"Conflagration" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there was a brilliant conflagration in the Carrousel. It was a bonfire of those very carriages which eighteen years before the mob had brought in triumph to Louis Philippe from the stables ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... swallowed in oblivion; And though this hope by many surly Sages Be now derided, yet they'll all be gone In a short time, like Bats and Owls yflone At dayes approch. This will hap certainly At this worlds shining conflagration. Fayes, Satyrs, Goblins the night merrily May spend, but ruddy Sol shall make ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... Streete in London.' It raged by day and by night,—'(if I may call that night which was light as day for 10 miles round about, after a dreadful manner).' Nothing could be done to stay its progress, and the citizens were awe-stricken and paralyzed by fear. 'The conflagration was so universal, and the people so astonish'd, that from the beginning, I know not by what despondency or fate, they hardly stirr'd to quench it, so that there was nothing heard or seene but crying out and lamentation, running ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... from the lodge in which he slept, he had seen a figure standing between him and the light, and had approached it to learn the cause of all the excitement. He was just about to speak, when he recognized Chitta, and heard him utter the words that at once declared him to be the author of the conflagration and the enemy of his ...
— The Flamingo Feather • Kirk Munroe
... the rage of their persecutors would have redoubled. Thus fury increasing by the reverberation of outrages, house being fired for house, and church for chapel, I am convinced that no power under heaven could have prevented a general conflagration, and at this day London would have been a tale. But I am well informed, and the thing speaks it, that their clergy exerted their whole influence to keep their people in such a state of forbearance and quiet, as, when I look back, fills ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in Germany. The latest include gutting of the Moabit Goods Station in Berlin wherein tanks of petrol, hydrogen, et cetera, exploded, resulting in the destruction of a part of Vilna and the township of Osjory near the Grodno conflagration station and a ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... resolution of the Senate of yesterday, respecting the recent destruction by fire of the Church of the Compania at Santiago, Chile, and the efforts of citizens of the United States to rescue the victims of the conflagration, I transmit a report from the Secretary of State, with the papers ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... tail ablaze As through the cloud red lightning plays, He scaled the palaces and spread The conflagration where he sped. From house to house he hurried on, And the wild flames behind him shone. Each mansion of the foe he scaled, And furious fire its roof assailed Till all the common ruin shared: Vibhishan's house alone was spared. From blazing pile to pile he sprang, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the first sight of the conflagration, for ourselves we had nothing to fear. The bottom on which we stood was a sward of short buffalo-grass; it was not likely to catch fire, and even if it did, we could easily escape from it. There is not much ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... very defective. But this is not the worst. The palace itself had never been finished; its ornamentation had scarcely been begun; and the little of this that was original had been so damaged by a furious conflagration, that it perished almost at the moment of discovery. We are thus reduced to judge of the sculptures of Esar-haddon by the reports of those who saw them ere they fell to pieces, and by one or two drawings, while we have ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... completely prostrated Mrs. Clementine Churchill Chadwick Greenwood, who, it is true, had the actual shock of the conflagration to upset her nervous system, though she suffered no ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... appeared above the rampart. Defeated here, they tried to effect a breach by battering the wall with heavy pieces of timber, but it proved too strong for them, and then they shot burning arrows among the temporary buildings in the courtyard. Several of these took fire, and soon a fierce conflagration was raging, which was only to be checked by throwing down part of the wall itself, and thus laying open a formidable breach. This was protected by a battery of heavy guns, and a file of arquebusiers, who kept up an incessant volley ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... remember that I was observing the heavy artillery of the attack on the conflagration. Individual campaigns were everywhere in progress. I saw one man standing on the roof of a threatened building. He lowered slowly, hand over hand, a small tea-kettle at the end of a string. This was filled by a friend in the street, whereupon the man hauled it up again, ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... aware of Mr. Polly awkwardly negotiating the top rungs of the fire escape. "'Ere 'e comes!" cried a voice, and Mr. Polly descended into the world again out of the conflagration he had lit to be his funeral pyre, moist, excited, and tremendously alive, amidst a tempest of applause. As he got lower and lower the crowd howled like a pack of dogs at him. Impatient men unable to wait for him seized and shook his descending ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... often completely destroying whole cities, and in battle cutting to pieces many ten thousands of cavalry and infantry, themselves too at last departed from life. Heraclitus, after so many speculations on the conflagration of the universe, was filled with water internally and died smeared all over with mud. And lice destroyed Democritus; and other lice killed Socrates. What means all this? Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou art come to shore; get out. If indeed to another life, ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... vivid flame leaped out from the gloom, and an awful peal, followed by a heavy, booming roar, that shook the crag to its base, announced the ruin of the pirate's den. At the same time the red fires gleamed in fitful flashes from the sheds, and, rapidly making headway, all at once burst forth in wild conflagration, till the whole nest was wrapped in flames. The shock of the explosion and the fires killed the wind, and a lurid pall of smoke and cinders hung like a ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... called by one of the papers.—[There was a dinner that evening at one of the colleges where, through mistaken information, Clemens wore black evening dress when he should have worn his scarlet gown. "When I arrived," he said, "the place was just a conflagration—a kind of human prairie-fire. I looked as out of place as a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... hurrying across the yards. Orders flew hither and thither, and there was a great calling and shouting; but above all the other noises soared the noise of a grand scrubbing, of rushing water, as if Bethlehem had been surprised by a conflagration. And the wailing of sick children torn from their warm beds, all the whimpering little bundles carried through the damp park, with a fluttering of bedclothes among the branches, strengthened the impression of a fire. In two hours, thanks ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... from Fort Sumter was as much applauded as a good shot from Fort Moultrie. When the American flag was shot away, General Beauregard sent Major Anderson another to fight under. When the fort was found to be on fire, the polite enemy, who had with such intense energy labored to excite the conflagration, offered equally energetic assistance to put it out. The only indignation felt throughout the affair was at the conduct of the Northern flotilla, which kept outside and took no part in the fray. The Southerners ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... them escaped before execution, but the other was hanged.[51] In Pennsylvania as late as 1803 a negro plot at York was detected after nearly a dozen houses had been burnt and half as many attempts had been made to cause a general conflagration. Many negroes were arrested; others outside made preparations to release them by force; and for several days a reign of terror prevailed. Upon the restoration of quiet, twenty of the ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... do homage to the God of Money. The gnomes offer to show their master Plutus a subterranean treasure-horde of molten gold. He approaches too close and his beard catches fire. In a few moments an immense conflagration spreads through the crowds of revellers, which would have ended in a terrible catastrophe (such as had actually happened at the French court shortly before Goethe wrote this scene, and such as happened some fifteen years ago in Paris at some bazaar) had not Faust with the help of Mephistopheles ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... rest of the picture signified nothing, and is vulgar and disagreeable besides. There are several other pictures by Haydon in this collection,—the Banishment of Aristides, Nero with his Harp, and the Conflagration of Rome; but the last is perfectly ridiculous, and all of them are exceedingly unpleasant. I should be sorry to live in a house that contained one of them. The best thing of Haydon was a hasty dash of a sketch for ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... irresistible force. Indeed, my impression was that of an immense and overwhelming Power opposed to my volition;—that sense of utter inadequacy to cope with a force beyond man's, which one may feel physically in a storm at sea, in a conflagration, or when confronting some terrible wild beast, or rather, perhaps, the shark of the ocean, I felt morally. Opposed to my will was another will, as far superior to its strength as storm, fire, and shark are superior in material force ...
— Pausanias, the Spartan - The Haunted and the Haunters, An Unfinished Historical Romance • Lord Lytton
... screened he reached a log wall, got to his feet, and edged along it. Then he witnessed a wild scene. The fire raged in great, sky-touching tongues. And already the roof of one of the Rover buildings smoldered. Why the aliens had built up such a conflagration, Ross could not guess. A signal designed to reach ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... sudden and violent conflagration lighted up from the Pont Neuf over the whole city," says De Retz. "Everybody without exception took up arms. Children of five and six years of age were seen dagger in hand, and the mothers themselves carried them. In less than two hours there were in Paris more than two ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... enjoyments can be compared to a fire which blazes the more, the more it is nursed; the freer its way the more widely it spreads until in a city it consumes houses and in a woods the trees. In the Word, moreover, lusts are compared to fire, and the evils from them to a conflagration. The lusts of evil with their enjoyments also appear as fires in the spiritual world; hellfire is nothing else. Lusts may also be compared to floods and inundations as dikes or dams give way. They may also be likened to gangrene and abscesses which bring death ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... her eyes. Presto, and it was no more! The sentiment he had roused in favour of public ownership, and against the regime of Blake, was as a thing that had never been. With him in jail, his candidacy was but the ashes that are left by a conflagration—though, to be sure, since the ballots were already printed, it was too late to remove his name. He was a thing to be cursed at, jeered at. He had suddenly become a little lower than nobody, a little ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... now began? Oh, my dear Chamisso, to confess it even to thee makes me blush. I drew the unlucky purse from my bosom, and with a kind of rage which, like a rushing conflagration, grew in me with self-increasing growth, I extracted gold, and gold, and gold, and ever more gold, and strewed it on the floor, and strode amongst it, and made it ring again, and, feeding my poor heart on the splendor and the sound, flung ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the Duchess, interrupting this skirmishing, "you will fall over into the orchestra! It is growing late, and if Mademoiselle de Vermont does not wish to remain to see the final conflagration, we might go now, before the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... successful comrades, and it was not till the smoke of their burning homesteads rose up in dense clouds that they became aware of the true state of the fight. At once they turned and ran to the rescue of their families, but their retreat was cut off by a party of the enemy, and the roar of the conflagration told them that they were too late. They drew together, therefore, and, making a last desperate onset, hewed their way right through the ranks of their enemies, and made for the mountains. All were more or less wounded in the melee, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... chests of drawers, beds, mirrors, pictures, and flung them whole into the fire; while every fresh addition to the blazing masses was received with shouts, and howls, and yells, which added new and dismal terrors to the conflagration. Those who had axes and had spent their fury on the movables, chopped and tore down the doors and window frames, broke up the flooring, hewed away the rafters, and buried men who lingered in the upper ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... given to that act of consecration, in the minds of the Venetian people, by what appears to have been one of the best arranged and most successful impostures ever attempted by the clergy of the Romish church. The body of St. Mark had, without doubt, perished in the conflagration of 976; but the revenues of the church depended too much upon the devotion excited by these relics to permit the confession of their loss. The following is the account given by Corner, and believed to ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... genius, he has done little. His letters and poems remind you of a few scattered leaves, surviving the conflagration of the Alexandrian library. The very popularity of the scraps which such a writer leaves, secures the torments of Tantalus to his numerous admirers in all after ages. His letters, in their grace, freedom, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... He consented, and it was led forth to die. But neither knife nor axe could penetrate its hide, so they tried to consume it with fire. After a time it became red-hot, and then it leaped out from amid the flames, and dashed about setting fire to all manner of things. The conflagration spread and was followed by famine, so that the whole ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... Mr. Blink was fanning the flame of mistrust into a conflagration. What, he asked, did the jury think? They were men of the world. Candidly, had they ever seen such a chauffeur and footman before? Did they look like servants? Of course they had Mr. Bumble's—their master's—confidence. But had they the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... has now descended, as it fell on the next younger of our cities, Chicago, in 1872. It was the rage of the fire-fiend that desolated the metropolis of the lakes. Upon the Queen City of the West the twin terrors of earthquake and conflagration have descended at once, careening through its thronged streets, its marts of trade, and its abodes alike of poverty and wealth, and with the red hand of devastation sweeping one of the noblest centres of human industry and enterprise from the face ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... the ravages of the last flood been repaired when fire marked Gorgona for its prey. The conflagration began at a store by the river-side; but it spread rapidly, and before long all Gorgona was in danger. The town happened to be very full that night, two crowds having met there, and there was great ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... merrily. They built it under the outer end of a long tree limb, and from the limb suspended a pot full of water by a long iron chain they had brought along. As the ground was covered with snow, there was little danger of spreading a conflagration. Soon the water was boiling and the guide made a steaming pot of coffee, which was passed around in tin cups, with sugar and a little condensed milk. They had brought along bread, cheese, chipped beef, and boiled eggs, and also a mince pie which Mrs. Barrow had baked ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... time to make out the camp's exact position before it closes round us, so we reach it without any real difficulty. When we get there, about one o'clock, I find the men have kept the fires alight and Cook is asleep before one of them with another conflagration smouldering in his hair. I get him to make me tea, while the others pack up as quickly as possible, and by two we are all off on our way down to the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... Thessalian, and Clisthenes of Sicyon, and proposed by Solon of Athens: we find the Amphictyons also about half a century afterward undertaking the duty of collecting subscriptions throughout the Hellenic world, and making the contract with the Alcmaeonids for rebuilding the temple after a conflagration. But the influence of this council is essentially of a fluctuating and intermittent character. Sometimes it appears forward to decide, and its decisions command respect; but such occasions are rare, taking the general course of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... for he did not much longer remain upon his elevated perch. Whether it was the smoke that he was unable longer to endure, or whether he knew that the conflagration was at hand, does not clearly appear; but from his movements it was evident the nest was getting too ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... that the present is the fifth age or period of the world's history; that it has already undergone four destructions by various causes, and that the present period is also to terminate in another such catastrophe. The agents of such universal ruin have been a great flood, a world-wide conflagration, frightful tornadoes and famine, earthquakes and wild beasts, and hence the Ages, Suns or Periods were called respectively, from their terminations, those of Water, Fire, Air and Earth. As we do not know the destiny of the fifth, the present one, ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... them, and that glimpse was but momentary. Thunder peals were now added to the terrors of the time, while the yacht tossed and plunged on angry, threatening billows. Showers of sparks and glowing cinders, as if from some mighty conflagration, poured down into the water, striking its surface with an ominous hiss; they resembled meteors, and their brilliancy was augmented by the surrounding gloom. Rain also began to descend, not in drops, but in broad sheets and with the roar of a cataract; in a moment everybody ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... and I witness what, at our distance, seems to be the burning of Santiago de Cuba! The sky is black with smoke, and from the centre of the town broad flames mount high into the air. Verily, part of Santiago is in flames, but the cause of the conflagration is—as we afterwards find—in no way connected ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... transformed, and in all countries political thought is baffled and bewildered by the complexity of the problems by which it is faced. To this in part we owe the dimness of vision which overtook us as we went whirling together towards the great catastrophe. It is only in the glare of a world-conflagration that we begin to perceive, in something like their true proportions, the great forces and events which have been shaping our destinies. In the future, if the huge soulless mechanism which man has ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... such enormities as these upon the helpless and unoffending women and children, as well as upon those who were more able to resist and better qualified to endure them; together with the desolation of herds, the devastation of crops, and the conflagration of houses which invariably characterized those incursions, engendered a general feeling of resentment, that sought in some instances, to wreak itself on those who were guiltless of any participation in those bloody deeds. That vindictive spirit led to the perpetration ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... smoke, that, entering their eyes, made them smart fiercely. Not only that, but the fire could be seen in a dozen places behind them, leaping up into the trees as the dried foliage offered such a splendid torch, and the wind urged the conflagration along. ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... mile we drove the car slowly between the blackened walls of fire-gutted buildings. This was no accidental conflagration, mind you, for scattered here and there were houses which stood undamaged and in every such case there was scrawled with chalk upon their doors "Gute Leute. Nicht zu plundern." (Good people. Do ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... brink of the earth and the instant that the Sun appeared he flung the magic ball full in his face. The surface of the Sun was broken into a thousand pieces that spattered over the earth and kindled a mighty conflagration. Ta-Vwots crept under the tree that had sheltered him, but that was of no avail against the increasing heat. He tried to run away, but the fire burned off his toes, then his feet, then his legs, then his body, so that he ran on his hands, and when his hands were burned off he walked on the stumps ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... all the air, will continually gravitate back to us; be reshaped, transformed, readapted, that so, in new figures, under new conditions, it may enrich and nourish us again? What part of it, not being incombustible, has actually gone to flame and gas in the huge world-conflagration, and is now GASEOUS, mounting aloft; and will know no beneficence of gravitation, but mount, and roam upon the waste winds forever,—Nature so ordering it, in spite of any industry of Art? This is the universal question of afflicted mankind at present; and sure enough it ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... health. He had gone to early morning chapel, leaving a lighted candle among his papers on his desk. Tradition asserts that his little dog "Diamond" upset the candle; at all events, when Newton came back he found that many valuable papers had perished in a conflagration. The loss of these manuscripts seems to have had a serious effect. Indeed, it has been asserted that the distress reduced Newton to a state of mental aberration for a considerable time. This has, apparently, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... back in great confusion out of shot-range. Munnich gives himself up for lost. And indeed, says Mannstein, had the Turks sallied out in pursuit at that moment, they might have chased us back to Russia. But the Turks did not sally. And the internal conflagration is not quenched, far from it;—and about nine A.M. their Powder-Magazine, conflagration reaching it, roared aloft into the air, and killed seven thousand of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... he had been in search of work. That evening, while watching for his return, she thought she had seen him enter the dancing-hall of the "Grand-Balcony," the ten blazing windows of which lighted up with the glare of a conflagration the dark expanse of the exterior Boulevards; and five or six paces behind him, she had caught sight of little Adele, a burnisher, who dined at the same restaurant, swinging her hands, as if she had just quitted his arm so as not to pass together ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... effect of the present peace, upon the approaching war with the Turks. Though it will not probably prevent it, yet it may moderate its views towards that quarter, and thus save the continent of Europe from the mischief of a general conflagration. I shall communicate my mission to the Vice Chancellor, as soon as some necessary arrangements can be made, and shall endeavor to bring on the business of the commercial treaty without loss of time, as there is now little doubt ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various
... and yet hardly long enough. He discovered soon after his return, that it was Santerre's purpose to burn the chateau early in the morning, and then to take the inhabitants away with him as prisoners; and he greatly feared that Chapeau would not be able to return in time to prevent the conflagration. He anxiously watched the first break of day, and listened intently, but for a long time in vain, for the noise of coming feet. About half-past two, a soldier came and whispered to the sergeant, who then woke Santerre, and whispered ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... resemblance to Mr. Westall's manner, and for containing a well-drawn figure of Jackson the pugilist. Of his 'Satan calling up the Legions,' Anthony Pasquin cruelly wrote, that 'it conveyed an idea of a mad German sugar-baker dancing naked in a conflagration of his own treacle.' Over an attempt at a Prospero and Miranda, he subsequently painted on the same canvas a portrait ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... nearer were those of the advanced posts; and, at more than one point of the surrounding country, a cottage or farmhouse, set on fire by careless or mischievous marauders, fiercely flamed without any attempt being made to extinguish the conflagration. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... his interview with his father, and was standing close by Uncle Richard. Every eye was fixed on the ship. The fire increased every second, and with a loud roar the flames burst out above the roof of the storehouse, and at each blast of wind the conflagration waxed higher and higher, until the heat by the engines became almost intolerable. The more furiously the fire raged, the more silent grew the crowd. No orders were heard, and the shouts of encouragement from the seamen died away; while the strokes ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... will succeed in extinguishing the fire, George?" asked Grace Hartley, as she clung to her lover's arm and gazed with wide-open eyes of anxiety at the progress of the conflagration. ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... appeared, but the hills all round, for many miles, were on fire, the effects of which by night were very striking. Had the voyagers been compelled by circumstances to remain on that coast, the result of these fires would have been serious, as the conflagration would have driven the kangaroos and the feathered tribes to a distance, and thus deprived the crew of the Endeavour of some of their principal means of support. But the ship was now ready for sea, though the master had been unable to ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... have judged us, but thou wouldst not! What dimm'd thy reason's piercing light, That Russian hearts thou understoodst not, From thine heroic spirit's height? Moscow's immortal conflagration Foreseeing not, thou deem'dst that we Would kneel for peace, a conquer'd nation— Thou knew'st the Russ ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... houses had been burned down and much damage done. The creature could not be found, and only when the parchment with the Name, which could not burn, was discovered amid the ashes, was it known that she had been destroyed in the conflagration. ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... of the grain-fields having been ruined by the heavy and constant rains which fell—which injured the salt springs even more, so that a half-fanega of salt, which usually is worth two or three reals, reached the price of twelve pesos. In La Estacada there was a great conflagration on Good Friday, in the night, which destroyed many houses. In the following year the scarcity of food was increased by a plague of locusts, which swept away all [vegetation]; and a caban of rice came to be worth twenty and twenty-four reals. But what ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... the historian, "Tamerlane remained a tranquil spectator of the sack and conflagration of Delhi and the massacre of its inhabitants, while he was celebrating a feast in honor of his victory. When the troops were wearied with slaughter, and nothing was left to plunder, he gave orders for the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... gave to Oswego Tea; but here the floral bracts, not the flowers themselves, are on fire. Whole mountainsides in the Canadian Rockies are ablaze with the Indian Paint-brushes that range in color there from ivory white and pale salmon through every shade of red to deep maroon—a gorgeous conflagration of color. Lacking good, honest, deep green, one suspects from the yellowish tone of calices, stem, and leaves that this plant is something of a thief. That it still possesses foliage, proves only petty larceny against it, similar to the foxglove's. The roots of our painted ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... embroidery of Mr. Sowerby on the basis of his excellent moral foundations, all the while hoping, praying, that he might not be lured on to the proposal for Nesta. But her subservience to the power of the persuasive will in Victor—which was like the rush of a conflagration—compelled her to think realizingly of any scheme he allowed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... concerned in electric and magnetic phenomena. Glass and crystal would be among the most opaque of bodies. Metals would be more or less transparent, and a telegraph wire through the air would look like a long narrow hole drilled through an impervious solid body. A dynamo in active work would resemble a conflagration, whilst a permanent magnet would realise the dream of mediaeval mystics, and become an everlasting lamp with no expenditure of energy or consumption ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... Heaven had never witnessed such calamities. Why, the march of the Germans has been a peaceful procession in comparison with Sherman's march or Sheridan's forays. They have sacked no city, their path is not marked by havoc and conflagration; they fight our men, and maybe loot deserted houses, but as a rule unarmed citizens and peasants ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... 5 a.m., when we were called, the whole sky was overcast with a lurid glare, and the atmosphere was thick, as if with the fumes of some vast conflagration. As the sun rose in raging fierceness, the sky cleared, and became of a deep, clear, transparent blue. The island of Penang is very beautiful, especially in the early morning light. It was fortunate we did not try to come in last night, as we could now see that we must inevitably have run ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... conflagration. Golden maples and amber-hued cherries, crimson dog-woods and scarlet oaks shook out their flame-foliage and waved their glowing boughs, all dashed and speckled, flecked and rimmed with orange and blood, ghastly green, and tawny brown. ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... historical remembrances, Rome was profitably destroyed; and in any other sense, whether for health or for the conveniences of polished life, or for architectural magnificence, there never was a doubt that the Roman people gained infinitely by this conflagration. For, like London, it arose from its ashes with a splendor proportioned to its vast expansion of wealth and population; and marble took the place of wood. For the moment, however, this event must have been felt by the people as an overwhelming ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... forms drew nearer, and were almost among them when they broke into a blaze from water-line to truck, and the two fleets were seen by the lurid light of the conflagration; the anchorage, the walls and windows of Calais, and the sea shining red far as eye could reach, as if the ocean itself was burning. Among the dangers which they might have to encounter, English fireworks had been especially dreaded by the Spaniards. Fire-ships—a fit device of heretics—had ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... very still. There was not so much as an earthquake. The reign of Augustus had been marked by the defeat of Varus. Under Tiberius a falling amphitheatre had killed a multitude. Caligula felt that through sheer felicity his own reign might be forgot. A famine, a pest, an absolute defeat, a terrific conflagration—any prodigious calamity that should sweep millions away and stamp his own memory immutably on the chronicles of time, how desirable it were! But there was nothing. The crops had never been more abundant; apart from the arenas and the prisons, the health ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... distinction the half-pounders complain of, and that twenty are selected to be starved. While we were at Port Desire, one day dressing our victuals, we set fire to the grass; instantly the flames spread, and immediately we saw the whole country in a conflagration, and the next day, from the watering-place, we saw the smoke at a distance, so that then the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... the trouble she took, and the great heat she endured at Talsy, trying to induce them to listen to terms of peace which she could have made favourable and lasting for France had they only listened to her. And this conflagration, and others which we have seen lighted from this first brand, would have been stamped out forever in France had they but believed in her. I know the zeal she showed, and I know what I myself have heard her say, ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... the famous fire which devastated Rome; whether or no it was actually Nero's own work, rumour declared that he appeared on a private stage while the conflagration was raging, and chanted appropriately of the fall of Troy. He planned rebuilding on a magnificent scale, and sought popularity by throwing the blame of the fire—and putting to the most exquisite tortures—a class hated for their abominations, called Christians, from their first leader, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... creek being flat, met with no obstacle. The burning liquid had then spread through the forest of the Far West. At this period of the year, when the trees were dried up by a tropical heat, the forest caught fire instantaneously, in such a manner that the conflagration extended itself both by the trunks of the trees and by their higher branches, whose interlacement favored its progress. It even appeared that the current of flame spread more rapidly among the summits of the trees than the current of ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... so far, to touch his heart. And if this was the impression he received seeing her at a comparative distance, that impression was greatly intensified seeing her now at close quarters. The contrast between the subtle softness and the flare—as of a conflagration—of her dress, the weariness of her attitude, and the unfathomable melancholy of her ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... rendered Delaherche services that were of inestimable value. But what days of terror and distress were those that followed upon the heels of the capitulation! the city, overrun with German soldiery, trembled in momentary dread of pillage and conflagration. Then the armies of the victors streamed away toward the valley of the Seine, leaving behind them only sufficient men to form a garrison, and the quiet that settled upon the place was that of a necropolis: the houses all closed, the shops shut, the streets ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... blistered surface, but with angles sharper and faces more regularly defined than most of those which have been found upon the earth's surface—as if the shape of the latter might be due in part to the conflagration they undergo in passing at such tremendous speed through the atmosphere, or, in an opposite sense, to the fractures caused by the shock of their falling. Though I made no attempt to count the innumerable ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... add a lurid touch of horror to the picture that might surpass all the rest a conflagration came to mock those who were in fear of drowning with a death yet more terrible. Where the ruins of Johnstown, composed mainly of timber, had been piled up forty feet high against a railroad bridge below the town ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... large hemlock tree. The lightning had struck the tree, causing it to topple ever. In falling, it had landed fairly and squarely upon the cabin, smashing it completely. One corner of the cabin was in ashes, but the heavy rain had probably extinguished the conflagration. ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... alarm for giving notice of the existence of a conflagration. Such are sometimes operated by a compound bar thermostat (see Thermostat), which on a given elevation of temperature closes a circuit and rings an electric bell. Sometimes the expansion of a column of mercury when heated is used. This, by coming in contact with ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... almighty mind, He raises Hector to the work design'd, Bids him with more than mortal fury glow, And drives him, like a lightning, on the foe. So Mars, when human crimes for vengeance call, Shakes his huge javelin, and whole armies fall. Not with more rage a conflagration rolls, Wraps the vast mountains, and involves the poles. He foams with wrath; beneath his gloomy brow Like fiery meteors his red eye-balls glow: The radiant helmet on his temple burns, Waves when he nods, and lightens ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... rational, but not any less fervid faith of the disciples of Perfectibility. But this was not so clear fifty years since, when the crash and dust of demolition had not so subsided as to let men see how much had risen up behind. The fire of the new school had been taken from the very conflagration which they execrated, but they were not held back from denouncing the eighteenth century by the reflection that, at any rate, its thought and action had made ready the way for much of what is best ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... of the city. Other cities and towns along the coast and in the Santa Clara Valley suffered greatly and a number of the buildings of Leland Stanford University, thirty miles south of San Francisco, were demolished. Ninety per cent of the loss in San Francisco was due to the conflagration which raged for two days. Fires broke out owing to the crossing of electric wires. The water-mains were old and poorly laid and the force of the earthquake had burst them. Firemen and soldiers fought the advance of the flames by destroying buildings with dynamite. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... distemperature was over;— there was something more of the old prudence in men's reflections; and it was plain to see that the elements of reconciliation were coming together throughout the world. The conflagration of the French Revolution was indeed not extinguished, but it was evidently burning out; and their old reverence for the Grand Monarque was beginning to revive among them, though they only called him a consul. Upon the king's fast I preached on ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... was heard, and through the port holes could be seen the glare of the rising conflagration, while the shouts of the savages grew more exultant. They had set fire to the end of the building occupied by the daughters. The logs were dry as tinder, and the devouring element was soon enveloping the whole building in its fatal embrace. To remain in the cabin was certain death, ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... Wentworth rush out, stare wildly at the conflagration, and plunge back into the cabin. Scarcely a minute elapsed when he emerged, this time slowly, half doubled over, his shoulders burdened by a sack heavy and unmistakable. Smoke and Shorty sprang at him like a pair of famished wolves. They hit him right and left, at the same instant. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... like the first flash of a conflagration! The spirit of church- rivalry awoke all at once in these people brutalized by many years of blind, savage worship of their own one idol. The fanatic's words flew from mouth to mouth. And beneath the tragic dull-red sky, the raging ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... seventh day the conflagration broke out. The editor of the Belmount Refiner was the first to smell smoke and to raise the cry of "Fire!" but by midnight the wires were humming with the news and the entire State ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... worked as though inspired; but to no purpose in the end. For the flames increased. Puff after puff of wind drove the fire on, scattering brands from the blazing pine; and now another, and another, tree caught. The glare of the conflagration increased. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... extending back towards the town, lay the dismal ruins of the United States arsenal and armory, consisting of piles of broken bricks and a waste of shapeless demolition, amid which we saw gun-barrels in heaps of hundreds together. They were the relics of the conflagration, bent with the heat of the fire, and rusted with the wintry rain to which they had since been exposed. The brightest sunshine could not have made the scene cheerful, nor have taken away the gloom from the dilapidated town; for, besides the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... swift, and proud, still blew upon the dying old house, which was constructed so entirely of combustible materials that it burnt almost as fiercely as a corn-rick. The heat in the road increased, and now for an instant at the height of the conflagration all stood still, and gazed silently, awestruck and helpless, in the presence of so irresistible an enemy. Then, with minds full of the tragedy unfolded to them, they rushed forward again with the obtuse directness of waves, to their labour of saving goods from ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... subject, and should neither faint nor scream if she were to enter the apartment at this moment. It is about five years since General Jerningham set hurriedly off, in considerable dismay, for the scene of a direful conflagration in a northern county, wherein several unfortunate individuals had perished. The fire originated at a hotel, and the General had reasons for fearing that his sister might be among the number of the sufferers, for she was known to have ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various
... Lord Stamfordham, watching the situation, felt there was not a single instant to lose. There is one moment in the life of a conflagration when it can be stamped out: that moment passed, no power can stop it. Stamfordham, his head clear, his determination strong and ready, resolved to act without hesitating on his own responsibility. He sent a letter round to Prince ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... the acts of outlawry which usually are a prelude to savage outbreaks. There were none of the rumblings of the coming storm which are almost invariable accompaniments of these upheavals. Indeed, it came with the suddenness of a great conflagration, and before the scattered settlers of western Idaho and eastern Oregon were aware of danger, from a thousand to twelve hundred plumed and mounted warriors were sweeping the country with ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... that burned the building on Market Street, near Third, next door to the History Building, again barely missed the Bancroft Library. And when it was moved to the building especially constructed for it at Valencia and Mission streets, the great conflagration of the 18th of April, 1906, just failed to reach it. In this State it had remained for a private individual, by his life work, to collect and preserve a library that to the State of California is almost priceless in value. This magnificent library ...
— California, Romantic and Resourceful • John F. Davis
... most decisive desolation: Indeed the consequences of their action were more sudden than themselves had expected or wished. The Flames rising from the burning piles caught part of the Building, which being old and dry, the conflagration spread with rapidity from room to room. The Walls were soon shaken by the devouring element: The Columns gave way: The Roofs came tumbling down upon the Rioters, and crushed many of them beneath their weight. Nothing was to be heard but shrieks ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... particularly rare golden-red shade of orange tulle, her faultless shoulders quite bare, her long throat and small dark head superbly held and ablaze with jewels, she was a vision of fire. She looked like a single flame that had become detached from some great conflagration and was swaying and dancing through the world alone. She shone and sparkled and flickered, and was the cynosure of all eyes. Mrs. Ozanne had never been so proud of her—and so perturbed. For where had that new diamond spray of maidenhair fern come from, that ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... might have would indeed be no more than an echo. I—am not like other women; something in me is dead—it is the power to love as women love. I am like a person who emerges from a conflagration, blinded; the eyes are there, but the ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... girl's soul as with a red hot brand. It was the Skandinavia's work. The agents of the Skandinavia. And she knew that she, perhaps, was their principal agent. The rattle of machine guns. The human slaughter. She had witnessed the terror of it all in the fierce light of the conflagration which looked to be devouring the whole world of the mills. She could never forget it. She could never forgive herself her share in the ghastly plans for that hideous destruction. But more than all she knew she could never forgive, or again associate ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... Hakodate itself makes one feel that it is Japan all over. The streets are very wide and clean, but the houses are mean and low. The city looks as if it had just recovered from a conflagration. The houses are nothing but tinder. The grand tile roofs of some other cities are not to be seen. There is not an element of permanence in the wide, and windy streets. It is an increasing and busy place; it lies for two miles along the shore, and has climbed the hill ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... planes scream over the house as he joined her at the window, heard the screaming whines mingled with the rumbling thunder. And far away, on the horizon, the red glare was glowing, rising, burning up to a roaring conflagration in the black ...
— Bear Trap • Alan Edward Nourse
... 1827 and the passage of the act of 1828 inflamed the south to the point of conflagration. John Randolph's elevation of the standard of revolt in 1824 now brought him credit as the prophet of the gospel of resistance. "Here is a district of country," he had proclaimed, in his speech on the tariff in that year, "extending from the Patapsco to ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... to the Fleet, and to the King's-Bench, and I know not how many other places; and one might see the glare of conflagration fill the sky from many parts. The sight was dreadful. Some people were threatened: Mr. Strahan advised me to take care of myself. Such a time of terrour you have been ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... little stab of wonder: "The Pisanello St Hubert," or "The Patinir Flight into Egypt—What's happened to that?" So now there must be a handful of wanderers here and there who, among all the major conflagration and disasters of nations and continents, have felt the tug of the question, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... from this immense scandal by a frightful calamity—the famous conflagration of Rome, which began the nineteenth of July of the year 64 and devastated almost all quarters of the city for ten days. What was the cause of the great disaster? This very obscure point has much interested historians, who have tried in vain to throw light on the subject. As far as I am concerned, ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... returned, "just five years ago this summer." And she proceeded, without further invitation, to give a voluminous account of the conflagration and the cause of it, the ruin of the Eustace family, the inebriety of Bastable, and the death of Dermod Eustace at Glenalla. "But we hope to see the house rebuilt. It's likely to be, we hear, when Miss Eustace is married," she said, in a voice which suggested that she was full ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... it out!" came from Poke Stover, and, catching up one of the buckets the boys had thoughtfully provided, he ran to the window beneath which the conflagration was spreading. "Unbar it, Dan, and I'll souse it out. Look out that you don't ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... dangerous game, and Renshaw almost shrank from his words. He was firing the Egyptian's mind, but to what course he knew not. If to the Soudan, well; if to remain, what conflagration might not ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with consternation, startling sleepers from their dreams, and awaking them to a sense of peril. Thereon they rose promptly from their beds, and hastily throwing on some clothes, rushed out to rescue their neighbours' property from destruction, and subdue the threatening conflagration. ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... the first trespass notice he stood a moment to read it. Then, slowly, he turned and looked toward Clinch's. An autumn sunset flared like a conflagration through the pines. There was a glimmer of water, too, where ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... that. We emerge from the forest; the hacienda is before our eyes. Its white walls gleam under a yellow light—the light of fire, but not of a conflagration. The house stands intact. A huge bonfire burns in front of the portal; it was this that caused the glare ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... Leaving the conflagration to take its course every available man hastened to the palisade. Rapid independent fire delayed but failed to check the charge of ferocious, wildly shouting Askaris, whose courage had been worked up by promises of rewards if successful, and dire punishment ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... wind blowing from the west, the Congregational and Baptist churches, the high school, Pratt's photograph gallery and the two motion-picture houses were threatened with destruction. As Anderson Crow, now deputy marshal of the town, declared the instant he arrived at the scene of the conflagration, nothing but the most heroic and indefatigable efforts on the part of the volunteer fire-department could save the town—only he put it in this way: "We'll have another Chicago fire here, sure as you're born, unless it rains or the wind changes mighty all-fired sudden; ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... And the rebel came, and the soldiers, and oh, how they did fight! And the slaves, they did all run away—all—all—all—away; and the trees and fruits all destroy; and the houses all burn up in one gran' conflagration; and it was one kind, good American that did help us to fly; or we never—never would be able to lif. So we did come back to our patria poor, and we had to lif poor in Valencia. I told you I was lifing in Valencia when I left that place to come on ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... is struck from the central station. As soon as the sharp strokes give the signal of danger and point out the locality, every man springs to his post. The horses are hitched in a few seconds, the fire is lighted in the furnace, and the steamer and hose carriage start for the scene of the conflagration. The foreman runs, on foot, ahead of his steamer to clear the way, and the driver may keep up with him, but is not allowed to pass him. Only the engineer, his assistant, and the stoker, are allowed to ride on the engine. The rest of the company go on foot. Fast driving is severely ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... the green ledgers with red backs, like strong cricket-balls beaten flat; the court-guides directories, day-books, almanacks, letter-boxes, weighing-machines for letters, rows of fire-buckets for dashing out a conflagration in its first spark, and saving the immense wealth in notes and bonds belonging to the company; look at the iron safes, the clock, the office seal—in its capacious self, security for anything. Solidity! Look at the massive blocks of marble in the chimney-pieces, and the gorgeous parapet on ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... planes saw a flash of light. They saw a swiftly descending conflagration tracing a steep arch toward the tree tops. They saw that flaming vanish among the trees. And then they saw a vast upflaring of fire below. Flames licked upward almost to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... At present emulation and the various causes of dispute existing between them incite them against each other, because the fear of any foreign enemy is remote. But show them the Roman arms and a body of troops, natives of another country, and they will run together as if to extinguish a common conflagration. These same Carthaginians defended Spain in a different manner from that in which they will defend the walls of their capital, the temples of their gods, their altars, and their hearths; when their terrified wives will ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... the mountain were old fissures, surrounded by rusty looking sulphur incrustations, now nearly washed away. The whole mountain gives evidence of having been, a long time ago, in just the same condition of conflagration as that in which we found "Crater hill;" but all outward trace of fire has now disappeared, save what is found in the warm water of the small ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... "Life of Washington," gave the fair and reasonable view of their position when he said that "men of property and intelligence who had contributed to kindle the flame, under the common error of being able to regulate its heat, trembled at the extent of the conflagration. But it had passed the limits assigned to it, and was no longer subject ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... speed, attracted by the shouts of the boys and the glare of fire. Upon seeing this accession of strength, the Greeks at once desisted from the attack, and made off. By this time the windows of the various houses were opening, and shouts of affright arose at the sight of the conflagration; for the houses were, for the most part, constructed of wood, and, once begun, there was no saying where ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... convictions were exceedingly strong, and few influences could shake them. That quiet conversation in his buggy, in a retired road, with a brother lawyer, was a political baptism. He had taken his stand on one side of a great question which would rend in twain the whole country, and make a mighty conflagration, out of whose fires the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... poor creatures that were like to perish; the flames which burst out on board the doomed ships served to guide the fire of the English as surely as in broad daylight. At the head of a small squadron of gunboats Captain Curtis barred the passage of the salvors; the conflagration became general, only the discharges from the fort replied to the hissing of the flames and to the Spaniard's cries of despair. The fire at last slackened; the English gunboats changed their part; at the peril of their lives the brave seamen ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... adventure. How often had he heard his grandfather, shaking his head, say, "Yes, now newspaper writers have little to tell since Napoleon is quiet." And then he had related to him of the hero at Arcole and among the Pyramids, of the great campaign against Europe, of the conflagration at Moscow, ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... of newspapers arrived from the Continent with these warm, glowing-hot tidings. They were sunbeams wrapped up in packing-paper, and they inflamed my soul till it burst into the wildest conflagration. . . . It is all like a dream to me; especially the name Lafayette sounds to me like a legend out of my earliest childhood. Does he really sit again on horseback, commanding the National Guard? I almost fear it may not be ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... day a striking proof of the same thing was given in the great fire in Tooley street, when Braidwood lost his life. I witnessed that conflagration for a time from London Bridge, and its fury was something not to be described. There were vaults under some of the warehouses stored with inflammable materials, the contents of which caught fire and burnt for a fortnight, defying all ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... concealed themselves in a deep ravine, which at the bottom was covered with dry reed grass. The Sioux surrounded this spot, and set fire to it on the windward side of the reeds, in order to drive them out. When the conflagration had nearly reached the fugitives, one of the brothers remarked, that the Wahconda had certainly not created him to be smoked out like a racoon; the Indians smoke this animal out of hollow trees, by kindling a fire at the root: he urged his brother to attempt ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the mysterious almost supernatural character of the aurora from such a description in terms of a burning wood-lot or a hay-stack; it is no more like a conflagration than an apparition is like solid flesh and blood. Its wonderful, I almost said its spiritual, beauty, its sudden vanishings and returnings, its spectral, evanescent character—why, it startles and awes one as if it were the draperies around ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... minutes, the whole village was in a blaze. Moved by the sight, the unfortunate inhabitants came out from their hiding places in the forest; wringing their hands, crying, and cursing the invaders. In spite of the advice of Major Tempe, several of the women went off towards the scene of conflagration, to endeavor to save some little household treasure from the flames. In a short time one of them returned to fetch her husband, saying that the enemy had all left before they reached the village, ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... consecrated banners, and boldly steered for the harbor of Constantinople, to place on the throne a new favorite of God and the people. They depended on the succor of a miracle: but their miracles were inefficient against the Greek fire; and, after the defeat and conflagration of the fleet, the naked islands were abandoned to the clemency or justice of the conqueror. The son of Leo, in the first year of his reign, had undertaken an expedition against the Saracens: during his absence, the capital, the palace, and the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... of his books on childhood, gives a good example of the different modes of apperception of the same phenomenon which are possible at different stages of individual experience. A dwelling-house took fire, and an infant in the family, witnessing the conflagration from the arms of his nurse, standing outside, expressed nothing but the liveliest delight at its brilliancy. But, when the bell of the fire engine was heard approaching, the child was thrown by the sound into a paroxysm of fear, strange sounds being, as you know, very alarming ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... and Herculaneum might have passed into oblivion, with a herd of their contemporaries, had they not been fortunately overwhelmed by a volcano. The renowned city of Troy acquired celebrity only from its ten years' distress and final conflagration. Paris rose in importance by the plots and massacres which ended in the exaltation of Napoleon; and even the mighty London has skulked through the records of time, celebrated for nothing of moment excepting the Plague, the Great Fire, and Guy Faux's ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... law, either by the hands of the executioner, or by being exposed to the fury of savage animals. The early Christians were especially subjected to this species of cruelty. Nero availed himself of the prejudice against them to turn aside popular indignation after the great conflagration of Rome, which is commonly ascribed to his own wanton love of mischief; and we learn from Tertullian, that, after great public misfortunes, the cry of the populace was, "To the lions ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... reared, and saw more danger ahead. She feared the young man was but amusing himself, or at best enjoying Hester's company as some wary winged thing enjoys the flame, courting a few singes, not quite avoiding even a slight plumous conflagration, but careful not to turn a delightful imagination into a consuming reality, beyond retreat and self-recovery. She could not believe him as careless of himself as of her, but judged he was what he would to himself call flirting with her—which had the more danger ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... CO2 is formed by the combustion; name it. The equation is C 2O CO2. Affix the names and weights. Is CO2 a supporter of combustion? Note that when C is burned with plenty of O, CO2 is always formed, and that no matter how great the conflagration, the union is atom by atom. Combustion, as here shown, is only a rapid union of O with some other substance, as ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... eagerness soon held lighted matches to the dry grass; there was a yellow flicker in the sunshine, then a blaze, a crackle, a devouring rush of flames that mounted higher and higher until, with the surrounding column of smoke, there was a conflagration which, at night, would have alarmed the country-side. The children at first gazed with awe upon the scenes as they backed farther away from the increasing heat. Our beacon-fire drew Junior, who came bounding over ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... be passing at the same time, and its contents were instantly seized upon for use. The labourers, incited and directed by the sisters, rushed down at once to the brook, thankful that water was so nigh. Happily there was no wind to fan the fierce conflagration, a heavy mist was beginning to rise, and strong and willing hands were at work to put out the fire. Duty and Affection were everywhere—encouraging the men, directing their efforts, nay, labouring themselves with ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... like other mortals, to all the influences of natural evil; his harvest is not spared by the tempest, nor his cattle by the murrain; his house flames like others in a conflagration; nor have his ships any peculiar power of resisting hurricanes: his mind, however elevated, inhabits a body subject to innumerable casualties, of which he must always share the dangers and the pains; he bears about him the seeds of ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... came upon Bob. Daylight knew him for what he wanted the moment he laid eyes on him. A large horse for a riding animal, he was none too large for a big man like Daylight. In splendid condition, Bob's coat in the sunlight was a flame of fire, his arched neck a jeweled conflagration. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... Schaffarik observes, Geschichte, p. 283, "The public library in the state-house was delivered to the Jesuits, who had just been introduced. The books which these did not commit to the flames on the spot, perished in the great conflagration in 1774, together with the edifice of their college. In all Carniola only two copies of Bohorizh's grammar are known ...
— Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations • Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
... crimson conflagration Roses o'er the tumult rise; Giant lilies, white as crystal, Shoot like ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... were my kinsfolk on the maternal side. My mother presented my father with seven children, of whom I was the sixth, being also the fourth son. I was born on November 29, 1853, at a house called Chalfont Lodge in Campden House Road, Kensington, and well do I remember the great conflagration which destroyed the fine old historical mansion built by Baptist Hicks, sometime a mercer in Cheapside and ultimately Viscount Campden. But another scene which has more particularly haunted me all through ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... the account I did not believe it; but the Bishop of London says, he hears the 'Etats have required the King to write to every foreign power not to harbour the execrable author, who is fled.(660) i fear this conflagration will not end as rapidly ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the vehement emotion which these reports excited in the bosom of the emperor, was superadded an alarming consideration. The conflagration of Smolensk was no longer, he saw, the effect of a fatal and unforeseen accident of war, nor even the result of an act of despair: it was the result of cool determination. The Russians had studied the time and means, and taken as great pains to destroy, as are usually ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... light and darkness appeared in a corner of the eastern sky, something like the reflection of a distant conflagration. The light spread farther and farther, and swallowed many a star. It looked as if some half-extinguished firebrand of a world had blazed up again, and was burning brightly once more. But no! that was neither a world-catastrophe nor a conflagration: some mysterious ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... large hail-stones and thunder and lightning. The wind was instantly lulled, and after the first burst of the storm a deathlike silence succeeded to the crackling of the flames. A deluge of rain descended, and an instant every spark of the conflagration was extinguished, and the pitchy darkness of the night was unbroken by ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that after having embarked on board the boat during that tempestuous night, which witnessed the conflagration of their noble steamer, whose fate was recorded in a previous chapter, the sailors, who had, unknown to the captain, smuggled a large cask of spirits on board, began freely to imbibe them, to keep out, as they said, the cold. It was in vain ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert
... and took them off. I have frequently observed that the day after the planter had burnt the trash in a cane-field the aura vulture was sure to be there, feeding on the snakes, lizards and frogs which had suffered in the conflagration. I often saw a large bird (very much like the common gregarious vulture, at a distance) catch and devour lizards; after shooting one it turned out to be not a vulture but a hawk, with a tail squarer and shorter than hawks have in general. The vultures, ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... only in a single pair of thick socks, were almost frozen, while the rest of his body was roasting in the fierce heat of the conflagration. It wanted about two hours of dawn. There was not a breath of air stirring, and the flames shot straight up, murky red and clear yellow intertwisting, with here and there a sudden leaping tongue of violet white. Outside the radius of the heat the tall woods snapped sharply in the intense cold. ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... country. I have heard experienced lumbermen maintain that the growth of this pine was even accelerated by a fire brisk enough to destroy all other trees, and I have myself seen it still flourishing after a conflagration which had left not a green leaf but its own in the wood, and actually throwing out fresh foliage, when the old had been quite burnt off and the bark almost converted into charcoal. The wood of the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... long since been decided in favor of the Central Powers. Italy had entered the Triple Alliance as a clean contract, for an honest defensive purpose. It was never intended for a weapon of aggression. When Austria and Germany decided upon the outrage to Serbia that was the cause of the conflagration, they did not consult Italy about it, knowing well that Italy would not have consented; in fact, would have denounced it to the world. But they hoped that by surprising her with the "fait accompli," she ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... are silent, Rome is dumb, the moral law sleeps, the canon law is forgotten; and these pastors, transforming their flocks into packs of wolves, scour the plains, blessing murder and sanctifying conflagration. ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... on, the buying and selling, the business of the day, and in some houses there were weary pain-racked bodies that slipped out of life gently without waiting for the general conflagration. ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... urgently pressed upon them. When they returned home, another band was sent out under the direction of one of the house-fathers, and exerted themselves as faithfully as their predecessors had done. But their sacrifices and toils did not end here. Among the thousands whom that fearful conflagration left homeless, not a few came here for shelter and food. With these our boys shared their meals, and gave up to them their beds,—themselves sleeping upon the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various |
