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More "Fathom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and upon its bosom floated tiny islands, those in the distance reduced to mere specks; but ever beyond them was the sea, until the impression became quite real that one was LOOKING UP at the most distant point that the eyes could fathom—the distance was lost in the distance. That was all—there was no clear-cut horizontal line marking the dip of the globe ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... nature and of mind. But religious faith is supreme trust in an unseen God and supreme obedience to his commands, without any other exercise of reason than the intuitive conviction that what he orders is right because he orders it, whether we can fathom his wisdom or not. "Canst thou by searching find ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... attributing the general distress to governmental cowardice and incapacity, those to conspirators and emeutes, still others to ignorance and general corruption,—and weary of the interminable quarrels of the tribune and the press, I sought to fathom the matter myself. I have consulted the masters of science; I have read a hundred volumes of philosophy, law, political economy, and history: would to God that I had lived in a century in which so much reading had been useless! I have made every effort to obtain exact information, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... inevitable—remains the flimsiest of our ideas and the only one that is backward? How should we know the one power which we never looked in the face? How could it profit by flashes kindled only to help us escape it? To fathom its abysses, we wait until the most enfeebled, the most disordered moments of our life arrive. We do not think of death until we have no longer the strength, I will not say, to think, but even to breathe. A man returning among us from another century would not recognize without ...
— Death • Maurice Maeterlinck
... with her hands behind her back, looking up at him with an expression he could not fathom. Suddenly she advanced, put up her lips ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... upon existence; it is acknowledged to be a science founded upon close observation, and so nearly allied to other sciences, that its pursuit is impracticable without them; that it requires years of patient toil to fathom its mysteries, and the undivided efforts of a mind to comprehend its purposes; and yet we are daily told of the most extraordinary cures, and of the discovery of sovereign remedies, in all cases and descriptions of disease, by ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Felicia with an air of wisdom that made Mrs. Bruce smile as she looked at the enthusiastic, vital beauty of this young girl, transformed into a new creature by the promise she had made to live the Christ-like life. "And I have reached certain conclusions in regard to it that you men are not yet able to fathom, but Mrs. ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... one of the oldest cub pilots on the river, and now on the Railroad Line steamer Trombone, sends us a rather bad account concerning the state of the river. Sergeant Fathom is a "cub" of much experience, and although we are loath to coincide in his view of the matter, we give his note a place in our columns, only hoping that his prophecy will not be verified in this instance. While introducing the Sergeant, "we ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... said Zoe, ironically, yet blushing a little, because her secret meaning was, "You are always at my apron strings, and have no time to fathom Fanny." ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... direct the hunt on the morrow within a few miles of the McLeod ranch, she would entice my sweetheart out and give me a chance to meet her. There was a roguish look in Miss Frances's eye during this disclosure which I was unable to fathom, but I promised during the few days' hunt to find some means to direct the chase within striking distance of the ranch ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... Another had climbed over the tender and ordered the runner to hold up. All this was regular programme, as I had explained to Miss Cullen, but here had been a variation which I had never heard of being done, and of which I couldn't fathom the object. When the train had been stopped, the man on the tender had ordered the fireman to dump his fire, and now it was lying in the road-bed and threatening to burn through the ties; so my first order was to extinguish it, and my second was to start ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... read the stars on high, Nathless we read your fortunes true; The stars may hide in the upper sky, But without glass we fathom you. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... dunes, and Bonnet, who had now taken the helm, headed the sloop cautiously for this opening. One of the men constantly heaved the lead and cried the soundings as the ship progressed. The pirate chief kept to the left of the channel and finally passed through into a wide lagoon, with a scant fathom to spare at the shallowest place. The Fortune entered without difficulty, but the deeply-laden Francis grounded midway in and had to wait several hours for the ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... These silver mists shall melt away And dew the woods with glittering spray. Then in broad lustre shall be shown That mighty trench of living stone. And each huge trunk that from the side, Reclines him o'er the darksome tide, Where Tees, full many a fathom low, Wears with his rage no common foe; Nor pebbly bank, nor sand-bed here, Nor clay-mound checks his fierce career, Condemned to mine a channelled way O'er ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... when one attempts to fathom the mysteries surrounding the origin and migrations of the Negrito race he becomes hopelessly involved in a labyrinth of conjecture. Did the Negritos come from somewhere in Asia, some island like New Guinea, or is their original home now sunk beneath the sea? ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... killed her, but for this hound of hers. My fellows have him tight and safe, as you see: but I was thinking by your leave to lodge him with you, yours being the nearest house for the safe keeping of such. But the plague is," says he, "there seems to be more in the business than I can fathom: for one half of these drenched villains take the man's part, while scarce one of them seems too well disposed towards the lady: although to my knowledge she has worked more than any ten of them ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... amazement. But she wasted no time, throwing off her jacket with a quick twist of her wrist. Later she might fathom the tortuosities of her tyrant's mind. All she knew now was that she might dance. With whom was a ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... not bother about trying to fathom Jim's little secret. He fancied that it would all be made plain shortly; certainly when they happened upon the stern old man who was day after day cheating himself out of happiness, by refusing to let bygones be bygones, and ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... and the causes not difficult to fathom. The fact was, that Godolphin had now arrived at that period of existence when a man's character is almost invariably subject to great change; the crisis in life's fever, when there is a new turn in our fate, and our moral death or regeneration is sealed by the silent ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... such ideas; but the soul wearies of a pauseless flight; and, stooping from its wheeling circuits round and round this spot, suddenly it fell ten thousand fathom deep, into the abyss of the present— into self-knowledge—into tenfold sadness. I roused myself—I cast off my waking dreams; and I, who just now could almost hear the shouts of the Roman throng, and was hustled by countless multitudes, now beheld the desart ruins of Rome sleeping under its own ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... which a lover is waiting with a feast? It is better for him not to hear such things, for he is ready to go mad. He would not have given that girl for all Caesar's treasures, and she fled. What kind of love is that which dreads delight and gives pain? Who can understand it? Who can fathom it? Were it not for the hope that he should find her, he would sink a sword in himself. Love surrenders; it does not take away. There were moments at the house of Aulus when he himself believed in near happiness, but now he knows that she hated him, that she hates him, and will ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... the rocks in three-fathom water, watching the pollock catch prawns, and the wrasses nibble barnacles off the rocks, shells and all, when he saw a round cage of green withes; and inside it, looking very much ashamed of himself, sat his friend the lobster, twiddling ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... you with a scrutinizing gaze, Resolved to fathom these your secret ways: But, sift them as I will, Your ways ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... conducted thither by certain English mariners which had been there with our Captain, in some of his former voyages. He had now left a plate of lead, nailed fast to a mighty great tree (greater than any four men joining hands could fathom about) on which were engraven these words, directed ...
— Sir Francis Drake Revived • Philip Nichols
... first week in August found them harboured at Eastport. They stayed there four days, not so much because the place abounded in interest as because the Adventurer, who had behaved splendidly for several hundred miles, suddenly refused to go another fathom. Steve said he guessed the engine needed a good overhauling, and Perry chortled and offered his services to Joe to help take it apart. But Joe, in spite of his invaluable and ever-present hand-book, acknowledged his limitations, and the job went to a professional and the Adventurer ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... soldiers during every campaign, which none endeavor to explain, other than the facts themselves. But as the soldier is nothing more than a small fraction of the whole of a great machine, so much happens that he cannot fathom nor explain, that it naturally makes a great number of soldiers, like the sailor, somewhat superstitious. But when we speak of moral courage, where is there a courage more sublime than the soldier marching, as he thinks, to his certain death, while all his comrades are taking their chances ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... being a big trout—at least until it lay gasping on the bank at his feet—was as unshaken after long years of mistaken calculation as when first he sallied forth to the babbling brook with a willow branch, a fathom of twine, ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... same distance from the junction of lagoon and river, we had our swimming-place. On an acre or two of grass and moss, removed from any habitation, grew a score of lofty cocoas, and under these we threw off our pareus or trousers and shirts. The bank of the stream was a fathom from the water which was brackish at high tide and sweet at low. With a short run and a curving leap we plunged into the flowing water. It was refreshing at the hottest hour. The Tahitians seldom dived head first, as we did, but jumped feet ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... chap it was not easy to fathom at first sight. He resembled his father slightly, but he was larger and better built, although somewhat too flat across the chest. He seemed to affect a drawl, and the grasp of his ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... incomprehensible to him. Why under heaven had she done it? How could one so sensitive have done a wanton cruel thing like this? Her reason he could not fathom. The facts that confronted him were that she had done it, and had meant to carry the crime through. Only detection had changed ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... my word, that then the reins were not held in. The lances they had were not light, but were big and square; nor were they planed smooth, but were rough and strong. Upon the shields with mighty strength they smote each other with their sharp weapons, so that a fathom of each lance passes through the gleaming shields. But neither touches the other's flesh, nor was either lance cracked; each one, as quickly as he could, draws back his lance, and both rushing together, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... took together Steve asked Miss Grace how she happened to come from her home way up in New York down to Kentucky to teach mountain boys and girls, and she was silent a moment, a look which he could not fathom coming over her bright face. At last she said, "I was very foolish; I threw away happiness. Then I heard of this work and came here that I might redeem my life ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... civilization. On the Solomon Islands there are some petty reef communities which occupy themselves solely with fishing and making shell-bead money.[319] On New Britain divarra is made by boring and stringing fathoms of shell money. A fathom is worth two shillings sterling, and two hundred and fifty fathoms coiled up together looks like a life buoy.[320] In the northwestern Solomon Islands the currency consists of beasts' teeth of two kinds,—those of a kind of flying dog and of a kind of dolphin. Each ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... too, at length was found, and the smith forged the necessary length of chain. Then, taking advantage of a favourable day, when breeze sufficient blew to reveal the tell-tale spot of calm water, the treasure-hunter started in his boat, leaving one end of the chain on shore and paying out fathom after fathom as his boat swept round the calm and again reached shore. Now hitching the yauds to one end and the oxen to the other, the animals were cautiously started by the twin drivers. Slowly the chain swept over the bed of the lough, and tightened, fast ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... got no breath to waste in hollering," he panted. "Why, there's a good fathom and a half or two fathom o' water under her keel, and if I slack out down she'll go. Wants a couple o' boats to back in, one on each side, and get a rope under her thwarts. They could get her ashore then. Oh, dear! oh, dear! ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... than that section just considered was dealt with. Each station consisted of one chief officer, one chief boatman, two commissioned boatmen, and four established boatmen. There was a six-oared boat with her rudder and wash-boards—"wash-streaks" they are officially called—a five-fathom rope as a light painter, eight good ash oars, two boat-hooks. She was a sailing craft, for she was provided with a fore-mast, main-mast, and mizzen-mast, with "haul-yards," travellers, down-hauls, sheets, &c. Her canvas consisted ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... "But I can't quite fathom him," confessed Hodge. "If ever I saw a deceptive young scoundrel, it's that chap. At times he's so meek and modest that he dazes me. At other times he's so flippant and forward that I want to collar him and shake him ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... explicable but unexplained. The most formidable men are her friends, and why? Nobody dares to fathom the mystery. Then is this person the lion ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... regions of scientific reality, he would not allow himself to be drawn into the regions of the strange and almost of the supernatural; but yet how to explain why Top, one of those sensible dogs who never waste their time in barking at the moon, should persist in trying with scent and hearing to fathom this abyss, if there was nothing there to cause his uneasiness? Top's conduct puzzled Cyrus Harding even more than he cared ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... quick to note the contemptuous tone in her voice, and he gave her a keen, searching look as if he were trying to read her thoughts and fathom the reason for her very ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... money. He had learned of Mrs. Amos purchasing the ranch and paying for it in gold, and wondered at the time. Then he thought that perhaps Amos was trying to throw him off the purchase of the mine in order to secure the property himself. There was a mystery somewhere he could not fathom. ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... a short sail round the cliff. Just as they were putting in to the shore, the wind shifted with a sudden gust, the boat listed over, and it was thought they were both drowned. How it could have happened was beyond his mind to fathom, for John Green knew how to sail a boat as well as ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... writes] we always found more shallow water, and the sea thick, black, and very muddy, and came at length into five fathom water; and seeing this we determined to pass over to the land which we had seen on the other side, and here likewise we found as little depth or less, whereupon we rode all night in five fathom water, and we perceived the sea to run with so ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... so was the nightgown that he wore, instead of coat and waistcoat, over his ragged shirt. He was long unshaved; but what most distressed and even daunted me, he would neither take his eyes away from me nor look me fairly in the face. What he was, whether by trade or birth, was more than I could fathom; but he seemed most like an old, unprofitable serving-man, who should have been left in charge of that big ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... matter-of-fact (pre-Raphaelite) school of this country, we find the same absence of abstract truth, together with a painful stiffness, and the want of a sense for beauty. We are not sufficiently practical artists to fathom the difficulty, but it seems to us to arise from the absence of one of the most prominent elements of beauty and interest to be found in the universe, namely, mystery. If, in the metaphysical world, with our ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... necessary to cease paddling, during which the boat lost considerable way, I was unwilling to discourage the men, and reluctantly gave up my intention of ascertaining the depth and the character of the bed. There was a general shout in the boat when we found ourselves in one fathom, and we soon after landed on a low point of mud, immediately under the butte of the peninsula, where we unloaded the boat, and carried the baggage about a quarter of a mile to firmer ground. We arrived just in time for meridian observation, and carried the barometer to ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont
... branches, as sailors climb. I next taught them to use the lasso, a powerful weapon, by aid of which the people of South America capture savage animals. I fixed two balls of lead to the ends of a cord about a fathom in length. The Patagonians, I told them, used this weapon with wonderful dexterity. Having no leaden balls, they attach a heavy stone to each end of a cord about thirty yards long. If they wish to ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... "Who can fathom human enmity, or the ingenious cunning of the evil-doer?" asked the grey-faced rector quite calmly. "Have you never stopped to wonder at the marvellous ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... imagination of the twentieth century cannot fathom the poverty of the eighteenth. The great development of mines and manufactures, which has brought ease and independence within the reach of industrious labour everywhere, had hardly begun; employment was so scarce and intermittent, and wages were so low, that the working classes ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... humble writer. For the western country, as a hardy and profitable stock of thrifty hogs, the Berkshire mixed or crossed with the Poland China, would be my choice, but every man has his own notions concerning the breed of his stock. The main point is to keep them healthy. Please fathom these instructions, which will cost you no ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... to our room, and asked us if we knew John Wollam. We hesitated to answer, as we could not fathom the motives of the inquiry. But even while we deliberated among ourselves, John came up, and ended our doubts by greeting us heartily. He had been parted from us some three weeks, and in that time had suffered most incredible hardships in the manner ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... thus solely with surfaces. It can name the thickness of reality, but it cannot fathom it, and its insufficiency here is essential ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... to fathom the mental capacity and the mental processes of some of the highest mammals, there is the same superior degree of interest attaching to the study of wild species that the ethnologist finds in the study ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... opposite corner the doll sat staring at them with eyes of blank blue and her vacuous smile. A vague sense of injury was over Ellen, in spite of her delight and her gratitude—a sense of injury which she could not fathom, and for which she chided herself. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... is that?" demanded the skipper of the Gull, as our boom-end came within a fathom of his rail, our name being ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... additional fact to record among the errors of the human mind, and a great experiment on the strength of the imagination." Over that vast inquiry of the influence of mind over matter, — an inquiry which the embodied intellect of mankind will never be able to fathom completely, — it will, at least, have thrown a feeble and imperfect light. It will have afforded an additional proof of the strength of the unconquerable will, and the weakness of matter as compared with it; another illustration of the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... to Roderick's heart, but he had to master his own agony a moment, in the effort to support Pauline who had utterly broken down. When she had recovered sufficiently, he protested tenderly that there was a mystery in all this which he was unable to fathom, and entreated her to help him discover it by telling him minutely all that had happened since they had last met. She gradually summoned strength and composure enough to do so, relating in detail ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... seeing that 'tis the custom of the country to eat off the floor and sit upon nothing. A pot to cook victuals in is about all we need in that way. But how we are to get anything to cook in it is one mystery, and" (clacking his tongue) "what we are going to drink is another, neither of which I can fathom. For, look you, Senor, if one may judge of men's characters by their faces or of their means by their habitations, we may dance our legs off ere ever these Moors will bestow a penny piece upon us, and as for their sour milk, I'd as lief drink hemlock, and liefer. Now, if this ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... what the lead reported. I felt my voice shaking and the leadsman's voice shook a bit too as he called back that he had found the bottom with the red seventeen fathom mark. Half a minute later he sang out that his line had lost it. I was just about calling to let go anchor when away on our starboard bow we heard the pilots hailing. We sent up a flare, and at sight of it the lighthousemen, ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... had read of such things in books; were there such things actually in the family, and she had never known of them? A few hours ago and she had been unable to think of anything but her first ball, her new dress, her flowers; but she was seized now with the most intense desire to fathom this mystery. That it bid fair to be a sad mystery only made her more eager and curious. She was so young, so ignorant, there was still a halo of romance about those unknown things, trouble ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... your dreamy, tranquil life, How can you fathom the rage and strife, The blinding envy, the burning smart, That, worm-like, gnaws the Maestro's heart When he sees another snatch the prize Out from under his very eyes, For which he would barter his soul? You see I taught him his art from first to last: Whatever he was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... converted into such clinging slush by a few minutes' rain. Then immediately below, for eight feet or so, there is a curious soil full of stones and debris, which must mean something geologically, but which no one can explain. Finally, at about a fathom and a half there is a sea of despond—the real and solid substratum, thick, tightly bound clay, which has to be pared off in thin slices just as you would do with very old cheese. This is work ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... there, and glancing upwards from the street as the carriage drove off, I waved my hand to the slim black figure at the window, whose wan, weary eyes watched our departure with an expression which at the time I could not fathom. It was not until I was actually in the train that I remembered what Lady Delahaye's silent departure might mean ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... high advantage of their assistance and counsel in the labor of self-culture, to which he now addressed himself with wonted energy. Yet, these gentlemen, although proud of Frederick Douglass, failed to fathom, and bring out to the light of day, the highest qualities of his mind; the force of their own education stood in their own way: they did not delve into the mind of a colored man for capacities which the pride of race led them to believe to be restricted to their own Saxon blood. Bitter and vindictive ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... old one, and daddy's having a new shirt made out of the old sheet, and mammy's making a new sheet out of the old table-cloth.' But 'twistings and turnings' of a marvellous kind there must have been, which the male understanding could not fathom; for while the house was always in order, and the two ladies looked as neat as if they had just stepped out of a bandbox, no bills came in, and a little money ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... see at a glance that the style of this message, from beginning to end, is not Charles Brad-laugh's. Whose style it is we cannot say. We do not pretend to fathom the arcana of Spiritualism. It may be Mr. Reedmam's, it may be another's. If it be Mr. Reedman's, he must have been guilty of fraud or the victim of deception. Three distinct hypotheses are possible. Either someone else produced or concocted the message while ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... and each, seating himself on the only two deal chairs, laughed immoderately at my doleful complaints. The gaunt Norwegian, the owner of this humble dwelling, made such comical grimaces, and winked his little eyes so frequently and eruditely, in endeavouring to fathom their mirth, that I could not restrain myself, and took a conspicuous part in the joke. After arranging, through King, who had come with us, as forming one of the boat's crew, where and how we should sleep, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... above the surface of the lake, and in the hand was a fair sword that gleamed in the level rays of the setting sun. "This is a great marvel," said the King, "what may it mean?" And Merlin made answer: "Deep is this mere, so deep indeed that no man may fathom it; but in its depths, and built upon the roots of the mountains, is the palace of the Lady of the Lake. Powerful is she with a power that works ever for good, and she shall help thee in thine hour of need. For thee has she ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay
... Ramon Mansford stood within the vestibule of the former's home. Ramon's arm was around Alene's waist and her beautiful black eyes were upturned to his, as if to say, "Fathom the love we tell of, if you can." Down stoops Ramon and plants a fervent, lingering kiss upon the lips of the girl he loves, saying, ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... hints like those Chrysophrasia had let fall, that he should place himself in such a position as to defy insults instead of being obliged to bear them quietly; and the conviction brought home to him by Hermione's words had resulted in his immediate departure, with the determination to fathom the mystery, and to clear himself forever, or to sacrifice his love in ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... habit—that her ease was the result of life-long practice. Sometimes he found his own consciousness of her steady gaze almost unbearable. He always turned to meet her deep eyes fixed upon him with an expression he could not fathom. Frequently he thought it an expression of dislike—of secret resentment—of subtle defiance. There came at last a time when he knew that he turned toward her again and again because he felt ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... some of the thoughts that surged through Van's mind as he and Bob settled themselves into their places on the train and began the attempt to fathom the reams of directions Mr. Blake had sent them; pages and pages there were of what to do and what not to do on the long trip, the letter closing with ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... now she could not ask them from that bowed head, nor yet from those clasped hands. And yet, somehow, it seemed that something of the man's soul was revealed to her at this moment, though she could not as yet fathom the meaning of this ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... is their home. There, the place to which every race on earth sends a representative, the pulse of the whole world is throbbing. There, whoever does not run with the rest is run over; there, but one thing is important—actual life. Science has undertaken to fathom it, and the results which it gains with measures and numbers is of a different value and more lasting than that which the idle sport of the intellects of the older philosophers obtained. But art, her nobler sister, must pursue the same paths. To copy life as it is, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... confidences, but this matter of Annabel Summerhayes was one which her father had forbidden Rose to mention; and around the memory of her mother there had grown a mystery which the girl was unable to fathom. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... have trouble with the little 'un," said Master Polwhele to his captain. "She don't draw half a fathom more than we do. No good running inside the shoals. And with this wind, she has the foot ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... that his silent unknown foe held the clue to the mystery he was trying to fathom. He fought on, silently, grimly. The cold creatoid fabric was slippery, but a sudden jerk of an arm, a certain quick twist that Grant was familiar with, and his enemy went limp. Grant's breath was coming in quick, labored gasps. There was very little air left ...
— Pirates of the Gorm • Nat Schachner
... notice, for in these earliest works Shakespeare is compelled to use his personal experience, to tell us of his own life and his own feelings, not having any wider knowledge to draw upon. Every word, therefore, in these first comedies, is important to those who would learn the story of his youth and fathom the idiosyncrasies of his being. When AEgeon, in the opening scenes, tells the Duke about the shipwreck in which he is separated from his wife and child, he declares that he himself "would gladly have embraced immediate death." No reason ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers—could I once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours—and the delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath us—I know not the fathom line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R—— is supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an umbrella, big enough ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... Music can be easily described in dry technical language, the language which deals in 'discords and their resolutions,' but that does not express its influence upon ourselves. No language can do that, for it is an attempt to fathom the infinite. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... with shame that my ideas on the subject are distressingly vague. I could never appreciate the poetry or the humor of making one's wrists ache by knocking to pieces gloomy-looking stones, or in dirtying one's fingers by analyzing soils, in a vain attempt to fathom the osteology or anatomy of our beloved earth, though my heart is thrillingly alive to the faintest shade of color and the infinite variety of styles in which she delights to robe her ever-changeful and ever-beautiful surface. ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... ere the article wanted could be passed along, the old boatswain had drawn out his from his waistband by means of the lanyard slung round his neck, and was busily employed in cutting up the signal halliards into short lengths of about a fathom each. ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... left, Glown-a-Coppal, the "Horse's Glen," invites the adventurous to fathom its depths. The dark lakes lying in its shadows are shoreless, but for the gloomy rocks which overhang the water's edge. Where the ground becomes more broken and rugged, suddenly a less inaccessible path arises, and leads to the Devil's Punch Bowl, a dark tarn, beset with strange echoes that ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... latitude of Ceylon, where the appearance of the flying fish excited the special wonder of the khan, who was by this time beginning, under the tuition of his fellow passengers, to make some progress in the English language, and had even attempted to fathom some of the mysteries of the science of navigation; "but though I took the sextant which the captain handed me, and held it precisely as he had done, I could make nothing of it." The regular performance of the Church ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... maze. What I have heard, Is plain, thou sayst: but wherefore God this way For our redemption chose, eludes my search. "Brother! no eye of man not perfected, Nor fully ripen'd in the flame of love, May fathom this decree. It is a mark, In sooth, much aim'd at, and but little kenn'd: And I will therefore show thee why such way Was worthiest. The celestial love, that spume All envying in its bounty, in itself With such effulgence blazeth, as sends ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... with," Slim answered, "there were forty fat pigs, each worth a fathom of prime shell-money, and shell-money worth a quid a fathom. That was two hundred dollars right there. There were ninety-eight fathoms of shell-money, which is pretty close to five hundred in itself. And there were twenty-two gold sovereigns. I split ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... Possibly she loves you deeply, only you do not believe it. Gauged by a woman's love, many men love, marry, and die, without even approximating the real grand passion themselves, or comprehending that which they have inspired, for no one but a woman can fathom a woman's love." ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... comedy after comedy, until I wrote you something that would run. You do me justice when you give me credit for good intentions; but the extent of my good-will and strong and warm interest in you personally and your great undertaking, you cannot fathom ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... wandered around the city awhile. In his paraNormal days he had never noticed them but it certainly was true that there were a lot of Suspendeds about. He studied some of them as he went along, trying to fathom their likes and dislikes by the way they moved and their expressions. But, unlike the paraNormals, each was different and it was impossible to see deeply ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... on the edge of a crevasse and disappears. His soul dropped into the frozen cleft that one cannot fathom." ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... where the rope was got, and doubt if I much cared. It was not that which gravelled me, but whether, now that we had it, it would serve our turn. Its length, indeed, we made a shift to fathom out; but who was to tell us how that length compared with the way we had to go? Day after day, there would be always some of us stolen out to the Devil's Elbow and making estimates of the descent, whether by a bare guess or the dropping of stones. A private ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from tawny jaws breathed flame of blazing fire, and with bronze hoofs smote the earth in alternate steps, and had led them and yoked them single-handed, he marked out in a line straight furrows, and for a fathom's length clave the back of the loamy earth; then he spake thus: 'This work let your king, whosoever he be that hath command of the ship, accomplish me, and then let him bear away with him the imperishable coverlet, the fleece glittering with tufts ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... "Three fathom o' water here, my lad," whispered Josh, as with his companion he leaned over the side and gazed ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... these dark comets should overtake the earth and strike it, the velocity of impact would be about eight miles per second; but if it should meet the earth in a head-on collision, the speed, when it struck, would be forty-five miles per second, a momentum beyond the power of the brain to fathom—indeed, man can not think of sixty miles per minute. Let a solid nucleous collide with the earth and imagination would reel at ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... craggy rocks, And thickets intricate, trembling he views His footsteps in the sand; the dismal road And avenue to death. Hither he calls 230 His watchful bands; and low into the ground A pit they sink, full many a fathom deep. Then in the midst a column high is reared, The butt of some fair tree; upon whose top A lamb is placed, just ravished from his dam. And next a wall they build, with stones and earth Encircling round, and hiding from all view ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... Whately have seen clear into the man's cruel, cunning little mind, she would have been unutterably shocked at the ugly motives contending there. But she couldn't see. She was made for sunshine and quiet ways. She could never fathom the gloom. It was from her father that Marjie inherited all that strong will and courage and power to walk as bravely in the shadows as in the light, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... with Edith Franks. Edith took an interest in her; she still believed that there was something behind the scenes—something which she could not quite fathom—but at the same time she fully and with an undivided heart believed in Florence's great genius, as ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... sad intensity in the eyes, as if trying to fathom any nether thought that he might have. It must have seemed to her at first that he was mocking her, but his words brought her the only relief from her self-upbraiding she had known. To suffer kindness from Miss Kingsbury would be ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... 1. The people were brought into the Hall, and enjoyed their meal with great appetites, being also treated to a glass of wine and a fathom of tobacco ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... uncanniness there is no doubt. We do not, and never shall, fathom the depth of a Chinaman's brain. After mutually looking at the same object from widely-different points of view we express our ideas, talk them over and invite criticism, while he—is silent. He listens ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... north side, thirty-odd miles from the mouth, they came to a certain peninsula, an island at high water. Two or three miles long, less than a mile and a half in breadth, at its widest place composed of marsh and woodland, it ran into the river, into six fathom water, where the ships might be moored to the trees. It was this convenient deep water that determined matters. Here came to anchor the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. Here the colonists went ashore. Here the members of the Council were sworn, ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... secrets to themselves, and I think you will agree with me it was in the highest degree consonant with justice that we should make them reveal them all to us." Small wonder that we missed this vital point, that we failed to fathom the force behind the German chemical war, if such an eminent authority was left groping for the truth. There was no time for mature reflection with the problems of war supply pressing forward in an endless stream. Lord ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... He, the charm of the town, in age scarce more than a stripling:— (He was acquainted with life, and knew the wants of his hearers, Fully convinced of the worth of the Holy Scriptures, whose mission Is to reveal man's fate, his inclinations to fathom; He was also well read in the best of secular writings.) "I don't like to find fault with any innocent impulse Which in the mind of man Dame Nature has ever implanted; For what reason and intellect ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... swept by her unheeded now. Why had not God been merciful to her, that she could have died there upon the sea, she thought. Ah, poor humanity never learns His mercy; perhaps it is because we have no measure by which to fathom its mighty depths. She saw herself old and lonely, forgotten but not forgetting. But even then lacked she not opportunity; woman-like, in spite of her constancy, she took a melancholy pleasure in the thought that there was one still who ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... not think we have seen the last of our troubles, though why he should take a gloomy view of the situation is more than I can fathom, since every one else on board considers that we have had a miraculous escape, and are sure now to ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... between all animals. He tried hard to conceive of some underlying natural cause by which all could have come about. As he grew older and his mind became more cautious he came to think the matter deeper than the human mind could ever fathom. He gave up the hope and believed the problem of animal origin and derivation would forever remain insoluble. He feared there was not in man the power to conceive his ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... remained in the breakfast-room, still nursing her injured companion, and very busy with her own thoughts. She was as convinced now that Tom had been true to her as if she had had the assurance from his own lips. Still there was much that was unaccountable—much which she was unable to fathom. A vague sense of the wickedness around her depressed and weighed her down. What deep scheme could these men have invented to keep him away from her during these long weeks? Was he, too, under some delusion, or the victim of some conspiracy? Whatever had been done was certainly connived ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to become reconciled to such a condition of affairs. No one seemed interested enough to fathom the reason for it, except a certain young peasant, named Micah, who had a home in the town of Moresheth, and was the proud possessor of several well-paying olive groves and vineyards ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... went out into the street, into the sunlight, into the busy world around him; but from that time forth a shadow rested on his young life that had never darkened it before,—a shadow whose cause he could not fathom and whose gloom he ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... and euen the roofe of the church was painted ful of images. The chiefe image was of our Ladie, which was garnished with gold, rubies, saphirs and other rich stones abundantly. In the midst of the church stood 12. waxe tapers of two yards long, and a fathom about in bignesse, and there stands a kettle full of waxe with about 100. weight, wherein there is alwayes the wicke of a candle burning, as it were a lampe which goeth not ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... on high in masses huge and dense; Where camest thou? thou ragged ball thrown out from time, and whence Doth thou intend to fathom realms of endless space and years? Art weary of thy dizzy flights? ...
— Poems - A Message of Hope • Mary Alice Walton
... Man cannot give assurance that sin is pardoned; in other words, man cannot absolve: but still the heart craves human assurance of forgiveness. What truth have we got to supply that craving? We shall therefore, rather try to fathom the deeps of the positive truth which is the true reply to the error; we shall try to see whether there is not a real answer to the craving contained in the Redeemer's words, "The Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins." What power is there in human forgiveness? What does ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... the cautious chin of an old man plunged into a situation which he could not fathom. "Would it not be better to consult the police first?" ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... of his madness and his folly; and not the thinnest phantom shadow of time divided him from the days of Harmouth, That moment of recognition annihilated all between; a lustre of his life swept away in one sweep of her eyelids, dropped fathom deep and forgotten in the gaze of her pure and tender eyes. It was not the Lucia of their last meeting; the tragic and terrible Lucia who had been so divided from him by her suffering and her grief. As she had ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... fond, almost a uxorious husband. The first burst of his wrath had long since passed away, and he was not disposed severely to censure what could not now be amended. The wily Lady Calista, accustomed from her earliest childhood to fathom the intrigues of a court, and watch the indications of a sovereign's will, hastened back to the Queen with the speed of a lapwing, charged with the King's commands that she should expect a speedy visit from him; ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... answered, 'I remember your wife very well. I could pick her out from ten thousand, but I have never seen her yet in the City of Light. You may, my dear friend, cherish only an illusion, and yet I am half willing to agree with you; such intuitive feelings have a deeper philosophy of truth than we can fathom, and no laughing skepticism, no mere frivolous doubt can expel them. Wait, my friend; it may yet be meant for you to meet her. And now I do recall some accounts told me of occasional visitants to Mars entering its life at different points; many indeed have been received ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... water had almost filled the level where it occurred, and, sweeping onward about eight fathoms to a winze, plunged down and partly over it. The greater part, however, went down to the eighty-five fathom level. East of this a man named Anguin, with his two sons, William and James—youths of about twenty years of age—were at work. They heard the roar of the approaching torrent, and the father and younger son James rushed towards the winze, intending to ascend the ladder. Before ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... framed some trifling excuse, at the same time darting significant glances at Wieland, as if to caution him against disclosing the truth. My brother said nothing, but delivered himself up to meditation. I likewise was silent, but burned with impatience to fathom this mystery. Presently my brother and his wife, and Louisa, returned home. Pleyel proposed, of his own accord, to be my guest for the night. This circumstance, in addition to those which preceded, gave new edge ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... everything but what fear constrain them to keep; crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension, ingenious enough in their own works, as may testify their weirs in which they take their fish, which are certain enclosures made of reeds and framed in the fashion of a labyrinth or maze set a fathom deep in the water with divers chambers or beds out of which the entangled fish cannot return or get out, being once in. Well may a great one by chance break the reeds and so escape, otherwise he remains a prey to the fishermen ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... said; "if you signal to them to veer out some more rope I could soon do it. I could not swim across the tide now, but if it were twenty fathom further ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... hut, conjuring her husband not to spy upon her privacy, since, in order to be safely delivered, she must assume a shape appropriate to her native land. He, however, suffered his curiosity to overcome him, and peeping in, saw her in the form of an eight-fathom crocodile. It resulted that having been thus put to shame, she left her child and returned to the ocean Kami's palace, declaring that there should be no longer any free passage between the dominions of the ocean Kami and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... shall the Spirit go To find this gift for Heaven;—"I know The wealth," she cries, "of every urn In which unnumbered rubies burn Beneath the pillars of CHILMINAR:[148] I know where the Isles of Perfume are[149] Many a fathom down in the sea, To the south of sun-bright ARABY;[150] I know too where the Genii hid The jewelled cup of their King JAMSHID,[151] "With Life's elixir sparkling high— "But gifts like these are not for the sky. "Where was there ever a gem that shone ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... go to the summit of the hill above this cave, and see what is to be seen there. Always look at both sides of a mystery if you would fathom it; ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... indicating that he wished to remain neutral. He felt that there was an intrigue at the bottom of it, whether comedy or tragedy; he was at his wit's end at not being able to fathom it, but in the meanwhile ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the theory of hereditary ideas. Nevertheless, she had become French enough to look at me with a dubious, albeit a good-natured eye. My motive in coming there and going farther without having any commercial object in view was more than she could fathom. After my visit to the dairy I fancy her private notion was that I was commissioned by the English Government to find out how Roquefort cheese was made, with a view to competition. At length, as we talked freely, she let the state of her mind with regard to me escape her unawares by putting ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... sprang out, and got a foothold. He seized the girl, and dragged her beside him. The boat turned clumsily over, and swirled away past. Then the wrecked couple climbed out of reach of the lunging waves, and stood breathless. Casely said, "That's a bad job, Jinny. The Cobbler'll be covered half a fathom in forty minutes' time." ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... be read, though the light was bad. On one wall between the windows a specimen chart was framed. Maps are good; but how much better are charts, especially when you cannot read them except by guessing at their cryptic lettering! About the coast line the fathom marks cluster thickly, and venture to sea in lines which attenuate, or become sparse clusters, till the chart is blank, being beyond soundings. At the capes are red dots, with arcs on the seaward side to show at what ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... quality, for it smelt of cool running water and nought besides. On the far bank the mists lay in wisps and streamers above the low-lying meadow, and the dark bulk of cattle and horses loomed through them like rocks in a vaporous sea. But a fathom from the ground the air was dry and clear; it was but in a shallow sea that these rocks were submerged, and on this side of the river where Daisy walked the banking-up of the path to form a protection to the garden against the spring ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... and was so recorded. The attack of two large bears, a Syrian and a sloth bear, upon a small Japanese black bear, in which the big pair deliberately attempted to disembowel the small victim, biting him only in the abdomen, always has been a puzzle to me. I cannot fathom the idea which possessed those two ursine minds; but I have no doubt that some of the book-making men who read the minds of wild animals as if they were open books could ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... you how it was that I was adrift, like a bear in a washing-tub. My first-mate was below. I had just relieved the deck, for in this blowing weather we must keep watch in harbour. The men were all at their dinner, when I heard the boat thumping under the main channels. I got into her to ease off a fathom or two of the painter; but as I hauled her ahead to get at the bend, it appears that the monkey of a boy who made her fast, and has been but a few months at sea, had made a 'slippery hitch;' so away it went, and I ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... along forty or fifty feet farther out. Some of them seem to be thirty feet out of the water; at one end they touch the cliff, and at the other there is a free passage. The water is very clear, but as far as I can judge I should say there is a depth of a fathom or a fathom and a half between the rocks and the cliff. Certainly a boat could row in to a position underneath where ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... Jack Benson on the scene, in contrast with the sham one, had opened the boatbuilder's eyes. He could not fathom, yet, what it all meant, but he was certain that his hitherto trusted young captain would be able to explain ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... mostly used for dunnage in stowing ships' cargoes, also for fuel, usually sold by the fathom; it is 3 feet 4 inches long, and 7-1/2 inches ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... that be the case, and if this offer be made in all sincerity, may God reward you!" for it was impossible for his generous disposition to suspect his brother of treachery and to fathom the wiles of a crafty nature; hence it happened that he was ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... Parliament, chaplains and led-captains, Noblemen with ribbons and stars, dove-coloured Quakers, Duchesses, quacks, fortune-hunters, lackeys, lank-haired Methodists, Bishops, and boarding-school misses. Ferdinand Count Fathom will be there, as well as my Lord Ogleby; Lady Bellaston (and Mr. Thomas Jones); Geoffry Wildgoose and Tugwell the cobbler; Lismahago and Tabitha Bramble; the caustic Mrs. Selwyn and the blushing Miss Anville. Be certain, too, that, sooner or later, you will encounter Mrs, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... hurriedly; and not a fathom's length away rode a second small boat; and standing forward were two men, their revolvers levelled directly at the heads of ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... no meeting. It may be as you think, and that she was but trying to lead you into the west; yet, for my part, I call it sorcery," and the old man crossed himself, for, like better men than himself, Turlough ascribed all he could not fathom to magic. "It seems to me that she is some witch who is hanging on ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... a crew of fifteen, including the skipper, the cook, the boy and two men for each boat. Each trawl had a thousand hooks, a strong ground line six thousand feet long, with a smaller line two and a half feet in length, with hook attached, at every fathom. These hooks were baited and the trawl was set each night. The six trawls stretched away from the vessel like the spokes from the hub of a wheel, the buoy marking the outer anchor of each trawl being ...
— Out of the Fog • C. K. Ober
... a greater misnomer? I protest I do not remember a single philosophical attempt made throughout the work to fathom the ultimate causes of the decline or fall of that empire. How miserably deficient is the narrative of the important reign of Justinian! And that poor scepticism, which Gibbon mistook for Socratic philosophy, has led ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... to do such things and not to be afraid. And they all splashed into the water that was on the top of the wharf. Then they let out the ropes from that end, but they didn't let them go. And the Industry lay out in the river, at anchor, about five fathoms from the end of the wharf. A fathom is six feet, and sailors generally measure distances in fathoms instead of ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins
... my heart in passion and hide my case as I may; But my case interprets for me and doth my love bewray. And whenas my lids brim over with tears,—lest the spy should see And come to fathom my secret,—"My eye is sore," I say. Of old I was empty-hearted and knew not what love was; But now I am passion's bondman, my heart to love's a prey. To thee I prefer my petition, complaining of passion and pain, So ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... Stockwell, who was beginning to fathom the dark ways of the coxswain. "The principal will suppose we have gone ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... ships could come up to the walls on either side. A great suburb, Loyang, lay beyond the northern water, connected with the city by the most celebrated bridge in China. Collinson's Chart in some points below the town gives only 1-1/4 fathom for the present depth, but Dr. Douglas tells me he has even now occasionally seen large junks come ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... you partly attribute it to want of exercise. I wish you were here amongst the green plains; we would take walks which would rival the Dolgelly ones, and you should tell stories, which I would believe, even to a CUBIC FATHOM OF PUDDING. Instead I must take my solitary ramble, think of Cambridge days, and pick up snakes, beetles and toads. Excuse this short letter (you know I never studied 'The Complete Letter-writer'), and believe me, my ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... fathom Annie's mind: Scarce could the woman when he came upon her, Out of full heart and boundless gratitude Light on a broken word to thank him with. But Philip was her children's all-in-all; From distant corners of the street they ran To greet his hearty welcome heartily; Lords of his house and of his ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... turn over the leaves of the book of the past, and study its economic aspect, as we have studied its political and literary aspect. We must follow living nations through their divers periods of development, and fathom the causes of the destruction of those that are dead. When we are dealing with the comparative study of the economic destinies of nations, our investigations are limited to a small number of individual nations—a further reason not to omit any, and above all, to scrutinize, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... appearance, and the moral struggle its presence caused Marmot, who, as postmaster, felt bound by every tie of duty to hold it inviolate for the addressee, while, as the centre of Birralong gossip, he yearned to fathom the secret of its source, even at the cost of opening it. During all the years which had elapsed since Slaughter first came upon the scene the struggle had gone on, and still the mystery was unsolved and the riddle ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... which the lieutenant had named Portland, from its very great resemblance to Portland in the British Channel, she suddenly fell into shoal water and broken ground. The soundings were never twice the same, jumping at once from seven fathom to eleven. However, they were always seven fathom or more; and in a short time the Endeavour got clear of danger, and again sailed in deep water. While the ship was in apparent distress, the inhabitants of the islands, who in vast numbers sat on ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... that seemed of moment. And now her brother spoke of saving her; it was a little late for that, she thought. Outside the coach his voice still urged her, and it grew peevish and angry, as was usual when he was crossed. In the end she consented to do his will. If she were to fathom this mystery that was thickening about her there seemed to be no other course. She ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... this boyish affection. His eyes twinkled and the wrinkles on his weather-beaten face ran together when I approached him in the field, or when we talked together beside the hearth fire or under the elm tree when the day's work was done. For some reason I cannot now fathom, unless it were the ambitious desire to put myself on a footing with his years and wisdom, I would assume with him an unnatural gravity. My wisdom consisted in asking him questions, any that happened to come into my head. I took for granted that he knew everything. Had he ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... in establishing his morals upon solid foundations; in spreading a wholesome education among his fellows. He would, unquestionably, have been much wiser, more fortunate, if he had agreed to let his idle, unemployed guides quarrel among themselves unheeded; if he had permitted them to fathom those depths calculated to astound the mind, to amaze the intellect, without intermeddling with their irrational disputes. But it is the essence of ignorance, to attach great importance to every thing which it ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... rose to the level of the highest thought, had from the earliest times to endure all the blessing and curse of an aristocracy of intellect. The Latin religion like every other had its origin in the effort of faith to fathom the infinite; it is only to a superficial view, which is deceived as to the depth of the stream because it is clear, that its transparent spirit-world can appear to be shallow. This fervid faith disappeared with the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... his sensitive nature—who can fathom the profound depths of his soul now stirred by two such entrancing sights as the high-smoking blackbird-pie won by his own prowess, and the little monarch for whose sake all this was brought about? The delicious smell excites him like draughts of rich old wine, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... it," returned Loring. "It would seem the sensible thing to do; but, through some curious psychology which I can not fathom, crooks seldom make away ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... migrations are doubtless dictated by the chances of food. I have once been visited by large flights of cross-bills; and whenever the snow lies long and deep on the ground, a flock of cedar-birds comes in mid-winter to eat the berries on my hawthorns. I have never been quite able to fathom the local, or rather geographical partialities of birds. Never before this summer (1870) have the king-birds, handsomest of flycatchers, built in my orchard; though I always know where to find them within half a mile. ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... and I knew that the overseer had no power over her person. He was overseer of the field-hands, and other slaves of the plantation— their master, with full licence of tongue and lash; but with all that, I knew that he had no authority over Aurore. For reasons I could not fathom, the treatment of the quadroon was, and had always been, different from the other slaves of the plantation. It was not the whiteness of her skin—her beauty neither—that had gained her this distinction. These, it is true, ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... is the sounding lead, with its line wound on a stick like that of a boy's kite. I soon found that much the best way to tell the fathoms, especially at night, was to measure the line as it was hauled in by opening my arms to the full stretch of one fathom between my hands. ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... unexceptional proceeding was looked on by many with grave offence. The Afghan officers muttered that this was mere braggadocio on the part of the sahibs; that the sport was only to show how they would spit and cut down the sons of the Prophet, if they had the chance! To fathom such depths of bigotry as this incident reveals is one of the many difficulties ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... to them his intentions and plan? Does what he says of this plan correspond with the effects, which we see? No. He informs them solely, that he is what he is; that he is a hidden God; that his ways are unspeakable; that he is exasperated against all who have the temerity to fathom his decrees, or to consult reason in judging ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... matter is that the autopsical research revealed absolutely nothing but a general disorganisation of the blood-corpuscles, a most peculiar thing, but one the significance of which none of us here can fathom. If it was poison that he took or that had been given to him, it was the most subtle, intangible, elusive, that ever came to my knowledge. Why, there is absolutely no trace ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... have you in your speech; your eyes now veiled, Where the light leaped to hear me voice his fame, Your blushes and your pallor have betrayed That which should lie uncounted fathom deep— The secret of a woman's ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... sought, though with feeble efforts, for a form of government more simple in its structure and more easy in its management. But his attachment to France, after all the pains which we have taken by inquiry and conjecture to fathom it, contains still something, it must be confessed, mysterious and inexplicable. The hopes of rendering himself absolute by Lewis's assistance seem so chimerical, that they could scarcely be retained with such obstinacy ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... water, over which a gossamerlike fleet of fishing catamarans already plied their craft. Their pilot, an old Arab, was a man of fun, and the specimens of his tongue are good. In some reference to the anchorage, he said, "Now if we only had two-fathom Ali here, you would not have all these difficulties. When they want to lay out an anchor, they have nothing to do but to hand it over to Ali, and he walks away with it into six or eight feet without any ado. I went once upon a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... rites appeared to be diabolical counterfeits of the Christian sacraments. With more probability the modern student of comparative religion traces such resemblances to the similar and independent workings of the mind of man in his sincere, if crude, attempts to fathom the secret of the universe, and to adjust his little life to its awful mysteries. However that may be, there can be no doubt that the Mithraic religion proved a formidable rival to Christianity, combining as it did a solemn ritual with aspirations after ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with our miserable senses, with our eyes which are unable to perceive what is either too small or too great, too near to, or too far from us; neither the inhabitants of a star nor of a drop of water ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... expected addition to Turnham's family. John embarked readily enough on the theme of his beautiful wife; but into his voice, as he talked, came a note of impatience or annoyance, which formed an odd contrast to his wonted self-possession. "Yes... her third, and for some reason which I cannot fathom, it threatens to prove the most trying of any." And here he went into medical detail ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... the five or nine years that also at the same time floated upward in his brain, explain why he categorically determined on eight years as the just, adequate punishment. Since not even humans, who are almost half-gods, can fathom the mystery of the genesis of ideas and the dictates of choice, appearing in their consciousness as ideas, it is not to be expected of a more dog to know the why of the ideas that animate it to ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... northern Germany and Denmark, prove that the mountain mass of Scandinavia was the nucleus of a huge ice-cap "radiating to a distance of not less than 1,000 miles, and thick enough to block up with solid ice the North Sea, the German Ocean, the Baltic, and even the Atlantic up to the 100-fathom line." In North America the same thing is proved by similar evidence. A gigantic ice-cap extending from Canada has glaciated all the minor mountain ranges to the south, sweeping over the whole continent. The drift and boulders still ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... deep, twenty," sang out the man in the chains. A short time afterwards, "fifteen fathom," then "twelve." Just at daylight she was in ten fathoms of water. As the sun rose, the marks denoting the entrance to Waterloo Bay were seen under the lee. The bay afforded no shelter with the wind blowing, as it then did, directly into it. Jack ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... doll sat staring at them with eyes of blank blue and her vacuous smile. A vague sense of injury was over Ellen, in spite of her delight and her gratitude—a sense of injury which she could not fathom, and for which she chided herself. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Jacob's expedition, Frank again remained at home. He had been out all the morning. Jacob looked anxiously at him when he returned. He clearly had not been drinking—at any rate immoderately—yet there was something in his look which Jacob could not fathom, and if ever Frank met his servant's eye, his own ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... governmental cowardice and incapacity, those to conspirators and emeutes, still others to ignorance and general corruption,—and weary of the interminable quarrels of the tribune and the press, I sought to fathom the matter myself. I have consulted the masters of science; I have read a hundred volumes of philosophy, law, political economy, and history: would to God that I had lived in a century in which so much reading had been useless! I have made every effort to obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Heaven's sake," I exclaimed, "the method—if method there is—by which you have been enabled to fathom my soul in this matter." In fact I was even more startled than I would have been willing ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as she was. And it got to be night and they knew they'd ought to be 'most onto the edge of the flats off here, if their reck'nin' was nigh right. They hove the lead and got five fathom. ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the British navy and mercantile marine are supplied in 121/2 fathom and 15 fathom lengths respectively, connected together by "joining shackles", D (fig. 1). Each length is "marked" by pieces of iron wire being twisted round the studs of the links; the wire is placed on the first studs on each side of the first shackle, on the second ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... house meeting Lorne had been "all worked up." She watched him with furtive anxious looks, was solicitous about his food, expressed relief when she knew him to be safely in bed and asleep. He himself observed himself with discontent, unable to fathom his extraordinary lapse from self-control on the night of his final address. He charged it to the strain of unavoidable office work on top of the business of the campaign, abused his nerves, talked of a few days' rest when they had settled Winter. He could think of nothing ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... indeed?' she answers, holdin' her needle for a moment— an' her voice was all hollow, like as if she pumped it up from a fathom or two. 'Then, if he knows what's due to his wife, I'll trouble en to come round,' she says; 'for this here's the door I mean to go ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the mystery of aspect, and how it is that the objects around us take so many different forms, or rather appearances, although they themselves remain the same. And also that it enables us, with, I think, great pleasure to ourselves, to fathom space, to work out difficult problems by simple reasoning, and to exercise those inventive and critical faculties which give strength and enjoyment to ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey
... quite true that the Gospel is simple, but it is also true that it is deep, and they will best appreciate its simplicity who have most honestly endeavoured to fathom its depth. When we let our little sounding lines out, and find that they do not reach the bottom, we begin to wonder even more at the transparency of the clear abyss. It is not simplicity in Christ, but towards Christ of which the Apostle is speaking; not a quality in Him, but a quality ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... mind. But religious faith is supreme trust in an unseen God and supreme obedience to his commands, without any other exercise of reason than the intuitive conviction that what he orders is right because he orders it, whether we can fathom his wisdom or not. "Canst thou by searching find ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... him there, and glancing upwards from the street as the carriage drove off, I waved my hand to the slim black figure at the window, whose wan, weary eyes watched our departure with an expression which at the time I could not fathom. It was not until I was actually in the train that I remembered what Lady Delahaye's silent departure might mean ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... fool, tortured into wisdom, was that what she meant? It was always hard to fathom her meanings. Could it ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... coral garden, worrying it like a bull-dog. As the struggling fish splashed on the surface the groper, abandoning its illegitimate prey, swerved swiftly downwards. The retreat was a second too late, for Tom had seized the, harpoon lying athwart the boat, and though the fish appeared through a fathom and a half of water, a vague, fleeting, contorted shadow, he reached it. The barbed point passed through it, carrying a foot or two of the line, and a 30-pounder was added to our catch at one stroke and without a tremor of excitement ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... somewhat richer class. It will accommodate about 900 people; but, as at Wesley Chapel, so here—there are more sittings than sitters. "It has been known to hold 1,300, on an excursion," said a quiet-minded young man to us when we were at the chapel; but we didn't understand the young man, couldn't fathom his "excursion" sentiments, and afterwards threw ourselves into the arms of one of the ministers for numeric protection. There is a good gallery in the building, and the pillars which support it prop up a sort of arched canopy, like an oblong umbrella, which ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Norey's Chart, The very place it tells: I think it says twelve fathom deep, Clay bottom, mixed ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... Who can fathom her ideas about the gods, or about death? Does she possess a soul? Does she think she has one? Her religion is an obscure chaos of theogonies as old as the world, treasured up out of respect for ancient customs; and of more recent ideas about the blessed final annihilation, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... playmates as children, they had been at school together, and had always shared each other's confidences, but this matter of Annabel Summerhayes was one which her father had forbidden Rose to mention; and around the memory of her mother there had grown a mystery which the girl was unable to fathom. ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... him, for the woods were wide and deep, and it must be a long way to the other side. There surely could be no habitation within their precincts, and Florence's curiosity was strongly excited to fathom the mystery, which in her eyes ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the S.E. of the anchorage. He went with the boats and some armed men. At the foot of the cape there was the mouth of a fair river, and on entering it they found the width to be a hundred paces, with a depth of one fathom. Inside they found 12, 5, 4, and 2 fathoms, so that it would hold all the ships there are in Spain. Leaving the river, they came to a cove in which were five very large canoes,[164-1] so well constructed that it was a pleasure to look ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... had brought about a kind of understanding, that the house should to some extent keep to itself, resent all intrusion into its own precincts, and maintain a profound silence about its own secrets. Besides all this, Walter bitterly and sorrowfully felt that for some reason, which he was unable to fathom, the whole school was just then in an unsatisfactory state, and that Charlie, for whom his whole heart yearned with brotherly love and pity, would be exposed to severe temptations in whatever house he should be placed. He hoped too that, as Charlie would ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... (the monastery was situated at the gates of the town) Augustin was happy: he had at last realized the project he had had so long at heart. To enter into himself, pray, above all, to study the Scripture, to fathom even its most obscure places, to comment it with the fervour and piety which the African of all times has brought to what is written down—it seemed to him that he had enough there to fill all the minutes of his life. But no man can teach, lecture, discuss, write, during twenty years, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... Whipple moored his squadron in a line with fort Moultrie, in a narrow passage between Sullivan's Island and the middle ground; and the British ships, without their guns, passed the bar, and anchored in five fathom hole. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... laughed over it subsequently, and until a few weeks after George's marriage, when he also was caught in the little Circe's toils, and had an understanding with her which his comrade certainly suspected, but preferred to ignore. William was too much hurt or ashamed to ask to fathom that disgraceful mystery, although once, and evidently with remorse on his mind, George had alluded to it. It was on the morning of Waterloo, as the young men stood together in front of their line, surveying the black masses of Frenchmen who ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was discovered that there was but a thin covering of dirt on the solid ice below; but anon in striking the ground with the end of an alpine stick it would prove to be but an inch of ice and dirt mixed, and a dark abyss below which we could not fathom. It is to be hoped, for the good of future tourists, that there are not many such places, or that they may soon be exposed so they can be avoided. Reaching the top after a tedious and slippery climb, there was a long view of icy billows, as if the sea ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... continual attrition of a life of goodness, God will let it wear away? It will lessen and lessen, until at the last, when the Ocean of Eternity beats against it, it shall go down, down into the deeps of love that no mortal line can fathom. Oh, Herbert, come out with me!—come out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... energy for business is proverbial, and whose acuteness in all matters of dollars and cents is unsurpassed, if equalled, by the shrewdest Hebrew of the Hebrews, I confess it is beyond my puny imagination to fathom. Were it accompanied with any pecuniary offer adequate to the sacrifice proposed, I might be able to comprehend it: but for those, or the descendants of those, who, as they found white labour more profitable, sold their sable brethren to their southern neighbours, and thus easily and profitably ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... morning cloud to the lava fire of a volcano: one moment shutting himself into obscure chambers of imagery, the next plunged into the revolutionless day of heaven, and piercing space, deeper than the mind can follow or the eye fathom; we find him by turns appalling, pensive, splendid, profound, profuse; and throughout sacrificing every minor quality to the power of his prevalent mood. By such an artist it might, perhaps, be presumed that a different system of color would be adopted in almost ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... almost entirely given over to sculpture, with one exception which is notable so far as the dear public is concerned - a painting, "The Arch of Septimius Severus," by Luigi Bazzani. I cannot fathom why Luigi Bazzani should go to all this trouble in trying to imitate a photograph when the result over which he so painfully laboured could be done by any good photographer for less than five dollars. It ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... were cold. She, Hollyhock, could not understand them, could not attempt to fathom them. She crept softly downstairs, gathering ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... or may not have the habit of biting his nails; that he is crafty, and that if he were to do murder it is almost certain his methods would be novel and surprising, as well as extremely difficult to fathom—in short, that suspicion points unmistakably to Rama Ragobah. That is easily said, but to bring the deed home to him is quite another thing. I shall analyse the poison of the wound and microscopically examine the nature of the abrasion this afternoon. To-night I take the ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... Denbigh, at this age, met with a guardian clear-sighted enough to fathom his real character, and competent to direct his onward course, he would yet have become an ornament to his name and country, and a useful member of society. But no such guide existed. His natural guardians, in his particular case, were his ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... require a much thicker volume than this to tell the half of our adventures. We lost five or six fish by their sinking before we could get them made fast to the ship, and one or two bolted so fast that they broke loose and carried away a number of harpoons and many a fathom of line. But such misfortunes were what we had to look for. Every whaler meets with similar changes of luck, and we did not expect to fare differently from our neighbours. These things did not cause us much regret beyond the time of their occurrence. But it ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... are certain occult forces in this world, Mr. Warren, that science cannot fathom, and some of them are manifested in that castle now. A priest might call it a demon or a fiend; a psychologist, perhaps a returning spirit. I can't say—but I know there is something real, a malignant force which lurks in that ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... long sentence," said I, in order to gain time enough to fathom what she meant. I could not. So I said: "What ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... consolation and a happiness. If I dared to pray to you to think pitifully of that most unhappy man whose secret is now known to you, I would do so; but I cannot hope for so much mercy from men: I can only hope it from God, who in His supreme wisdom alone can fathom the mysteries of a repentant heart. I beg of you to deliver to Lady Jocelyn the diamonds I place in your hands. They belong of right to her; and I regret to say they only represent apart of the money ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... when Sir Mordred heard Sir Arthur, he ran until him with his sword drawn in his hand. And then king Arthur smote Sir Mordred under the shield, with a foin of his spear throughout the body more than a fathom. And when Sir Mordred felt that he had his death's wound, he thrust himself, with the might that he had, up to the bur of king Arthur's spear. And right so he smote Arthur with his sword holden in both his hands, on the side of the head, that the sword ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... tolerably quick in observing, and putting things together, and unwilling to trust to intuitive judgments of what was safe or unsafe in the moral atmosphere, she set to work with all her wits, and not without some measure of success, to fathom the secrets of the tantalizing freemasonry which piqued her curiosity. By listening to all that was said, laughing when others laughed, keeping silent when she was puzzled, comparing results and drawing deductions, she presently began to understand a good deal more than she ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... fascinating ideal life she had seen a lover with whom she could walk down through the years, whose life would touch hers at all points, who could fathom the depths of the nature that so puzzled herself, who could measure and supply the yearning reaches of intellect; who could awake in her soul a love, strong, deep, and unquestioning, so fervent, indeed, that she would turn from all other dreams and desires to ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... all objects in that way and proportion that they are suited to our faculties, and upon those grounds they are capable of being proposed to us." "It is of great use for the sailor to know the length of his line, though he cannot fathom with it all the depths ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... fresh, threatening a gale. Ship reported as having dragged her anchor. Ordered steam to be got up and the berth shifted. Ran in nearer to the eastern shore into four fathom water and where ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... was his full heart's only lore: A prophet on the Sabbath-day Had touched his sightless eyes with clay, And made him see who had been blind. Their words passed by him like the wind, Which raves and howls, but cannot shock The hundred-fathom-rooted rock. ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... Jack said; "if you signal to them to veer out some more rope I could soon do it. I could not swim across the tide now, but if it were twenty fathom further astern I ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... and she is brave enough. Why, she let me strike her on the cheek as hard as ever I could, and didn't utter a word. I wanted her to lock the door, and she had some queer notions about it that I couldn't fathom; and when I struck her on her cheek, she only just offered me the other, and said, 'You may do what you like, but I ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... course, we all know that Jack didn't slope with the diamonds. He's tied up or dead, for sure. But—no matter what may have become of him—why the dickens that should stop Edith from marrying me is more than I can fathom. Just look at some of the women in Society. They don't leave it to their relatives to be mixed up in a scandal, I can tell you. Still, there you are. Edith is jolly clever and awfully determined, so you've got to find him, Mr. Brett. Dead or alive, ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... no breath to waste in hollering," he panted. "Why, there's a good fathom and a half or two fathom o' water under her keel, and if I slack out down she'll go. Wants a couple o' boats to back in, one on each side, and get a rope under her thwarts. They could get her ashore then. Oh, dear! oh, dear! ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... deep for Mr. Smithers, who could not fathom the idea of a midnight malefactor becoming jubilant over his arrest. So he gave no ear to the torrent of excited explanations that burst upon him, but silently took the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... His comrades could never fathom where he found the time to employ in study, but nevertheless he went through all examinations and prescribed work with distinction and from the first course the professors had him in view. Now Yarchenko was beginning little by little to quit his former comrades and bottle ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... was full of love for him, and pride and confidence in him; but it was full of other feelings, too, which he could not fathom. His trouble was clearer to her than to him; as heavy to bear. To her mind, trained in all the minutiae of domestic economy, the Warden family lived in careless wastefulness. That five women—for Dora was older than she had been when she began to do housework—should require servants, seemed to ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... beaten. It was a disadvantage to me that she wouldn't lose her temper. She was too polite; she really was grateful for what I had done for her. She gave me no chance to work on her feelings. But beyond all this there was something strange about Rosa, something I have never been able to fathom. She isn't a child like most of 'em. She's as strong-headed as I am ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... three thousand sequins, and if you want more ask for them; but have the goodness never to come into my presence again." As he said these last words the old man's eyes flashed with fire, and the tip of his nose grew a darker red Antonio could not fathom the old man's mind; he did not, however, trouble himself overmuch about it, but with some little difficulty took up the purses, which he believed he had honestly and ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Mr. Fenelby could not fathom Kitty laughed merrily at this, and then they all went in to dinner. It was a very good dinner, of the kind that Bridget could prepare when she was in the humor, and they sat rather longer over it than usual, and then Mr. Fenelby proposed that he should ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... clear into the man's cruel, cunning little mind, she would have been unutterably shocked at the ugly motives contending there. But she couldn't see. She was made for sunshine and quiet ways. She could never fathom the gloom. It was from her father that Marjie inherited all that strong will and courage and power to walk as bravely in the shadows as in the light, ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... 26 degrees south we saw an opening, and ran in, hoping to find a harbour there; but when we came to its mouth, which was about two leagues wide, we saw rocks and foul ground within, and therefore stood out again; there we had twenty fathom water within two miles of the shore: the land everywhere appeared pretty low, flat, and even, but with steep cliffs to the sea, and when we came near it there were no trees, shrubs, or grass to be seen. The ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... Isolda, Why this to me? When clearly was disclosed what before I could fathom not, what joy was mine to find my friend was free from fault! In haste to wed thee to my hero with flying sails I followed thy track: but howe'er can happiness o'ertake the swift course of woe? More food for Death did I make: ...
— Tristan and Isolda - Opera in Three Acts • Richard Wagner
... in nature and the efforts of the soul to fathom the incomprehensible, are more inspiring than any written page. To this "Word of God" I bow with reverence, and I can find no language too exalted to express my love, ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... don't in the least!" she said. "She's not one of those hard-faced children; she's lovely—and I've come to the conclusion that she's pathetic. I'm beginning to rather hate this man Pollen. Back of it all are subtleties of personality difficult to fathom. You should know Blais Rochefort. I imagine a woman going about things the wrong way could break her heart on him like waves on a crystal rock. I think it has been a question of fire meeting crystal, and, when it finds ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... fact, and probably, could we fathom all the profundities and unravel all the entanglements of the relations between the sexes, as deep and as intricate as significant, that no woman thinks a man can pay her a higher compliment than to wish to make her his ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... and thief!" he sternly answered. "There you have the catalogue of all my rightful titles. And besides, it pleases me, for a reason I cannot entirely fathom, to be unpardonably candid and to fling my destiny into your lap. To-night, as I have said, the Tranchemer lies off Manneville; keep counsel, get me a horse if you will, and to-morrow I am embarked for desperate ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... talk with Sis. He endeavoured, by the exercise of every art of manner and conversation of which he was master, to place their relations upon the old familiar footing, but he failed most signally. He found it impossible to fathom the gentle dignity with which he was constantly repulsed. In the midst of his perplexity, which would have been either pathetic or ridiculous if it had not been so artfully concealed, he managed for the first time to measure the depth of his love for this exasperating but charming ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... wind, or a strong tide current, as in the southern anchorage, we should never have found her more, or found her stranded beyond help. As it was, there was little amiss, beyond the wreck of the mainsail. Another anchor was got ready, and dropped in a fathom and a half of water. We all pulled round again to Rum Cove, the nearest point for Ben Gunn's treasure-house; and then Gray, single-handed, returned with the gig to the Hispaniola, where he was to pass the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Fanshawe, the porter assured me there was no such gentleman among the guests. By what channel our secret had leaked out, or what pressure had been brought to bear on the too facile John, I could never fathom. Enough that my family had triumphed; that I found myself alone in London, tender in years, smarting under the most sensible mortification, and by every sentiment of pride and self-respect debarred for ever from my ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... whole sad story. Can it be possible that there is some quixotic notion in your head that it is for you to heal a wound for which one of your family was responsible? Oh, surely not! And yet, you women are so fond of anything like self-sacrifice that it is impossible to fathom the motives that drive you into folly: generous, well-meant folly, but folly all the same. You have no one here to advise you, and I beg you to be guided by me. You are not really called upon to do this thing. It ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... respectfully. He did not wonder at the deference, almost the fear, which all men showed her—that seemed somehow her due. She had shed her taciturnity and was even voluble at times. But behind her volubility lurked always an inexplicable intensity of purpose whose cause Simpson could never fathom and was afraid to seek for. It was there, however—a nervous determination, not altogether alien to his own, which he associated with religion and with nothing else in the world. Religiosity, he called it—and ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... "cortesia," not "curtsey,") and read "quiet" for "whist," if you want the full sense. Then you may indeed foot it featly, and sweet spirits bear the burden for you—with watch in the night, and call in early morning. The vis viva in elemental transformation follows—"Full fathom five thy father lies, of his bones are coral made." Then, giving rest after labour, it "fetches dew from the still vext Bermoothes, and, with a charm joined to their suffered labour, leaves men asleep." Snatching away the feast of the cruel, it seems to them as a harpy; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... historical compilation, ephemeral criticism, were the multifarious employments which they laid on him. Nothing that he afterwards produced quite came up to the raciness of his first performances. In 1753, he published the Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom. In the dedication of this novel he left a blank after the word Doctor, which may probably be supplied with the name of Armstrong. From certain phrases that occur in the more serious parts, I should conjecture them to be hastily translated ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... fascinating qualities for our Woodvale gallants that Miss Lawrence selected this unknown outsider even as a target on which to practise flirtation archery, but, in common with most men, it is beyond my ken to fathom the ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... he, smilin' apologetic. "You mustn't mind; but for a minute there, seein' all the liquor bein' passed around, I didn't know but what I'd got among the rocks and shoals. But it's all right. Full ten fathom, and ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... reel—and the line came aboard with no diver on the end of it. At the same time, Starley told me, the sea boiled and churned as though the whole bottom were coming up, and his ship was tossed about as though it were in a violent storm, although it was calm enough for forty fathom salvage work and that is pretty quiet, you know. Half the time his screws were out of water and he had a hard time to keep from being capsized. He fought his way out of the disturbed area, and as soon as he did, it started to quiet down, and in ten minutes ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... "you have been deceived. Your Mimi has jilted you like mine has jilted me. Bah! Let us console ourselves. You see, my poor fellow, the hearts of women and she-cats are abysses that neither men nor toms will ever fathom." ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... call of the horn beneath the willow, the girl was as free to come and go as an oriole in the orchard; for that he was grateful. But whether Adam Craig's attitude was one of trust or cold indifference, he could not fathom. With Hughie and Hannah it was different. They loved Joan and trusted him. That trust, he resolved, should not be futile. He could justify it and he would. Joan, of course, was foredoomed to know the delirium of the heart that had come to him that day beneath ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... insects; and this is especially true in the tropics. Fortunately, exactly as certain differences too minute for us as yet to explain render some insects deadly to man or domestic animals, while closely allied forms are harmless, so, for other reasons, which also we are not as yet able to fathom, these insects are for the most part strictly limited by geographical and other considerations. The war against what Sir Harry Johnston calls the really material devil, the devil of evil wild nature in the tropics, has been waged with marked success only during the last two decades. The ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... as it was then! So transparent that we saw great fish swimming about, full fathom five under us. A monstrous shark drifted lazily past, his dorsal fin now and then cutting the surface like a knife and glistening like polished steel, his brace of pilot-fish darting hither and thither, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... thought to be precluded by the savage character of the region, broken up by precipices, furious torrents, and impassable quebradas,—those hideous rents in the mountain chain, whose depths the eye of the terrified traveller, as he winds along his aerial pathway, vainly endeavors to fathom.5 Yet the industry, we might almost say, the genius, of the Indian was sufficient to overcome all ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... barrow in the London Road he certainly seemed a hard-working, respectable fellow, with a voice rendered hoarse and rough by constantly shouting his wares. But by the whispered words that had passed I knew that Ambler was in his confidence. The nature of this I had several times tried to fathom. ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... the life of him Herrick could not fathom her tone. "But since Toni is a free agent and not a slave, I expect she's gone out ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... we shall get in," added Mr. Beresford. "I cannot fathom the man's motives, but suspect he owes a grudge to a newcomer, who, he says, is winning large sums from Rudolph. I shall drive to Smith's livery stable, leave my horse and carriage there, then walk on to the place, which is only a few squares ...
— Elsie's Girlhood • Martha Finley
... again and again while he spoke, and it seemed to her that she saw in him such great knowledge and tenderness as made her glad; and how he could understand the follies that men had done, and fathom what real meaning was in them, and disentangle all the threads. He smiled as she gazed at him, and answered ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... all his life by the sea, and understood such matters, it was plain that presently she would float, or be torn off the point of the rock on which she hung, broken-backed, and sink in the hundred-fathom-deep water which lay beyond the reef. There was no time to spare, and he laboured at his oars fiercely, till at length, partly by skill and partly by good fortune, he reached the companion ladder and fastened to it ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... ran riot through his mind its to the motive for the theft of the Drifter. Then he decided that it must be some professional who had done the act. It was hard to fathom the ultimate plans of such an abstractor, who would not dare to use the machine in any public way and could scarcely ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... had a grudge against the Lookouts before ever she met them. Leila and I were always suspicious of the way Natalie Weyman acted about meeting you at the station. We could not fathom the object of such a performance. We both thought there was more to it than appeared on ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... difficult to fathom the motives which induced John Wilford to tell his wife and son that the money had been restored to the owner. Perhaps he had some plan by which he hoped to escape detection and punishment for his crime; or it may be that he told the falsehood to satisfy Lawry for the present moment. ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... its pretended romance, and real humbug, that I acquired what you consider an unfeminine accomplishment. I saw fat, turbaned men sitting cross-legged in every bazaar, dozing over their huge pipes, in a sort of dreamy helplessness; and I determined to fathom the mystery of their enjoyment, and ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... banker in an adjacent town, with whom he enjoyed a slight acquaintance. In thinking the matter over he was greatly perplexed to determine how to introduce the subject. Of course it would not answer to allow the cashier to fathom his secret purpose, and yet he was oppressed with a vague consciousness that only a translucent film hid his thought from the world. Once or twice, in driving over on the unfamiliar errand, weak and irresolute he half resolved to turn back, but greed finally prevailed, ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... Markham, when the two women were alone again. "I don't pretend to fathom the befogged brains of Todos Santos; but as far as I can understand their grown-up child's play, they are making believe this unfortunate Mr. Hurlstone, who may be dead for all we know, is in revolt against the United States Government, which is supposed to be represented by Senor Perkins ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... off, Mother," said Anthony, who although vaguely aware that she was endeavouring to create an atmosphere of vacuity, could not fathom the advantage ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... not be regarded in its proper light by the strangers, he thought of mounting his uniform, in which they would not fail to recognize him as a person of distinction. While, however, he paused in a state of uncertainty, the little craft came within a fathom of us, and a voice cried out, "What sloop is that? ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... brother. Accordingly, with great difficulty I made my way out of the house; but my distress was much increased upon finding the snow so deep upon the ground, that it was impossible for me to attempt to stir, as upon stepping one foot out to try, I found it far too deep for me to fathom the bottom. This greatly distressed me. 'Alas!' said I to myself, 'what shall I do now? To proceed is impossible; and to return is very melancholy, without any tidings of my dear, dear Longtail.' But I was interrupted ...
— The Life and Perambulations of a Mouse • Dorothy Kilner
... interest you but the Thoracic himself is usually interesting. He is an actual curiosity to the quiet, inexpressive people who never can fathom how he manages to talk so frankly ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... Perigal. Any man, Windebank, but for this experience, would have been proud to have made her his wife. She believed that her whole-hearted devotion to a worthless man had for ever cut her off from love, wifehood, motherhood—things for which her being starved. Then she tried to fathom the why and wherefore of it all. She had always tried to do right: in situations where events were foreign to her control, she had trusted to her Heavenly Father for protection. "Why was it," she asked herself, "that her lot had not been definitely thrown in with Windebank ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... this argument carried complete conviction either to the legal profession, to the public, or to Congress. Certainly, it did not convince Mr. Justice Harlan, who failed to fathom it, and bluntly expressed his astonishment in a dissenting opinion in another cause from which I regret to say I can only quote a couple of paragraphs, although the ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... very merciful essay! When we had once got upon the subject of sanitary improvements, I thought we should soon be five fathom deep in blue-books, reports, interminable questions of sewerage, and ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... was loath to change it, and feeling at the same time that they too would lose something if the half-realised form ever quite emerged from the stone, so rough-hewn here, so delicately finished there; and they have wished to fathom the charm of this incompleteness. Well! That incompleteness is Michelangelo's equivalent for colour in sculpture; it is his way of etherealising pure form, of relieving its stiff realism, and communicating to it breath, pulsation, the effect of life. It was a characteristic ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater
... note the contemptuous tone in her voice, and he gave her a keen, searching look as if he were trying to read her thoughts and fathom the reason for her very evident ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... must not be taken to mean that children should never be taught to perform operations in arithmetic which they do not, in cant phrase, "perfectly understand," or to learn poetry whose whole meaning they cannot fathom. Into this ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... her face—when is it otherwise now?—and giving one little sigh as she smiled, the sigh being for Del Castello, gone out in his loneliness, and the smile for him. But poor Lionel did not know her heart. Man cannot fathom the depths of woman's nature. They both may stand on the brink of a deep clear river, as he looks with her into its transparent mirror he only sees the reflection of her loveliness, for her heart is deep as the bed of the river; but when she sees his face reflected, his heart ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... the shadows. Her hand rested upon the arm of the elder lady. She turned her face toward Franklin. He felt her gaze take in the uniform of blue, felt the stroke of mental dislike for the uniform—a dislike which he knew existed, but which he could not fathom. He saw the girl turn more fully toward him, saw upon her face a querying wonder, like that which he had known in his own dreams! With a strange, half-shivering gesture the girl advanced half a step and laid her head almost upon the shoulder of ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... a prize of ten thousand dollars to whomsoever could fathom how the trick was done. Bill Carfax, an enemy of Joe's and a former circus employee, tried to ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... mysterious elder brother. That Ken was tinkering at the Flying Dutchman (as he had immediately called the power-boat, on account of its ghostly associations) was evident to his brother and sister, but why he should be doing so they could not fathom. ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... Could we fathom the mystery—? Lift up the lashes weighed down by her tears And wash with their dews one white face from her history, Set like a gem in the red rust of years? Nothing will rest her— unless he who ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... These qualities, with a violence of temper which took the form of beating people when on his travels, cannot have made Smollett a popular character. He knew his faults, as he shows in the dedication of "Ferdinand, Count Fathom," to himself. "I have known you trifling, superficial, and obstinate in dispute; meanly jealous and awkwardly reserved; rash and haughty in your resentment; and coarse ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... Bonner known that now gray-haired, gray-mustached veteran. Twenty-five years had he liked him, admired him, and much of late had he sought to know him, but Hazzard was a man he could not fathom. ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... exist a boundless, uncircumscribed region, of immeasurable extent, called the Empyrean, or Heaven of Heavens, the incorruptible abode of the Deity, the place of eternal mysteries, which the comprehension of man was unable to fathom, and of which it was impossible for his mind to form any conception. Such were the imaginative beliefs upon which this ancient astronomical theory was founded, that for a period of upwards of two thousand years ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... not respond to a virtuous love. But a few moments' reflection told me that such innocence, such artlessness, such candor never could be assumed—never feigned; no, they were most natural! And this conviction, added to the intense curiosity which now inspired me to fathom the mystery of her singular remark, rendered me more anxious than ever to meet with her again. Several weeks passed without seeing the gratification of my wish; and I was becoming seriously ill with ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... speed. The forest here was of large trees, with no undergrowth, and he noticed that the two parties did not join, but kept on as they had come, one on the right and the other on the left. This fact must have some significance, but he could not fathom it. Neither could he guess whether the Indians were fresh or tired, but apparently they made no effort to come within ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Halicarnassus stood almost empty; legal slavery seemed here a haven of rest compared with the torments to which the free provincial succumbed, and even the patient Asiatic had become, according to the descriptions of Roman statesmen themselves, weary of life. Any one who desires to fathom the depths to which man can sink in the criminal infliction, and in the no less criminal endurance, of all conceivable injustice, may gather together from the criminal records of this period the wrongs which Roman grandees could perpetrate and Greeks, Syrians, and Phoenicians could suffer. Even the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... word, although in the earlier part of our journey he had proved himself a most unrivalled chatterer. He seemed ill at ease in the presence of our guest, and a sort of mutual distrust, the cause of which I could not exactly fathom, seemed ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... treated with puritanic art, having, that is, the Lord's Prayer bitten into them with muriatic acid. Here lay the same yellow harbor with many more fussy little tugs in it, its water low yet still mast-deep, its yard-long catfish and fathom-long gars leaping and wallowing after their prey, its white gulls flashing about the steamers' pantry windows. Here was the same black forest of ships in the up-stream and down-stream distance and here, finally, ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... like that Boy's I shall never see. How often I have pleased myself that one day I should send to you this Morning Star of mine, and stay at home so gladly behind such a representative. I dare not fathom the Invisible and Untold to inquire what relations to my ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... it came to, and before sunset was reddening the western skies behind the Cheviots. We went a long, long way out—far beyond the thirty-fathom line, which is, as all sailors acquainted with those waters know, a good seven miles from shore; indeed, as I afterwards reckoned, we were more than twice that distance from Berwick pier-end when the affair happened—perhaps still further. We had been tacking about all the afternoon, ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... there, and Philip Feltram—come to the boat; and we pulled out, keeping Snakes Island atwixt us and the wind. 'Twas smooth water wi' us, for 'twas a scug there, but white enough was all beyont the point; and passing the finger-stone, not forty fathom from the shore o' the island, Bill and me pullin' and he sittin' in the stern, poor lad, up he rises, a bit rabblin' to himself, wi' his hands ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... they wuz a mind to—secrets of dark places down, fur down, where the sun doesn't shine; secrets of joy and happiness, and hope that had gone down, and wuz carried under the depths—under the depths that we hadn't no lines to fathom. ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... paid to act as spies on one another; his bodyguard consisted of mutually hostile mercenaries; his captains in the field were watched and thwarted by commissioners appointed to check them at the point of successful ambition or magnificent victory. The historian has a hard task when he tries to fathom the Visconti's schemes, or to understand his motives. Half the Duke's time seems to have been spent in unravelling the webs that he had woven, in undoing his own work, and weakening the hands of his chosen ministers. Conscious that his ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... this, the safest course for the assailants is to push on. This the English did, firing and cheering at every fathom they advanced, but suffering also. The constant discharge of the carronades, and the total absence of wind, soon caused a body of smoke to collect in front of the rock, while the English brought on with them another, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... time my anxiety was very great, and I determined to fathom the question to the bottom. My frequent conversations with Elder King served to carry me on to a conviction that the dispensation of the fullness of time would soon usher in upon the world. If such was the case I wished to know it; for the salvation ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... what a commentator wast thou, when thou would'st affect to understand Shakespeare, instead of contenting thyself with collating the text! The meaning here is too deep for a line ten-fold the length of thine to fathom. ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... sat silent for a while, leaning on his arm. He knew that there existed some mischief, but he could not fathom it. Had he been prudent, he would have felt that there was some impediment to his love; some evil which it behoved him to fathom before he allowed his love to share it; but when was a ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... his feet Droom was more than six feet tall; as he sat in the low-backed, office chair he looked to be less than five feet, over all. What became of that lank expanse of bone and cuticle when he sat down was one of the mysteries that not even James Bansemer could fathom. ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... a treasonous barnacle before? A barnacle, Starrett, adheres and adheres, parasite to the end as long as there's liquid, even as you adhered while the ship was keeled in gold. Nevertheless, you're right. I'm all of what you say and more that you haven't brains enough to fathom. And some that you can't fathom is to my credit—and some of it isn't. As, for instance, my inexplicable poker penchant ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... hath wonders many, Which we cannot fathom, Placed within thy form! When the heart is sinking, Thou alone canst raise it, Trembling in ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... intently into his eyes with her own luminous ones as he said this. She seemed to be trying to fathom the hidden meaning of his words which would explain his ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... mountain-peaks of the submerged plateau. The seas that wash the long Cornish peninsula, therefore, though they are thoroughly oceanic in character, especially on the north, are not oceanic in depth; we have to pass far beyond Scilly to cross the hundred-fathom line. From the Dover strait westward there is a gradual lowering of the incline, though of course with such variations and undulations as we find on the emerged plains; but the existence of this vast submarine basis must cause us to ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... conditions of beauty. I will explain. The beautiful, as each sensuous phenomenon, supposes certain conditions, and, in as far as it is beautiful, these are purely conditions of the senses; well, then, in that the mind (in virtue of a law that we cannot fathom), from the state in which it is, itself prescribes to physical nature which accompanies it, its own state, and in that the state of moral perfection is precisely in it the most favorable for the accomplishment of the physical conditions of beauty, it follows that ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... cried; "I am suffocating;" and he really was not far from it, such was the effect of his excessive fright. They seized and rescued him from his deadly peril. When he had recovered a little, he told them the trick the gipsy woman had played him; and yet for all that, he dug a hole, more than a fathom deep, in the place pointed out to him, in spite of all his neighbours could say; and had he not been forcibly prevented by one of them, when he was beginning to undermine the foundations of the house, he would ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... lockers. The new mate watches them go ashore—dinner hour—and sends the ship- keeper out of the ship to fetch him a bottle of beer. Then he goes to work whittling away the forelock of the forty-five-fathom shackle-pin, gives it a tap or two with a hammer just to make it loose, and of course that cable wasn't safe any more. Riggers come back—you know what riggers are: come day, go day, and God send Sunday. Down goes the chain ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... save himself and his companions, and the end of his thinking was this: There was a mighty pole in the cave, green wood of an olive tree, big as a ship's mast, which Polyphemus purposed to use, when the smoke should have dried it, as a walking staff. Of this he cut off a fathom's length, and his comrades sharpened it and hardened it in the fire and then hid it away. At evening the giant came back and drove his sheep into the cave, nor left the rams outside, as he had been wont to do before, but ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... from the early Puritans. It is not an infusion of new blood that has given America her greatest writers, but an infusion of new ideals. Some of these ideals were illusions, but a noble illusion has frequently led humanity upward. The transcendentalists could not fathom the unknowable, but their attempts in this direction enabled them to ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... was called, for the purpose of burying the dead. During the time, Burnett and the major examined the fort, but made no discovery which enabled them to fathom the mysterious circumstance. Not a living being remained within it. Should any unfortunate persons have been left behind, they must have been blown to pieces. Burnett then rode forward to explain what had happened to Reginald; but as a long delay ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... to-morrow. And it's for my sake, Rowley! Depend upon it, if there was any reason at all for that Bow Street man being at the bank, he was not there to look out for you. How they could have found out about the account so early is more than I can fathom; some strange coincidence must have played me false! But there the fact is; and Rowley, I'll not only have to say farewell to you presently, I'll have to ask you to stay indoors until I can say it. Remember, my boy, it's only so that you ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he had blown up the guy or not, things would be sure to look black against him, and my recollection of the episode of Hector's death told me he would come out of it badly. How, if he had done it, he had contrived to get at the explosives, I could not fathom. I was sure, even with his grudge against Jarman, he was not the sort of fellow to take a revenge that was either mean or dastardly; and ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... hide-house in his bedroom that night, and, being a close friend of her Ladyship's, he was no doubt aware that she didn't relish the notion of Wombo's being had up for theft and murder—I'm not saying who it was let out Wombo. It's a mystery I don't take upon myself to fathom—I'll ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... he felt he had solved the reason that he rode always with closed helm, he was for the first time anxious himself to hide his face from the sight of men. Not from fear, for he knew not fear, but from some inward impulse which he did not attempt to fathom. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a stranger to the procedure could not have felt sure whether the mountain was holding up the dome, or was dangling from it. A piece of symbolism done by a maniac artist, whose meaning no one could fathom! ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... FULL fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong. Hark! now I ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... saw them at evening and at day-break going to and fro from their work to the shore. They sleep, during the day, and chop and gnaw during the night. They cut the wood that they use, from slender wands up to poles four inches through, and from one to two fathoms long (a fathom is a measure of six feet). A large beaver will carry in his mouth a stick I should not like to carry on my shoulder, for two or three hundred yards to the water, and then float it off to where he wants to take it. The kinds of trees used by ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... not to hear such things, for he is ready to go mad. He would not have given that girl for all Caesar's treasures, and she fled. What kind of love is that which dreads delight and gives pain? Who can understand it? Who can fathom it? Were it not for the hope that he should find her, he would sink a sword in himself. Love surrenders; it does not take away. There were moments at the house of Aulus when he himself believed in near happiness, but ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... never pretended to that intimate knowledge of negro thought and character by which some of his acquaintances claimed the ability to fathom every motive of a negro's conduct, and predict in advance what any one of the darker race would do under a given set of circumstances. He would not have believed that a white man could possess two so widely varying ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... able to fathom Burke's feelings towards her. The Irishman's manner to her in public was always light-hearted and cheerfully friendly; but the subaltern suspected that it concealed a deeper, warmer feeling. He betrayed no jealousy of Frank's constant companionship with her when she took ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... anonymous has said "While the story may have for a plot a subject involving complication, or mystery, each scene must be easily understood, or the audience, taxed by trying to fathom motives or emotions with which it is unfamiliar, or with which it is not in sympathy, loses the thread of the story, and consequently pronounces the photoplay lacking in interest. Remembering the brevity of the film drama, compactness and simplicity in every feature ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... in Bigot's mind which Angelique could not fathom, as little did Bigot suspect that, when Angelique seemed to flatter him by yielding to his suggestions, she was following out a course she had already decided upon in her own mind from the moment she had learned that Cecile Tourangeau was to be ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... foretold of them who dwell in the dust of the vineyard. Bow and be silent, ye children of God and ye of far countries. Consider how many lie low in the old, immemorial vineyard. Deep—fathom deep—is the dust of the dead 'neath the feet of ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... your youth, your comeliness, your content; to see the man he once sneered at the husband of the woman he once loved; to recall impotent regret. I know his nature, and can stir him to his heart's core with a look, revenge myself with a word, and read the secrets of his life with a skill he cannot fathom." ...
— Pauline's Passion and Punishment • Louisa May Alcott
... ranch and paying for it in gold, and wondered at the time. Then he thought that perhaps Amos was trying to throw him off the purchase of the mine in order to secure the property himself. There was a mystery somewhere he could not fathom. ...
— Where Strongest Tide Winds Blew • Robert McReynolds
... He and all his crew had been; swept to destruction. His anticipations of coming evil had indeed been speedily verified. Two short hours ago he and I were sitting side by side away from the crowded deck, talking of matters of deep importance, to fathom which I felt was far beyond my comprehension. Now, though scarce a remnant of his blackened form could be discovered, he, I trusted, was on his way to those realms inhabited by beings of bright intelligence, to whom all such mysteries are ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... resolution, Badang said to the hantou, "Give me the gift of physical strength; let me be strong enough to tear down and to uproot the trees; that is, that I may tear down, with one hand, great trees, a fathom or ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... to you to make more careful enquiries," Seaman replied. "All I can tell you is that I made up my mind last night to interview him once more and try to fathom his very mysterious behaviour. I found the door of your butler's sitting-room locked, and a very civil fellow—Mr. Pelham's valet he turned out to be—told me that he had left in the car which went ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... double in our body, and which Nature has designed as brothers. For the hands cannot at the same time reach two things several fathoms distant from one another; the feet cannot stretch themselves from the end of one fathom to another; the eyes, which seem to discover from so far, cannot, at the same time, see the fore and hind-part of one and the same object; but when two brothers are good friends, no distance of place can hinder them from ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon
... has a philosophy," the doctor went on, still watching me, - "which is not common to the world, and which I have hitherto in vain endeavoured to fathom. I have always fancied that I should be happier if I ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... the tale set forth in the local and London and provincial journals. Widely as it was discussed, and many as were the theories offered, no one could fathom the mystery. But all agreed that the failure of the police to find a clue was inexplicable. It was difficult enough to understand how the assassin could have murdered Bolton and opened the packing case, and removed the mummy ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... eyes—the same look she had detected in Stephen's? Were they looks of pity or were they—and she shuddered—looks of scorn? This was the nightmare which had haunted her, the problem she could not fathom. ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... lifted her, and had there been much wind or a strong tide current, as in the southern anchorage, we should never have found her more, or found her stranded beyond help. As it was, there was little amiss beyond the wreck of the main-sail. Another anchor was got ready and dropped in a fathom and a half of water. We all pulled round again to Rum Cove, the nearest point for Ben Gunn's treasure-house; and then Gray, single-handed, returned with the gig to the HISPANIOLA, where he was to pass the ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... applied between the time when she stated with the utmost positiveness that she did not want, and would not buy, a book, and the time, a few minutes later, when she signed her name to the agent's list of subscribers, was something she could not fathom. ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... woman! I in part Fathom your dangerous meaning. You have broke The worse than iron band, fretting the soul, By which you held me captive. Whether my husband Is what you gave him out, or your fool'd fancy But dreams he is so, either ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... to remember her by, Shane Oge, and her a fathom deep beneath me in the cold ground. And a trinket or two, or a dress, maybe, or a bangle would keep my ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... grade; And more than all, how boundless that love, free, unrepaid, Which nurtures into being each particle that floats, Descending from far sun-worlds to microscopic motes; O God! so grand and awful in yonder little ray, What thought dare seek to fathom the blaze of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... going along the rocks in three-fathom water, watching the pollock catch prawns, and the wrasses nibble barnacles off the rocks, shells and all, when he saw a round cage of green withes; and inside it, looking very much ashamed of himself, sat his friend the lobster, twiddling ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... of fancy, the reception that awaited me from John. But alas! when I inquired for Mr. Fanshawe, the porter assured me there was no such gentleman among the guests. By what channel our secret had leaked out, or what pressure had been brought to bear on the too facile John, I could never fathom. Enough that my family had triumphed; that I found myself alone in London, tender in years, smarting under the most sensible mortification, and by every sentiment of pride and self-respect debarred for ever from ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... the sea, and whereas also they doubted not to find at the least good and fresh water, and belike other bait in the plain under the mountains, they still sailed on not unmerrily; so that by nightfall they cast anchor in five-fathom ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... does not think we have seen the last of our troubles, though why he should take a gloomy view of the situation is more than I can fathom, since every one else on board considers that we have had a miraculous escape, and are sure now to reach the ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Peter continued. "He came here with a request. He begged for my help. Guillot is here, committed to some enterprise which no one can wholly fathom. Dory has enough to do with other things, as you can imagine, just now. Besides, I think he recognizes that Monsieur Guillot is rather a hard nut for the ordinary English detective ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the cooking, but she ate next to nothing, to the grief of his hospitable soul. She was tired, of course, but there was something in her manner that he could not fathom. She was silent and unresponsive. There was almost an air of tragedy about her that made her so unfamiliar that he felt as if he were entertaining a stranger. He did not like the change. His old domineering, impetuous playfellow was infinitely easier to ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... numerous batteries on the waterside, to prevent the approach of ships; and they had raised a bar or sand-bank, that rendered the approach of our largest ships of war impracticable, and of the smaller craft difficult and dangerous. Within the bar, however, there was a place called Five Fathom Hole, with a sufficient depth of water to float second-rate ships; and here nine American ships were moored, under the American commodore Whipple. Behind the bar and Whipple's squadron there was Fort Moultrie, upon Sullivan's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... something that caused him suddenly to turn and breast his way back to the ship. The line was too short. The seaman holding the line attached to the officer had in his hands the mere end of it, and there was not another bit to pay out. It was a sixty fathom line, "all gone," and the officer yet only half way to the drowning man. It was too late to splice another. Had it been thought of in time the man might have been saved. A longer struggle was useless, and the officer allowed himself to ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... underneath which lay the secret treasures of the peddler, unable to refrain from speaking of what she would have been very unwilling to reveal; "but a rough outside often holds a smooth inside." Caesar stared around the building, unable to fathom the hidden meaning of his companion, when his roving eyes suddenly became fixed, and his teeth chattered with affright. The change in the countenance of the black was instantly perceived by Katy, and turning her face, she saw the peddler himself, ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... with unprecedented vigour, is their home. There, the place to which every race on earth sends a representative, the pulse of the whole world is throbbing. There, whoever does not run with the rest is run over; there, but one thing is important—actual life. Science has undertaken to fathom it, and the results which it gains with measures and numbers is of a different value and more lasting than that which the idle sport of the intellects of the older philosophers obtained. But art, her nobler sister, must pursue the same paths. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... winning. What was the charm in the little half-foreign cousin that had seized on him in an instant, and that seemed to fasten its subtle hold more and more irresistibly with every minute of his life? He was content to feel the charm without caring to fathom it. The lovely morning light took him in imagination to her bedside; he saw here sleeping peacefully in her new room. Would the time come when she might dream of him? He looked at his watch. It was seven o'clock. The breakfast-hour at Fairfield Gardens had been fixed for eight, to ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... two things; first, that he had no very troublesome sense of honour—which Dave had long suspected—and second, that he had deliberately planned a confliction with Dave's visit to the Hardy home. This indicated a policy of some kind; a scheme deeper than Dave was as yet able to fathom. He would at least guard against any further eavesdropping ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... clear-sighted enough. But he did not quite perceive the state of his uncle's mind in regard to himself. He did not understand how painfully the old man was still vacillating between affection and duty; nor did he fathom the depth of the love which his uncle felt for Isabel. Had he been altogether wise in the matter, he would have kept out of his uncle's presence, and have devoted himself to the tenants and the land; but in lieu of this, he intruded himself ...
— Cousin Henry • Anthony Trollope
... that the accused was in a state of mind, when committing the offense, that rendered him irresponsible for the crime alleged, which plea Pike would ever make to me, sometimes alluding to the great injustice of his being hung. But as Mr. Holman had undertaken to fathom that, I never pressed him with any particular inquiry ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... in your speech; your eyes now veiled, Where the light leaped to hear me voice his fame, Your blushes and your pallor have betrayed That which should lie uncounted fathom deep— The secret of a woman's ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... so deep that the largest ships could come up to the walls on either side. A great suburb, Loyang, lay beyond the northern water, connected with the city by the most celebrated bridge in China. Collinson's Chart in some points below the town gives only 1-1/4 fathom for the present depth, but Dr. Douglas tells me he has even now occasionally seen large junks come ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Jack Tier and Josh were both passing to and fro, as is the wont of stewards, between the camboose and the cabin, the breakfast table being just then in the course of preparation. In all other respects, always excepting the man at the wheel, who stood within a fathom of Rose, Spike had the quarter-deck to himself, and did not fail to pace its weather-side with an air that denoted the master and owner. After exhibiting his sturdy, but short, person in this manner, to the admiring eyes ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... simple substance; but Boyle's work was better known, and in its effect probably more important. But with all Boyle's explanations of the composition of air, he still believed that there was an inexplicable something, a "vital substance," which he was unable to fathom, and which later became the basis of Stahl's phlogiston theory. Commenting on this mysterious substance, Boyle says: "The difficulty we find in keeping flame and fire alive, though but for a little time, without air, renders it suspicious ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... dreams assurd were Of the Spirit that plagued us so; Nine fathom deep he had followed us From the land ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... were there such things actually in the family, and she had never known of them? A few hours ago and she had been unable to think of anything but her first ball, her new dress, her flowers; but she was seized now with the most intense desire to fathom this mystery. That it bid fair to be a sad mystery only made her more eager and curious. She was so young, so ignorant, there was still a halo of romance about those unknown ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... anywhere, the problem of the formation of coral reefs would never have been a difficult one. Nothing can be easier than to understand how there must have been a time when the coral polypes came and settled on the shores of this island, everywhere within the 20 to 25 fathom line, and how, having perched there, they gradually grew until they built ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... these repeated struggles to digest a mass of mental food for years, in days or weeks. They know their nation cannot be understood by these chance viewers, feebly glancing through greenest spectacles, any more than the Atlantic can be sounded with a seven-fathom line. They have become familiar with the English traveller only to regard him with contempt. Each new production has opened the old wound. Each new announcement awakens only derisive expectations. As for "French and Germans," with them it is ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... America. Nothing worth relating happened till we arrived within three hundred leagues of the river Saint Lawrence when the ship struck with amazing force against (as we supposed) a rock; however, upon heaving the lead, we could find no bottom, even with three hundred fathom. What made this circumstance the more wonderful, and indeed beyond all comprehension, was, that the violence of the shock was such that we lost our rudder, broke our bow-sprit in the middle, and split all our ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... an incident; so, indeed, I believe that he is thus always with a woman—only an incident. With women we are toys. They play with us. We never read them. They are the mystery of the world. When they would deceive us it is beyond all our art to read them. Never shall man, even the wisest, fathom the shallowest depths of a woman's heart. Their superiors? God! we are their slaves, and the stronger we are as men, the ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... poor little undertaking could have been saved from a ridiculous and mortifying failure. He had been inclined to regard his young relative as rather frivolous; but perhaps there were depths to Billy Brackett's character that he was not yet wise enough to fathom. He would study it more carefully hereafter, and how doubly thankful he now was that his chance to do so had not been lost with the ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... were the Dutchmen bold, Duncan he had but two; But he anchored them fast where the Texel shoaled And his colours aloft he flew. "I've taken the depth to a fathom," he cried, "And I'll sink with a right good will, For I know when we're all of us under the tide, My flag will be ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... Portuguese Prince. A mysterious voyage of a certain wandering saint, called St. Brendan, was not without its influence upon an enthusiastic mind. Moreover, there were many sound motives urging the Prince to maritime discovery; among which, a desire to fathom the power of the Moors, a wish to find a new outlet for traffic, and a longing to spread the blessings of the faith may be enumerated. The especial reason which impelled Prince Henry to take the burden of discovery on himself was that neither mariner nor merchant would be likely ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... yet as she sat before the fire with this little infant cooing in the warmth—like a puppy or a little pig, or any other little animal you can suggest—this was the thought of the irreverent man—there was a look of almost more than common happiness, of blessedness, in her face. Who can fathom these things? They were at least beyond the knowledge, though not the sympathy, of this very rising member ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... not yet what it was, some of you even say it was nothing; care not whether it was anything. Could Arnold grind, or not, as formerly? What is Act of 1566, or any or all Acts, in comparison? Wretched mortals, had you wigs a fathom long, and Law-books on your back, and Acts of 1566 by the hundredweight, what could it help, if the right of a poor man were left by you trampled under foot? What is the meaning of your sitting there as Judges? Dispensers of Right in God's Name and mine? I will make ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... piano and play to her. She knew that Rosanne gave, and was given to, by music in a way that is only possible to deep, inarticulate natures such as possess the musician's gift. One had only to listen to her music, thought Kitty, to know that there were depths in her that no woman would ever fathom, though a man might, some day. Denis Harlenden might—if she ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... always been one of the inscrutable mysteries in natural philosophy that I never could fathom, why men do not faint. Certain it is, I never yet heard of a man swooning from excess of surprise or joy, and perhaps that may account for Sir Norman's not doing so on the present occasion. But he came to an abrupt stand-still in their rapid career; and if it had not been quite ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... clearly been intimate with the late Sir Charles, Harley determined to make use of this opportunity to endeavour to fathom the mystery of the late surgeon's fears. "You will not misunderstand me, Doctor McMurdoch," he said, "if I venture to ask you one or two rather ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... the gardens cannot be seen at all, for the great elder trees that spread themselves out by the bank, and hang far out over the streaming waters, which are deeper here and there than an oar can fathom. Opposite the old nunnery is the deepest place, which is called the "bell-deep," and there dwells the old water spirit, the "Au-mann." This spirit sleeps through the day while the sun shines down upon ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... Had he been asked he could not have said whether the work was a success or a failure. The feature of the performance that convinced him was the man and the magnetism that radiated from the man. The work itself he could neither fathom nor evaluate. It took hold of him nevertheless because of its inseparable association with ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... a petition imbedded in a reiterated statement of the disciples' isolated position when left in a hostile world without Christ's sheltering presence. We cannot fathom the depth of the mystery of the praying Christ, but we may be sure of this, that His prayers were always in harmony with the Father's will, were, in fact, the expression of that will, and were therefore promises and prophecies. What He prays the Father for His disciples He gives to His disciples. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... memory returned, and he rose stiffly to his feet. He limped out of the Park, putting away the handkerchief, muttering profanity and trying to fathom the mystery. As nearly as he could reason it out, he must have been struck by another machine ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... meant to ask him when he was sleeping: now she could not ask them from that bowed head, nor yet from those clasped hands. And yet, somehow, it seemed that something of the man's soul was revealed to her at this moment, though she could not as yet fathom the meaning of this strange answer to ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... civil, in her fierce, wild way. She and the house, upon that desolate and extensive Wild, and everything we saw, made us think of one of those places of rendezvous which we read of in novels—Ferdinand Count Fathom, or Gil Blas,—where there is one woman to receive the booty, and prepare the supper at night. She told us that she was only a servant, but that she had now lived there five years, and that, when but a ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... of her whispered: "Well, I hope you're satisfied."... She was conscious of the heavy scent of flowers which reminded her of a funeral.... One face stood out distinct and seemed to be boring into her, reading secrets which, she felt through a great dizziness, she ought not to let him fathom. It was the face of Dr. Ebbett.... Then she heard a voice which sounded to her unduly loud saying: "I do," and realized that it was her own. Later she was reliably informed that she had appeared splendidly collected ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... golden Wings; he only valued the smiling Babies in Belvira's Eyes. His Generosity was boundless, as his Love, for no Man ever truly loved, that was not generous. He thought his Estate, like his Passion, was a sort of a Pontick Ocean, it could never know an Ebb; But now he found it could be fathom'd, and that the Tide was turning, therefore he sollicits with more impatience the consummation of their Joys, that both might go like Martyrs from their Flames immediately to Heaven; and now at last it was ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... and up and down, and they wondered. For the ways of elephants are beyond the wit of any man, black or white, to fathom. ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... ran toward Sir Mordred, crying, Traitor, now is thy death day come. And when Sir Mordred heard Sir Arthur, he ran until him with his sword drawn in his hand. And then king Arthur smote Sir Mordred under the shield, with a foin of his spear throughout the body more than a fathom. And when Sir Mordred felt that he had his death's wound, he thrust himself, with the might that he had, up to the bur of king Arthur's spear. And right so he smote Arthur with his sword holden in both his hands, on the side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet and the brain-pan, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... remarks was unmistakable, though to my shame I confess I was unable to fathom their meaning, and I was on the point of opening the scullery door and rushing out to declare myself, when I heard a loud banging from the front of ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... Thou wouldst fathom Life and Being, Thou wouldst see through Birth and Death, Thou wouldst solve the eternal riddle— Thou a speck, a ray, a breath, Thou wouldst look at stars and systems, As if thou couldst understand All the harmonies of Nature, Struck by ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... deeper-laid, wider-spread, and more diabolical conspiracy than any that darkens the page of history. Other men—and women, too—were instrumental in dragging the dark iniquity to light; but they failed to fathom its full enormity, and to discover its point of outbreak. He did that; and he throttled the tiger when about to spring, and so deserves the lasting gratitude of his country. How he did it I propose to tell in this paper. It is a marvellous tale; it will read ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... tried not to fathom her purpose for the head is useless when the heart usurps its functions, and Turan knew only that the woman he loved had denied him, and though he tried not even to think it his foolish heart urged but a single explanation—that ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the leaf and in the atom, the immortality of the great human race. He was sublimer, that gray old man, hunted from the circle of his kind, in his words, than ever is action in its deeds; for words can fathom truth, and deeds but blunderingly and ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "When did you ever see a man that could fathom a woman? Good, simple soul that he was!—she made him think black was white with holding up a finger. She glistened bravely, and he thought she was gold. Well!—we shan't have much peace now,— take my word for it. Eh, this world!—'tis a queer ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... bull-dog. As the struggling fish splashed on the surface the groper, abandoning its illegitimate prey, swerved swiftly downwards. The retreat was a second too late, for Tom had seized the, harpoon lying athwart the boat, and though the fish appeared through a fathom and a half of water, a vague, fleeting, contorted shadow, he reached it. The barbed point passed through it, carrying a foot or two of the line, and a 30-pounder was added to our catch at one stroke and without a tremor of excitement on ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... or less making an allegorical description of Giovanni himself. He was like his country and its traditions, revealing himself only in glimpses. He attracted her immensely through his subtle impersonality underlying all that was seemingly personal. She could not fathom his depth, nor determine his shallowness—she did not even guess which it might be. She was irresistibly drawn to him; yet she was on her guard, as one who, looking down from a great height, in fear of vertigo clings to the parapet over which he leans. The parapet ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... genius. Her French is classic. The sealed book of her youth gives no hint of where her fine idiom came from. Merrily Marie Berard recounts to the luxurious social star the efforts of sly dames and soft-voiced messieurs to fathom the "De Santos'" past. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... precise means and method by which we can discriminate our friends in heaven need be no obstacle to believing the fact itself; for there are millions of undoubted truths whose conditions and ways of operation we can nowise fathom. Upon the whole, then, we conclude that we cannot by our mere understandings decide with certainty the question concerning future recognition; but we are justified in trusting to the accuracy of that doctrine, since it rests safely ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... sufferings from loss of wealth, of health, of friends, or of any earthly blessing. Relations, acquaintances, strangers, even enemies, could be found who would do so. But who will so love me as to carry my crushing burden of sin? Who can fully understand its exceeding sinfulness I Who can fathom the depths into which I have fallen, or enter the body of death which imprisons my spirit. One only, the truest, the best, the most loving of all, my Saviour! And His hatred of my sin, and His sorrow for it, is just the measure of His ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... first attracted me, and the mere reading of them gave me very little trouble. But I was convinced that behind their meaning thus read lay some deep esoteric significance; and this, almost to the last, I was utterly unable to fathom. You perceive that these border figures consist of waved lines of two different lengths, drawings of snakes, triangles looking like the Greek delta, and a heart-shaped object with a dot following it. These succeed one another in a certain definite order on all the slips. What, I asked myself, were ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... ministers! you novices! We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward; Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from us; We use you, and do not cast you aside—we plant you permanently within us; We fathom you not—we love you—there is perfection in you also; You furnish your parts toward eternity; Great or small, you furnish your parts ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... tiny islands, those in the distance reduced to mere specks; but ever beyond them was the sea, until the impression became quite real that one was LOOKING UP at the most distant point that the eyes could fathom—the distance was lost in the distance. That was all—there was no clear-cut horizontal line marking the dip of the globe below ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that beautiful stuff can have entered the mind of man I cannot fathom. I think I have got him persuaded to leave well alone. It must be ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... bar being abandoned, Commodore Whipple moored his squadron in a line with fort Moultrie, in a narrow passage between Sullivan's Island and the middle ground; and the British ships, without their guns, passed the bar, and anchored in five fathom hole. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... mattered not to him that he had to meet the open opposition of the saloon element and the secret hostility of those who depended upon that element for the success of their political schemes. His love of a fight was as strong as ever. At first the men could not fathom his motives, but as men do, they silently and observantly waited for the real motive to emerge. As "Mexico" said, they "couldn't get onto his game." And none of them was more completely puzzled than was ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... whom he had come into such close contact, M. Dantes, the Deputy from Marseilles, remained as much of a mystery as ever. Marrast, though now devotedly attached to him, admitted that he was totally unable to fathom either his designs, or his methods of accomplishing them, while Lamartine, who was in his company a large portion of the time, when questioned concerning him, replied that all he knew of M. Dantes was that he was a firm friend of the cause and an untiring worker in the interest ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... they get more encouragement here than they do in Lorn," said the Provost, shrewdly, for he had seen the glint of coin and knew his man. "You beat all, Factor! If I lived a hundred years, you would be more than I could fathom. Well, well, pass the bottle, and ye might have another skelp at yon ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... eastern breakers, they were obliged to let go an anchor to save them from destruction. They could see nothing of the buoy, and no doubt was entertained that it was washed away by the current. Their anchorage was in three and a half fathom water, and the ground swell, which then set in, heaved the vessel up and down in such a frightful manner, that they expected every moment to see the chain cable break. As soon as they dropped their anchor, the tide rushed past the vessel at the rate of eight miles an hour. After ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... said Beaton, in pensive discouragement. He was sensible of being manipulated, operated, but he was helpless to escape from the performer or to fathom her motives. His pensiveness passed into gloom, and was degenerating into sulky resentment when he went away, after several failures to get back to the old ground he had held in relation to Alma. He retrieved something of it with Mrs. Leighton; but Alma glittered upon him to the last with ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... thousand, but I have never seen her yet in the City of Light. You may, my dear friend, cherish only an illusion, and yet I am half willing to agree with you; such intuitive feelings have a deeper philosophy of truth than we can fathom, and no laughing skepticism, no mere frivolous doubt can expel them. Wait, my friend; it may yet be meant for you to meet her. And now I do recall some accounts told me of occasional visitants to Mars entering its life at different points; many indeed have been received ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... at me in a way I could not fathom, and then, but only after a little choking sound ...
— The Gold Bag • Carolyn Wells
... his personal experience, to tell us of his own life and his own feelings, not having any wider knowledge to draw upon. Every word, therefore, in these first comedies, is important to those who would learn the story of his youth and fathom the idiosyncrasies of his being. When AEgeon, in the opening scenes, tells the Duke about the shipwreck in which he is separated from his wife and child, he declares that he himself "would gladly have embraced immediate death." No reason is given ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... according to etiquette, rose, and, bowing to the king, retired. The queen followed with her ladies of honor. The queen-mother remained: the king's gayety was a mystery that she wished to fathom. ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathom above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids: it was thought she was a woman, and was turned into a cold fish for she would not exchange flesh with one that loved her. The ballad is very pitiful, and ...
— The Winter's Tale - [Collins Edition] • William Shakespeare
... give orders, sir," said Tom, "we'd soon have that hatch over again, and fifty fathom o' chain ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... gallery is almost entirely given over to sculpture, with one exception which is notable so far as the dear public is concerned - a painting, "The Arch of Septimius Severus," by Luigi Bazzani. I cannot fathom why Luigi Bazzani should go to all this trouble in trying to imitate a photograph when the result over which he so painfully laboured could be done by any good photographer for less than five dollars. ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... Jason would have sprung to seize it; but Medeia held him back, and pointed, shuddering, to the tree-foot, where the mighty serpent lay, coiled in and out among the roots, with a body like a mountain pine. His coils stretched many a fathom, spangled with bronze and gold; and half of him they could see, but no more, for the rest lay in the ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... the 17. Cauo de Monte bare off vs North Northeast, we sounded and had 50. fathom blacke oase, and at 2. of the clocke it bare North Northwest 8. leagues off. [Sidenote: Cauo Mensurado.] And Cauo Mensurado bare of vs East and by South, and wee went Northeast with the maine: here the current setteth to the East Southeast alongst the shoare, and at midnight wee sounded and had ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... a society machine-sewn, fathom the seething depths whence issued the great masterpiece of Henrik Ibsen? It could not understand, and therefore it poured the vials of abuse and venom upon its greatest benefactor. That Ibsen was not daunted he has proved by his reply in AN ENEMY ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... was silent a moment, as if endeavouring to fathom the meaning of the words, and we moved a few inches ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... dripping garments for dry ones and curled herself up on the sofa in her own room before the fire, with full determination to fathom her growing unwillingness to meet Christopher, and to accommodate herself to the new existence, but the gentle languor of mental emotion and physical effort took the caressing warmth of the fire to their aid and cradled her to sleep ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... pool with this distinction. Reuben, of course, knew the interpretation of the myth. He knew the Perdu was very deep. Except at either end, or close to the banks, no bottom could be found with such fathom-lines as he could command. To him, and hence to Celia, this idea of vast depths was thrillingly suggestive, and yet entirely believable. The palpably impossible had small appeal for them. But when first they saw the great blue bird alight where they ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... shadows as she half hoped he might do, he stands without, the flood of moonlight falling full upon his stalwart figure. Two months ago he would not thus have held aloof, yet now he is half extending his hand as though in adieu. She cannot fathom this strange silence on the part of him who so long has been devoted as a lover. She knows well it cannot be because of her injustice to him at the Point that he is unrelenting now. Her eyes have told him how earnestly she repents: ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... psychology of the looks, and leers, and grins, and hot, hectic desires on the faces of his women is a puzzle that we can not lay aside—we want to solve the riddle of this paradox of existence—the woman whose soul is mire and whose heart is hell. Many men have tried to fathom it at close range, but we devise a safer plan and follow the trail in books, art and imagination. Art shows you the thing you might have done or been. Burke says the ugly attracts us, because we congratulate ourselves that we ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... six hundredweight, tying a cable to it with great dexterity, and pulling it from a rock. Their arms are made of wood, without any iron point; but some instead thereof use a crocodile's tooth. They have no bows nor arrows, as the other Indians have, but their common weapon is a sort of lance a fathom and a half long. Here are many plantations surrounded with woods, whence they gather abundance of fruits, as potatoes, bananas, racoven, ananas, and many others. They have no houses to dwell in, as at other places in the ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin
... hate Thor? were you my secret ally against him? But how could you fathom my purposes enough even to help me? And what wrong has he done you terrible enough for such revenge as mine? What human being, except Manetho, could hold an unwavering purpose so many years? Have you never pitied or relented? Sometimes I have ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... heart's only lore; A prophet on the Sabbath day Had touched his sightless eyes with clay, And made him see who had been blind, Their words passed by him like the wind Which raves and howls, but cannot shock The hundred-fathom-rooted rock. ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... is out of proportion to the increase of the population. Much thought has been given to the cause of this phenomenon, and physicians as well as moralists, national economists as well as philosophers and philanthropists, have endeavored to fathom the connection between this fact and the conditions of modern social life. According to all observations, it is certain that the cause of this phenomenon is not a single etiological condition, but that it is the sum of a number of influences which act upon the human race and produce ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 415, December 15, 1883 • Various
... of a mighty stake of green olive-wood, tall and stout as the mast of a twenty-oared galley,[1] which had been cut by the Cyclops for a staff, and laid aside to season. Odysseus cut off about a fathom's length, and with the help of his comrades made it round and smooth, and tapered it off at one end to a point. Then he hardened the sharp end in the fire, and when it was ready he hid the rude weapon away under a pile of refuse. Of the twelve who had followed him from the ship, there only ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... sparkle on top, as if they had secrets they might tell if they wuz a mind to—secrets of dark places down, fur down, where the sun doesn't shine; secrets of joy and happiness, and hope that had gone down, and wuz carried under the depths—under the depths that we hadn't no lines to fathom. ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley
... they thought fit to save, and with 120 Days Provisions, were receiv'd at the time of the Floud; and the rest of their Goods being put into great Vessels made of China Ware, and fast luted down on the top, were preserv'd unhurt by the Water: These Ships they furnish'd with 600 Fathom of Chain instead of Cables; which being fastned by wonderful Arts to the Earth, every Vessel rid out the Deluge just at the Town's end; so that when the Waters abated, the People had nothing to ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... character was a sorry mixture of folly and bad principles. One may say of him what one of the Peripatetic philosophers of old said long ago, that in men, as in the mixing of colours, the most opposite qualities combine. I will therefore only describe his disposition as far as I have been able to fathom it. ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... he might generally be found if any one among them wished to see him in any difficulty or sorrow. Though this was well known, no one of Mr. Chantrey's parishioners had gone to him for counsel; for he was a grave, stern, silent man, whose opinion it was difficult to guess at and impossible to fathom. He was unmarried, and kept no servant, except the housekeeper who had been left in charge of the rectory. All society he avoided, especially that of women. His abruptness and shyness in their presence was painful both to himself and them. To Mrs. Bolton, however, he was studiously ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... is exhilarating even to think about the cables were got up and served and coiled on deck, and the anchors, which some of them had thought would never grip the bottom again, unstopped and cleared. The leadsman of the Santa Maria, who has been finding no bottom with his forty-fathom line, suddenly gets a sounding; the water shoals rapidly until the nine-fathom mark is unwetted, and the lead comes up with its bottom covered with brown ooze. Sail is shortened; one after another the great ungainly sheets of canvas are clewed up or lowered down on deck; one after another ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... straying angel—some fervid, bright spirit, flame-coloured and intangible, a being of the elfin race? As they stood together looking at the distant coastline a depression which he could neither fathom nor control came over him. His bride seemed so much younger than he had ever realised. She cared for him—how could he doubt it? But was the ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... ministers together, for Priest Pemberton was a real scholar in his special line of study,—as all D. D.'s are supposed to be, or they would not have been honored with that distinguished title. But Mr. Byles Gridley not only had more learning than the deep-sea line of the bucolic intelligence could fathom; he had more wisdom also than they gave him credit for, even those among them who thought most ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... understand what you want me to do, Willett," and his tone was very cold. "I don't see how I can help you. From your own account you have behaved either like a fool or a blackguard, and what I can't fathom is why Davies's commanding officer, or some friend or comrade, did not warn you ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... and was indeed an admiral on his own account, he conferred with his first lieutenant, Peter Plum, on the question of a colour: what description of flag should he fly at his masthead? They both started with the understanding that nothing under a fathom and a half in length was worth hoisting. After much discussion it was agreed that the device should consist of a very small jack in the top corner, and in the middle a crown with a wooden leg under it—the timber toe being ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... behalf of my team after the game was over. To this she turned a deaf ear and a stony glance was her only answer. After the game we returned to the Pyramids and the Sphinx, looking them over more at our leisure and trying to fathom the mystery of how they were built that has been a puzzle ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... no opinion on such a subject, and must leave the discussion to more learned people than myself. I do not know whether such apparitions really mean anything or not, and I have not sought to fathom these mysteries, thinking them outside the realm ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... he drew to his breast a broad shield, and he grasped in his hand a spear that was most strong, and spurred his horse with all his main, and hit the admiral with a smart blow under the breast, that the burny gan to burst, so that the spear pierced through there behind him full a fathom; the wretch fell to the ground! That saw soon the admiral's son, who is named Gecron; and grasped his spear anon, and smote Leir the earl sore on the left side, throughout the heart,—the earl down fell. Walwain perceived that, where he was in the fight; and he ...
— Brut • Layamon
... that whenever one of the others addressed him directly, or turned to him when speaking, it was with a curious expression, not of fear, but partly amusement and partly something else which I could not fathom. Now, one might think that this was natural enough purely on account of the man's extraordinary appearance. I do not think that a sufficient explanation; for however strange a man's appearance may be, his intimate friends and associates ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... and there, facing him from the fly-leaf, was the answer to the question he had erstwhile sought to fathom,—Pia di Donatello. His lips formed the syllables, dwelling with pleasure on the first three little letters—Pia. Oh, it was right, it was utterly and entirely right. Every other possibility vanished before ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... an opportunity of going unnoticed to a "bear-stack," and fathom it three times round. The last fathom of the last time you will catch in your arms the appearance ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... pyramid that Julius Caesar brought forth of Africa; it stood in Faustus's time leaning against the church-wall of St. Peter's; but Pope Sixtus hath erected it in the middle of St. Peter's churchyard. It is fourteen fathom long, and at the lower end five fathom four square, and so forth smaller upwards. On the top is a crucifix of beaten gold, the stone standing on four lions of brass. Then he visited the seven churches of Rome, that were St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Sebastian, St. John Lateran, St. Laurence, St. ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... that you need lay nothing to my door hereafter." To make the most of this hour, I got my companions at the oars, and we all pulled with hearty good-will. So much importance did I attach to every fathom of distance made, that we did not rise from our seats until the mate told us to stop rowing, for the hour was up. As for himself, he had not risen either, but kept looking behind him to the eastward, still hoping to see land somewhere ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... which may be readily connected, forming in a short space of time a ladder of any required height; a canvas sheet, with 10 or 12 handles of rope round the edge of it for the purpose of a fire-escape; one 10-fathom and one 14-fathom piece of 2 1/2-inch rope; six lengths of hose, each 40 feet long, 2 branch-pipes, one 2 1/2 feet, and the other from 4 to 6 feet long, with one spare nose-pipe; two 6-feet lengths of suction-pipe, a flat rose, stand-cock, ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... leaning heavily against the jamb of the kitchen door. Something inscrutable in the stare of the fishlike, china-blue eyes clung in his memory, and try as he would in the days that followed, MacNair could not fathom the meaning of that stare, if indeed it had any meaning. MacNair did not know why, but in some inexplainable manner the memory of that look eased ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... Nets, which must be made of the best Pack-thread; and for taking great Fowl, the Meshes must be large, two Inches at least from point to point, the larger the better; (provided the Fowl creep not through;) two Fathom deep, and six in length, is the best and most manageable Proportion; Verged with strong Cord on each side, and extended with long Poles at each end made on purpose. But for small Water-fowl, let your Nets be of the ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... lakes and green avenues our great moral desert. The superiority of modern science consists in the fact that each step forward it takes is a step further in the order of abstractions. We make chemistry from chemistry, algebra from algebra; the very indefatigability with which we fathom nature removes us further from her. This is as it should be, and let no one fear to prosecute his researches, for out of this merciless dissection comes life. But we need not be surprised at the feverish heat which, after ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... read to the prisoners, who cried out that they had spoken the truth, that their sister was indeed a Princess more beautiful than the day, and that there was some mystery about all this which they could not fathom. Therefore they demanded seven days in which to prove their innocence, The King of the Peacocks was so angry that he would hardly even grant them this favour, but at last he was persuaded ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... Trevison who had spoken so frankly to her one day out on the plains when he had taken her into his confidence. In the look that he gave her now was the same frankness, clouded a little, she thought, by some emotion—which she could not fathom. ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of spiritual causes which give rise to all that we see of outward phenomenal manifestation. There are continual allusions in his works to the life behind the veil, and it is to this suggestion of some mystery underlying his words that we owe the many attempts to fathom his meaning expressed through Browning Societies and the like—attempts which fail or succeed according as they are made from "the without" or from "the within." No one was better qualified than the poet to ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... never have been a difficult one. Nothing can be easier than to understand how there must have been a time when the coral polypes came and settled on the shores of this island, everywhere within the 20 to 25 fathom line, and how, having perched there, they gradually grew until they built ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley
... that he had the motive for which we have been looking; that he may or may not have the habit of biting his nails; that he is crafty, and that if he were to do murder it is almost certain his methods would be novel and surprising, as well as extremely difficult to fathom—in short, that suspicion points unmistakably to Rama Ragobah. That is easily said, but to bring the deed home to him is quite another thing. I shall analyse the poison of the wound and microscopically examine ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... so difficult, and even impossible to understand, that surely I am not to be blamed because I could not fathom the incomprehensible? ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... together, together always, or if we were away from each other it was but to meet again at the very earliest moment. But the more we were together the more I came to understand the wealth of his nature. What impressed me most about him was not the flow of ideas, it was the man himself. To fathom his perfect uprightness, clear to the very bottom, gave me the most glorious moments I have known. His devotion to me—or what shall I call it?—was all summed up in one image—his mighty head on my lap! There he often rested ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... barnacle, Starrett, adheres and adheres, parasite to the end as long as there's liquid, even as you adhered while the ship was keeled in gold. Nevertheless, you're right. I'm all of what you say and more that you haven't brains enough to fathom. And some that you can't fathom is to my credit—and some of it isn't. As, for instance, my inexplicable ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... tribute of gold and silver. Albert Duerer in August, 1520, saw at Brussels the "things brought the king from the new golden land," and describes them in his diary as including "a whole golden sun, a fathom in breadth, and a whole silver moon of the same size, and two rooms full of the same sort of armour, and also all kinds of weapons, accoutrements and bows, wonderful shields . . . altogether valued at a hundred thousand guidon. And all my life," he adds, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... solid. Soon it was discovered that there was but a thin covering of dirt on the solid ice below; but anon in striking the ground with the end of an alpine stick it would prove to be but an inch of ice and dirt mixed, and a dark abyss below which we could not fathom. It is to be hoped, for the good of future tourists, that there are not many such places, or that they may soon be exposed so they can be avoided. Reaching the top after a tedious and slippery climb, there was a long view of icy billows, ...
— Oregon, Washington and Alaska; Sights and Scenes for the Tourist • E. L. Lomax
... child that ever gave a kiss for the asking (you could kiss her as soon as look at her), but she was also the very devil to deal with if she saw fit to take a distaste of you. I saw her once smack a fathom of able- bodied youth on both sides of the head with a lusty vigor that constrained the sufferer to howl. And I have seen her come to meet a man—well, me, with the readiest lips and the friendliest hand in the world. Oh, Katje was like ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... while, they had been tempted to go out for a short sail round the cliff. Just as they were putting in to the shore, the wind shifted with a sudden gust, the boat listed over, and it was thought they were both drowned. How it could have happened was beyond his mind to fathom, for John Green knew how to sail a boat as well as any ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... describes the tobacco of the Philippines: "It is an annual, growing to the height of a fathom, and furnishes the tobacco for the estancos (licensed shops). General opinion prefers the tobacco of Gapan, but that of the Pasy districts, Laglag and Lambunao, in Iloilo, of Maasin or Leyte, is appreciated for its fine aroma; also that of Cagayan, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... assiduously serenading my brain, flinching under the glittering hail of your notes— were you not safe behind... rats know what thickness of... plastered wall... I might fathom your golden delirium with throttle of finger and thumb shutting ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... his eyes on Godefroid with an apprehension it was easy to fathom; the look seemed to say: "The misfortune I feared has ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... too deep for Mr. Smithers, who could not fathom the idea of a midnight malefactor becoming jubilant over his arrest. So he gave no ear to the torrent of excited explanations that burst upon him, but silently took the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... pursues from point to point in the surrounding landscape finds statement in lines 34-60. Of these lines Sharp (Life of Browning, p. 159) says, "There is a gulf which not the profoundest search can fathom, which not the strongest-winged love can overreach: the gulf of individuality. It is those who have loved most deeply who recognize most acutely this always pathetic and often terrifying isolation of the soul. None save the weak can believe in the absolute ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... of Ochtertyre informs us, to have no greater enjoyment than recounting the scenes and doings he and Hamilton had transacted together in those early days, of which the poet himself writes, when they "kept friendship's holy vigil" in the subterranean taverns of old Edinburgh "full many a fathom deep." ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... till I conclude. I should not ask so much of others. You, Svanhild, I've learnt to fathom thro' and thro'; You are too sensible to play the prude. I watched expand, unfold, your little life; A perfect woman I divined within you, But long I only saw a daughter in you;— Now I ask of you—will you be my wife? [SVANHILD ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... lips a little smile. And as I saw it, my heart almost broke with delight, for I said to myself: She has changed her mind about me; after all, and now my plan is beginning to succeed. Alas! little did I fathom the unfathomable intelligence of that extraordinary Queen! And presently she said, with exactly the same gentleness in her low voice that made my heart tremble exactly as before, every time it spoke: Thou art, beyond all doubt, ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... sword. And as the bright blade flashed in the air the English artillery, loaded with round, bar, and chain shot, musket balls, spike nails, and every kind of missile that the men had been able to lay hands upon, were discharged when the two vessels were scarcely a fathom apart, and the Spanish ship's upper deck instantly became a shambles, scarcely a man remaining ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... background a shade less deep. The south wind was blindly roaming about in the darkness like a sleep-walker. The stars in the sky with vigilant unblinking eyes were trying to penetrate the darkness, in their effort to fathom some profound mystery. ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... miscellany were not dominated by a clear genius and if before the confusion of things the poet or philosopher were not himself delighted, exalted, and by no means confused. Nor does this presume omniscience on his part. It is not necessary to fathom the ground or the structure of everything in order to know what to make of it. Stones do not disconcert a builder because he may not happen to know what they are chemically; and so the unsolved problems ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... very little way from the horizontal, scarcely more than two inches in a fathom, and the stream ran gently murmuring at our feet. I compared it to a friendly genius guiding us underground, and caressed with my hand the soft naiad, whose comforting voice accompanied our steps. With my reviving spirits these mythological ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... be more gracious in her own house. I have her formal word that I am to come. Soon, not too soon, I will come over; and you shall meet me and take me to see her. There is something in her opposition that I can't fathom: I wondered twice was lunacy her notion: she ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... breathe freely. He was not free from that nervous pressure under which he had been working, but the worst of the inner tension had relaxed and he felt the need of taking a survey of what had happened, of summarising and trying to fathom what could have been underlying his apparently unaccountable experiences. The literary outcome of this settling of accounts with the past ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... investigation, augment the beauties of original genius. This delightful province has been termed in Germany the AEsthetic, from a Greek term signifying sentiment or feeling. AEsthetic critics fathom the depths, or run with the current of an author's thoughts, and the sympathies of such a critic offer a supplement to the genius of the original writer. Longinus and Addison are AEsthetic critics. The critics of the adverse school always look for a precedent, and if none is found, woe ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... waterside, to prevent the approach of ships; and they had raised a bar or sand-bank, that rendered the approach of our largest ships of war impracticable, and of the smaller craft difficult and dangerous. Within the bar, however, there was a place called Five Fathom Hole, with a sufficient depth of water to float second-rate ships; and here nine American ships were moored, under the American commodore Whipple. Behind the bar and Whipple's squadron there was Fort Moultrie, upon Sullivan's Island, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... himself, he found no pleasure in their companionship. For society he sought such of the youth of Budge Street as would admit him into their raucous fellowship. But, for some reason which his immature mind could not fathom, he felt a pariah even among his coevals. He could run as fast as Billy Goodge, the undisputed leader of the gang; he could dribble the rag football past him any time he desired; once he had sent him home to his mother with a bleeding nose, and, even in that hour of ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... during which the boat lost considerable way, I was unwilling to discourage the men, and reluctantly gave up my intention of ascertaining the depth, and the character of the bed. There was a general shout in the boat when we found ourselves in one fathom, and we ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... companion's regret. On the contrary, he was very thankful for Gevrol's blunder. Had it not been for that, how would he ever have found an opportunity of investigating an affair that grew more and more mysterious as his search proceeded, but which he hoped to fathom finally. ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... on the trial, or that the accused was in a state of mind, when committing the offense, that rendered him irresponsible for the crime alleged, which plea Pike would ever make to me, sometimes alluding to the great injustice of his being hung. But as Mr. Holman had undertaken to fathom that, I never pressed him with any particular inquiry ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... character, alliteration was known to the Latins, especially in early times, and Cicero blames Ennius for writing "O Tite tute, Tati, tibi tanta, tyranne, tulisti.'' Lucretius did not disdain to employ it as an ornament. We read in Shakespeare:— "Full fathom five thy father lies: Of his bones are corals made.'' In Pope:— "Here files of pins extend their shining rows, Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billet-doux.', In Gray:— "Weave the warp and weave the woof, The winding-sheet of Edward's race.'' In Coleridge:- "The ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... She seemed to fathom something from the expression of his face. "You couldn't have known I was coming ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... conscious of "that something" which transcends thought and which uses thought as a medium for expression. Many have glimpses of "that something," but few ever reach the state where the mind is steady enough to fathom these depths. Silent, concentrated thought is more potent than spoken words, for speech distracts from the focusing power of the mind by drawing more and more ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... Port-au-Prince. In particular, they for a time occupied the port of Gonaives, about midway between the capital and Mole St. Nicholas, a step almost as threatening to the British forces as to the French Republicans. It is hard to fathom the designs of the Spaniards at this time. Their pride, their hereditary claims to the whole of the Indies, and their nearness to this splendid prize, all urged them on to an effort from which lack of men, ships and money, and the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... cultivated and burned to serve as manure. Iron is very scarce, for many of the men appear with wooden spears; they find none here, but in some spots where an ooze issued from the soil iron rust appeared. At each of the villages where we spent a night we presented a fathom of calico, and the headman always gave a fowl or two, and a basket of rice or maize. The Makonde dialect is quite different from Swaheli, but from their intercourse with the coast Arabs many of the people here have acquired ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... our depth, Old King Brady," he remarked. "This mystery keeps growing all the time, and we can't seem to fathom it." ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... dauphin said to his father, "My lord, I must go back with them, then; for so I promised them." "Louis," replied the king, "the gates are open, and if they are not high enough I will have sixteen or twenty fathom of wall knocked down for you, that you may go whither it seems best to you." Charles VII. had made his son marry Margaret Stuart of Scotland, that charming princess who was so smitten with the language and literature of France that, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... from whom I have been reading to you, is not among the first or wisest: he sees shrewdly as far as he sees, and therefore it is easy to find out its full meaning; but with the greater men, you cannot fathom their meaning; they do not even wholly measure it themselves,—it is so wide. Suppose I had asked you, for instance, to seek for Shakespeare's opinion, instead of Milton's on this matter of Church authority?—or ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin
... of the Self is a matter by no means easy to compass. We have all probably at some time or other attempted to fathom the deeps of personality, and been baffled. Some people say they can quite distinctly remember a moment in early childhood, about the age of THREE (though the exact period is of course only approximate) when self-consciousness—the awareness of ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... class of bookmakers. They are not blind to these repeated struggles to digest a mass of mental food for years, in days or weeks. They know their nation cannot be understood by these chance viewers, feebly glancing through greenest spectacles, any more than the Atlantic can be sounded with a seven-fathom line. They have become familiar with the English traveller only to regard him with contempt. Each new production has opened the old wound. Each new announcement awakens only derisive expectations. As for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... them I could scarce publish from different considerations; but some of them—for instance, my long experience of gambling places—Homburg, Wiesbaden, Baden-Baden, old Monaco, and new Monte Carlo—would make good magazine padding, if I got the stuff handled the right way. I never could fathom why verse was put in magazines; it has something to do with the making-up, has it not? I am scribbling a lot just now; if you are taken badly that way, apply to the South Seas. I could send you some, I believe, anyway, only none of it is thoroughly ripe. If you have kept back the volume ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... between Mariyah and him?" and quoth Ins bin Kays, "Thine be the rede." So Al-Aziz sent after his son and acquainted him with that which had passed; whereupon Al-Abbas called for four-and-twenty mules and ten horses and as many camels and loaded the mules with fathom-long pieces of silk and rugs of leather and boxes of camphor and musk and the camels and horses with chests of gold and silver. Eke, he took the richest of the stuffs and wrapping them in wrappers of gold, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... I am not untroubled. For I cannot fathom you, and that troubles me. I am very fond of you—and yet I do ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... came to a certain peninsula, an island at high water. Two or three miles long, less than a mile and a half in breadth, at its widest place composed of marsh and woodland, it ran into the river, into six fathom water, where the ships might be moored to the trees. It was this convenient deep water that determined matters. Here came to anchor the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. Here the colonists went ashore. Here the members of the Council were sworn, and for the first President ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... was now a matter of serious perplexity. On their left lay the Tigris, so deep that they could not fathom it with their spears; while in their front rose the steep and lofty mountains of the Carduchi, which came so near the river as hardly to leave a passage for its waters. As all other roads seemed barred, they formed the ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... be 4 degrees 49 minutes East. At 6 Sounded and had 32 fathoms Water; the Bottom Coral Rocks, fine Sand and Shells, which Soundings we carried upon a South-West 1/2 West Course 9 or 10 leagues, and then had no ground with 100 fathom. We were by our account and per run afterwards 54 Leagues East from the Coast of Brazil and to the Southward of the Shoals called Abrollos, as they are laid down in Most Charts. Wind South-East to North-East; course South 58 degrees West; distance 68 miles; latitude 19 degrees 46 minutes ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... all the mighty outpouring of its wrath, when the white waves lift their heads to heaven and break themselves in foam upon the rocky beach, or in the calm beauty of its broad and mirrored surface, in which the bright world of sun and sky are seen full many a fathom deep. But far before these, I love the happy and tranquil beauty of some bright river, tracing its winding current through valley and through plain, now spreading into some calm and waveless lake, now narrowing to an eddying stream with mossy ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... salutes. He shows the back of his hand." Secretly, they were proud of him. Standish came of a long chain of soldiers, and that the weakest link in the chain had proved to be himself was a sorrow no one else but himself could fathom. Since he was three years old he had been trained to be a soldier, as carefully, with the same singleness of purpose, as the crown prince is trained to be a king. And when, after three happy, glorious years at West Point, he was found not clever enough to pass the examinations and ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... Wicked so as to frighten most people. I will tell you what he was. He was nothing less than a thief and a murderer at heart. And do you think he's any different now because he's dead? Not he! His carcass lies a hundred fathom under, but he's just the same . . . in latitude 8 ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... loath to change it, and feeling at the same time that they too would lose something if the half-realised form ever quite emerged from the stone, so rough hewn here, so delicately finished there; and they have wished to fathom the charm of this incompleteness. Well! that incompleteness is Michelangelo's equivalent for colour in sculpture; it is his way of etherealising pure form, of relieving its hard realism, and communicating to it breath, pulsation, the effect of life. ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... me which was the narrowest part of the Channel, and I told him. Then he asked how Silly [sic] bore, if I had 75 fathom, red sand and gravel. I said, 'About N.W.,' and the old man said, 'Well, yes,—rather West of N.W., is not it so, Sir Richard?' And Sir Richard did not know what they were talking about, and they pulled out Mackenzie's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... impossible to fathom what was going on in his mind. Was he preparing to burst into a tirade of ridicule, or was he ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... a cape of the said coast, off which we sounded in from 45 to 70 fathom, but shortly after we got no bottom, and in the evening the ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... may not interest you but the Thoracic himself is usually interesting. He is an actual curiosity to the quiet, inexpressive people who never can fathom how he manages to talk ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... timorous, quick of apprehension, ingenious enough in their own works, as may testify their weirs in which they take their fish, which are certain enclosures made of reeds and framed in the fashion of a labyrinth or maze set a fathom deep in the water with divers chambers or beds out of which the entangled fish cannot return or get out, being once in. Well may a great one by chance break the reeds and so escape, otherwise he remains a prey to the fishermen ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... cleared of its grim visitant, and fit to serve as a human habitation. He and a number of others, whom curiosity had prompted to join us, followed me to the spot at which I had seen the demon vanish. I instructed them to take spades and pick-axes and dig: they did so; and at about a fathom's depth we discovered a mouldering corpse, of which nothing but the bones remained entire. We took the skeleton up, and placed it in a grave; and from that day to this the house has never ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... me something to remember her by, Shane Oge, and her a fathom deep beneath me in the cold ground. And a trinket or two, or a dress, maybe, or a bangle would ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... preparing her father's supper, there had been a dresser at the window: what had become of the salt-bucket, the meal-tub, the hams that should be hanging from the rafters? There were no rafters; it was a papered ceiling. She had often heard of open beds, but how came she to be lying in one? To fathom these things she would try to spring out of bed and be startled to find it a labour, as if she had been taken ill in the night. Hearing her move I might knock on the wall that separated us, this being a sign, prearranged between us, that I was near ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... intent on the different ends of life, viz. religious observances, wealth, pleasure, and final release; and recognising that the Vedas—which teach the truth about his own nature, his glorious manifestations, the means of rendering him propitious and the fruits of such endeavour—are difficult to fathom by all beings other than himself, whether gods or men, since those Vedas are divided into Rik, Yajus, Sman, and Atharvan; and being animated by infinite pity, tenderness, and magnanimity; with a view to enable his devotees to grasp the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut
... every principle of duty, gratitude, and esteem, to have shunned, and who you are bound, from this moment, to renounce for ever. How you ever came to be acquainted with Colonel Charles Lennox of Rose Hall is a mystery none of us can fathom; but surely the person, whoever it was that brought it about, has much, much to answer for! Mrs. Douglas (to whom I thought it proper to make an immediate communication on the subject) pretends to have been well informed of all that has been going on, and even ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... "you have got hold of a thought which no man has ever yet been able to fathom. Free will is a great mystery, nevertheless every child knows that it is ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... "Ah, my friend! if one fathom of your anchor chain were to rattle as you drew it in, a thousand warriors would be standing on your deck. No, no, that could not be done. Even now your ship would be taken from you were it not that Tararo has some feeling of gratitude towards you. But I know ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... beyond the straits of Juan de Fuca, and are from one to four inches long, and about half an inch in diameter: they are a little curved and naturally perforated: the longest are most valued. The price of all commodities is reckoned in these shells; a fathom string of the largest of them ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... promise like that Boy's I shall never see. How often I have pleased myself that one day I should send to you this Morning Star of mine, and stay at home so gladly behind such a representative. I dare not fathom the Invisible and Untold to inquire what relations to my Departed ones ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a singular coincidence," said Schwarzenberg, shrugging his shoulders, "and I should like to know the connecting link. Well, I hope to fathom the mystery, and then the ghost story will resolve itself into a ridiculous reality. Early to-morrow morning I shall have all the soldiers called up, who were on duty at the castle to-night, and question them myself. The castellan's wife, too, must be summoned. She is an ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... leader as he looked at Marche-a-Terre eating his bread by the side of the road. But Hulot's face soon cleared; he began to rejoice in the opportunity to fight for the Republic, and he joyously vowed to escape being the dupe of the Chouans, and to fathom the wily and impenetrable being whom they had done him the ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... time it was," says his biographer, "that the philanthropist Howard, led by his benevolent enthusiasm to fathom dungeons, vindicate the wrongs, and alleviate the sufferings of the lonely and forgotten victim of vice and crime, arrived at Cork. A society had for some years existed in that city 'for the relief and discharge of persons confined for small debts,' of which ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... a scrutinizing gaze, Resolved to fathom these your secret ways: But, sift them as I will, Your ways are ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... set forth in the local and London and provincial journals. Widely as it was discussed, and many as were the theories offered, no one could fathom the mystery. But all agreed that the failure of the police to find a clue was inexplicable. It was difficult enough to understand how the assassin could have murdered Bolton and opened the packing case, and removed the mummy to replace it by the body of his victim in a ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... beneath our eye as completely defies our scrutiny as the economy of the most distant star. Every leaf and every blade of grass holds within itself secrets which no human penetration will ever fathom. No man can tell what is its principle of life. No man can know what his power of secretion is. Both are inscrutable mysteries. Wherever we place our hand we lay it upon the locked bosom of mystery. Step ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... mystery, and one that he could not fathom. He could only feel thankful that no compulsion lay upon him to make known what he had seen and heard. His word had been pledged to Catesby and Father Urban, and how to have broken it he knew not. But there ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... true!" exclaimed Leicester, his transient gleam of hope giving way to the utmost bitterness of feeling and expression; "thou art not fit to fathom a woman's depth of wit, Varney. I see it all. She would not quit the estate and title of the wittol who had wedded her. Ay, and if in my madness I had started into rebellion, or if the angry Queen had taken ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... it—less than Tempest's. Whether he had blown up the guy or not, things would be sure to look black against him, and my recollection of the episode of Hector's death told me he would come out of it badly. How, if he had done it, he had contrived to get at the explosives, I could not fathom. I was sure, even with his grudge against Jarman, he was not the sort of fellow to take a revenge that was either mean or dastardly; ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... In my opinion, she is the subject of an insane delusion. In your opinion, she is in possession of her senses, and has some mysterious motive which neither you nor I can fathom. Either way, there can be no harm in putting Mrs. Lecount's description to the test, not only as a matter of curiosity, but for our own private satisfaction on both sides. It is of course impossible to tell ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... I could not fathom the expressions of his black frowning face. Although Captain Falk of course had no direct communication with him openly, I learned through Bill Hayden that indirectly he treated him with tolerant and friendly patronage. It even did not surprise me greatly to be told that sometimes he secretly ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... believed to exist a boundless, uncircumscribed region, of immeasurable extent, called the Empyrean, or Heaven of Heavens, the incorruptible abode of the Deity, the place of eternal mysteries, which the comprehension of man was unable to fathom, and of which it was impossible for his mind to form any conception. Such were the imaginative beliefs upon which this ancient astronomical theory was founded, that for a period of upwards of two thousand years held undisputed ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... completed it. This resolution, like every thing great and entire, was admirable; the motive sufficient and justified by success; the devotedness unparalleled, and so extraordinary, that the historian is obliged to pause in order to fathom, to comprehend, and ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... steamer on which I was did not draw much water, being built specially for river navigation, careful soundings had to be taken continually. I well recollect the cries of the man at the lead. When the man cried out "Una braca!" (one fathom), there was great excitement on board, and we had to slow down to half speed or dead slow. In the distance on the left bank in the haze could be distinguished high hills, at the foot of which white ribbon-like streaks were visible ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... was below. I had just relieved the deck, for in this blowing weather we must keep watch in harbour. The men were all at their dinner, when I heard the boat thumping under the main channels. I got into her to ease off a fathom or two of the painter; but as I hauled her ahead to get at the bend, it appears that the monkey of a boy who made her fast, and has been but a few months at sea, had made a 'slippery hitch,' so away it went, and I was adrift. I hailed them ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... proportion to the labour bestowed. Such is Mr Bergson's fundamental hypothesis, and it is far-reaching. "Many metaphysical difficulties probably arise from our habit of confounding speculation and practice; or of pushing an idea in the direction of utility, when we think we fathom it in theory; or, lastly, of employing in thought the forms of action." (Preface to ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... of a certain wandering saint, called St. Brendan, was not without its influence upon an enthusiastic mind. Moreover, there were many sound motives urging the Prince to maritime discovery; among which, a desire to fathom the power of the Moors, a wish to find a new outlet for traffic, and a longing to spread the blessings of the faith may be enumerated. The especial reason which impelled Prince Henry to take the burden ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... upon its bosom floated tiny islands, those in the distance reduced to mere specks; but ever beyond them was the sea, until the impression became quite real that one was LOOKING UP at the most distant point that the eyes could fathom—the distance was lost in the distance. That was all—there was no clear-cut horizontal line marking the dip of the globe below the line ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... questions him with a piercing eye accustomed to fathom the black depths—and, tamed himself by all this unexpected peace, he understands very well that his bold comrade dares no longer, that all the projects have fallen, that all is useless and inert in presence of ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... what Fielding proposed to himself by a picture of complete vice, unrelieved by anything of human feeling. ..."]. Some other critics have been neither more friendly than Sir Walter, nor more discriminating, in speaking of Jonathan Wild and Smollett's Count Fathom in the same breath, as if they were similar either in purpose or in merit. Fathom is a romantic picaresque novel, with a possibly edifying, but most unnatural reformation of the villainous hero at the last; ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... scymitar shore off a head of horse or man. Charles himself rode at him, and smote him with his hammer. They heard the blow in Avignon, full thirty miles away. The flame flashed out from the magic armor a fathom's length, blinding all around; and when they recovered their sight, the enchanter was far away in the battle, ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... have done this poem great injustice. There are levities here and there, more than good taste approves, but nothing to make such a terrible rout about—nothing so bad as "Tom Jones," nor within a hundred degrees of "Count Fathom." ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... tender and ordered the runner to hold up. All this was regular programme, as I had explained to Miss Cullen, but here had been a variation which I had never heard of being done, and of which I couldn't fathom the object. When the train had been stopped, the man on the tender had ordered the fireman to dump his fire, and now it was lying in the road-bed and threatening to burn through the ties; so my first order was to extinguish it, and my second was to start a new fire and get up steam ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Poet himself, with his sensitive nature—who can fathom the profound depths of his soul now stirred by two such entrancing sights as the high-smoking blackbird-pie won by his own prowess, and the little monarch for whose sake all this was brought about? ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 39., Saturday, December 24, 1870. • Various
... prince was such, that, like the bee, he gathered the most perfect substance from the best and most beautiful flowers. He tried to fathom men, to draw from them the instruction and the light that he could hope for. He conferred sometimes, but rarely, with others besides his chosen few. I was the only one, not of that number, who had complete access to him; ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... I tried to fathom the meaning of the rapid movement of these small bodies of rebels, but could get nothing out of it, except the supposition that our cavalry had pushed on up the road after we had passed Old Church. There might be, and doubtless were, several attempts made this day to ascertain the position ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... Father Confessor which had an effect on the latter that made itself apparent in the severity of his reply: "The ways of the Lord are inscrutable," he said, "and it is presumptuous for mortals, however great their station, to attempt to fathom them." ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Beaton, in pensive discouragement. He was sensible of being manipulated, operated, but he was helpless to escape from the performer or to fathom her motives. His pensiveness passed into gloom, and was degenerating into sulky resentment when he went away, after several failures to get back to the old ground he had held in relation to Alma. He retrieved something of it with Mrs. Leighton; but Alma glittered ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... at her face, as though trying to fathom the reason of her request, or at least to detect some scornful look upon her face to agree with her sneering words. But he was no match for the unparalleled astuteness of Atossa, though he had a vague suspicion that she wished to annoy ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... miseries which surround us: God destines a calmer and a more certain future to the communities of Europe; I am unacquainted with His designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather mistrust my ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the young man eagerly. Two weeks had worked a shocking change in Dave; he was gaunt, ill; his eyes were bright and tired and feverish. They had a new expression, too, which the judge at first could not fathom, but which he took to be fear. Dave's brown cheeks had bleached; his hands hung loose and ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... also received a letter from his daughter begging him to come home as soon as he could, as her mail had been tampered with and she strongly suspected Joles of acting in a most deceitful manner for reasons she could not fathom. It was because she expected her father that she acted under Beverly's advice and did not mention the subject to Joles, nor even to Herr Von Barwig until her ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... fellow. Meanwhile my guide ate but little, drank still less, and spoke never a word, although in the earlier part of our journey he had proved himself a most unrivalled chatterer. He seemed ill at ease in the presence of our guest, and a sort of mutual distrust, the cause of which I could not exactly fathom, seemed ...
— Carmen • Prosper Merimee
... Who else did I care for? Who else mattered to me? Mother or brother or other folk? I pray you to go an' leave me. God knaws how hard it was to hide it, but I hugged it an' suffered more 'n any but a mother could fathom 'cause things weer as they weer. Then came this trouble, an' still none seed. But 't was meant you should, an' the rest doan't matter. I'd so soon ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... midst thereof is buried the body of Mahomet, and not in a chest of yron cleauing to the adamant, as many affirme that know not the trueth thereof. Moreouer, ouer the body they haue built a tombe of speckled stone a brace and a halfe high, [Marginal note: Or, a fathom.] and ouer the same another of Legmame fouresquare in maner of a pyramis. After this, round about the sepulture there hangeth a curtaine of silke, which letteth the sight of those without that they cannot see the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... Owain. And they perceived that he was wroth. And thereupon he saluted Owain, and told him that his Ravens had been killed, the chief part of them, and that such of them as were not slain were so wounded and bruised that not one of them could raise its wings a single fathom above the earth. "Lord," said Owain, "forbid thy men." "Play," said he, "if it please thee." Then said Owain to the youth, "Go back, and wherever thou findest the strife at the thickest, there lift up the banner, and let come what ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... Arthur aware where Sir Mordred leaned upon his sword, and there King Arthur smote Sir Mordred throughout the body more than a fathom, and Sir Mordred smote King Arthur with his sword held in both hands on the side of the head, that the sword pierced the helmet and the brain-pan. And Sir Mordred fell dead; and the noble King Arthur fell in a swoon, and Sir Lucan and Sir Bedivere ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... mouths, and part without, soe they go under water, where at first they can not stay long, but after practice, the leanest stay an hour and a halfe, even till the oyle of the spunge be corrupted.... Thus they gather spunges from more than an hundred fathom deep," &c. All this is very wonderful, but the narrator stamps the value of his tale by telling us immediately afterward that "Samos is the only place in the world on whose rocks the spunges grow." So that, in the words ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... Mary was also upon her feet, tearful and compassionate and fain to turn her eyes away from the sad, brave little face that confronted her. Yet not even her pity could fathom the longing of this vagrant "Queen" for her dirty Lane and her loyal subjects; nor how she shrank in terror from the lonely search she knew she must yet continue, thinking, "'Cause grandpa would never have give me up if I was lost and I never ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... preparation before I grew conscious of that hunger for beauty which, awakening intuition, opened the heart to truth and so to wisdom. It then came softly, delicately, whispering like the dawn, yet rich with a promise I could, at first, not easily fathom, though as sure of fulfilment as that promise of day that steals upon the world when ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... class—for whatever her condition, she had certain breeding and inherent culture—in Woodhouse. The young men of the same social standing as herself were in some curious way outsiders to her. Knowing nothing, yet her ancient sapience went deep, deeper than Woodhouse could fathom. The young men did not like her for it. They did not like the tilt of ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... the precentor, "and deliver up the machine you stole, and leave this Session to do its duty. John, we maun fathom the ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... was incomprehensible to him. Why under heaven had she done it? How could one so sensitive have done a wanton cruel thing like this? Her reason he could not fathom. The facts that confronted him were that she had done it, and had meant to carry the crime through. Only detection ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... the complex vision of the soul plunges into the abysses of stellar space, seeking to fathom, at least in a mental act, immensity beyond immensity, and gulf beyond gulf, is a definite human experience. It is the actual experience of the soul itself, dropping its plummet into immensity, and finding immensity unfathomable. But as soon as the logical reason ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... within another minute the whale spouted, blowing strongly and sounding again. He sulked at the bottom for over twenty minutes, coming up suddenly quite near the boat. Scotty had lost no time, and not more than thirty-five fathom of line was out ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
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