cal. The Work and the Worker, Santa Cruz, Cal. Yellow Chili Squash in Harness Squash Grown Under Pressure A Natural Bridge, Santa Cruz, Cal. An Excavated ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... garden. It was a narrow rectangle, inclosed within high walls, like those of a convent. There were gravel paths between grass-plots and humble flowers; and an arbor of grape-vines and climbing roses. A tiny fountain trickled from a grotto built of stones: an acacia against the wall hung its sweet-scented branches over the next garden. Above stood the old tower of the church, of red sandstone. It was four o'clock in the evening. The garden was already in shadow. The sun was still shining on the top of the ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... passed. Mark had been very quiet and thoughtful at home, reading, or making believe to read, and spending a good deal of time in the mine with Dummy Rugg, who twice over proposed that they should go on exploring the grotto-like place he had discovered; but to his surprise, his young master put it off, and the quiet, silent fellow waited. He, though, had more tales to tell of the way in which things disappeared from cottages. Pigs, sheep, poultry went in the most unaccountable ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... Face And Shape of Venus, and with equal Grace In some Elysian Field the Figure place? Your Fancy, warm'd by TEA, with wish'd success, Shall Beauty's Queen in all her Charms express; With Nature's Rural Pride your Landscape fill The Shady Grotto, and the Sunny Hill, The Laughing ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... overjoyed to hear and see her so much interested about his picture, and calling to mind that there was in a grotto which she often frequented a certain pedestal, on which a Diana, not yet finished, was to be erected, on this pedestal he resolved to place himself, crowned with laurel, and holding a lyre in his hand, on which he played like another Apollo. He most anxiously waited the princess' ...
— The Little Lame Prince - And: The Invisible Prince; Prince Cherry; The Prince With The Nose - The Frog-Prince; Clever Alice • Miss Mulock—Pseudonym of Maria Dinah Craik
... approaching Fleur-de-Lys, "what is the subject of this tapestry work which you are fashioning?" "Fair cousin," responded Fleur-de-Lys, in an offended tone, "I have already told you three times. 'Tis the grotto of Neptune." ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... at Burke, who had risen, pale and astounded. "Sit down, Mr. Burke! There is no need to question these men; no need to demand what they robbed you of. For," he added slowly, "what they took from the garden grotto of Sais, and from you, I have under ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... of this formal garden was a miniature lake with bridges leading to an island; there was a waterfall feeding the lake, usually at its southern end; and at the eastern and western limits of the garden, respectively, a grotto for angling and a "hermitage of spring water"—a sort of picnic ground frequented on summer evenings. The great artist, Kanaoka, of the end of the ninth century worked at laying out these rockeries and tiny parks. A native school of architects, ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... flew the Red Cross flag, displaying on its portals the register of wounded like a roll-call. The streets at night, with their lights extinguished, were subterranean in their darkness, and the single cafe, faintly illuminated, looked like some mysterious grotto within which the rows of bottles of cognac and Mattoni gleamed like veins of quartz and felspar. We were, indeed, a race of troglodytes, and we were all either very young or very old. Our adolescence was all called up to the colours. There was never any news beyond ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... sweeps. Here, careful as he was, he slipped, and lay for a moment stunned and chilled with his sudden immersion. Struggling to the bank, he regained his foothold, and, rounding the promontory of cliff which had almost defeated his search, he turned the angle that hid the grotto, and found himself at ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... Dale would otherwise have left this shifting scene, Mrs. Carey, the last woman in her condition they tanked and then turned into a flagged cell that only wanted one frog of a grotto, was found soon after moribund; on which they bundled her out of the asylum to die. She did die next day, at home, but murdered by the asylum; and they told the Commissioners she died through her friends taking her away from the asylum too soon. The Commissioners had nothing to do but believe this, ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... solemn music. Following the sound, he came to a moss-hag, where a group of Covenanters were worshiping God. A moss-hag is a cut on the hillside, formed by frost and rain; and overhung with moss, heather, and other growths. In such places the pursued Covenanters often hid themselves. The cold grotto was their house; the damp earth their bed; the hole cut out of the hill without hands their sanctuary. Andrew listened with breathless interest. They were singing a Psalm of David. Then followed an earnest prayer. Tie ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... blazing bolt smote his swift ship,—Zeus, thundering from on high,—and his good comrades perished, utterly, all, while he escaped their evil doom; how he came to the island of Ogygia and to the nymph Calypso, who held him in her hollow grotto, wishing him to be her husband, cherishing him, and saying she would make him an immortal, young forever, but she never beguiled the heart within his breast; then how he came through many toils to the Phaeacians, who honored him exceedingly, as if he were a god, and brought him on his way to his ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... close on your right, a little open-air cafe, with tables under a trellis of green vines. It is as cool a retreat of mingled sun and shadow as I know. There is red wine at two francs and long imported cigars of as soft a flavour as even Louis the Fourteenth could have desired. The idea of leaving a grotto like that to go trapesing all over a hot stuffy palace with a lot of fool tourists, seemed ridiculous. But I bought there a little illustrated book called the Chateau de Versailles, which interested me so extremely that I decided ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... much nicer ones; for you will tell me yours, and we can do great things," she said, when she had displayed her big rocking-horse, her grotto full of ferns, her mimic sea, where a fleet of toy boats lay at anchor in the basin of an old fountain, her fairy-land under the lilacs, with paper elves sitting among the leaves, her swing, that tossed one high up among the green boughs, and the basket of white ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... the potatoes, the plums, the honey and the head of the dragon and manufacture a grotto in which the Fairy Bluebell reclines with closed eyes. It appears to be a suitable moment for returning to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... Severan, who fascinated her by some mysterious power. At the wedding-feast she learns that he is a mere bandit, leader of a band of robbers that infests the country. She fled away through the mountains and found the grotto where she now lives. The fishermen, seeing her appear and vanish among the cliffs, take her to be the fairy Esterello, who is a sort of Loreley. Calendau determines that either Severan or he shall die, and seeks him out. ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... enamelled baths along one wall, cork mats on the floor, and one enormous central water supply, hot and cold, which you diverted to whichever bath you chose by means of a long flexible rubber pipe. Soap, sponges, towels, ad lib. You can imagine what this palatial water grotto meant to us, when, at other times, our best bath was of saucepan capacity, taken on the cold stone floor of a farm room. We lay and boiled the trenches out of our systems in that palatial asylum. Glorious! lying back in a long white ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... and saw Colonel Nairne's garden and grotto. Here was a fine old plane tree. Unluckily the colonel said, there was but this and another large tree in the county. This assertion was an excellent cue for Dr Johnson, who laughed enormously, calling to me to hear it. He had expatiated to me on the nakedness of that part of Scotland ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... this country who understands the French. It's been rather amusing," she went on, "I've had to fight Hilda, and she's no mean antagonist. How she hates me! She wanted a monstrosity, of course, a modernized German rock-grotto sort of an affair, I can imagine. She's been so funny when I've met her at dinner. 'I understand you take a great interest in the house, Mrs. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... heap of broken stones and natural rocks, cemented with clay, bound together by the roots of gnarled trees, the whole forming at the back of the picture a small, shallow grotto, full of crevices that admitted the light. The floor, which Don Luis could easily distinguish, consisted of ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... on a time men sacrificed human beings to their God, and perhaps just those they loved the best—to this category belong the firstling sacrifices of all primitive religions, and also the sacrifice of the Emperor Tiberius in the Mithra-Grotto on the Island of Capri, that most terrible of all Roman anachronisms. Then, during the moral epoch of mankind, they sacrificed to their God the strongest instincts they possessed, their "nature"; THIS festal joy ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... trench with the remains of a fire smoldering in it, and a frying pan and some soiled dishes beside it. There is a log, used as a seat, and near it are several books, a bound volume of music lying open, and a violin case with violin. To the right is a rocky wall, with a cleft suggesting a grotto.] ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... glaciers of Mus-tagh-ata on foot or on yaks. One must be well shod so as not to slip, and one must look out for crevasses. Once we were stopped by a crevasse several yards broad and forty-five feet deep. When we stooped over the brim and looked down, it had the appearance of a dark-blue grotto with walls of polished glass, and long icicles hung down from the edges. Streamlets of melted ice run over the surface of the glacier, sometimes flowing quietly and gently as oil in the greenish-blue ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... along; you'll find 'em. [She walks away slowly, baffled. He glances at her over his paper, slightly puzzled.] Have you seen the grotto? ...
— The Gay Lord Quex - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... this little Grove stood a rustic Grotto, formed in imitation of an Hermitage. The walls were constructed of roots of trees, and the interstices filled up with Moss and Ivy. Seats of Turf were placed on either side, and a natural Cascade fell from the Rock above. Buried in himself the Monk approached the spot. The universal ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... Let us then leave this fav'rite shelt'ring bower, To taste the beauties of this balmy hour; To view the sunbeams gild the moisten'd ground, And throw their rich and radiant glory round. As from the grotto, hand in hand they past, The gentle Daphne on her partner cast Her swimming eyes, pressing his ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... escaped the threatening dangers of the long and shivering ice-period, and had put his house in order, he began to make certain things which he thought beautiful, although they were of no earthly use to him in his fight with the wild animals of the jungle. He covered the walls of his grotto with pictures of the elephants and the deer which he hunted, and out of a piece of stone, he hacked the rough figures of those ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... emblematic pictures. In the first there opened before Christine a grotto of ice. The light was thin and cold but very clear. Stalactites hung glittering from the vaulted roof. Stalagmites in strange fantastic forms rose to meet them. Vivid brightness and beauty were on every side, but of that kind that threw a chill ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... awoke and told his dream to the Prince, who, in shame and confusion at the breach of his promise, went to the Grotto of the Fairies, and, commending his daughter to them, asked them to send her something. And behold, there stepped forth from the grotto a beautiful maiden, who told him that she thanked his daughter for her kind remembrances, and bade him tell her to be ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... the arch is always delightful in distant effect, partly on account of its graceful line, partly because the shade it casts is varied in depth, becoming deeper and deeper as the grotto retires, and partly because it gives great apparent elevation to the walls which it supports. The grottoes themselves are agreeable objects seen near, because they give an impression of coolness to the eye; ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... widen out, and we found ourselves, on passing over the plain which we had seen from above, entering a vast grotto from the roof of which long crystal prisms hung, while here and there natural pillars of limestone seemed to give their support to the roof above. Our strange guide now fastened a torch of some resinous material ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... palace, a grotto hewn out of the rock and made in days long agone, and to this grotto some little light was given by a tunnel[219] by art wrought in the mountain, which latter, for that the grotto was abandoned, was well nigh blocked at its mouth with briers and weeds that had overgrown it. Into this grotto one ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... all less ordinary events, suggested his sole counsellors or monitors to the musing Godolphin), led his steps in an opposite direction. Scarcely conscious whither he was wandering, he did not pause till he found himself in that green and still valley in which the pilgrim beholds the grotto of Egeria. ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the old circular temple of Remus to the right hand, and the most venerable relic of Rome's infancy, the Ruminal Fig tree, beneath which the she-wolf was believed to have given suck to the twin progeny of Mars and the hapless Ilia. A little farther on, the mouth of the sacred grotto called Lupercal, surrounded with its shadowy grove, the favourite haunt of Pan, lay to their left; and fronting them, the splendid arch of Fabius, surnamed Allobrox for his victorious prowess against that savage tribe, gave entrance ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... the guests. A splendid fir-tree, covered with burning tapers, and hung over with tinsel-gold, gilt eggs and apples, almonds and grapes, dazzled the eye. On either side of the tree were grottoes of fir-trees and moss, hung with red and blue paper lamps. In each grotto was an altar; upon one stood John of Bologna's floating Mercury; upon the other, a reduced cast in plaster of Thorwaldsen's Shepherd-boy. The steps were covered with presents, to which were ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... Malarnaud in France, increase our material which is now as abundant as could be desired. The most recent discovery of all is that of a skull dug up in August of this year [1908] by Klaatsch and Hauser in the lower grotto of the Le Moustier in Southern France, but this skull has not yet been fully described. Thus Homo primigenius must also be regarded as occupying a position in the gap existing between the highest apes ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... When our six hundred years are ended, we march into the Great Blue Grotto, through the Arch of Phinis, and ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... he said: "I wish you'd give up this grotto-making till to-morrow. Mrs. Kavanagh, Mrs. Lorraine and Lord Arthur Redmond are coming here to luncheon at two. I suppose you can get something decent for them. What is the matter? What is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... grotto about a hundred paces from the edge of the lake where the tug stopped. The grotto, twelve feet by ten, was lighted by an incandescent lamp, and fitted with an entrance door that was closed ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... entrusted to me by your Excellency!" replied she, in a voice of wonder at such a question. "The marble statue in the grotto is not closer than I am, your Excellency. I was always too fond of a secret ever to part with it! When I was the Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport I never told, even in confession, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sentinel hedgerow is guarding repose, Midst grotto and songlet and streamlet that flows Where beauty and perfume from buds burst away, And ope their closed cells to the bright, laughing day; Yet, dwellers in Eden, earth yields you her tear,— Oft plucked for the banquet, but ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... the maid came in and invited Lady Bassett to follow her. She opened the glass folding-doors, and took them into a small conservatory, walled like a grotto, with ferns sprouting out of rocky fissures, and spars sparkling, water dripping. Then she opened two more glass folding-doors, and ushered them into an empty room, the like of which Lady Bassett had never seen; it was large in itself, and multiplied tenfold by great mirrors from floor ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... features like one of Dante Rossetti's women, offered me trout for dinner. Out of the back window I looked for the shattered summits of the Sentis, which rise five thousand feet above the valley, but they were invisible. The vertical walls of the Ebenalp, in which are the grotto and chapel of Wildkirchli, towered over the nearer hills, and I saw with regret that they were still above the snow line. It was impossible to penetrate much farther without better weather; but I decided, while enjoying my trout, to make another trial,—to take the road to Urnaesch, and thence ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... "I am so glad you are come. I wanted to ask you to collect me some shells, as many as you can find time to gather; not all winkles and cockles, remember, but as great a variety as possible. The ladies have a fancy for making a grotto in the garden, and I have undertaken to adorn the inside with shapes of all sorts of strange creatures to be formed with the shells. They will, I am sure, gladly pay you for your trouble, and I shall be much obliged to you if you can get them ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... tour spent in Brigade support, Battalion Headquarters and two Companies were in that village, and two Companies in billets in Richebourg St. Vaast, or finding garrisons for "St. Vaast," "Grotto" and "Angle" posts. An interesting discovery in the rafters of a ruined house at Richebourg St. Vaast was a pepper box found to contain several gold louis. Capt. E. M. Hacking was the means of their being handed over to the French ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... place where she would have been setting that night—you may see it to-day. The Roman soldiers were recruited from the Teutonic and the Celtic portions of Gaul; of the latter many did know of that grotto under Chartres which is among the chief historical interests of Europe. The tide was, as I have said, on the flow at midnight—and ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... in strange garments of grey, with black hoods covering their faces, and leaving nothing but the bright good-humoured eye to guide one under this sepulchral figure to the Giovanni or Beppino who was cracking jokes yesterday till the Blue Grotto rang again. Then beneath a great canopy upborne by the four elder fishers of the island, vested in gowns of "samite, mystic, wonderful"—somewhat like a doctor of music's gown in our unpoetic land—comes the Madonna ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... made the ascent of Mont Blanc, with ten persons—eight guides, and Mr. Corkindale and Mr. Randall. We reached the summit at half past 2. Immediately after quitting it, we were enveloped in clouds of snow. We passed the night in a grotto hollowed in the snow, which afforded us but poor shelter, and I was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... them waiting for us in the Grotto of the Spine of the Chinaman, a shallow cave in the side of the hill. There were seven of them, naked as ourselves, thick-lipped, their eyes ringed with the blue ama-ink and their bodies scrolled with it. They had ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... of Naples, went to the celebrated Grotta del Cane, or Dog Grotto, on the borders of Lake Agnano, so called from the vapour in the cave, destructive to animal life, being shown by means of a dog. In his diary, of March 3, 1818, he records:—"Travellers have made a great display of sensibility in their strictures upon the spectacle ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Simon (who turned out a prime one) These words, which grew into a proverb full soon, O'er the late Abbot's grotto, stuck up as a motto, "Who Suppes with the Deville sholde ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... witnessed in this or any other country. The creek, which is about seven yards wide, and has a general course about S. 15 W., here passes through a hill elevated from two to three hundred feet above the surface of the stream, winding its way through a huge subterraneous cavern, or grotto, whose roof is vaulted in a peculiar manner, and rises from thirty to seventy or eighty feet above its floor. The sides of this gigantic cavern rise perpendicularly in some places to the height of fifteen or twenty feet, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... Number, like Fagots in the muster of a Regiment. I was wonderfully pleased with such a mixt kind of Furniture, as seemed very suitable both to the Lady and the Scholar, and did not know at first whether I should fancy myself in a Grotto, ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... shudder shook even his bold heart, for the girl's sayings and doings seemed to him not solemn merely, but mysterious like those of a prophetess. A violent crash sounded through the silent and sacred place, and loud echoes were tossed from side to side, ringing ominously throughout the grotto. Publius turned anxiously round, and his eye, seeking Klea, found her no more; then, hurrying to the door of the cave, he heard her lock it on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the Moors, leaving his virtuous and saintly wife, Genevieve, in the care of his trusted vassal Golo. Inflamed by lust and perverted by evil counsels, Golo proves faithless to his trust. The scene is in Genevieve's castle-garden, where Golo has hidden in a grotto.] ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... various old-fashioned excrescences which we profess to despise. He admired mock classical temples and obelisks erected judiciously at the ends of vistas. His most famous piece of handiwork, the grotto at Twickenham, still remains, and is in fact a short tunnel under the high road to connect his grounds with the lawn which slopes to the river. He describes in a letter to one of his friends, his "temple wholly comprised of shells in the rustic ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... and took no precaution against it; even when the army had actually left Paris, on the evening of the 5th of October, the King was shooting at Meudon, and the Queen was alone in her gardens at Trianon, which she then beheld for the last time in her life. She was sitting in her grotto absorbed in painful reflection, when she received a note from the Comte de Saint-Priest, entreating her to return to Versailles. M. de Cubieres at the same time went off to request the King to leave his sport ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Oh for a grotto to typify heaven, Scooped in the rock under cataract vast! Oh for a winter of discontent even! Oh ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... the Prince's palace was a grotto, hewn in days of old in the solid rock, and now long disused, so that an artificial orifice, by which it received a little light, was all but choked with brambles and plants that grew about and overspread it. From one of the ground-floor rooms of the palace, ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... reflected a hundred thousand lights to me from my two candles. What it was in the rock - whether diamonds or any other precious stones, or gold which I rather supposed it to be - I knew not. The place I was in was a most delightful cavity, or grotto, though perfectly dark; the floor was dry and level, and had a sort of a small loose gravel upon it, so that there was no nauseous or venomous creature to be seen, neither was there any damp or wet on the sides or roof. The only difficulty in it was the entrance - which, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... fixed he was in the Bosquet d'Apollon, walking up and down in front of the famous grotto, on whose threshold the white Apollo, just released from the chariot of the Sun, receives the ministrations of the Muses, while his divine horses are being fed and stalled in the hollows of the rock to either side. No stranger ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were fitted into holes in the basement. I then began to realize that what I had hitherto regarded as solid walls were in reality sliding panels of wood. These panels when opened revealed a kind of grotto. There were no windows, but in the roof was a skylight. At one end of this room or grotto was a large rock, on the top of which was a seat with a yellow cushion, and beside the cushion an incense burner. Everything had the appearance of being very old. The room contained no furniture of any description. ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge once satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration (Putz). Warmth he found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto: but for Decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see among the barbarous ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... illuminated with lamps of every form and hue. We seemed suddenly to have passed to another world, so dream-like was the effect of the multitudinous lights as they fell with white, red, lurid, or golden glare, upon bush or tree, grotto, statue, ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... stealthy footsteps could be heard, and the figure of a man appeared at the entrance of the grotto. Cautiously he stepped forward, and cast an inquiring glance through the trailing vines which overhung the grotto, to the young girl who still slumbered, reclining on the trunk of the laurel-tree. It ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... now come for the voice of Omnipotence to give the mandate. The group have gathered around the sepulchral grotto—the Redeemer stands in meek majesty in front—the teardrop still glistening in His eye, and that eye directed heavenward! Martha and Mary are gazing on His countenance in dumb emotion, while the eager ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... the approach of Summer,—The Pastoral, in the Manner of Spenser—(which has not much resemblance to that writer), and Verses inscribed on a beautiful Grotto,—were printed in the Union, a poetical miscellany, selected by him, and ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary |
