"High-water mark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... broke and Bride ended her journey at the sea. She came gently without any splendid nuptials to the lover of rivers. Her brief course run, her last silver loop wound through the meadows, she ended in a placid pool amid the sand ridges above high-water mark. The yellow cliffs climbed up again on either side, and near the chalice in the grey beach whence, invisible, the river sank away to win the sea by stealth, spread Estelle's sea garden—an expanse of stone and sand enriched by ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... starboard watch in unbending the sails, which, when they reached the deck, were rolled up by the other watch on duty below, and lowered to the beach over the side, where they were stowed in a heap on the sand above high-water mark. ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... danger of floods, but they conserve our waterways, preventing a dangerous high-water mark in the season of heavy rains and melting snows, and then preventing a shrinkage in dry seasons when the only feeders of the rivers are the underground sources. In the summer of 1911, prolonged drought in North Carolina lowered the rivers to such an extent ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... But this poem is the high-water mark of unsuccessful love exultant. Browning was too true a humanist to keep us always on so shining a peak; he knew that there are lower levels, where the wounded wings must rest—that mood, for instance, of wistful looking-back to things ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... been able to see far, and in answer to the Lord's question, had rung out the confession: 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!' So the name by which Jesus addresses him now says to him in effect: 'Remember thy human weakness; remember how thou wert drawn to Me; remember the high-water mark of thy discipleship, when I was plain before thee as the Son of God, and remembering all these, answer Me— lovest ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... trees above the high-water mark and the flames back on the ridge still thrust and flared, but were unable to cross the wide, wet flood-belt. The settlement and the "big woods" ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... have reached the high-water mark of English Poesy and of Milton's own production. A period of a century and a half was to elapse before poetry in England seemed, in Wordsworth's Ode on Immortality (1807), to be rising again towards the level ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... its high-water mark in England long before the power and prestige of the French monarchy had culminated in the person of Louis XIV. In the sixteenth century—the very century in which the French sovereigns faced constant foreign war and chronic civil commotion—the ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... had never been happier than as she prepared for her first Christmas at Enderby. But that festival seemed the high-water mark of her happiness. The close of the day found her strangely depressed and thereafter she had more frequent periods of being ill ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... fossil flat-iron." This antediluvian relic was found imbedded in a Sandy deposite opposite Surrey-street, near high-water mark. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb-tide. There was a story that one of the pits dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout; and a blighting influence seemed to have proceeded from it over the whole place. Or else it looked as if it had gradually ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... enabling us to dry our wet clothes; but the crew were warned that they would have to rouse up about midnight, when Captain Billings expected the tide would have gone down sufficiently to enable us to get the long-boat out of danger, and turn her over on the beach beyond high-water mark. ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to grade them on a scale with complete-indifference as the interest zero, and with the 'exploding-point'-of-enthusiasm as the highest interest mark, where would the score mark of my class stand? And if I cannot reasonably hope to keep my class at the high-water mark of interest at all times, what shall I call an attainable standard? If one hundred per cent is to represent the supreme achievement of interest, shall I be satisfied with fifty per cent, with twenty-five per cent, or ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... hundred feet above the sea, called La Burons, and I passed just in time to see a sheep fall with a plunge and splash into the sea, shot by a man in a boat. This appeared to be the local way of slaughtering the sheep which are put on the rocks to crop the sparse herbage which grows above high-water mark. After a fortnight among the rocks sheep will get so agile and surefooted, that a man has no chance with them in running or climbing, hence the rifle has to be employed to ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... about half-an-hour, its fury was tremendous; the government-house, built on stone piers, was blown away from them to a distance of nine feet; the sea rose ten feet and a half, by measurement afterwards, above the usual high-water mark. H.M.S. Pelorus, having parted her cables, was driven on shore, and thrown over on her beam ends, on the north-east point of the settlement, where heeling over 82 degrees, her starboard side was buried nine feet in the mud, leaving the ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... in the public interest. It has introduced an element of picturesque enthusiasm and, here and there, a passion of hatred rarely seen before in New Zealand politics. It brought division into the Liberal Party in 1893, at the moment when the Progressive movement seemed to have reached its high-water mark, and the feeling it roused was found typified in the curious five years' duel between Mr. Seddon and Sir Robert Stout, which began in 1893 and ended only with Sir Robert's retirement at the beginning of the present year. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... out the policy set forth in Circular 124 reached a high-water mark in mid-1948. By then black troops, for so long limited to a few job categories, could be found in a majority of military occupational fields. The officer corps was open to all without the restrictions of a racial quota, and while a quota for enlisted men still existed all racial ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... for a good man men have even dared to die. Mankind has been glorified by countless silent heroisms, by unselfish service, and sacrificing love. Christ, who always took the highest ground in His estimate of men and never once put man's capacity for the noble on a low level, made the high-water mark of human friendship the standard of His own great action, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." This high-water mark has often been reached. Men have given themselves to each other, with nothing to gain, with no self-interest ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... alone. There was nothing more soothing to my thoughts and mind (the latter getting quiet from the former, I suppose) than for the whole of me to rest a while in such a little scollop of the shingle as a new-moon tide, in little crescents, leaves just below high-water mark. And now it was new-moon tide again, a fortnight after the flooding of our fly by the activity of the full moon; and, feeling how I longed to understand these things—which seem to be denied to all who are of the same sex as the moon herself—I sat in a ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... next morning. But Mrs. Geen was first by a good hour, and what pulled the preacher out of bed was the sound of guns. He put his head out of window, and could hardly believe it was the peaceful place he'd come upon last evening. The beach swarmed with men like emmets. Near up, by high-water mark, men were unloading a long-boat for dear life—some passing kegs, others slinging them to horses, others running the horses up the cliff under his window. At first he thought it must be their trampling had woke him out of sleep, but the next moment bang! the room shook ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Heinrich Bach had educated his people into the belief that there was only one way to play, and that was as he did it. It is not at all probable that Heinrich put forward any claims of perfection, but the people regarded his playing as high-water mark, and any variation from his standards ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... beach your boat before we go out, and pull it above high-water mark," suggested Frank. "Some of the seams may have been opened, as well as this hole being in her, and ...
— Frank and Andy Afloat - The Cave on the Island • Vance Barnum
... piece of iron for his attention to us. As we pulled away, one elderly man drew his bow, and the women and children ran off into the bush, here, as everywhere almost in these islands, growing quite thickly some twenty yards above high-water mark. The man did not let fly his arrow: I cannot tell why this small demonstration ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was right—they all knew him. The Leith millionaire, the summer resident, was a new factor in politics, and the rumours of the size of his fortune had reached a high-water mark in the Pelican Hotel that evening. Pushing through the crowd in the corridor outside the bridal suite waiting to shake hands with the new governor, Mr. Crewe gained an entrance in no time, and did not hesitate to interrupt the somewhat protracted felicitations of an Irish member ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the split and stripped trunks of a half-dozen pines. The slide was started by the dislodged section of a sheer wall close to the top of the 2700-foot cliff. We also saw a boat of crude construction, pulled above the high-water mark; evidently abandoned a great while before. Any person who had to climb the walls at that place had a hard job to tackle, although we could pick out breaks where it looked feasible; there were a few places behind us where it would be next to impossible. ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... not wish my Philosopher always to look upon "A frog he would a-wooing go" as the high-water mark of poetical genius; but I should wish him to bring to better poetry the same hearty relish he brings to this. ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... struggle in the heart of Julia Anderson? Did he guess that her pride and defiance had by this time reached high-water mark? Did he divine this from seeing her there? He rose and started in through the door of the upper hall, the only opening to the porch, except the window. But this was a feint. He turned back and sat himself down upon the farther end of the settee from Julia. He understood human nature perfectly, ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... subsequent to Aristophanes' day, and recognized by themselves as belonging to an entirely different genre. Hence the distinction drawn between 'The Old Comedy,' of which Cratinus and his younger contemporaries, Eupolis and Aristophanes, were the leading representatives, and which was at high-water mark just before and during the course of the great struggle of the Peloponnesian War, and 'The New Comedy,' a comedy of manners, the two chief exponents of which were Philemon and Menander, writing after Athens had fallen ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... the matter. But Stair looked out many times at the green trenches closing in the land entrance to the isle, and even as he looked, it seemed that during the night the parallels had crept down a little nearer to high-water mark. ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... been all over the lower storey, but a muddy deposit on the wooden floor, and a brown slimy high-water mark on the door jambs, alone remained to show what had happened. The piano had been hoisted upon a table, carpets and curtains bundled upstairs, and everything, apparently, saved. The poor garden, with its slime-daubed shrubs, broken palings and torn ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... cross of St. Paul's Cathedral is 407 feet, whilst its base, or ground-line, is 52 feet. The base of the lowest building is that of the Bricklayer's Arms, Kent Road, the sill of the south door of which is only six inches above the high-water mark. The sill of the north entrance-door of Westminster ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... from his own particular knot of friends and enemies, and they jollied him to an extent that, perhaps, reached high-water mark, when Grim found one morning on his table a dozen thoughtful addresses of lunatic asylums, and specimens of the writing of mad people, culled from a popular magazine. But Grim recked not, and persevered. He turned out, ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... 1878, the high-water mark of the movement, about a million votes were cast for Greenback candidates. Approximately two-thirds of the strength of the party was in the Middle West and one-third in the East. That the movement, even in the East, was ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... the high-water mark was still above their heads. "It's getting exciting, isn't it?" she observed. "But I don't feel nasty. Having you here makes—makes a difference, ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... transport of seeds alone. "Tree stems and branches played an important part in the colonisation of Krakatau by plants and animals. Large piles of floating trees, stems, branches and bamboos are met with everywhere on the beach above high-water mark and often carried a considerable distance inland. Some of the animals on the island, such as the fat Iguana (Varanus salvator) which suns itself in the beds of streams, may have travelled on floating wood, possibly also the ancestors of the numerous ants, but certainly plants." (Op. cit. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... must go!" said Netty. And yet she would have been sorry if he had gone. The worst of reaching the high-water mark is that the ebb must necessarily be dreary. In a flash of thought she recollected Joseph Mangles' story. This was the sequel. Strange if he had heard his own story through the door of communication between Mangles' bedroom and the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... on the leeward side of the island, and on going to the windward shore it was curious to notice the process by which these islands gradually become covered with vegetation. The whole shore just above high-water mark was covered with little seeds, beans, and various other atoms of vegetation which had been dropped by birds or cast up by the sea, and which in process of time will cover the island with trees and shrubs. The island did not look much bigger than half a dozen times the size of the yacht. At low ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... as we know it to-day is old. By tradition it was founded in 762 A.D., and became the renowned capital of the Arab empire. It is said that the city grew till it covered some 25 square miles, reaching its high-water mark of splendour and magnificence under the Sultan Haroun-al-Raschid. The fame of its schools and learning was world-wide, and Baghdad became to the East what Rome became ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... which, when the fog lightened, was found to have stranded quite close to land. The depth here was eleven metres. At this place we lay till the morning of the 10th. The beach, was formed of a sandbank,[235] which immediately above high-water mark was covered with a close grassy turf, a proof that the climate here, notwithstanding the neighbourhood of the pole of cold, is much more favourable to the development of vegetation than even the most favoured parts of the west coast of Spitzbergen. Farther inland ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... the kingdom of the Vertebrata, at which we are able to obtain an obscure glance, apparently consisted of a group of marine animals (32. The inhabitants of the seashore must be greatly affected by the tides; animals living either about the MEAN high-water mark, or about the MEAN low-water mark, pass through a complete cycle of tidal changes in a fortnight. Consequently, their food supply will undergo marked changes week by week. The vital functions of such animals, living under these conditions ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... it, walked about the beach to see what we could, of the place. The beach is nearly a mile in length between the two points, and of smooth sand. We had taken the only good landing-place, which is in the middle; it being more stony toward the ends. It is about twenty yards in width from high-water mark to a slight bank at which the soil begins, and so hard that it is a favorite place for running horses. It was growing dark, so that we could just distinguish the dim outlines of the two vessels in the offing; and the great seas were rolling in, in regular ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... after this big scout camp. How in the world John Temple, in his big leather chair in the Bridgeboro Bank, had ever got wind of Jeb Rushmore no one was able to find out. John Temple was a genius for picking out men and in this case he touched high-water mark. ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... output, and he makes the exceptional number for that day serve as the exponent of his circulation until good fortune brings him a similar and possibly larger order, and his circulation is reported as "still increasing." Another struck a "high-water mark" of "190,500" the day after Mr. Cleveland was elected, and that has been the implied measure of circulation for the last six years. Another, during a heated political campaign, or a great financial crisis, or some other dominant factor in public interest, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 795, March 28, 1891 • Various
... of the world's great elegies, was written on the death of Milton's classmate, Edward King. Mark Pattison, one of Milton's biographers, says: "In Lycidas we have reached the high-water mark of English poesy ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... boats down to the bay. While at this work we discover three sacks of flour from the wrecked boat that have lodged in the rocks. We carry them above high-water mark and leave them, as our cargoes are already too heavy for the three remaining boats. We also find two or three oars, which we ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... for instance, who represents the high-water mark of a philosophy that will not hold water, pours out the vials of his bottled-up wrath on the poor unfortunates of London who are compelled 'to make a living' by tips in opening the carriage doors or holding the horses of the wealthy. He had nothing ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... of simple and direct emotion, which to me has always seemed the high-water mark of Hugo's lyrical achievement as well as the most human of his utterances, one might pass on to masterpieces of another inspiration: to the luxurious and charming graces of Sara la Baigneuse; to the superb crescendo and diminuendo of les Djinns; to 'Si vous n'avez rien ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... it all about?" again demanded the younger man, seizing the rope halter and aiding the mare to flounder out upon the firmer sand below high-water mark. "What are you doing up so early? And what were you going to ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... warrant me in speaking very confidently about him, but from the examination which I have given his poetry, I think that he treats his subjects with as little inflation as possible, and he now and then touches a point of naturalness—the high-water mark of balladry, to which modern poets, with their affected unaffectedness and elaborate simplicity, attain only with the greatest pains and labor. Such a triumph of Mercantini's is this poem which I am about to give. It celebrates the daring ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... of each day, but confine myself to the narration of such incidents as may be most worthy of notice throughout the voyage. The moment we landed the tent was pitched by men employed for the purpose; the other men unloaded the canoes, and carried the goods beyond high-water mark, where it was piled and covered ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... his assistants and students were doing all in their power to keep the work of the Museum at high-water mark. The publications, the classification and arrangement of the more recent collections, the distribution of such portions as were intended for the public, the system of exchanges, went on uninterruptedly. The working force at the Museum ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... is practicable for the purpose of self-preservation. Almost for a century the Prussian authorities have been getting the control of their national schools more and more into their own hands. They have now succeeded in bringing the application of the theory of State interference to the high-water mark of practicability. From the rudiments of the alphabet to the history of economics, everything in the Prussian curriculum may be suspected of serving some political purpose. The schoolboy is regarded by the authorities as a mere pawn, to be moved on the ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... quote Lieut. Cruttenden. The Berberah water has acquired a bad name because the people confine themselves to digging holes three or four feet deep in the sand, about half-a-mile from high-water mark. They are reconciled to it by its beneficial effects, especially after and before a journey. Good water, however, can be procured in any of the Fiumaras intersecting the plain; when the Hajj Sharmarkay's ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... If he had been walking by faith, he would have called Samuel's anointing to mind, and have drawn arguments from the victory over Goliath, for trust in victory over Saul, as he had done for the former from that over the lion and the bear. But faith does not always keep high-water mark, and we can only too easily sympathise with this momentary ebb of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in the sunny hours, out from the woodwork of the groynes or bulwarks, there came a white spotted spider, which must in some way have known the height to which the tide came at that season, because he was far below high-water mark. The moles in an upland field had made in the summer a perfect network of runs. Out of curiosity we opened some, and found in them large brown pupae. In the summer-house, under the wooden eaves, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... Now any classification that starts with preconceived values or that works up to sentimental satisfactions is self-condemned as unscientific. A linguist that insists on talking about the Latin type of morphology as though it were necessarily the high-water mark of linguistic development is like the zooelogist that sees in the organic world a huge conspiracy to evolve the race-horse or the Jersey cow. Language in its fundamental forms is the symbolic expression of human intuitions. These may shape themselves in a hundred ways, regardless ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... whether the "Elene" or the "Dream of the Holy Rood" came first. The poetry of the "Dream" is as fine as the conception is grand, and, at whatever time it was written, it must be classed as being at the high-water mark of the poet's work. ...
— Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days • Emily Hickey
... our designs, and had first, by main strength, heaved the boat upon the beach so high that the tide would not float her off at high-water mark, and besides had broke a hole in her bottom too big to be quickly stopped, and were set down musing what we should do, we heard the ship fire a gun, and make a waft with her ensign as a signal for the boat to come on board-but no boat stirred; and they fired several times, making ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... review of Schummel's "Empfindsame Reise" in Frankfurter Gel. Anz. represents the high-water mark of understanding criticism relative to individual work, but represents necessarily no grasp of ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... country-people, would be sure to reach them. So Oddo carried on shore, at the first stretch of white beach they came to, the brandy-flasks, the bearskins, the tobacco-pouch, the muskets and powder-horns, and the tinder-box. He scattered these about just above high-water mark, laughing to think how report would tell of the sprite's care in placing all these articles out of reach of injury from ...
— Feats on the Fiord - The third book in "The Playfellow" • Harriet Martineau
... the arrival of the British ambassador, he discovered that the forts had been greatly strengthened, and that obstructions of all sorts had been placed across the river. Strong booms had been carried from side to side, and iron stakes driven into the bottom at intervals, reaching within two feet of high-water mark. The Chinese having neglected to remove the obstructions, after the admirals had waited several days, Mr Bruce and the French ambassador having arrived, the admiral sent in to say that unless his demands were immediately complied with ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... motion, in all directions, probably to catch food. Others are so sluggish, that they may be mistaken for pieces of rock; and are generally of a dark color, from four to five inches long, and two or three round. When the coral is broken about high-water mark, it is a solid hard stone; but if any part of it be detached at a spot where the tide reaches every day, it is found to be full of worms of different lengths and colors, some being as fine as a thread and several feet long, ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... appearance outside the window, pushing between the fuchsia bushes which overhung the path, put an end to this dialogue; they entered armed with buckets and spades, a very moist and sandy aspect pervading them as far up as the high-water mark of their clothing, and began to tell Ethelberta of the ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... and he became very passionate and excitable, and spent much time in rushing about the woods in search of other deer, fighting those of his own sex, and making love to the does. The year was at its high-water mark, and the Buck was nearing his prime. Food was plenty; everywhere the beechnuts were dropping on the dry leaves; the autumn sunshine was warm and mellow; the woods were gay with scarlet and gold and brown, and the very taste of the air was enough to make one happy. Was it any wonder ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... that a queer softness had risen in the Maestro from somewhere down in the regions of his heel, up and up, quietly, like the mercury in the thermometer, till it had flowed through his whole body and stood still, its high-water mark a little lump ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... asked them to wait and have a drink of cold water, and was deeply humiliated to find that both water bags were empty,—the overgrown girl having used the last to wash her face. Casey didn't like her any the better for that, or for having accentuated the high-water mark, or for forcing him to apologize to the pretty ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... watering-place, who having found it, returned before noon; and then we sent the long-boat for a load of water. This island of Quibo is extremely convenient for wooding and watering; for the trees grow close to the high-water mark and a large rapid stream of fresh water runs over the sandy beach into the sea, so that we were little more than two days in laying in all the wood and water ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... pony is old, while she is young (although she was born before him), and now he belies his name, "Lord Keppel," by starting at every soft glimmer of the sea. Therefore now he is left to roam at his leisure above high-water mark, poking his nose into black dry weed, probing the winnow casts of yellow drift for oats, and snorting disappointment through a gritty ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... we understand: "a primal eternal Being, author of all things, the father and the friend of man, the invisible omniscient guardian of morality," a definition which, while it fixes the high-water mark of monotheism, yet only states with formidable distinctness what, according to Mr. Lang, is found confusedly in the apprehension of the rudest savages. There are two senses in which we can understand an evolution of this idea of God; first, as Mr. Tylor understands it, in the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... three started for Rocquaine Bay, where a lively scene was being played, for it was the time of vraicing or sea-weed harvest. Lines of carts were ranged above high-water mark, and the patient horses were decked with flowers. The beach and sands swarmed with people all smiling and gay, and for the most part wearing nosegays. Rich and poor from two parishes chatted, laughed and worked hard with sickles ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... by the tide upon the shore at its greatest height; it is also called high-water mark. This denotes the jurisdiction of the High Court of Admiralty, ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... a long bed of oysters, growing up to high-water mark, the upper ones poor, called "raccoon oysters" by the natives, but the lower ones, which are mostly covered with water, large, fat and delicious. We gathered about a bushel of these, built a fire of dead mangrove wood, which is the best of fuel, and when we had a good bed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... submarine—said cormorant kindly obliging with quick diving act when approached; a food-ship laden with bananas represented by rushes culled from the banks; and a smuggler running cargoes of French wine contained in an elderly empty bottle discovered in the mud above high-water mark. It ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... him. "That's canting drivvle, made to console the unsuccessful. No man knows when he has reached his high-water mark. Yours may have come on the day you licked Stevie Ballard for gilding the tailless cat; it may not come till you ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... I think the Johnnies have made their high-water mark. Great work our army did down there at Vicksburg, and we'll have the chance to do just as well against Bragg. We'll defeat him, of course. Now, Mason, notice that light flickering on ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... is this merry group doing in the farther corner? These are the babies, bless them! and they are modeling in clay. What an inspired version of pat-a-cake and mud pies is this! The sleeves are pushed up, showing a high-water mark of white arm joining little brown paws. What fun! They are modeling the seals at the Cliff House (for this chances to be a California kindergarten), and a couple of two-year-olds, who have strayed into this retreat, not because there was any room for them here, but because there ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... drew more near; and Captain Kettle, connoisseur as he was of differences of this sort on the high seas, became instinctively more and more interested. And at last when he came to a small canoe drawn up on the beach above high-water mark, he paused beside it with a mind loaded with temptation as deep as ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... wisdom or strength had been an endowment of our nature from the outset, is there any conceivable way in which we should have been the worse for it? For even as it is there are some people who do make a fairly wise and right choice, and whose high-water mark of excellence is not reached through the crime and folly of the revival meeting convert. Are they the worse because they have never yielded to evil? Is the naturally good man really a less worthy character than the one whose comparative goodness is only reached through and after ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... he towed the tree away back home, although it wasn't worth the trouble, and built another house, using the old tree for the foundation and props, and called it after her, "Mary's Ark!" But you may guess the next house was built above high-water mark. And that's all. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... flood reaches high-water mark everywhere. The three streets are all growing dark as each overflows into another. Some natives cross our path, old men or ill-shapen, contorted in their walk, stunted in the face; and even young people, too, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... onto Madison Street, and, turning to his right, dropped into a continuous vaudeville show in an attempt to coax his spirits back to somewhere near their normal high-water mark. Upon the next day he again haunted the newspaper office without reward, and again upon the third day with similar results. To say that Jimmy was dumfounded would be but a futile description of his mental state. It was simply beyond him to conceive ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... mind this picture of Luke Fildes reaches high-water mark in the school of his time, and yet in watching as I have done the crowds who surge through the Tate Galleries and the National Gallery, it is an almost every-day occurrence to overhear such contemptuous ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... render the boat unmanageable, and if upset the best swimmer could not live in these places. The rocks are serpentine and grey limestone, presenting angular masses which project into the stream; the former in all places within high-water mark is of a dark-brown colour. Micaceous slate? likewise occurs, although rarely. The depth is of course enormous, in the low state of the river, when Bayfield passed up, in many places no bottom was found, ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... with a mock flourish, and began rolling down his shirt-cuffs; a thrill quivering through him—that thrill only felt by a painter when he is conscious that some work of his brush has reached the high-water mark of his abilities. For only the artist in him had been at work. What stirred him was not the personality of the Countess—not her charm nor beauty but the harmony of the colors playing about her figure: ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... cave some eight yards square and three in height, whose straight-cut walls showed that men had once hewed stone therefrom. On one side was that passage through which we had come in, and on the other opened a sort of door which gave on to a stone ledge eight fathoms above high-water mark. For the cave was cut out just inside that iron cliff-face which lies between St. Alban's Head and Swanage. But the cliffs here are different from those on the other side of the Head, being neither so high as Hoar Head nor of chalk, but standing for the most part only an ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... the mere sense of throes. Perchance the mind is capable of suffering worse than the fiercest pangs of hopeless love combined with jealousy; one would not pretend to put a limit to the possibilities of human woe; but for Mallard, at all events this night did the black flood of misery reach high-water mark. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... Policeman," or "On Going a Journey," or "The Deceased"—this last is perhaps the high-water mark of the book. To vary the figure, this essay dips its Plimsoll-mark full under. It is freighted with far more than a dozen pages might be expected to carry safely. So quietly, so quaintly told, what a wealth of humanity is in it! Am I wrong in thinking that those ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... one of surprises. I believe that any man's life will be filled with constant, unexpected encouragements of this kind if he makes up his mind to do his level best each day of his life—that is, tries to make each day reach as nearly as possible the high-water mark of pure, unselfish, useful living. I pity the man, black or white, who has never experienced the joy and satisfaction that come to one by reason of an effort to assist in making some one else more useful ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... manner in which the parchment had come into my possession. The spot where we discovered the scarabaeus was on the coast of the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a short distance above high-water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it gave me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with his accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown towards him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature, by which to take hold of it. It was at this moment that ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... time when the faith was well established. There was no danger of a pagan revival, and, provided the Fians were Christianised, it might be legitimate to represent them as heroic and noble. The Colloquy would represent the high-water mark of this reaction among the lettered classes, for among the folk, to judge by popular tales, the Fians had never been regarded in other than a favourable light. The Colloquy re-established the dignity ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch
... low. Bribery and other forms of corruption were rife, and the powers of government, both national and local, were in the hands regularly of an aristocratic minority which ruled in its own interest. The high-water mark of intrigue was reached in 1783 when the old Tories, led by Lord North, allied themselves with the old Whigs, led by Charles James Fox, to retain power and to curtail the influence of the king. The coalition ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... arches in its sea story, and twenty-six above them in its first story, the whole based on a magnificent foundation, built of blocks of red marble, some of them seven feet long by a foot and a half thick, and raised to a height of about five feet above high-water mark. At this level, the elevation of one half of the building, from its flank to the central pillars of its arcades, is rudely given in Fig. IV., in the previous page. It is only drawn to show the arrangement of the parts, as the sculptures which are indicated ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... "has grown rapidly since Harry took hold. The old part represents the high-water mark of his father's efforts. Of course," she added reflectively, "Harry has had command of some capital since a relative of his died, but I never thought that ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... against George W. Curtis at the Republican State convention at Rochester as the high-water mark of his oratory. I sat in the seat next to Mr. Curtis when Conkling delivered his famous attack. His admirers thought this the best speech he ever made, and it certainly was a fine effort, emphasized by oratory of a high order, and ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... study of striking power and literary quality which may well remain the high-water mark in American fiction for the year.... Mr. Harrison definitely takes his place as the one among our younger American novelists of whom the most enduring work may be hoped ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... interesting lesson to be learned from a comparison between the New York Police Department as it is today and as it was twenty-five years ago. Then the scheme of organization was thoroughly bad—and the department was at its high-water mark of honest and effective activity. Now the scheme of organization is excellent—but the less said about the way it works the better. The answer to the riddle is this: today the New York police force is headed by Tammany; the name of ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... to the north beach you will find a small cliff in which is a large cave, a little above high-water mark. There you will discover the man ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... and several guns were fired, when all the natives ran away except Paowang, who was suitably rewarded for his confidence. After a time permission was obtained to get wood, water, and ballast, and whilst trying to lift a stone out of a pool below high-water mark, one of the crew scalded his hand badly. The pool proved to be one of a series of springs running down a spur of the volcano into the sea. Several were tested with the thermometer, and as much as 202 degrees Fahrenheit was attained. Forster ...
— The Life of Captain James Cook • Arthur Kitson
... way of viewing death has become obsolete through the scientific and philosophic developments of the later centuries. Walt Whitman also tells us "that nothing can happen more beautiful than death," and he has exprest the humanist view of mortality in a hymn which his admirers regard as the high-water mark of modern poetry. But will this rhapsody bear thinking about? Is death "delicate, lovely and soothing," "delicious," coming to us with "serenades"? Does death "lave us in a flood of bliss"? Does "the body gratefully nestle close to death"? Do we go forth to meet death "with ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... towards the end of those wealthy and populous three centuries, which are the foundation and the making of England, some fortification was built on the brow of the little eminence which here slopes down to the high-water mark. ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... cleverly performed. He saw himself safe. Again he could look hopefully towards the goal of his legitimate ambition. Nobody would dare to suspect him, and in a few days there would be nothing to suspect. He was elated. He did not know that his prosperity had touched then its high-water mark, and that the tide was ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... It would be going too far to intimate that they were proud of themselves, but it is not stretching it very much to say that they counted noses with considerable satisfaction and were glad that they had not been left out. The real, high-water mark in New York society was established at this memorable function. It was quite plain to every one that Mrs. Wrandall,—THE Mrs. Wrandall,—had made out the list of guests to be invited to the funeral of her son. It was a blue-stocking affair. You couldn't imagine anything more so. Afterwards, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... was, the dollars were carried ashore and buried above high-water mark in a snug little bay to the south; the mutineers, according to the prevailing superstition of such gentry, burying the body of their murdered captain on top of the treasure, so that his ghost might prevent any unprivileged intruders ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... at his noblest, Lucan's criticism is just. In these passages not only is the thought singularly pure and noble, and the expression felicitous, but the actual metre represents almost the high-water mark of the post-Vergilian hexameter. Here, as in other writers of the age, the influence of Ovid is traceable in the increase of dactyls and the avoidance of elision. But the verse has a swing and dignity, ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... survey the bank, and found that but a small portion was uncovered at high water; for, trifling as was the rise of the tide, the bank was so low that the water flowed almost over it. The most elevated part was not more than fifteen feet above high-water mark, and that was a small knoll of about fifty ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... raised the pile up to the height of my head before the tide had yet risen over the rocks, but I knew that this would not be high enough. Two feet more was wanted to bring the top of my cairn on a level with high-water mark; and to accomplish this I slaved away without thinking of a moment's rest. The work as it went on became more difficult. The loose stones that lay near had all been used, and I was obliged to go far ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... At 1 o'clock we reached Mr. Fetler's, who was pleasant, and said we should have the best he had. The bed into whose grateful softness I sank was piled with mattresses to within two or three feet of the ceiling, and, with no step-ladder, getting in and out was a problem. This morning we noticed the high-water mark, four feet above the lower floor. Mrs. Fetler said they had lived ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... emotion of Poe and the calm spirit of the man who followed him is very great. In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow American poetry reached high-water mark. Lafcadio Hearn in his "Interpretations of Literature" says: "Really I believe that it is a very good test of any Englishman's ability to feel poetry, simply to ask him, 'Did you like Longfellow when you ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... and helped himself. "Na'mi used to take a glass o' beer wi' her meals, I remember. Well, as I was agoin' to tell you, havin' got out o' the boat, I'd just sense enough left to clamber up above high-water mark, an' there I sat starin' stupid-like an' wonderin' how I'd done it. Down below, the boat was heavin' i' the wash an' joltin' 'pon the rocks, an' I watched her—bump, bump, up an' down, up an' down—wi' Jeff jamm'd by the shoulders ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tangle of underbrush the occupants of the canoe made out, some fifty yards below their position, a small clearing in the center of which, just above the high-water mark of the river, was ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... transports when they grounded at ten o'clock. To his disgust and to Captain Cook's surprise both vessels stuck fast in the mud nearly half a mile from shore. This made the grenadiers' muskets useless against the advanced French redoubt, which stood at high-water mark, and which overmatched the transports, because both of these had grounded in such a way that they could not bring their guns to bear in reply. The stranded vessels soon became a death-trap. Wolfe's cane was knocked out of his hand by a cannon ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... driven ashore?-Yes; they said the Crown had no interest in that kind of whales. We thought, as the Government claim the foreshores and beaches, the proprietors had no right to claim any share of the oil, because the blubber is never taken above high-water mark Most of the whales were killed at sea, and dragged ashore, and we thought the fishermen should have the same right to beach whales as to beach cod or ling, or anything else under the Act ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... he seems to be shut out. This may be seen by his reference to Shelley in his last book, "Letters and Social Aims," and by his preference of the metaphysical poet throughout his writings. Wordsworth's famous "Ode" is, he says, the high-water mark of English literature. What he seems to value most in Shakespeare is the marvelous wit, the pregnant sayings. He finds no poet in France, and in his "English Traits" credits Tennyson with little but melody and color. (In our last ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... night. The fiery eloquence of the abolitionists, the amusing episodes that occurred when some crank was suppressed and borne out on the shoulders of his brethren, gave sufficient variety to the proceedings to keep the interest up to high-water mark. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... range in San Francisco,—rotten at times, petty at others, with the saving grace of occasional idealism. The consolidation act and the People's Party touched high-water mark in reform. With the lopping off of the San Mateo end of the peninsula in 1856, one board of supervisors was substituted for the three that had spent $2,646,000 the year before. With E.W. Burr at its head, under the new board expenditures were reduced ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... died hard. "There's still the Government yacht," he said, going to a huge iron punt that lay far above high-water mark. Mac called it a forlorn hope, and it looked it, as it lay deeply ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... one never knew what might happen, and it would be as well to have some provisions all ready to hand in case of emergency. There were still thousands of dead fish to be seen everywhere lying on the sand, cast up among the debris above high-water mark, but these were now turning putrid, and ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke |
