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More "Catastrophe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not remarry; but although they strove zealously in some sections to enforce this rule, the rougher members of society easily evaded it by moving into another colony. Sewall makes mention of applications for divorce; but when such a catastrophe seemed imminent in his own family he ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... rock, and sank as an old shoe would sink in a small pool—sank with men and mice on board, as the saying is; and there certainly were mice, but only one man and a half—the skipper and the grave-digger's boy. None witnessed the catastrophe except the screaming sea-gulls and the fishes below; and even they did not see much of it, for they rushed aside in alarm when the water gushed thundering into the little vessel as it sank. Scarcely a fathom beneath the surface it stood; yet the two human ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... either never written or soon lost. Diodorus, who gives circumstantial details both of the coalition and the siege, dates it a century too early, changes all the names, and mixes up many fables with his recital (ii. 23-28). In forming a just idea of the catastrophe and of its date we have to depend chiefly upon the lost historians, such as Abydenus and Alexander Polyhistor, fragments of whose works have been preserved for us by Eusebius and Georgius Syncellus. See RAWLINSON, The Five Great Monarchies, ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... on the bitter anguish of the Beaumont family at the dreadful catastrophe of the long-imprisoned King. Its pious head added largely to his intercessory prayers, imploring heaven to avert its vengeance from all who had inadvertently been accessary to the fact, to forgive those who repented ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... saying that a balanitis is often the tiny match that lights the train that later explodes in an apoplectic attack or sudden heart-failure due to toxaemia; the organic and vascular systems being gradually undermined until, unannounced and unawares, the ground gives way and the final catastrophe occurs,—unfortunately, an occurrence or ending looked upon as unavoidable by the friends of the victim. They cannot see any danger; the idea that diseases have the road paved, not only for an easy entrance but an easy conquest, by the action of these toxic agents on the tissues, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... "I used to apprehend such a catastrophe, but God has made a providential opening, a merciful safety valve, and now I do not feel alarmed in the prospect of what is coming. 'What do you mean,' said Mr. Choules, 'by providence opening a merciful safety valve?' Why, said the gentleman, I will ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... who made the proposition that Derrick's plan be accepted unreservedly, and that the engineer himself should be requested to resume his position and undertake the management of the work. There was some slight demurring at first, but the catastrophe was so recent that its effect had not had time to wear away, and finally ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... catastrophe which fills us all with sorrow. It appears that the Quartermaster-General, Brigadier Airey, thinking that the light cavalry had not gone far enough in front when the enemy's horse had fled, gave an order in writing to Captain Nolan to take to Lord Lucan, directing his ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... the play is successful. With so great an element of chance in the schemes of the speculator, it would have been easy to transcend the limits of the probable. But the author is careful to maintain his balances. Situation succeeds plot, and catastrophe situation, until the final moment when the absconding partner actually arrives, to the astonishment of Mercadet more than all the rest. And with Mercadet's joyful exclamation, "I am a creditor!" the play has reached its ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... that the reason why Mr. Gilman obligingly remained in the vicinity was, lest I should be scalded or blown to atoms by a sudden freak of Kilauea, though I don't see that he was capable of preventing either catastrophe! A slight grass shed has been built over a sulphur steam crack, and within this there is a deep box with a sliding lid and a hole for the throat, and the victim is supposed to sit in this and be steamed. But on this occasion the temperature ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... woman's letter, as Mrs. Farron Saftleigh chose to rank a woman's thought and sympathy; nothing practical, nothing that had to do with coarse topics of bond and scrip; taking the common essentials of life for granted, referring to the inignorable catastrophe of the fire as a grand elemental phenomenon and spectacle, and soaring easily away and beyond all fact and literalness, into the ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... envoys. It must have been an attractive house, surrounded by large grounds, and enjoying a superb view of the city and the Golden Horn. It was burnt[486] in the fire which devastated the district on the 25th June 1784, and since that catastrophe its grounds have been converted into market gardens or left waste, and its chapel has been a desecrated pile. But its proud name still haunts the site, calling to mind political relations which have long ceased to exist. The chapel stood at the north-western end of the residence and ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... all for Phillida's sake," Philip went on. "It can not be a happy marriage. Here they've gone and engaged themselves without reflection, and a catastrophe is sure to follow." ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... determines the catastrophe of the other stories. They almost invariably close in the sullen gloom of a wet March evening, when we wonder afresh if the Spring is ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... toward him showed an involuntary haughtiness and contempt; and upon the timid and alarmed widow, who dreaded lest he should interfere with her darling, though almost desperate projects for her boy. And, indeed, the major, unknown to himself, was the bearer of tidings which were to bring about a catastrophe in the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the light from which has probably occupied not much less than one hundred years in its passage hither. It has been suggested that the collision of two suns, or of two great masses of matter, would create such phenomena; but, apart from the improbability of such a catastrophe occurring among the celestial orbs, the rapid subsidence in the luminosity of the observed objects would indicate that the outburst was produced by causes of a more rapidly transitory nature than what would result from the collision of two condensed masses of matter. ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... know whether any of my amorous young readers are much affected by the catastrophe I have just related. If not, I will just remind them that even Edward Dodd was prepared to oppose the marriage of Julia and Alfred, if any serious ill should befall his father at sea, owing to Alfred's imprudent interference in rescuing him ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the catastrophe happened which Lady Glencora had feared. A fly with a pair of horses from the Matching Road station was driven up to the door of the Priory, and Lady Hartletop was announced. "I knew it," said Lady Glencora, slapping her hand down on the table in the room in which she was sitting ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... resist—one of those weights beneath which all humanity bows shuddering; cast over him a stifling dream, where only the soul can act, and the limbs refuse their offices; have him pushed along by Fate to the lowering, ruinous catastrophe; and you see the dramatic chainwork of a part which he who ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... filling from all sides. The Government was going out in disaster, and, instead of being able to stand by his colleagues and fight, and perhaps avert catastrophe by his brilliant speeches and biting wit, he was chained like a log to a sofa and was ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... could have made it, or that the situation gained in effectiveness from having the hero die in the very moment of his acceptance. In his supposition that the reader would care more for his hero simply because he had undergone that tremendous catastrophe, the writer had omitted to make him interesting ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... urgent can justify the employment of any evil means. (Ethics, c. iii., s. ii., nn. 3, 13, pp. 32, 36.) Suppose in the instance just given the quarryman saw that, unless that piece of rock where the visitor stood were blown up instantly, a catastrophe would happen elsewhere, which would be the death of many men, and there were no time to warn the visitor to clear off, who could blame him if he applied the explosive? The means of averting the catastrophe would be, not that visitor's death, but the blowing up of ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... knife into his breast; the blade broke; he shattered the bottle at his side and swallowed the fragments, and then fell bleeding and exhausted on the straw. If left long alone, life would have ebbed away; but, probably in anticipation of such a catastrophe, the officer ere many hours revisited the cell to put chains upon the prisoner. Discovering his condition, a surgeon was called, remedies were applied, and two Austrian sentinels carried Foresti into the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... new gospel had, as I have said already, been vouchsafed to me at Littlehampton by Mr. Philpot. I now saw what logically the new gospel implied. The sense of impending catastrophe became more and more acute. I felt like a man on a ship, who, having started his voyage in an estuary, and imagining that a deck is by nature as stable as dry land, becomes gradually conscious of the sway of the outer sea, until, when he nears the bar, showers of ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... proclaimed that a stupendous catastrophe was at hand. Opening the Book of the Revelation of St. John he read, pondered, and interpreted. A divine illumination opened out to him the dark things that were written in the sacred pages. The unenlightened could make nothing of "a time, ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... of the politics of the age in which Bert Smallways lived—the age that blundered at last into the catastrophe of the War in the Air—was a very simple one, if only people had had the intelligence to be simple about it. The development of Science had altered the scale of human affairs. By means of rapid mechanical traction, it had brought men nearer together, so much nearer ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... Bethlem, the solitary residence of St. Jerom and his female converts, was crowded with illustrious beggars of either sex, and every age, who excited the public compassion by the remembrance of their past fortune. [114] This awful catastrophe of Rome filled the astonished empire with grief and terror. So interesting a contrast of greatness and ruin, disposed the fond credulity of the people to deplore, and even to exaggerate, the afflictions of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... through whose labors it may at last fix the date of invasions and unlock religions, so a bit of ink and paper which has long been an innocent wrapping or stop-gap may at last be laid open under the one pair of eyes which have knowledge enough to turn it into the opening of a catastrophe. To Uriel watching the progress of planetary history from the sun, the one result would be just as much of a coincidence ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... it with astonished eyes. It was from the German Emperor, and expressed his grief at the catastrophe, and his sympathy with France, which he had directed his ambassador to call at once in ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... is not tragic: she is too rational. And in her career there is no progression, no decline or degeneration. Her condition is once and for always. There is and will be no catastrophe. ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... reputation does he gain to himself. Now, by forgiving our brother what he has unhappily committed, thou wilt preserve us all; for we cannot think of living if he be put to death, since we dare not show ourselves alive to our father without our brother, but here must we partake of one and the same catastrophe of his life. And so far we beg of thee, O governor, that if thou condemnest our brother to die, thou wilt punish us together with him, as partners of his crime,—for we shall not think it reasonable to be reserved to kill ourselves for grief of our brother's death, but so to die ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... Yet it is not so. The conclusion is more weighty by far that all things bear their fruit: that the comprehender and the master of so much, the very mind, suffers to no purpose and in one moment a tragic, final, and unworthy catastrophe agrees with nothing other that we know. It is not thus of the good things of the earth that turn kindly into the earth again. It cannot be thus with that which makes of all the earth a subject thing for contemplation ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... like the fair flower in its lustre," are only equalled by its characteristic propriety and naivete. Polly describes her lover going to the gallows, with the same touching simplicity, and with all the natural fondness of a young girl in her circumstances, who sees in his approaching catastrophe nothing but the misfortunes and the personal accomplishments of the object of her affections. "I see him sweeter than the nosegay in his hand; the admiring crowd lament that so lovely a youth should come to an untimely ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... holidays, when sailors, watermen, shoemakers, butchers, and apprentices are at leisure, then it is good policy to amaze those violent spirits with some tearing tragedy full of fights and skirmishes ... the spectators frequently mounting the stage, and making a more bloody catastrophe among themselves than the players did." Occasionally, it appears, the audience compelled the actors to perform, not the drama their programmes had announced, but some other, such as "the major part of the company had a mind to: sometimes 'Tamerlane;' sometimes 'Jugurtha;' ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... mine, several years younger, terribly injured himself on the Fourth of July; and I sat all night in the room with him, helping his mother. Somehow he had learned that there was no hope of saving his sight; he was an imaginative child and realised the whole meaning of the catastrophe; the eternal darkness.... And he understood that the thing had been done, that there was no going back of it. This very certainty increased the intensity of his rebellion a thousandfold. "I WILL have my eyes!" he screamed. "I ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... intellectualist veto, so that we now join step with reality with a philosophical conscience never quite set free before. As a french disciple of his well expresses it: 'Bergson claims of us first of all a certain inner catastrophe, and not every one is capable of such a logical revolution. But those who have once found themselves flexible enough for the execution of such a psychological change of front, discover somehow that they can never return again to their ancient attitude of mind. They are now ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... supposed to have been killed during this catastrophe, but the full extent of the ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 28, May 20, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the surrounding canoes. The interpreter was in the main-chains at the time of the explosion, and was thrown unhurt into the water, where he succeeded in getting into one of the canoes. According to his statement, the bay presented an awful spectacle after the catastrophe. The ship had disappeared, but the bay was covered with fragments of the wreck, with shattered canoes, and Indians swimming for their lives, or struggling in the agonies of death; while those who had escaped the danger remained ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... and many social convulsions, recorded in the annals of the six ages preceding our own, may be traced to it. The frightful French Revolution was certainly a result of it, although it must be granted that several secondary causes contributed to render the catastrophe more destructive, the chief among which was the spread of infidel doctrines among ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Missionary Wife's Experience in Oregon. All Alone with the Wolves. A Woman's Instinct in the Hour of Danger. Dr. White's Dilemma and its Solution. A Clean Pair of Heels and a Convenient Tree. A Perilous Voyage and its Consequences. A Heartrending Catastrophe. A Mother's Lost Treasure. A Savage Coterie and the White Stranger. Mrs. Whitman and Mrs. Spalding. A Murderous Suspicion. The Benefactress ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... O'Loghlen wrought a coup d'etat. On the last day of January, Victoria was amazed by the altogether unexpected news that the Ministry had advised, and the Governor granted, a dissolution. The morning papers had not contained even a hint of such a catastrophe, and the publication of the Government Gazette containing the proclamation was the first intimation of it which anybody outside the Cabinet received. The grounds upon which the request of the Ministry was granted were, that the House was so divided into sections of parties that it ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... meal he had told them of his chance discovery of the old church and graveyard and of the loss of the brown derby. Primmie plainly regarded the catastrophe to the hat ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... uninterested in that other kind of "makdom and fairnesse" which must be wooed with industrious thought and renunciation of small desires? In the story of this passion, too, the development varies: sometimes it is the glorious marriage, sometimes frustration and final parting. And not seldom the catastrophe is wound up with the other passion, sung by the Troubadours. For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... or in 'the dowie den in the Lawlands o' Balleichan.' In Gil Morice, that ballad which Gray thought 'divine,' it is 'Willie, the bonnie boy,' whom the hero trusted with his message, that in malice and wilfulness brings about the tremendous catastrophe of the tale. He calls aloud in hall the words he was bid whisper in the ear of Lord Barnard's lady—to meet Gil Morice in the forest, and 'speir ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... famous criticism of Hamlet in Wilhelm Meister, says that the distinction between the two is the difference between sollen and wollen, that is, between must and would. He means that in the Greek drama the catastrophe is foreordained by an inexorable Destiny, while the element of Freewill, and consequently of choice, is the very axis of the modern. The definition is conveniently portable, but it has its limitations. Goethe's attention ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... of men ready to give them battle, than they turned to flight; and instantly Henry, on seeing them run, stopped the slaughter of the prisoners, and made it known to all that he had had recourse to the measure only in self-defence. Henry, in order to prevent the recurrence of such a dreadful catastrophe, sent forthwith a herald to those companies of the enemy who were still lingering very suspiciously through the field, and charged them either to come to battle at once, or to withdraw from his sight; adding, that, should they array themselves afterwards ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... I, a white man of blood untainted, must answer for this final tragic catastrophe! Without me, perhaps, the sachems of the three clans might submit to the will of the League, for even the surly Onondagas had now heeded the League-Call—yes, even the Tuscaroras, too. And as for those Delaware dogs, they had come, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... to his self-esteem and provided the evening of his life with material for talk. Unhappily, I have to confess, as even Boswell at times did, I took no notes, and cannot reproduce that which to me is of absorbing interest, the individual impressions of a vivid catastrophe. ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... thrown into prison, where Faust and Mephistopheles find her. Faust urges her to fly with them, but she refuses, and places her reliance for salvation upon earnest prayer, and sorrow for the wrong she has done. Pleading for forgiveness, she expires; and as Mephistopheles exults at the catastrophe he has wrought, angels appear amid the music of the celestial choirs and bear ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... disdaining the construction of sentences,—the precise decorum of the cold grammarian,—she has caught the spirit of her author,—if, in every altered scene,—still adhering to the nice propriety of his meaning, and still keeping in view his great catastrophe,—she has agitated her audience with all the various passions he depicted, the rigid criticism of the closet will be but a slender abatement of the pleasure resulting from the sanction of ...
— Lover's Vows • Mrs. Inchbald
... place, the national safety would be involved. Englishmen were at one time too fond of saying that the great Colonies might, if they chose, sever the link which binds them to the Mother Country. Happily, in their case, no such catastrophe need now be considered. But it would be folly to shut our eyes to the fact that to many Irishmen national independence appears to be the only goal worth striving for. If the concession of full responsible government should be followed (at whatever interval) by ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... my affection for Troy consider what my feelings were, the other day, when on my return from a brief jaunt to London I alighted at the railway station amid all the tokens of a severe and general catastrophe. The porter who opened the door for me had a bandaged head. George the 'bus driver carried his right arm in a sling, but professed himself able to guide his vehicle through our tortuous streets left-handed. I had declined ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... devastated buildings, up the little sandy hills, out of the park to the lonely temple. Already his self-reproach seemed trivial. He knew how little his concealed suspicions had to do with bringing about this catastrophe. That misunderstanding was but a drop in the stream of fate, which was all too swift for her strength. He paused at the last turn of the road and rested, settling his burden more closely in his arms, drawing her to him in the unavailing embrace of regret. Another kind of life, he said,—some average ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... would not be courteous to knock at Miss Gascoigne's door, and ask if she too were ready, when she heard a loud outcry in the nursery above. This, alas! was no novelty. More than once Christian had rushed wildly up stairs, expecting some dreadful catastrophe, but it was only the usual warfare between Phillis and the children, especially Arthur, who was no longer a baby to be petted and scolded, or a little girl to be cowed into obedience, but a big boy to be ruled, if at all, vi ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... earthquake occurring at night. We are told that "the usual means of escape by rushing into the open air was of no avail: the yawning earth swallowed up everybody: huge mountains sank down, level plains rose into hills, and lightning flashed throughout the catastrophe." Substitute "villages" for "famous cities," "hills" for "huge mountains," and we have, perhaps, as good an account as can be found in such few words of one of those dreadful calamities of nature,—though it happened not in the reign of Tiberius ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... that had crushed him down;—or the delicate and prettily dressed lady, who had been bred in affluence, but was suddenly thrown upon the perilous charities of the world by the death of an indulgent, but secretly insolvent father, or the commercial catastrophe and simultaneous suicide of the best of husbands;—or the gifted, but unsuccessful author, appealing to my fraternal sympathies, generously rejoicing in some small prosperities which he was kind enough to term my own triumphs in the field of letters, and claiming to have largely contributed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... became apparent that she was fast settling in the water, while with every roll her list to port became stronger, until at last I found myself holding my breath in momentary expectation to see her roll right over. The catastrophe was not long delayed. There came a moment when, having rolled heavily to port, she failed to lift again, but heeled steadily more and more until, watching her through my powerful glasses, I saw a number of ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... had but little influence upon the minds or the lives of the people. Nor can I find that at any period of the extraordinarily interesting economic and social revolution, which has been in progress in Ireland since the great catastrophe of the Famine period, Dublin University has departed from its academic isolation and its aloofness from the great national problems that were being worked out. The more one thinks of it, indeed, and the more one realises the opportunities of an institution like Trinity College ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... is the trivial, temporal accident of the wiping out of a planet and its inhabitants to the infinite catastrophe which shall establish a mighty world of eternal despair? And which is it most desirable for mankind to have disproved or weakened, the grounds of the threat of M. Babinet, or those of the other infinitely ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... would have made more frequent allusions than she did to the crisis which she thought was approaching. But she was restrained by the intuitive conviction that if her daughter became conscious of what was impending, and was made aware of Mrs. Gibson's cautious and quiet efforts to forward the catastrophe, the wilful girl would oppose herself to it with all her skill and power. As it was, Mrs. Gibson trusted that Cynthia's affections would become engaged before she knew where she was, and that in that case she would not attempt to frustrate her mother's ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... to keen, thrilling divination. She grasped the relation between Monty's terrible cry and the strange hunched posture he had assumed. Stillwell's haste and silence, too, were pregnant of catastrophe. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... to live; it was all right and safe there, but the other part of the garret had only the joists of the floor, and the lath and plaster of the ceiling below, and if one stepped on this there would be a catastrophe. As it was half dark up above, perhaps one of the others had best go up first with a candle. Then there were more outcries and threatening, until at last Jurgis had a vision of a pair of elephantine legs disappearing through the trap door, and felt the house shake as Madame Haupt ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... it was either the natural affection of those about me, which I certainly had done nothing to deserve, or the fear of the law which, ages before my birth, was painfully built up by the society into which I intruded, that prevented that catastrophe. If I was nourished, cared for, taught, saved from the vagabondage of a wastrel, I certainly am not aware that I did anything to deserve those advantages. And, if I possess anything now, it strikes me that, ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... blamed himself bitterly for the whole catastrophe on the grounds that, if he had only looked into the petrol-tank instead of taking a Kafir's word, the car would never have been held up or the encounter with the leopard occurred. It was no use Lundi Druro's telling him that such reasoning manifested an arrogant underrating ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... birth, but her solemn promise to de Gersay had stood in her way. She determined now to remedy the evil and she therefore applied to de Gersay to relieve her from her promise. De Gersay advised her to communicate the truth to her son as soon as possible to prevent a catastrophe which he prophesied was liable to happen when least expected. She accordingly wrote the Chevalier that at a certain time she would be at her house in the Saint Antoine suburb and prayed him to meet her there. The impassioned Chevalier, expecting nothing less than the gratification ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... than I received from this man's death. The circumstances of his fate presented themselves to my mind in their full complication of iniquity. From him, and the execrations with which I loaded the government that could be the instrument of his tragedy, I turned to myself. I beheld the catastrophe of Brightwel with envy. A thousand times I longed that my corse had lain in death, instead of his. I was only reserved, as I persuaded myself, for unutterable woe. In a few days he would have been acquitted; his liberty, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... activities, persons having dreams which directed group actions were no longer useful. Today, dreams appear to occur to a number of individuals, and those felt to be of social significance usually deal with catastrophe or other foreboding subjects. The following stories were told to me by the widow under the shadow of witchcraft. When I asked her if she thought any of her friends would tell me their dreams, she replied: "No I don't think no Washo would tell you their dreams. But I'm ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... mere "infidelity." All that, in his sore straits, Dr. Zockler is able to do, is to pronounce a faint commendation upon a particularly absurd attempt at reconciliation, which would make out the Noachian Deluge to be a catastrophe which occurred at the end of the Glacial Epoch. This hypothesis involves only the trifle of a physical revolution of which geology knows nothing; and which, if it secured the accuracy of the Pentateuchal writer about the fact of the Deluge, ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... accident having signalized the voyage. Fouquet hoped to be the first to arrive at Nantes; there he would see the notables and gain support among the principal members of the States; he would make himself a necessity, a thing very easy for a man of his merit, and would delay the catastrophe, if he did not succeed in avoiding it entirely. "Besides," said Gourville to him, "at Nantes, you will make out, or we will make out, the intentions of your enemies; we will have horses always ready to convey you to Poitou, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to find in any play a catastrophe so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as this. This is indeed, according to Milton, to "describe high passions and high actions". The fortitude of the Spartan boy who let a beast gnaw out his bowels till he died without ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... could make out, the poor young man's grief and despair had been poured out to his mother, and she, unable to soothe, had come to try to extract some assurance that the catastrophe had been unconnected with his folly. A very slight foundation would have served her, but this Rachel would not give, honestly believing him the cause of the accident, and also that the shock to the sense of duty higher than he could understand had ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is seen in giving much food, or applying much warmth, to those who have been previously exposed to great hunger, or to great cold. The accumulated sensorial power is thrown into so violent exertion, that inflammations and mortifications supervene, and death closes the catastrophe. In many diseases this method is the most successful; hence the bark in agues produces more certain effect after the previous exhibition of emetics. In diseases attended with violent pain, opium has double the effect, if venesection and a cathartic have been previously used. On this seems ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... "I suppose the catastrophe will arrive, sooner or later, and it is more likely to occur to a girl of twenty than to ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... relief corps. The brave spirit of self-reliance triumphed over the appalling calamity. Money for relief was sent to the city from many sources, and it is interesting to note that the citizens of Johnstown, who had suffered from the great catastrophe of the previous year, were among the first to offer help. They knew what ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... 22, 1622 that the great catastrophe struck Virginia in the form of the well planned and carefully executed massacre by the Indians under the crafty leadership of Opechancanough, successor to Powhatan. Although the consequences were not enough to threaten the survival of the Colony, they were deeply serious. At least a fourth, if not ...
— The First Seventeen Years: Virginia 1607-1624 • Charles E. Hatch
... From the snow drifted over a rock protruded a horse's hoof. Doug swept the body free of snow. It was old Buster, with his right fore leg broken and a bullet wound in his head. Hot tears scalded Doug's wind-tortured eyes. After a moment of search for further details of the catastrophe, he crawled up the wall again and, after a frantic hunt, found a blurred single horse trail leading on from the spot whence Buster had slipped. He went back for his own horses, mounted Tom ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... fishermen on the sands below, who had seen the impending catastrophe, rushed up the bank, headed the maddened horses ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... rushed at full speed past the temple of Mercury, which stood in a grove before the city. Evidently people knew of the catastrophe, for there was an uncommon movement in front of the temple. While passing, Vinicius saw crowds on the steps and between the columns. These people holding torches were hastening to put themselves under protection of the deity. Moreover the road was not so empty or free as beyond ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... existence—certainly not in this one. And now to shut myself up and write my memoranda- -for I must not lose a single detail of this singular Egyptian psychic problem. The whole thing I perceive is rounding itself towards completion and catastrophe—but in what way? How will it— how CAN ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... The catastrophe of having the mug drained dry at one pull by the stranger in cinder gray was effectually guarded against this time by Mrs. Fennel. She poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping the large one at a discreet distance from him. ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... poetry, had not caused him such misery as this. He had loved a young lady, and had been accepted;—and then the young lady had jilted him. At this time of his life he was about thirty; and as to the outside world, he was absolutely dumfounded by the catastrophe. Up to this period he had been a sportsman in a moderate degree, fishing a good deal, shooting a little, and devoted to hunting, to the extent of a single horse. But when the blow came, he never fished or shot, or hunted again. I think that the young lady would hardly ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... left out of sight of his memory. However, all the while the usual trivialities of his life and the lives of those who belonged to him went on with the same regularity and reality as tragedy, and with as certain a trend to a catastrophe of joy or misery. ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of her fancies, nor follow the steps of her fury. The very glory of a mountain is in the revolutions which raised it into power, and the forces which are striking it into ruin. But we want no cold and careful imitation of catastrophe; no calculated mockery of convulsion; no delicate recommendation of ruin. We are to follow the labor of Nature, but not her disturbance; to imitate what she has deliberately ordained,[64] not what ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Bumpus, who seemed to be almost smothered under the folds of his blanket, which he must have had up over his head at the time the catastrophe came ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the Examiner, "has overthrown the Holy Alliance of Southern Germany. Lola Montez, whose affecting testimony during the trial of those who killed Dujarier in a duel cannot but be remembered, was driven by that catastrophe to seek her fortunes in other realms. Chance brought her to Munich, the Sovereign of which capital has divided his time between poetry and the arts, gallantry ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... and before he had moved two feet, that catastrophe seemed at least to have begun. The prop gave way: the light at the entrance was at once blotted out; the air was filled with terrifying roaring echoes. There followed a succession of crashes, the rolling of rocks over each other, the grinding ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... troubled the pit of his stomach. At seven he telephoned to Winifred by trunk call. No! Fleur had not been to Green Street. Then where was she? Visions of his beloved daughter rolled up in her pretty frills, all blood and dust-stained, in some hideous catastrophe, began to haunt him. He went to her room and spied among her things. She had taken nothing—no dressing-case, no Jewellery. And this, a relief in one sense, increased his fears of an accident. Terrible to be helpless when his loved one was missing, especially when he couldn't bear fuss or publicity ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... wishing to meet Captain Aylmer before she had reached the house. It was now nearly the middle of April, and the weather was soft and pleasant. It was almost summer again, and as she felt this, she thought of all the events which had occurred since the last summer of their agony of grief at the catastrophe which had closed her brother's life, of her aunt's death first, and then of her father's following so close upon the other, and of the two offers of marriage made to her as to which she was now aware that she had accepted the wrong ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... watched over the fortunes of the Nederlandters having unthinkingly left the field and stepped into a neighboring tavern to refresh themselves with a pot of beer, a direful catastrophe had well-nigh ensued. Scarce had the myrmidons of Michael Paw attained the front of battle, when the Swedes instructed by the cunning Risingh, levelled a shower of blows full at their tobacco-pipes. Astounded at this assault and dismayed at the havoc of their pipes, these ponderous warriors gave ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... least he would pretend he was going blind. To give a semblance of truth to this he would that day consult distinguished oculists and, in spite of their assurances, would tell them that slowly and surely his eyesight was failing him. He would declare to them, in the dread of such a catastrophe, he was of a mind to seek self-destruction. To others he would confide the secret of his blindness and his resolution not to survive it. And, later, all of these would ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... south-west end, narrowing to thirteen miles at the north-east; and it was here that the terrible earthquake occurred in the summer of 1883, by which so many thousands of lives were sacrificed in a moment, through the submerging of some of the adjacent islands in the sea, a catastrophe only second in the annals of history to the earthquake at Lisbon in the ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... remainder of the sentence in tones so low that not a mouse in the corner could have heard.) 'Well, the inventor of that explosive has naturally been wanted ever since by all the heads of police in Europe. But the most curious—or perhaps the most natural part of my story is, that our hero, after the catastrophe, grew disgusted with himself and his comrades, acquired, in a fit of revulsion, quite a conservative taste in politics, which was strengthened greatly by the news he indirectly received of the great wealth and respectability of his ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... Derefd. febr. 29, 1703/4, in Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc., 1867, p. 478. This valuable document was found among the papers of Fitz-John Winthrop, governor of Connecticut. The authorities of that province, on hearing of the catastrophe at Deerfield, promptly sent an armed force to its relief, which, however, could not arrive till long after the enemy were gone. The paper in question seems to be the official report of one of the Connecticut officers. After recounting what had taken place, he gives a tabular list of the captives, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... turned combatants, striking or parrying with their heavy oaken blades; the sound of blows on breaking heads; plunges into the foaming brine; blood trickling down faces and necks, and reddening naked arms—such was the catastrophe seen in its details from the overhanging gunwale of the galley. And while it went on, the worse than confused mass drifted away from the ship's side, leaving a clear space through which, with the first shout heard from him during the race, the hamari ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... counted upon studying, if but for a few rapt moments, the vision of a land west of the sun, east of the moon—a novel territory, perhaps a vast playground for souls emancipated from the gyves of existence. But this!—he shuddered at the catastrophe: a very Pompeian calamity depriving him at a stroke of his wife, his orchestra—all, all had been engulfed. Forgetting his newly won crown, forgetting the tremendous import of his discovery to mankind, Pobloff began howling, "Luga, Luga, Akh! ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... trudged to the house with a goodly following, including Nancy herself, who soon found her feet when she heard that there was a cure for the catastrophe. ...
— Terry - Or, She ought to have been a Boy • Rosa Mulholland
... to the Squire, with a good deal more land besides in neighbouring parishes. Kencote House is a big, rather ugly structure, and was built early in the eighteenth century after the disastrous fire which destroyed the beautiful old Tudor hall and nearly all its hoarded treasures. This catastrophe is worth a brief notice, for nowadays an untitled family often enjoys some consideration from the possession of an old and beautiful house, and the Clintons of Kencote would be better known to the world at large if they did not live in a ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... Speech describes the catastrophe. How Pentheus, arrived within sight of the orderly Maenads, was not satisfied, but desired a higher station from which to view their unseemly life. Then a wonder: the stranger bent down an ash tree, and seating Pentheus in a fork of it let the ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... mentioned above, was ever made of the second expedition. We inherited from the first a plat of the river itself down to the mouth of the Paria, which, according to Professor Thompson, was fairly good, but we did not rely on it; from the mouth of the Paria to Catastrophe Rapid, the point below Diamond Creek where the Howlands and Dunn separated from the boat party, a plat that was broken in places. This was approximately correct as far as Kanab Canyon, though not so good as above the Paria. ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... Three years afterwards, the Duc d'Alencon (Lucon et Mindanao; Paris, 1870, S. 38) found the traces of the catastrophe everywhere. Three sides of the principal square of the city, in which formerly stood the government, or governor's, palace, the cathedral, and the townhouse, were lying like dust heaps overgrown with weeds. All the large public edifices were "temporarily" ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... was activity of the fiercest. Winton had raced back with his news of the catastrophe, and the camp was alive with men clustering like bees and swarming upon the flat-cars of the material-train to ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... about to fall beneath the united efforts of a squadron of workmen. Watch in hand, the great citizen was estimating the length of the resistance which that mass of freestone would present to the destructive labor of which it was the object. Precisely at the crucial moment of the impending catastrophe la Peyrade, lost in the tumult of his thoughts, was entering, heedless of the shouts addressed to him on all sides, the radius within which the stones would fall. Seen by Phellion (who, it must be said, would have done the same for a total stranger) ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... flower-pot greedily and appeared refreshed, Horace proceeded: "I have every hope, sir," he said, "that before many hours you will be smiling—pray don't prance like that, I mean what I say—smiling over what now seems to you, very justly, a most annoying and serious catastrophe. I shall speak seriously to Fakrash (the Jinnee, you know), and I am sure that, as soon as he realises what a frightful blunder he has made, he will be the first to offer you every reparation in his power. For, old foozle as he is, ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... the trials, the country was shocked by the assassination of the President on July 2, 1881, at the hands of a disappointed office seeker named Guiteau. Despite a strong constitution Garfield grew slowly weaker and died on September 19. The catastrophe affected the country the more profoundly because of its connection with the factional quarrel in the Republican party and because, following the recent murder of the Russian Czar, it seemed to show that democratic government was no guarantee ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... himself—I mean on her account than his. I have always thought sudden death to be the best of all for oneself, but under such circumstances it is terrible for those who are left. Arnold told me years ago that he had heart disease. I do not suppose there is any likelihood of an immediate catastrophe in my own case. I should not go abroad if there were. Imagine the horror of leaving one's wife to fight all the difficulties of sudden euthanasia in a Swiss hotel! I saw enough of that two ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... had an unhappier childhood than Anthony Trollope. Born in London on April 24, 1815, his home was made sordid by his father's misfortunes, and at Harrow and Winchester, where he was for nearly eleven years, his mean appearance subjected him to many dire humiliations. A final catastrophe in the fortunes of the elder Trollope drove the family to Belgium, where Anthony for a time acted as usher in a school at Brussels. But at the age of nineteen a Post-office appointment brought him back to London. The turning point in his career came in 1841, when he accepted the position of a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... occurred in it so many strange and horrible things, that the credulous Susanna, who during it had become ever paler and paler, might have been petrified with horror if, precisely at the most terrible part of the catastrophe, the suspicion had not suddenly occurred to her, that she was horrifying herself—at a mere fiction! And Harald's countenance, when she expressed her conjectures, made this certainty; and the hearty laughter ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... dark, cloudy, and windy night. We often looked out, but could see nothing, scarcely even the outline of the mountain. We listened, and our hearts beat thick, when there was no sound but the rising gust! I dwell on these circumstances too long, because I recoil from relating the catastrophe, as if it were but recent—as if my thoughts had not been familiarized with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 279, October 20, 1827 • Various
... who had exiled himself to France, and had taken no share in the last catastrophe (which he foresaw), returned, he was in a position once more to conduct the government according to his old policy, only with greater independence. A Parliament was called which now for the first time confirmed the statutes ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... of mending in the family, which Wilmet replenished every Saturday; and though Mrs. Underwood's instinct for piecing and darning had revived as soon as she was taken out of bed, her work now always needed a certain revision to secure the boys from the catastrophe of which Wilmet often dreamt—appearing in public in ragged shirt-sleeves! Geraldine knew that every stitch she left undone would have to be put in by her sister in late evening or early morning, and therefore often wrenched herself from the pencil and paints that best beguiled her thoughts from ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... worst, too, the nation would not dock me of more than half my income, so I should still be as well off as before my investment, and in the meantime I shall be drawing a double income until the catastrophe arrives. A nation doesn't become bankrupt more than once in a century, so I shall have plenty of time to amass a little capital out ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Genis, "was churlish enough to refuse. I would not have come now only that I felt I might be in time to avert the most awful catastrophe that has yet ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... to only a few hundred yards. They pass through nearly the same point once in each of their periods of revolution round the Sun, and it has been suggested that they are fragments of a great globe rent asunder by some mighty catastrophe; over 400 of these little worlds have been discovered and have received names, or are known ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... Christian to be troubled by the disagreeable conviction that was in the minds of other members of my crew, namely, that our souls, unliberated by funeral rites from this world, would have to hover for ever over the Ogowe near the scene of our catastrophe. I own this idea was an unpleasant one—fancy having to pass the day in those caves with the bats, and then come out and wander all night in the cold mists! However, like a good many likely-looking prophecies, those of M'bo did not quite come off, and a miss is as good ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... first feeling of dismay at the discovery that the police were looking for him he had been overwhelmed by a sense of catastrophe. With the passing of that phase he was able to consider the situation with a cooler brain, and it now seemed to him that his position was not so precarious as he deemed it in the light of that shock. He knew London, and might be able ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... Pierre Couttet had been whirled to death on the great peak, and his body, embedded and preserved in a glacier, was found nearly half a century afterward at its foot. And two other Couttets of past years escaped, by the merest hair of miraculous fortune, from a catastrophe on the same dreadful slopes in which three of their comrades were swallowed up. Yet the Ambroise Couttet of to-day is never so happy as when he is on the mountain. His eyes sparkle if he hears the thunder of an avalanche, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... iron door grew, with every roll of our wheels, louder and louder. But it was rather as though I had been lifted in a sheet from one life—a life of speculation, of viewing war from a superior and safe distance, of viewing indeed all catastrophe and reality from that same distance—into the other. I had been caught up, had hung for a moment in midair, had been "planted" in this new experience. For us all there must have been at this moment something of this passing from an old life into a new one, and yet I dare swear that not ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... has been made at times that the United States might develop a Caesarism, and certainly the position of president might easily become that of an imperator. No doubt in the event of an acute failure of the national system such a catastrophe might occur, but the more hopeful and probable line of development is one in which a conscious and powerful, if informal, aristocracy will play a large part. It may, indeed, never have any of the outward forms of an aristocracy or any definite ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... off than it really was because of the darkness, gave one a sense of wonderful security: to feel her so steady and still was like standing on a large rock in the middle of the ocean. But there were now more evidences of the coming catastrophe to the observer than had been apparent when on deck last: one was the roar and hiss of escaping steam from the boilers, issuing out of a large steam pipe reaching high up one of the funnels: a harsh, deafening boom that made conversation difficult and no doubt increased the apprehension ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... it had yet, as in its infancy, nothing of Manners. On which account, those, who could not penetrate into the ill constitution of its plan, yet grew disgusted at the dryness of the Conduct, and want of ease in the Catastrophe. ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... almost impalpable bar between them, which is the more remarkable because Williams appears to have seen with equanimity Froude's apparently more violent and dangerous outbreaks of paradox and antipathy. Possibly, after the catastrophe, he may, in looking back, have exaggerated his early alarms. But from the first he says he saw in Newman what he had learned to look upon as the gravest of dangers—the preponderance of intellect among ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... of the parish, the most remarkable generality (for we had no particular catastrophe) was a great death of old people in the spring. Among others, Miss Sabrina, the school mistress, paid the debt of nature, but we could now better spare her than we did her predecessor; for at Cayenneville there was a broken manufacturer's wife, an excellent teacher, ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... rested one thing more to make the catastrophe complete, and that also came to pass: Cecil was fully and entirely aware of his ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... not another word, but with an air of indescribable dignity adjusted the retort, took out a cork—and—but words fail me to describe the catastrophe! Before Dr. Mumbudget could rush forward to prevent it, the gas had come in contact with the air, become inflamed instantly, and sent Dr. Skihi whirling above the ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... parents and guardians, expect entertainment for themselves, as well as instruction for those who had rather it was out of sight,—look for antiques in carved cherry-stones,—and require plot, incident, and catastrophe in a chronicle ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... into the other room would be to drop the conversation. I was determined not to let that catastrophe happen. It was just possible that Mrs. Beauly's maid might have quitted her service, or might have been left behind in England. My information would not be complete until I knew what had become of the maid. I pushed my chair back a little ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... a little catastrophe. Miss Marchmont's pile overbalanced and fell into Jacob's compartment. Such things happened to Miss Marchmont. What was she seeking through millions of pages, in her old plush dress, and her wig of claret-coloured hair, ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... circumstances would permit, for the delinquent "fine feathers" to blow in. By eight, he was a little more than uneasy, but it didn't help any. Suddenly, on the domestic horizon appeared a weird-looking creature! A human being, apparently in a state of frenzy over some terrible catastrophe. It was the tailor! "Here," he whispered, almost in tears, as he handed something to the outraged head of the State, "these ain't yours, but you'll have to wear 'em; yours ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... on the whole, we have no reason to be ashamed of the primaeval inhabitants of the land of our ancestry. They knew their rights, they prized them, they fought for them bravely and died for them nobly. More harmony among themselves might have delayed, but could not have prevented the final catastrophe. Rome in the age of Trajan was irresistible; and Britain became a Roman province. This portion of the Agricola of Tacitus, and the Germania of the same author, entitle him to the peculiar affection and lasting ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... of the Matutina felt that most hopeless of catastrophes—an inert catastrophe undermining them. The still and sinister certainty of their fate petrified them. No stir in the air, no movement on the sea. The motionless is the inexorable. Absorption was sucking them down silently. Through ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... With great diffidence we reply to the query of our learned friend. The force of tragedy consists in its depicting evil so ruinous as to involve even the innocent in the catastrophe; the pleasure is derived, we think, from the failure of the mischievous design, and the merited retribution which falls upon the head of the plotters. In Romeo, "a scourge is laid upon the hate of the Montagues and Capulets, by which all are punished;" Hamlet's wicked ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... a catastrophe, after all, and yet it called up a look of each unmistakable vexation to that naturally tranquil and abstracted countenance, that a spectator of the scene repressed a smile which had risen to his lips and ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... the last man defending their gold, all well and good. But in case any of our men are still alive there, they'd be butchered. And then, the destruction of gold as a medium of exchange, by its gross plenty, would wreck the world with panics. And the greatest catastrophe of history would lie on our shoulders. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... sat down and thought the matter over. The financial catastrophe appalled her. She had grown so used to a life of luxury. And the threat? It seemed fantastic, impossible of fulfillment. Never in her life had she been coerced by force. There was one way out—Meredith's way. But she ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... steadily higher. Instead of abating, the wind seemed momentarily to increase in violence, and the balloon made increasingly heavier weather of it. It was only a matter of time when the wind would rip it to pieces, and this catastrophe was not long in coming. There was a sound of ripping cloth, and the next moment the balloon began to drop rapidly. This left its passengers no alternative but to take to their parachutes, as to remain longer with the balloon ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... she had done, but Stella's face, as she viewed the catastrophe, was so comical that Marjorie went off into peals of laughter. Molly joined in this, and the two girls ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... to the last quietude and desertion of the grave; in this dulness of the senses there is a gentle preparation for the final insensibility of death. And to him the idea of mortality comes in a shape less violent and harsh than is its wont, less as an abrupt catastrophe than as a thing of infinitesimal gradation, and the last step on a long decline of way. As we turn to and fro in bed, and every moment the movements grow feebler and smaller and the attitude more restful and easy, until sleep overtakes us at a stride and we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time of the battles of Salamis, Himera, and Cumae a furious war raged for many years, according to the accounts of the Roman annals, between Rome and Veii (271-280). The Romans suffered in its course severe defeats. Tradition especially preserved the memory of the catastrophe of the Fabii (277), who had in consequence of internal commotions voluntarily banished themselves from the capital(4) and had undertaken the defence of the frontier against Etruria, and who were slain to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... much easier it is to plan than to achieve,—nor had the voice of Burke carried terror throughout Europe. Even now, it is impossible to read the first acts of that drama without being moved to sympathetic enthusiasm. What emotions must it not have excited while the awful catastrophe was yet concealed! Tried by any received test, France, for centuries, had been the chief state in Europe,—inferior to none in the arts of war, superior to any in the arts of peace. Fashion and letters had given her an empire more permanent than that which the enterprise of Columbus and the fortune ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... suppose that, being conscious of his remarkable power in the representation of momentary action and of states of the soul, he thought that he could harmonise into a whole the continuous action of a number of persons, and of their passions in sword-play with one another; and then conduct to a catastrophe their interaction. But a man may be capable of writing dramatic lyrics and dramatic romances without being capable of writing a drama. Indeed, so different are the two capabilities that I think the true dramatist could not write such a lyric or romance ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... down on the porch, and I'll show you how to empty her lungs, Berry," said Adam, laying down his bundle and taking charge of the situation, as all the rest, even capable Aunt Mary, still stood helpless before the catastrophe. ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... without speaking, in acquiescence to the old hunter's verdict—as though in his own heart he could not determine, amidst such conflicting thoughts, whether he ought to rejoice, or to grieve over this unexpected catastrophe. ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... from the flames. With a dignified step he advanced towards Jack, and presenting his war axe, he yielded himself up as a prisoner. No others came out, and the roof of the hut directly afterwards fell in. For a moment the seamen stopped, gazing at the catastrophe; then the impulse seized them to rush forward and attempt to rescue their fellow-creatures, but it was too late: for an instant a blackened head rose amidst the burning embers, and in another place an arm and shoulder appeared, but directly after sank ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... after position—fortress after fortress—city after city—declared impregnable by the Government up to the very last moment, fell suddenly and mysteriously; only to expose, when too late, the chain of grievous errors that inseparably linked the catastrophe ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... not left the baroness's side since the catastrophe. She could not see the unconscious face on the pillow for tears. Was there ever such barbarous, such gratuitous cruelty as young Treumann's? His mother had been in once or twice on tiptoe, the last ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... home, sounds uninterruptedly from The Two Gentlemen of Verona onward till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the earth and drowns his book. It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are those of my lords bishops ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... becoming tragical. Of course beautiful Lisa was now out of the question, but for this they found ample consolation in prophesying that Florent would bring about some frightful catastrophe. It was quite clear, they said, that he had got some base design in his head. When people like him escaped from gaol it was only to burn everything down; and if he had come to the markets it must assuredly be for some abominable purpose. Then they began to ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... A catastrophe was avoided, just in time, by Bob and Nellie appearing on the scene of action; when, catching hold of the end of Rover's chain, they bore him away captive again to where their aunt and the Captain were waiting and ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... prudence, and throw him upon his knees before her as a humiliated creature who had been pretending to love knowledge, philosophy, and science, but in reality had been loving beauty and riches. It was the fear of this catastrophe which had had a strong influence ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... sorrow for what had happened. They reproached and blamed him, saying that there was no truth in the story of treachery—all was quiet, and the people showed nothing but goodwill. Then Pizarro accused his treasurer and Father Valverde of having deceived him in the matter and brought about the catastrophe; and they in their turn exculpated themselves, and upbraided Pizarro as the only one responsible for the deed, and the quarrel was fierce between them. Meanwhile, the death of the Inca, whose power over his people had been so great, caused the breaking-up of all the ancient institutions. The ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... differ on this point. What she does not do is to let her mother into her confidence. She sees the man—runs upon him, if you will, in places or under circumstances she cannot avoid—till her judgment leaves her and the point of catastrophe is reached. Then, possibly, she awakens, or what is more probable, seeks to protect herself from the penetration and opposition of his friends by meetings less open than those in which they had lately indulged. She says ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... infection. Not to lie whole and decent in one's coffin! Oh, it was an indignity too terrible for contemplation; and every time they were away from Jerrem she would beset Reuben with entreaties and questions as to what could be done to avoid the catastrophe. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... a lighted lantern, on pain of being stopped by the sentinel and kept in custody until morning. Murder and villany are strongly depicted on the features of the slaves of that nation; and such of them as dared to speak of this dreadful catastrophe clearly appeared to approve ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... the beach, and in canoes and rafts, there were not less, altogether, in the immediate vicinity of the schooner, than ten thousand natives, besides the shoals of them who, laden with booty, were making their way inland and over to the neighbouring islands. We now anticipated a catastrophe, and were not disappointed. First of all there came a smart shock (which we felt as distinctly where we were as if we had been slightly galvanized), but unattended with any visible signs of an explosion. The savages were evidently startled, and paused ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... said, was not built in a day; the rule of Rome was not destroyed in a day. When we speak of the "fall" of Rome, we have in mind, not a violent catastrophe which suddenly plunged the civilized world into ruin, but rather the slow and gradual decay of ancient society throughout the basin of the Mediterranean. This decay set in long before the Germans and the Persians became a serious danger to the empire. It would have continued, doubtless, had ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... please to write me word at what time was it when isreal went to Jerico i am very anxious to hear for thare is a mighty host will pass over and you and i my brother will sing hally luja i shall notify you when the great catastrophe shal take place No more at the present ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... could be pitched upon. He wished Callista no harm, but, if a Christian must be found and held up in terrorem, he would rather it was a person like her, without connections and home, than the member of any decent family of Sicca, whose fair fame would be compromised by a catastrophe. However, she was not a Christian, and Agellius was, at least by profession; and his fear was lest Juba should be right in his estimate of his brother's character. Juba had said that Agellius could be as obstinate as he was ordinarily indolent and yielding, ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... Mrs. Weldon, "we shall never know the secret of this catastrophe. Meanwhile, it might be possible that some man of the crew is ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... was not likely to come to them, they dispatched a disinterested person to him, to notify him of their arrival, and the condition in which they found matters at the store-camp, left in his charge, and also of their wish that he would attend their proposed meeting, and account for the catastrophe which had so unexpectedly occurred. He pretended to know nothing of the affair, and feigned great surprise at the news; said he had left the camp and its stores, all safe, two days before the storm, to come to the settlement for more provisions; believing that his companions ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... guests forget their wonted smiles; only occasionally did the mask of cheerfulness fall from many a face, discovering serious, anxious features, and suspicious, lurking glances. Every one felt that a catastrophe was impending, but, as no one could know its result in advance, all wished to keep as clear of it as possible, and seem perfectly unconscious and unaffected by these things. As they could not foresee which party would triumph, they found it advisable to join neither while ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... characteristic vacillation by the adherents on whom he counted, the delinquent had fled to the camp of the rival tribe, with whom he had already been in secret negotiation. This much Mukair Ibn Zarrarah's spies had ascertained, but not in time to prevent the catastrophe that followed. Plans thought to be known only to the Sheik and his son had been disclosed to the marauding Chief, who had long sought an opportunity of aiming an effectual blow at his hated rival, and on one of Omar's ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... Aramaic word meaning zealot. Hence Luke translates it for Gentile readers. He was one of the fanatical sect who would not have anything to do with Rome, and who played such a terrible part in the final catastrophe of Israel. The baser elements were purged out of his fiery enthusiasm when he became Christ's man. The hallowing and curbing of earthly passion, the ennobling of enthusiasm, are achieved when the pure flame of love to Christ ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... canvass to get the feet in; so he turned the legs up in such a manner, as to give the child the appearance of being in great danger of sliding into the water. We greatly offended the painter by advising him to drive a couple of stakes into the bank to prevent such a catastrophe. Another artist, engaged in painting a full-length portrait, found, when he had got his picture nearly finished, that his canvass was at least four inches too short. "What shall I do," said the painter to a friend, "I have not room for the feet." "Cover them up with green grass," was the reply. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... knowledge of this latest disaster spread with amazing rapidity. Up from the saloon came a rush of stewards and others. Overborne in the panic-stricken flight, Gray, Tollemache, Christobal, the French Count and the head steward, not knowing what new catastrophe threatened, brought Mr. Somerville and the almost inanimate women with them, leaving to their fate those who, like Boyle, were unable to move. Some of the mob rushed up the bridge companion; others ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... that there was a section of the extreme Liberals who would not be deeply mortified if the government were overthrown. All efforts, therefore, political and social, and particularly the latter, in which the Whigs excelled, were to be made to prevent or to retard the catastrophe. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... letter by telling her of the catastrophe, with the usual amount of epithets. It was very terrible, awful, shocking—the saddest thing that had ever happened! The poor widow was in a desperate state, and all the Claverings were nearly beside themselves. But when this had been duly said, he allowed himself ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... to it. In the first place, history teaches us that whenever civilized man comes in contact with a savage race, the latter almost inevitably begins to decrease, and to approach by more or less gradual steps towards extinction. Whether this catastrophe is the result of political, moral, or physical causes, the ablest writers have not been able to decide; and most men seem willing to content themselves with the belief that the event is in accordance with ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... courteous to knock at Miss Gascoigne's door, and ask if she too were ready, when she heard a loud outcry in the nursery above. This, alas! was no novelty. More than once Christian had rushed wildly up stairs, expecting some dreadful catastrophe, but it was only the usual warfare between Phillis and the children, especially Arthur, who was no longer a baby to be petted and scolded, or a little girl to be cowed into obedience, but a big boy to be ruled, if at all, vi et armis—as Mrs. Grey had more ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... some measure of dismay, as he thus presented to her the worst aspect of the catastrophe. But Chris remained serene. She was rapidly ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... Carr as we had arranged, and we had a very pleasant evening. Poor Carr, who had seen the papers, had hardly expected that I should turn up, knowing the catastrophe of the previous night had taken place at the house I was going to, and was much relieved to hear that my sister had moved, and had thus been spared all the horror of ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... 'Sir, the thing is absolutely, insuperably, and forever impossible. Not the archangel Gabriel, nor his multipotent adversary, durst attempt any such thing!' From that quarter, then, nothing could be expected; but the intervention of other parties averted a catastrophe melancholy to contemplate—restoring to us a vast body of literature, unique in character and supreme in kind. We do not pretend that De Quincey has yet been awarded by any very general suffrage the foremost position among modern litterateurs; we expect ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... examples in the 'Observations' are taken from incidents and movements in which Spragge was the chief actor. One long observation is directed to precautions to be taken by flag officers in shifting their flags in action, so as to prevent a recurrence of the catastrophe which cost Spragge his life. Indeed, with the exception of Jordan, Spragge is the only English admiral mentioned. Dartmouth was present at all the actions quoted, and succeeded in constituting himself a sufficient authority on naval affairs to be appointed in 1683 to command the ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... it the back wash, yet we may have had a tidal wave of our own; for, though we had no knowledge of the frightful catastrophe at Java, still there had been for days several submarine earthquakes all about us, sending fountains of water, steam bubbles, and mud from the ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... both saw, outside the window, what we thought was an Antiopa. We rushed out, and when we came back we found that the cat. . . . Dear me; I was quite overcome. . . . But that summer I caught the one you have seen in Switzerland; and as my dear friend was no more and nobody else knew of the catastrophe, I thought there would be no harm in merely restoring a specimen to my ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... pale from the very contemplation of such a catastrophe, such an unprecedented haegira of dames! It is as if from every gay watering place, some softly tinkling bell should summon the fair mermaids. Beplaided and betrowsered, with their little gypsy hats, would they float ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... forest of Bondy, who have just heard that the provost-marshal has been discharged.' Voltaire and Condorcet were not more dismayed by the fall of the minister, than by the insensate delight which greeted the catastrophe. 'This event,' wrote Condorcet, 'has changed all nature in my eyes. I have no longer the same pleasure in looking at those fair landscapes over which he would have shed happiness and contentment. The sight of the gaiety of the people wrings my heart. They dance and sport, as if they had lost nothing. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... to her friend to help, and she was not backward; but in spite of her twenty years her astonishment at the catastrophe was great. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... trial embraced a period of five and twenty years, during which the policy of the Union in its relations with Europe constituted the principal basis of our own political divisions, and the most arduous part of the action of the Federal Government. With the catastrophe in which the wars of the French Revolution terminated, and our own subsequent peace with Great Britain, this baneful weed of party strife was uprooted. From that time no difference of principle, connected with the theory of government, or with our ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... astound us here, where green hills slope to lawns or peer at a peaceful sea; but there among the flames of those dreadful peaks the Sun seemed not the giver of joy and colour and life, but only a catastrophe huger than everlasting war, a centre of hideous violence and ruin and anger and terror. There came by mountains of copper burning everlasting, hurling up to unthinkable heights their mass of emerald flame. And mountains of iron raged by and mountains of ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... they were angry because she had cheated them out of five months' gossip, and that if her mother could have had her way, she would have sent the news to the Herald and had it inserted under the head of "Awful Catastrophe!" Thus Mrs. Carter was exonerated from all blame; but many a wise old lady shook her head, saying, "How strange that so fine a woman as Mrs. Carter should have such a reprobate of ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... for this tragedy. It was probably accidental, as the Earl was a favourer of the reformed religion, and not likely to meet with treachery in England. The Irish annalists do not even allude to the catastrophe; the Four Masters merely observe, that "he would have been lamented, were it not that he had greatly injured the Church by advice of ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... way by the sirens of administration, which never fail to swallow them up like quicksand—like a serpent, who charms and fascinates, bewitches and enchants with his eye the unwary bird; witness the fatal catastrophe of Rehoboam, who rejected the counsel of the wise and experienced, and gave up all to the advice and guidance of young, unskilful and wicked counsellors. Had he listen'd to you, my Lord, had he followed your ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... plunged a knife into his breast; the blade broke; he shattered the bottle at his side and swallowed the fragments, and then fell bleeding and exhausted on the straw. If left long alone, life would have ebbed away; but, probably in anticipation of such a catastrophe, the officer ere many hours revisited the cell to put chains upon the prisoner. Discovering his condition, a surgeon was called, remedies were applied, and two Austrian sentinels carried Foresti into the presence of the judge. It was scarcely dawn; the venerable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the beaver has a tolerably idle life; but as in most districts the levels of rivers and lakes are apt to sink at various seasons if left to themselves,—whenever an emigrant party of beavers have fixed on a new locality, they set to work to dam up the stream or outlet of the lake, to prevent a catastrophe which might bring ruin and destruction on their new colony. In Nova Scotia, as well as in other parts of North America, large level spaces are found covered with a rich alluvial soil, from which spring up waving fields of wild grass. From this the human settler draws ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... she had attempted to drag me out of the room. She had seen all that had passed in the bed-chamber; and she had run out to take me back with her, and show me the wonderful sight of Lucilla with the bandage off her eyes. If I had been wise enough to listen to Jicks, I might have prevented the catastrophe that had happened. I might have met Lucilla in the corridor, and have forced her back into her own room and turned the ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... be. A catastrophe more vital than war threatened Switzerland—the world—wide revelation of a secret which, exposed, would throw all civilisation into righteous fury and the ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... in one's coffin! Oh, it was an indignity too terrible for contemplation; and every time they were away from Jerrem she would beset Reuben with entreaties and questions as to what could be done to avoid the catastrophe. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... explained how Lady CALLENDER obtained the prussic acid, nor why she had selected that particular moment for its use. I ought to add, that CASANUOVA left England before the inquest, and has never returned. On the mystery of the final catastrophe the manuscript throws no light. It ends abruptly. But the whole tone of it leads me to believe, that in some unexplained manner Sir CHARLES himself had been instrumental in causing his wife's death. But you, no doubt, know, and could tell ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... those people set the fire? It would be a catastrophe if the plane burned just at this particular time, wouldn't it? ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... no one might suspect her of corresponding with an author. After reading the first four volumes of 'Clarissa' (which were separately published), she wrote under a feigned name to beg the author to alter the impending catastrophe. She spoke as the mouthpiece of a 'multitude of admirers' who desired to see Lovelace reformed and married to Clarissa. 'Sure you will think it worth your while, sir, to save his soul!' she exclaims. Richardson was too good an artist to spoil his tragedy; and was rewarded by an account ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... capitulate to the invading Hittites and see the end of the kingdom of Mitani. The great "love" of this king for Egypt was not, therefore, called forth merely by the glitter of gold, but also by dire political necessity. The catastrophe occurred some few decades after the correspondence comes to an end for us. Mitani vanished from the states of Western Asia and gave place to small Aramaic kingdoms, while the eastern boundary, together with Ninua, was seized by Assyria as the first step to her ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... is the conduct and disposition of the whole piece, which, by the order and harmony of its parts, and the happy connection of its incidents and intrigues, holds the mind of the spectator in suspense till the catastrophe, and then restores him his tranquillity, and dismisses ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... attacks; for in the early part of the fifteenth century, we find the then abbot of Derry negotiating a peace between the English and O'Donnell. But in its subsequent annals nothing more than the mere date of an inmate's death meets us till we come to the great catastrophe, which ended at once the monastery and order of Columba. Cox thus tells the story: "Colonel Saintlow succeeded Randolph in the command of the garrison and lived as quietly as could be desired, for the rebels were so daunted by the former defeat that they did not dare to ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various
... and consequently, owing to difference of character, would be less relished by the same circles in England. I suspect the author to be a great admirer of Chateaubriand's "Atala," whose death is brought to mind by the catastrophe of Elode's. Here, however, the similitude ends. There is nothing to be said respecting the comparative features of Charles the Bold and Chactas, except that the Indian possessed those qualities of the heart which ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... expression of his haggard face. It was only natural that he should keenly feel his responsibility for the accident, but this did not quite seem to account for the man's condition. He looked absolutely unnerved, like one who had barely escaped from some appalling catastrophe. ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... partly prompted by the thought of the new helve I already had in store, awaiting just such a catastrophe. Having come somewhat painfully by that helve, I really wanted to see ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... on, to turn into a deserted street,—a street where the doors of the stores had been left open and the owners gone. Everywhere it was the same; it was as if Ohadi suddenly had been struck by some catastrophe which had wiped out the whole population. Only now and then a human being appeared, a few persons left behind at the banks, but that was about all. Then from far away, up the street leading from Kentucky Gulch, came the sound of cheering and shouting. Soon a crowd appeared, led by gesticulating, ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... into a deep swoon, and she was carried from the carriage to a sofa in the drawing-room. Neither Miss Agnes nor Mr. Wyllys was at home; they had gone to their afflicted neighbours the Hubbards. An express had brought a report of the melancholy catastrophe, not half an hour after Elinor had left Wyllys-Roof in the morning; the lifeless body of our poor young friend, Charlie, was to reach Longbridge that afternoon, and Hubert de Vaux had come to request Miss Agnes to break the sad truth to the bereaved mother and ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... side, in order to compel the apparition to repeat them. He found a comforting reassurance in asserting his command over his own shadow. He was temporizing, making, with unconscious prudence, a dilatory opposition to an impending catastrophe. He felt that invisible forces of evil were closing in upon him, and he parleyed for time with ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... untrained as it was, sufficed to communicate abundance of the feeling to others. Perhaps more than abundance: to judge from our individual impression, the perusal of the Robbers produces an effect powerful even to pain; we are absolutely wounded by the catastrophe; our minds are darkened and distressed, as if we had witnessed the execution of a criminal. It is in vain that we rebel against the inconsistencies and crudities of the work: its faults are redeemed by the living energy that pervades it. We may exclaim against ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... and trowels even beginning to work on the foundations, when, one sad December night, a terrible gale arose. All through the hours of darkness it roared and shrieked across the British Isles, working havoc upon sea and land, but, when morning came at last, few were prepared for the appalling catastrophe it had caused. Sweeping up the Firth of Tay, it had torn away a portion of the great railway bridge that crossed the inlet, and hurled it into the water. A train was passing over at the time, and plunged into the abyss with all its ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... this evil to come. He had a blank helpless feeling, a dismal sense of his own weakness, which for the moment mastered him. Against any ordinary calamity he would have held himself bravely enough, with the natural strength of an ardent hopeful character; but against this mysterious catastrophe courage and manhood could avail nothing. She was gone, the fragile helpless creature he had pledged himself to protect; gone from all who knew her, leaving not the faintest clue to her fate. Could he doubt that this energetic warm-hearted girl was right, and that some foul deed had been ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... Edwin, his excitement was, on balance, pleasurable. In truth, he could not kill in his mind the hope that the floor would yield. The greatness of the resulting catastrophe fascinated him. He knew that he should be disappointed if the catastrophe did not occur. That it would mean ruinous damage to the extent of hundreds of pounds, and enormous worry, did not influence him. His reason did not influence him, nor his personal danger. He saw a large hook in the wall ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... he was questioning me; and judge of my confusion when I saw on the cover the word "Memoirs," written in my best round-hand. I, myself, had provided material to Justice—important details which the suddenness of our catastrophe had prevented me from saving from the police search of ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... ways of Chance—Destiny, call it what you will—brought about the greatest catastrophe that had so far obtained in the Guernsey ranks. Major Davey moved his party over an area—at about 11 in the morning of a warm, sunny Sunday—coming in for a spell of shelling extraordinary in intensity. A labour unit retired because of the exigencies of the precarious situation. ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... by telling him that a man was sometimes lucky in forgetting to write a letter, for he seldom knew what it contained until it appeared again some day to confront him with an indiscreet word or expression; and then he told a humorous story of a sad catastrophe that happened in a family, which was ascribed to something that came in a letter—a catastrophe so far beyond the region of possibility that it set us all laughing, and Mr. Chase lost his anxious look. That ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... at a catastrophe," said she, "but he can't carry on the blank verse proper to the ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... Instead of abating, the wind seemed momentarily to increase in violence, and the balloon made increasingly heavier weather of it. It was only a matter of time when the wind would rip it to pieces, and this catastrophe was not long in coming. There was a sound of ripping cloth, and the next moment the balloon began to drop rapidly. This left its passengers no alternative but to take to their parachutes, as to remain longer with ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... possibility that progress and human life should some day end together. If the present equilibrium of forces were eternal all adaptations to it would have already taken place and, while no essential catastrophe would need to be dreaded, no essential improvement could be hoped for in all eternity. I am not sure that a humanity such as we know, were it destined to exist for ever, would offer a more exhilarating prospect than a humanity having indefinite ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... around, and in a few seconds the mainsail came down with a bang and was secured by the others. The jib was still up, and this drew just sufficiently to send them forward slowly, to the spot where the catastrophe had occurred. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... aggrandizements, and his Philippics are perhaps the most brilliant of his orations. But the cause which he advocated was unfortunate; the battle of Cheronaea, 338 B.C., put an end to the independence of Greece, and Philip of Macedon was all-powerful. For this catastrophe Demosthenes was somewhat responsible, but as his motives were conceded to be pure and his patriotism lofty, he retained the confidence of his countrymen. Accused by Aeschines, he delivered his famous Oration on the Crown. Afterward, during the supremacy of Alexander, Demosthenes ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... charge of highway robbery, which bore a singular resemblance to the final catastrophe in Queensland, he resisted to the utmost, and showed that his experience in the Supreme Court at Dunedin had not been lost on him. At half-past six one evening in a suburb of Melbourne an elderly gentleman found himself confronted by a bearded man, wearing a ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... projecting point, and overturned it. Only three persons, besides himself, escaped: the rest were all lost. The wretch fled instantly, and was never taken; he was condemned to death, and hung in effigy; and since then an annual procession takes place on the banks of the Drot, where the catastrophe occurred, and solemn service is ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... and onward it would sweep, with the steady gait of destiny, until the continents would melt with fervent heat, the atmosphere glare with the ominous conflagration, and all living creatures, in land and sea and air, perish in one universal catastrophe." ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... could give the alarm, a terrible catastrophe would occur. He realized this, and made the supreme effort of his life to avert it. But fate was against him. In his mad haste to leap down the stair-way to give warning, his foot slipped, and he fell headlong to the floor of the lower deck, his temple, coming in contact with ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... much, begging your honour's pardon, that your lordship stinks." "Put him into the carriage," cried Mr. Godfrey, "and drive him home." Lord Martin, now first recovered his tongue, and wiping away the mud from his eyes, "And so it was you, sir, I suppose," cried he, "to whom I am obliged for this catastrophe. But pox take me, if you shall not hear of it. Ten thousand curses on my wayward fate! The devil take it! Death and damnation!" During this soliloquy, the servants were employed in placing their lord in the chariot. The coachman mounted the box, and ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... such a catastrophe—martial law, military dictatorship, self-perpetuating monarchy, divine authority, are more than likely to heap fuel on the flames of rebellion and lead ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... same moment some fishermen on the sands below, who had seen the impending catastrophe, rushed up the bank, headed the maddened horses and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... bedside and listened to the hysterical lamentation in which Louise gave her own—the true—account of the catastrophe. It was all her fault, and upon her let all the blame fall. She would humble herself to Mr. Higgins and get him to pay for the furniture destroyed. If Mrs. Mumford would but forgive her! And so on, as her poor body agonised, and ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... 1712-1732) not more than eight or nine of Shakspeare's plays were acted, whereas Garrick annually gave the public seventeen or eighteen. Romeo and Juliet had lain neglected near 80 years, when in 1748-9 Garrick brought it out, or rather a hash of it. 'Otway had made some alteration in the catastrophe, which Mr. Garrick greatly improved by the addition of a scene, which was written with a spirit not unworthy of Shakespeare himself.' Ib. p. 125. Murphy (Life of Garrick, p. 100), writing of this alteration, says:—'The catastrophe, as it now ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... wonder that men looked blankly into each other's eyes, and asked themselves and each other how such an unheard-of catastrophe had come about, and what was going to happen next? The first and universal feeling was one of amazement, which amounted almost to mental paralysis, and then came a sickening sense of insecurity. For two generations the Fleet had been trusted implicitly, and ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... delusions are to last for ever, whether this policy is to be the perpetual policy of England, whether these results are to go on gathering and gathering until there come, as come there must inevitably, some dreadful catastrophe on ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... to; for the entrance of the footman with coffee made denial indecent at the moment, if not impossible. That deus ex machina from below the stage retired, unconscious of the imminent catastrophe he had averted. But he had brought into the little drama a certain prosaic element. Coffee and romantic passion do ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... bleeds to death, so might Tusk have slept into eternity, were it not for that mysterious spark of something which the most crass of men possess to mark them human. Thus it was that later in the night he awoke with a feeling of terrible fear, of the presence of some awful catastrophe; and sat up, looking about him through the dark, shivering. He did not comprehend that an alert subconscious mind might be giving the alarm, touching him upon the shoulder and guiding his hand to the bleeding wound; but, once he knew there was a bleeding wound, ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... in his hand, scrutinizing it with impassive face. Was this a piece of unparalleled good fortune, or simply a trick of the fates to tempt him on to catastrophe? With that wonderful swiftness of thought which was part of his mental equipment he balanced the chances—and took ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... this catastrophe caused Alexander the greatest dismay. He immediately despatched a chamberlain to Marino, where Cardinal Ascanio was to be found in the headquarters of the Colonna, and who, on his urgent request, had returned November 2d, and had had an interview with King Charles. He complained to the cardinal ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... sufficient reinforcements should be sent out to defend the whole colony. In the long telegraphic despatch addressed on 6th September, 1899, by the Governor, Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson, to the Colonial Office, it was urged that: "In the opinion of the Ministers, such a catastrophe as the seizure of Laing's Nek, and the destruction of the northern portion of the railway ... would have a most demoralising effect on the natives and the loyal Europeans in the colony, and would afford great encouragement to the Boers and their sympathisers." The announcement ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... the scene which Thomas Batchgrew now saw and the scene which had met Rachel in the night was so violent as to seem nearly incredible. Not a sign of the catastrophe remained, except in Mrs. Maldon's face, and in some invalid gear on the dressing-table, for Rachel had gradually got the room into order. She had even closed and locked ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... impressed. He and all the other officers of the Kandarian defense forces had searched desperately for something that could be done to avert the catastrophe before them. They'd failed to find even the promise of a hope. He couldn't be encouraged by the confidence of a total stranger,—and a civilian to boot. He'd taken refuge ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... in the higher region of the camp or court that has not some indirect influence upon the intrigues of Lorenzo and Elvira; and the part which the gallant is called upon to act in the revolution that winds up the tragic interest, while it is highly in character, serves to bring the catastrophe of both parts of the play under the eye of the spectator, at one and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... attempt to negotiate for help, by the union of the Greek and Latin Churches. The agreement come to at Florence was not ratified at home; the attempt was resented, and led to an explosion of feeling that made even subjugation by the Turk seem for the moment less intolerable, and that hastened the catastrophe by making Western Christians slow to sacrifice themselves for their implacable brethren in the East. Offers of help were made, conditional on acceptance of the Florentine decree, and were rejected with patriotic and theological disdain. A small force of papal ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... quality of these studies, which, with one exception, are concerned with some or other aspect of the world-struggle. In "War and Literature," a paper dated during the black days of October, 1914, the author attempts to realise what will be the probable literary effect of the catastrophe by recounting the various ways in which French writers suffered from that of 1870. An interesting prediction, too, as recalling what many of us believed at the beginning of the war, is this about the future of English letters: "What we must really face is the fact that this harvest of volumes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... not anticipate the catastrophe. The play, reader, is extant in choice English, and you will employ a spare half-crown not injudiciously ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... the scene of the disaster not more than a dozen people were present, and they did not display any intense affliction at the catastrophe. Five or six were smoking and lounging about, discussing the probabilities of the miners being alive, yet showing no great inclination to commence work and put all doubts ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... that Miss Fraenkel interposed, all unconsciously, and became the cause of our presence at a most singular catastrophe, the collapse of the aeroplane in the snow. For had we not gone out that night to visit Miss Fraenkel and with her see the New Year safely born, we should have had no vivid memory of that terrible descent, nor understood how Fate had woven our neighbours' destinies, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the deer, however, that we are concerned. It is out of the question for any thinking man who takes the slightest interest in these creatures to stand passively by and permit them to be exterminated. To prevent such a catastrophe proper measures must be taken. The hunting community increases with as great rapidity as that with which game decreases. Where one man hunted twenty-five years ago, a score hunt for big game to-day. Unfortunately it has become the fashion. It is a diversion involving no danger and, ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... everything except what was on their bodies when the catastrophe occurred. Their horses were gone, and they hadn't a gun between them; nothing but two revolvers, and about a ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... return of Christ and the total ruin of the pagan world, with the inauguration of the kingdom of the saints, at the end of the first generation. The catastrophe did not come to pass, but Christian thought profited so greatly from the apocalyptic myth that certain contemporary scholars maintain that the whole preaching of Christ referred solely to this one point. The hopes which Luther and Calvin had formed of the religious exaltation of Europe were by no ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... for a heavy rain, when, instead, to their great consternation, the camp was inundated by "a high ridge of water over which came the sea current combing down like water over a mill-dam." The canoes were almost capsized, but this catastrophe was averted by rapid and good management. Even in the darkness, in the face of a danger unexpected and unknown, the trappers never for an instant lost their coolness and quick judgment, which was so often their salvation. ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... authorities, that, when fairy stories, or balls, or rolls of thread, stopped of their own accord—as I do not—it presaged some great catastrophe near at hand. The precedent holds good in this case. When I have remembered the short time I have before me to spend in this land of mighty interests, and the poor opportunity I can at best have ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... poet; that being, perhaps, the most exciting epoch in any life. Coming into school one morning, he showed Paul his first attempt at verse-writing, which Hayne describes as "a ballad of stirring adventures and sanguinary catastrophe," which he thought wonderful, the youthful author, of course, sharing that conviction. Convictions are easy at thirteen, even when one has not the glamour of the sea and the romance of old Charleston to prepare ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... "that, when we began with one of these works, we were conscious that we never knew how to leave off. The Porteous mob is rather heavily described, and the whole part of George Robertson, or Staunton, is extravagant and displeasing. The final catastrophe is needlessly improbable and startling." The critic felt that he must be critical, but his praise of Effie and Jeanie Deans obviously comes from his heart. Jeanie's character "is superior to anything we can recollect in the history of invention . . . a remarkable triumph ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... "Close upon the catastrophe followed a torpor, which lasted he did not know how long, and which wrapped in a thick fog all the succeeding events. For some time he can hardly be said to have had any conscious history. He awoke to life and torture when half-way across the sea towards ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... crowns from Chesnel at one time and another, the better to hide the sources on which he was drawing. He wrote lying letters to his poor father and aunt, who lived on, happy and deceived, like most happy people under the sun. The insidious current of life in Paris was bringing a dreadful catastrophe upon the great and noble house; and only one person was in the secret of it. This was du Croisier. He rubbed his hands gleefully as he went past in the dark and looked in at the Antiquities. He had good ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... yes, I do really. In a catastrophe of this kind all kinds of ideas come into the mind, very absurd ones some of them," and he laughed ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... they found that the story of the Baxters' fate had preceded them. Many folks were inclined to think that the wrongdoers deserved the catastrophe which had overtaken them. As nothing was heard of either father or son for a long while, it was presumed that both were dead beyond ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... the strong current produced by the indraught of the Irish Channel drifted these ships out of their course, and was the cause of the catastrophe. ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... being either overawed by the Emperor or menaced by his Protestant adversaries. Soon, however, the case was altered by the manifest collapse of the latter, notwithstanding their expectations of support from England, Denmark, and France, long before their final catastrophe in the battle of Muhlberg, April 24, 1547. The Emperor would not hear of the removal of the council to Lucca, Ferrara, or any other Italian town, and in consequence the plan of campaign at Trent was modified, in order at all events to make the breach with the Protestants impassable. The debates ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... held the office in the shire of—at the time of this catastrophe, was well born and well educated; and, though somewhat pedantic and professional in his habits, he enjoyed general respect as an active and intelligent magistrate. His first employment was to examine all witnesses whose evidence could throw ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... day just such a catastrophe had occurred when he had been working; vividly he recalled how all the men had been forced to ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... was keenly alive to what she must do. There was no time lost in bewailing the catastrophe, or wondering about the identity ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... a direct result of this case a more determined stand was taken at the North against slavery; the Anti-Slavery Republican party was strengthened, and their candidate for President, Abraham Lincoln, elected in 1861, and the catastrophe of civil ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... Claude. But if all her work had been useless? If all the ingenuity of herself and Alston should be of no avail? If the opera should never be produced, or should be produced and fail? Perhaps for the first time she strongly and deliberately imagined that catastrophe. For so long now had the opera been the thing that ruled in her life with Claude, for so long had everything centered round it, been subservient to it, that Charmian could scarcely conceive of life without it. She would be quite alone with Claude. Now they ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... away on them, heedless of the crowd of soldiers of all arms crowding back to the rear. Generals and Colonels were helplessly carried away. Units were disbanded, and the army became a mere mob. It was readily to be seen that catastrophe ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... One of them, more courageous, inspired them with the sufficient resolution, and, continuing, they discovered the father almost at the last extremity. They reached him presently, took good care of him, and helped him with what they were carrying. With that he came to himself and recounted his catastrophe. They marveled greatly at so extraordinary an event, which they regarded only as a prodigy never before seen. In this manner did they continue with the conversion of those infidels, until they obtained a good foundation in the village of Masinloc. It was a very suitable location, as it was the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... Europe might have been spared the misery and bloodshed of the next few years. But, for the moment, her strength and resources were exhausted, nor was it until months had elapsed that other nations, or even France herself, became aware of the magnitude of the catastrophe which had overtaken Napoleon's host. That he was able to rally himself after it, to carry the French people with him, to enforce a new conscription, and to assume the aggressive in the campaign ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... of Yezd, and exercise an influence on public opinion considerably wider than the boundaries of their sect. As for actual Missionary work of Christianization going beyond this point, the difficulties encountered and the risks of a catastrophe are too great at present for any sensible man ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... than Mac for the night to come, for I was very anxious about Clarian, dreading lest some catastrophe was about to overtake him,—and the thought was by no means pleasant. For, as Mac had said, the lad was a protg of mine; he had been given into my charge by his sweet lady-mother; he had looked up ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... south-west of China. This legend may be interpreted as indicating that the non-Chinese races in the south-west have come to their present seats by migration from Central China in remote antiquity. During Yau's reign a catastrophe reminding one of the biblical deluge threatened the Chinese world. The emperor held his minister of works, Kun, responsible for this misfortune, probably an inundation of the Yellow river such as has been witnessed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... of interesting incidents, one of which was, that when a party of wounded Englishmen came to a station where she was tending the Belgian wounded, every wounded Belgian gave up his bed to accommodate an English soldier. The idea of a German occupation of English soil, she said, was the idea of a catastrophe that was unspeakable. People read things in the papers and thought they were exaggerated, but she had seen them, and she would show photographs of ruined Belgium which would convince them of what the Germans were now doing in the name of God. However unprepared we were for war, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... that he could expect would be a great hissing and fizzling at all the joints of his machine; and it would be only by means of such a degree of looseness in the joints as would allow of the escape of the imprisoned force in this way that could prevent the repression ending in a frightful catastrophe. ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... health of mind was concerned, itself grievously inopportune, the catastrophe could not have happened at a more opportune moment. Trading upon the heels of his encounter with Valerie, it made a terrific counter-irritant to the violent inflammation which that meeting had set up. Yet if the back of the sickness was broken, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... and convincing terms in which the eye-witness describes the manner in which they stayed their hand whenever it could have slain, and the silent struggle which the Moderates of Chinese politics must have waged to avert the catastrophe by merely gaining time and allowing the Desperates to dash themselves to pieces when the inevitable swing of the pendulum took place. Finally, it will not escape notice that many remarks borne out all through the narrative tend to show that British diplomacy in the Far East was at one ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... character from great cataclysms in which whole territories and populations perished, to comparatively unimportant landslips such as occur on our own coasts to-day. When the destruction was once inaugurated by the first great catastrophe there was no intermission of the minor landslips which continued slowly but steadily to eat away the continent. Four of the great catastrophes stand out above the rest in magnitude. The first took place in the Miocene age, about 800,000 years ago. The second, which was of minor importance, ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... character, no longer exist in the memory of man—they died with them who were contemporaneous with the happening of them.[10] On one occasion however, such was the extent of savage duplicity, and such, and so full of horror, the catastrophe resulting from misplaced confidence, that the events which marked it, still live in the recollection of the descendants of some of those, who suffered on the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... always must be, overwhelmingly against him. Without interference from any one he had already formulated plans for quietly putting Monty in his rightful position, and making over to him his share in the Bekwando Syndicate. But to arrange this without catastrophe would need skill and tact; interference from any outside source would be fatal, and Francis meant to interfere—nothing would stop him. Trent walked backwards and forwards with knitted brows, glancing every now and then at ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... grave danger. Blue Bonnet felt a swift overpowering fear; the half-broken colts were as apt to plunge backward as to advance if they felt the whip, and that meant a plunge down the steep bank. She looked about her helplessly. Sarah, with a faint shriek, shut her eyes and prepared for the catastrophe. ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... that picture is the only thing I clearly remember during those earlier days. I have no recollection of the disaster, which, at four years old, altered my life. The catastrophe, as others have described it, was that we three boys were riding cock- horse on the balusters of the second floor of our house in Montagu Place, Russell Square, when we indulged in a general melee, which resulted in all tumbling over into the vestibule ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ground, we prefer a simple and natural, to an artificial and affected style; a regular and well-connected story, to loose and scattered narratives; a catastrophe which is tender and pathetic, to one which leaves us ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... appartient a la terre, support impassible de l'homme, et il resemble a toutes les plaines. La nuit pourtant une espece de brume visionnaire s'en degage, et si quelque voyageur s'y promene, s'il regarde, s'il ecoute, s'il reve comme Virgile dans les funestes plaines de Philippes, l'hallucination de la catastrophe le saisit. L'effrayant 18 juin revit; la fausse colline-monument s'efface, ce lion quelconque se dissipe, le champ de bataille reprend sa realite; des lignes d'infanterie ondulent dans la plaine, des galops furieux traversent l'horizon; le ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... conciliatory, or it may be insulting and calculated to invite resistance. A magazine may be dangerous in itself, for an accidental spark or an unintended friction of apparently harmless substances may cause it to explode; but, at the same time, the catastrophe may be brought on by the wilful folly of those whose duty it is to provide the necessary precautions against danger. The North has unquestionably been right in the contest on slavery, as to all the moral and economical aspects ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ambling withal for a certain time, and then of breaking into a headlong gallop—bolting free—plunging to catastrophe or liberty. Kate went her busy ways for a fortnight, somewhat chastened in spirit, secretly a little ashamed, and altogether very determined to make such a useful person of herself that she could forget her apparent lack of attractions (for she told herself mercilessly that if ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... favour, they would gratefully repay his care with sweet fruit. But there is yet one thing to be told, which, though it may not be regarded as germane to the mighty event of the Reformation, grew so plainly out of the signal catastrophe related in the foregoing chapter, that it were to neglect the instruction mercifully intended were I not to describe all its circumstances and particularities ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... behoved him to set some altered course of life before him. He could not shoot his rival or knock him over the head, nor could he carry off his girl, as used to be done in rougher times. There was nothing now for a man in such a catastrophe as this but submission. But he might submit and shake off his burden, or submit and carry it hopelessly. He told himself that he would do the latter. She had been his goddess, and he would not now worship at another shrine. And then ideas came into his head,—not ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... confirmed in the very bad opinion, which I was always apt to have, of the Intrigues of the Popish Clergy, and of the Confessors of Kings: He was undone by them, and was their Martyr, so that they ought to bear the chief load of all the errors of his inglorious Reign, and of its fatal Catastrophe. He had the Funeral which he himself had desired, private, and without any sort ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... before him, Sir John Monteith; the young chieftain whom he had parted with a few months ago at Douglas; and from whose fatal invitation to that castle he might date the ruin of his dearest happiness, and all the succeeding catastrophe! ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... what had broken the friendship between Fanny and her worthless brother. I feared a catastrophe when Mr. Faringfield should learn of the occurrence at the tavern. But, thanks to the silence of us who were concerned, and to the character of the few gentlemen with whom he deigned to converse, it never came to his ears. Ned, restored to his senses, and fearing for his maintenance, made no attempt ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Licinia thus blurted out was but a confirmation of what Dea had already feared. Every drop of blood within her seemed to turn to ice, horror gripped her heart, the oncoming catastrophe appeared suddenly before her, vivid, swift and inevitable. But she contrived to steady her voice and to appear ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the story. Often and often when we children were playing in the park did we wander about, trying to settle from which tree the arrow glanced, conjuring up before our eyes the whole scene—the king's anger and the archbishop's despair at the catastrophe—and feeling the while a proud personal interest in it all. Ah, what good days those were, roaming about knee-deep in heather, catching the rare moths, chasing the squirrels that whisked up the fir stems and mocked us from their high perch, searching the hollow trees for woodpeckers' nests, eating ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... miles outside the Golden Gate. Looking back from his pilot-boat a short time after, he saw the vessel stop, drift into the trough of the sea, careen to port, both bulwarks going under water, then suddenly capsize and sink. What was the cause of this sad catastrophe?—A want of ballast. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... occurred between the interchanges of conversation was a comradeship and a sympathetic understanding which both the man and the girl would have found it difficult to define. Was he in love with her? He was shocked at the possibility of such a catastrophe overtaking him. Love had never come into his life. It was a hypothetical condition which he had never even considered. He had known men to fall in love, just as he had known men to suffer from malaria or yellow fever, without ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... her, and my heart stood still with the sense of threatening catastrophe as I realized the attitude of the pair. He, as every word showed, was still ignorant of Gwendolen's fate, consequently of the identity of the child who I had every reason to believe was at that very moment fluttering a few steps below in the care of the colored maid, whose voice I could faintly ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... experienced it, I had not taken the trouble to prevent it. My watchfulness became extreme. I scrupulously avoided positions which I found specially exposed me to the accident. My restlessness became so great that, at last I was able to awake before the catastrophe. When I was not in time to prevent it, I would jump out of bed, with naked feet on to the polished floor, and with crossed arms pray to the Saviour to preserve me from the wiles of the devil. I would then impose some ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Company's war with the river and its repeated defeats Willard Holmes was forced to stand a mere observer, an idle looker-on. Foreseeing the catastrophe that was now upon them, he had prepared himself by careful study of every factor in the problem and by thorough knowledge of the situation to meet the crisis when it came. With every means at his command he had planned and worked that he might ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... determination of the great ethical question as to the moral responsibility for the present crime against civilization. That must be determined by the facts as they have been developed, and the nations and individuals who are responsible for this world-wide catastrophe must be held to a strict accountability. The truth of history inexorably ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... of all this speedily manifested themselves. The very next incident in the story was in some degree decisive of the catastrophe. Hitherto I have spoken only of preliminary matters, seemingly unconnected with each other, though leading to that state of mind in both parties which had such fatal effects. But all that remains is ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... clans withdrawn to let the various contendents for that honor fight it out? Or—what was more probable and dangerous—had the aliens come to the point of view that the Queen was in the main responsible for the catastrophe and were engaged in preparing too warm a welcome for any Traders who dared ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... her way through the water, dipping her nose into the waves raised by a stiff southeaster, Eric thought of the suddenness of the catastrophe if the Coast Guard cutter, in the darkness, should strike one of those abandoned hulks, floating almost level with the water, and scarcely ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... say, she is not tragic: she is too rational. And in her career there is no progression, no decline or degeneration. Her condition is once and for always. There is and will be no catastrophe. ...
— Eeldrop and Appleplex • T.S. Eliot
... reproaches to his country and to his country's government that must have passed through the mind of that devoted man during those months of unmerited desertion. In Gordon's letter of the fourteenth of December he said: "All is up. I expect the catastrophe in ten days' time; it would not have been so if our people had kept me better informed as ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... temps find pleasure in playing thus with young hopes and hearts as carelessly as though they were mere tennis-balls, to be whacked about and rallied, and volleyed hither and yon, without regard to their constituent ingredients, and then when trouble comes, and a catastrophe is imminent, the refuge of "only a boy" is sought as though it really afforded a sufficient protection against "responsibility." The most of us would regard the hopeless infatuation of a young girl committed to our care, either as parents or as ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
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