"Climber" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... translated. Plant gods do not appear prominently, the chief one seeming to be the ginseng, addressed in the formulas as the "Great Man" or "Little Man," although its proper Cherokee name signifies the "Mountain Climber." ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... garden and the field, but it belongs to a very large family, the Solanaceae or Nightshades, of which many members are very ornamental, though as they chiefly come from the tropical regions, there are very few that can be treated as entirely hardy plants. One, however, is a very beautiful climber—the Solanum jasminoides from South America—and quite hardy in the South of England. Trained against a wall it will soon cover it, and when once established will bear its handsome trusses of white flowers with yellow anthers in great profusion during ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... scrupulous of their personal safety. To be deeply interested in the accidents of our existence, to enjoy keenly the mixed texture of human experience, rather leads a man to disregard precautions, and risk his neck against a straw. For surely the love of living is stronger in an Alpine climber roping over a peril, or a hunter riding merrily at a stiff fence, than in a creature who lives upon a diet and walks a measured distance in the ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... did never fear, But cried 'Good seamen!' to the sailors, galling His kingly hands, haling ropes; And, clasping to the mast, endured a sea That almost burst the deck.... Never was waves nor wind more violent: And from the ladder-tackle washes off A canvas-climber. 'Ha,' says one, 'wilt out?' And with a dropping industry they skip From stem to stern; the boatswain whistles, and The master calls ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... pinyon tree as best suited to the purposes of a lazy climber, Stacy climbed it, grunting and grumbling unintelligibly. He had hopes that he might discover something worth while, something that would distinguish him from his ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... he said. "Seriously, though, a mountain climber, who must naturally be often walking along risky places, has enough to think about without indulging in fancies of what might be if this happened or that took place. Such thoughts may unnerve him; and you may depend upon it, some of the bravest things are done ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... of the cries we heard. There were notes and cries familiar to me as the crowing of the cock—parrot screams and yelping of toucans, the distant wailing calls of maam and duraquara; and shrill laughter-like notes of the large tree-climber as it passed from tree to tree; the quick whistle of cotingas; and strange throbbing and thrilling sounds, as of pygmies beating on metallic drums, of the skulking pitta-thrushes; and with these mingled other notes less well known. One came from the treetops, where it was perpetually wandering ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... compression of the hand was stayed, while horror leapt into the eyes so keenly looking over the sight. Something had happened up there on the face of the cliff. The man had slipped! One foot shot out helplessly, as the frantic climber struggled for those last few steps before the shot came. He wildly sought to recover himself, but the fatal jolt carried the weight of his body with it, and wrenched the other foot from its hold. For the fraction of a second the man below became aware of the ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... and ia tiet hile), and Yule writes, "Another of their recreations is an old acquaintance also, which we are surprised to meet with in the Far East. A very tall thick bamboo is planted in the ground, and well oiled. A silver ornament, or a few rupees placed at the top, reward the successful climber." A leg of mutton, or a piece of pork fixed at the top of this pole would render the pastime identical with the "greasy-pole" climbing of English villages. The following are some other ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... society, because look what he'd done in one brief evening without trying—and he flashed three cards on which telephone numbers is written in dainty feminine hands. He said if a modest and retiring stranger like himself could do that much, just think what an out-and-out social climber might achieve! ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... evasions. If he likes a man, he likes him. If he doesn't like him—that ends it. I don't have any idea what he really thinks of Granger. The Judge visits the old man's house when Mrs. Sayers and the daughter are there, but Mrs. Sayers is not the old man—by a long shot! She's a social climber. The old man doesn't give a hang about society, or pink teas. He makes automobiles and believes in efficiency. Granger's not the old man's sort at all. Too stuck up. If I were you, I'd wait until the old man finds out that you're ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... Merrill, even though she herself declared it—those old chestnuts of the social world which must have had their origin in Egypt and Chaldea. Mrs. Simms herself was of a nondescript type, not a real personage, clever, good-looking, tasteful, a social climber. The two Simms children (little girls) had been taught all the social graces of the day—to pose, smirk, genuflect, and the like, to the immense delight of their elders. The nurse in charge was in uniform, the governess was a much ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... a tremendous walker and hill climber. The following letter narrates a curious adventure in a ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... imagine Helen is deficient there? Well, I suppose you don't know she's the best tennis player in the county and a daring rock-climber. Girls are taking to mountaineering now, you know. But are you going back to ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... days later (January 11) he accomplished the tour de force of the campaign. In the plain to the west of Colesberg there arose an isolated kopje, some six hundred feet in height, called Coles Kop. This hill, which rises almost sheer from the plain, taxes the wind of the unencumbered climber to the utmost. Being higher than the surrounding kopjes, it commands both Colesberg and the enemy's laager. The Boers had left it ungarrisoned, thinking it useless either to themselves or to the enemy. They made a very great mistake. For the mere ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... of mountains sees vast masses piled up in gentle declivities to the clouds. To see mountains in this way is to appreciate the masses of which they are composed. But the climber among the glaciers sees the elements of which this mass is composed,—that it is made of cliffs and towers and pinnacles, with intervening gorges, and the smooth billows of granite seen from afar are transformed into cliffs and caves ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... stood out against this stealing a march, as it was for her the expedition was said to be planned, but she said nothing; she had set her heart upon seeing the Tor, and realising somewhat of the thrilling sensation of an Alpine climber; and she was but nine—no great age for unerring wisdom. "Young people's heads are renowned for folly." Mrs. Grant said something like this when Dick and Jenny mustered at the gates, and the four set off, fortified with a good supply of sandwiches and ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... trained athlete, and a skillful climber as well, and, difficult as the ascent proved to be for him, he managed it, and clambered over the sill of the window and into the room, breathless, but smiling ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... of the beach scrub the way was open, though rough, with granite boulders half hidden among rampant blady grass. The country was decidedly hostile to the climber, though far from actually forbidding, and with Wylo in the lead—for I held myself in reserve for the final clamber up the ravine, to which the ascent to the base of the Sentinel was merely a prelude—the pace was respectable and sure. Closer acquaintance forced a certain sort ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of the habits of this animal as follows: "The Wah is a vegetivorous climber, breeding and feeding chiefly on the ground, and having its retreat in holes and clefts of rock. It eats fruits, roots, sprouts of bamboo, acorns, &c.; also, it is said, eggs and young birds; also milk and ghee, which it is said to purloin occasionally from ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... none could be simpler, as everyone knows who has ever visited an Italian country gentleman in his home. Early hours, constant exercise, plain food and farm interests made a strong man of him, with plenty of simple common sense. As a boy he was a great walker and climber, and it is said that he was excessively fond of birding, the only form of sport afforded by that part of Italy, and practised there in those times, as it is now, not only with guns, but by means of nets. It has often been ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... very difficult. The first few insulators Harry put up himself. He was a good climber, but not being provided with the peculiar "climbers" used by the men who put up telegraph wires, he found it very hard to stay up at the top of a pole after he had got there, especially as he needed both hands to nail to the tree the wooden block to which the ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... healthy, and longed to join in the sports of boys of his age. He went bird-nesting with them, and climbed the trees while the boys below directed him to the nests, receiving his share of eggs and young birds. Thus he shortly became an expert climber, and could mount with ease any tree that he was able to grasp. He rambled into the lanes and fields alone, and soon knew every foot of the ground for miles round Knaresborough. He next learnt to ride, delighting above all things in a gallop. He contrived to keep a dog and coursed hares: indeed, ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... gentlemen failed utterly. Mr. Spalding, who was the first member of his party to reach the summit, writes: "I believe that Mr. Langford reached the summit because he says he did, and because the difficulties of the ascent were not great enough to have prevented any good climber from having successfully scaled the peak, * * * and I cannot understand why Mr. Owen failed so many times before ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... seamed by several fissures. Only by following the path could the summit be reached without great difficulty. The loose boulders rested upon one another, in such fashion, that even the most expert climber would have found difficulty in scaling them; and the stunted spreading cedars that grew between their clefts, combined in forming a chevaux de ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... the ascent was easy enough, the ground having been irregularly broken, so that the climber disappeared behind masses of rock at times, while he kept as much as possible to the western edge of the mountain where the cleavage had occurred; but as he ascended he was forced to come out upon ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... Napoleon and others). We all have our beginnings. But it wouldn't have mattered how I began, Caroliny: I should have come to the top just the same. (Becoming a poet himself.) I am a climber and there are nails in my boots for the parties beneath me. Boots! I tell you if I had been a bootmaker, I should have been the first ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... Coon inquired. "I'm as good a climber as anybody. I can climb the tallest tree you ever saw, without feeling dizzy. But of course I'm a bit heavier than you are. And if you've gone and picked out a nest that's a long way above the ground, among the ...
— The Tale of Dickie Deer Mouse • Arthur Scott Bailey
... war is said to have been ferociously waged, both rats exist and flourish, and under conditions which do not usually even bring them into competition with each other. The black rat (Mus rattus) is smaller than the other, but more active and a better climber; he is the rat of the barn and the granary. The brown or Norway rat (Mus decumanus) is larger but less active, a burrower rather than a climber, and though both rats are omnivorous the brown rat is more especially a scavenger; he ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... said the squirrel. Like the bats, he was some way off the ground; also he had mapped up a clear course of forty yards among the tree-tops, so he spoke recklessly. "The stoat is an amateur climber." ("Wait till I get to your nursery!" snarled the stoat.) "He has no idea of taking cover. A treed stoat against a human is doomed. Look at his black-smudged tail—only a trifle better than a weasel's. It reminds me of my summer moult—but it's worse; and, in ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... not originate, I could only do the same sort of work, and of weaker quality than before." "Well," he said, "I don't wonder; the last book must have been a great strain, though I am sure you were happy when you wrote it. I remember a friend of mine, a great Alpine climber, who did a marvellous feat of climbing some unapproachable peak—without any sense of fatigue, he told me, all pure enjoyment—but he had a heart-attack the next day, and paid the penalty of his enjoyment. He could not ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... The thought excited him wildly. His face dripped with sweat, his boots were cut with rock till the leather hung in shreds, and a bleeding arm showed through the rents in his sleeve. But he felt no physical discomfort, only the exhilaration of a rock climber with the summit in sight, or a polo player with a clear dribble before him to the goal. At last he was playing a true game of hazard, and the chance gave him the ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... Kitty tried to reassure herself. "But she's as surefooted as a deer. We all went up the other day and Nan was by far the best climber amongst us." ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... not of the soft and friable stuff to be found at Bridlington, but of hard and slippery sandstone, with bulky ribs oversaling here and there, and threatening to cast the climber back. At such spots nicks for the feet had been cut, or broken with a hammer, but scarcely wider than a stirrup-iron, and far less inviting. To surmount these was quite impossible except by a process of crawling; ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... you climb the higher it grows.—This is evidently borrowed from the common phenomenon of ridge beyond ridge, each in turn deceiving the climber into the belief that he has ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... what they were going to do she was following after the first climber; and as they made room for the others, first Mrs. Jacobus, and then last of all Bessie ...
— Afloat on the Flood • Lawrence J. Leslie
... would sooner have met an actor-manager than an earl; he would have spoken of his friendship with Dante—had that been possible—more glibly than of his friendship with the Duke. Call him a snob if you like, but not the worst kind of snob; a hanger-on, but to the skirts of Art, not Society; a climber, but in the neighbourhood ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... have asked that, because of course they had. It was like asking a mountain climber if he had ever felt a taut rope over the razor edge of a precipice ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... Publishing Company, and the late Marion S. Parker, '95e, who as a structural engineer has had a large share in the designing of some of the monumental buildings of New York. Annie S. Peck, '78, is also well known as a traveler and mountain climber. ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... heard you phoning about it. Go, by all means, but I do not think you will like the Doric. The tires are all right, but the cylinders are under size, and this causes a constant friction with the magneto which impairs the efficiency and makes the car a poor climber and weak on ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... a skillful climber, however, and when he reached the trunk he moved down it, with the nimbleness of a monkey, taking care, however, not to be too rapid or sudden, as the movement might attract notice. Then, too, he had the benefit of a denser vegetable growth, in which he thought it quite possible to conceal ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... in an ancient oak. The male was so zealous in the defense of the young that he actually attacked with beak and claw a person who attempted to climb into his nest, putting his face and eyes in great jeopardy. Arming himself with a heavy club, the climber felled the gallant bird to the ground and killed him. In the course of a few days the female had procured another mate. But naturally enough the stepfather showed none of the spirit and pluck in defense of the brood that had been displayed by the original parent. When danger ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... turn these words in another direction, and remind you, dear friends, of how the sublimest application of them is still to be realised? As a climber on a mountain-peak may look down the vale up which he had painfully toiled for many days and see the dusty path lying, like a sinuous snake, down all along it, so, when we get up yonder, 'Thou shalt ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... They were free from all false pride and privately they considered Mrs. Hollister a snob, and worried lest Ethel should become one. Archibald seldom asserted himself, but when he did his word was law. While his wife was a social climber he was exactly the opposite. He had been known to bring home the most disreputable looking men—men who had been his friends in youth and who were playing in hard luck. He would ask them to dinner without even sending word, and his wife would invariably plead a sick headache ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... needed, however; the lady climbed with the coolness and hardihood of a born mountaineer; they camped for the night on the way, 7500 feet above the sea, at the base of the main peak, and in the morning she triumphantly gained the top. But now the fair climber undid all the glory of the exploit: a bottle had long been left in a niche of rock at the top, opened by each rare new-comer in turn to add his name and a sentiment or some expression of his admiration; our heroine opened this, scattered the precious contents to the winds, and inserted her ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... a skillful climber and he soon stood on a stout platform at the top of the pole. Before him was a rude, though inviting-looking cabin of sticks; but, alas for poor Ringtail's hopes, the doorway was much too small for ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... something of the climber to him, took himself to the arbiter of manners and urged the latter instruct him how best he might learn effectively to pass himself ...
— A Book Without A Title • George Jean Nathan
... a moment on this period, as an experienced climber pauses to be overtaken by a less agile companion; but presently she became aware that Kate was still far below her, and perhaps needed a stronger incentive to ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... directly from the Golden Gate, seemed to concentrate its full force upon the western slope of Russian Hill, might have dismayed any climber less hopeful and sanguine than that most imaginative of newspaper reporters and most youthful of husbands, John Milton Harcourt. But for all that it was an honest wind, and its dry, practical energy and salt-pervading breath only seemed to sting him to greater and more enthusiastic exertions, ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... window. The rain-pipe shook threateningly under her weight, and even the trellis supports swayed uncomfortably when once she slipped and almost lost her frail footing. Allee gave a low moan of horror and shut her eyes, but the daring climber did not fall, and when next the watcher looked, she beheld the curly, brown head bobbing over the balcony rail, as Peace swung up to safety beside her, and dropped the burden—the birds' ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... region depends a tail more strange than any borne by beast or reptile. It looks like a large brown pot, constructed in the middle. It is, in fact, a large gourd, or calabash, hanging by a hook from the climber's waistband. When he has reached the top of a tree, he gets among the branches and, sitting astride of one of them, proceeds to detach one of the black pots from the stout fruit stem on which it is fastened, and empty its contents into his tail. Then, taking his billhook, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... vigorous vine clambering over stone walls and winding about the shrubbery of wayside thickets in a suffocating embrace is akin to the morning-glory of the garden trellis (C. Major). An exceedingly rapid climber, the twining stem often describes a complete circle in two hours, turning against the sun, or just contrary to the hands of a watch. Late in the season, when an abundance of seed has been set, the flower can well afford to keep open longer hours, also ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... metre or rhyme. It is not merely the Christians and the Stoics who have maintained this; Epicurus himself was a believer in virtue as a means to happiness. This, indeed, is a commonplace written all over the face of nature. There is no great happiness without opposition except for children. The climber struggles with the hill, the rower with the water, the digger with the earth. They are all men who live on the understanding that the pleasures of difficulty are greater even than the ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... Cotton derived from her poisonings can have been but small, almost as small as that gained by Helene Jegado. Was it for social advancement that she murdered husbands and children? Was she a 'climber' in that sphere of society in which she moved? One hesitates to think that passion swayed her in being rid of the infant obstacle to the fifth marriage of her contemplation. With her "all o'er-teeming loins,'' this woman, Hecuba in no other particular, must have been a very sow were ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... telegraph wire, hand over hand, with his feet dangling in the air. Slowly he swung himself from the cross-bar to the wire, and began to finger his way towards the cord. But this was an experience new to the expert tree-climber; ere he had proceeded more than three feet his hands slipped and he fell to the ground. The distance was thirty-five feet or more, and the lookers-on cried out in alarm. The boy would surely break his ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... hardly a more elegant variety than that, though it is not strictly a climber; and indeed when I spoke I was thinking as much of the training roses. Many of the Noisettes are very fine. But I have the climbers all over—in some parts nothing else, where the wood closes in upon the path—there ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... Cathedral Peak that long ago I named the Tuolumne Glacier Monument, one of the most striking and best preserved of the domes. Its burnished crown is about 1500 feet above the Tuolumne Meadows and 10,000 above the sea. At first sight it seems inaccessible, though a good climber will find it may be scaled on the south side. About half-way up you will find it so steep that there is danger of slipping, but feldspar crystals, two or three inches long, of which the rock is full, having offered greater resistance to atmospheric erosion than the mass ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... a good plan to grow this subject amongst tall and early flowering plants, such as lupins, foxgloves, and lilies, the old stems of which form ample supports for the climber; moreover, they are rendered less unsightly from being thus furnished anew with leaf and flower, even though not their own. Another method is in early summer to place a short twiggy branch over the pushing growths; it will soon become covered, and if not too large, the ends of the ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood
... "Why, what do 'ee mane, child, eh? But there!" she added starting up, "us'll make sure to wance and knaw whether 'tis lies or truth we'm tellin'.—Here, Sammy, off ever so quick as legs can carry 'ee, and climber up and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... have been for an hour that we ascended, and what with my wounded ankle and the pain from my eye, and the fear lest this wound should have spoiled my appearance, I have made no journey to which I look back with less pleasure. I have never been a good climber at any time, but it is astonishing what you can do, even with a stiff ankle, when you have a copper-coloured brigand at each elbow and a nine-inch blade ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the others," and Bess flushed at the mention of anything in the flesh-reducing line. "I have always been a pretty fair climber." ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... its ample foliage, and curiously formed yellow and purple streaked flowers. A native of North America, it is perfectly hardy in this country, and makes an excellent wall plant where plenty of space can be afforded for the rambling branches. What a pity it is that so ornamental a climber, whose big, dark-green leaves overlap each other as if intended for keeping a house cool in warm weather, is not more generally planted. It does well and grows fast in almost ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... beginning of the book, "come on and let us mend our pace." "I cannot go so fast as I would," humbly replied Christian, "because of this burden on my back." It is a common observation among mountaineers that he who takes the hill at the greatest spurt is the last climber to come to the top, and that many who so ostentatiously make spurts at the bottom of the hill never come within sight of the top at all. And this is one of the constant dangers that wait on all revivals, religious retreats, conferences, and even communion seasons. ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... talked together, Looking down upon the weather, When they heard our friend had planned his Little trip among the Andes! How they'll bare their snowy scalps To the climber of the Alps, When the cry goes through their passes, "Here comes the great Agassiz!" "Yes, I'm tall," says Chimborazo, "But I wait for him to say so,— That's the only thing that lacks,—he Must see me, Cotopaxi!" "Ay! ay!" the fire-peak thunders, "And he must view my wonders! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... are should be satisfied with chasing squirrels when there is much better game within reach." Here he paused; but when the marten only grinned impudently at him, he continued: "Can it be possible that you haven't seen the wild geese that stand under the mountain wall? or are you not a good enough climber to get ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... unexpected meetings with foreign 'fair ones' in out-o''-the-way circumstances, with broken bones, perhaps, or gunshot wounds, to lend pathos to the affair, and necessitate nursing, which may lead to love-making,—all that is equally possible to the Alpine climber and the chamois-hunter, to the traveller almost anywhere, who chooses to indulge in reckless sport, regardless of his neck.—Of course," I added, with a smile, for I did not wish to appear too cynical in my friend's eyes, "the soldier has a few advantages in which the civilian does not quite ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... give him leisure for study and New Salem could offer him nothing else save consuming toil with the axe or the saw. He could not think of leaving the little cabin village. There were Ann Rutledge and Jack Kelso and Samson Traylor and Harry Needles. Every ladder climber in the village and on the plain around it was ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... cup to overflow. I vowed that night, as I buried my tear-stained face beneath the blankets, that the next morning would either find me at West Inch or well on the way to it. Our dormitory was on the second floor, but I was a famous climber, and had a fine head for heights. I used to think little, young as I was, of swinging myself with a rope round my thigh off the West Inch gable, and that stood three-and-fifty feet above the ground. There was not much fear then but that I could make my way out ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... street the visitors thronged noisily. Women in light-colored evening frocks, with lace shawls thrown about their shoulders and their hair; men in attendance upon them, clerks from Paris and Geneva upon their holidays; and every now and then a climber with his guide, come late from the mountains, would cross the bridge quickly and stride toward his hotel. Chayne watched the procession in silence quite aloof from its light-heartedness and gaiety. Michel Revailloud drained his glass ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... they got the dinghy overboard and started on a tour of exploration. First they visited the beach and found a rude pathway leading up beside the waterfall that promised exit from the basin to an active climber. ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe
... ALONE! no climber of an Alpine cliff, No Arctic venturer on the waveless sea, Feels the dread stillness round him as it chills The heart of him who leaves the slumbering earth To watch the silent worlds that crowd the sky. Alone! And as the shepherd leaves his flock To feed upon the hillside, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Mr. Danley; let's begin again. Climb along the surface. Use toeholds, handholds, and fingerholds. Feel your way along. Find those little crevices that will give you a grip. It doesn't take much. You're a lot better off than a mountain climber on Earth because you don't have to fight your weight. You have only your mass to worry about. That's it. Fine. Very good, ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... Brunelleschi is there, bolted together in successive beams. Last of all, a long, straight staircase, straight because without turn to right or left, curves upward like an unradiant, bowed Valhalla-bridge to a great burst of daylight, and the climber is upon the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... we put a sting in him That at his will he may do danger with. The abuse of greatness is, when it disjoins Remorse from power: and to speak truth of Caesar, I have known his affections swayed More than his reason. But 'tis a common proof, That lowliness is young ambition's ladder, Whereto the climber-upwards turns his face; But when he once attains the topmost round, He then unto the ladder turns his back, Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees By which he did ascend. So Caesar may: Then, lest he may, prevent. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... tree here, and went back the same way," Steve proposed. "We know already that the thief is a climber, don't we, Max?" ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... in the far northwest, a spill of lava, now the haunt of mountain sheep, the continental divide southward piles climax upon climax. Following it at an elevation well exceeding twelve thousand feet, the hardy, venturesome climber looks westward down a slope of bald granite, thickly strewn with boulders; eastward he gazes into a succession of gigantic gorges dropping upon the east, forest grown, lake-set canyons deep in mid-foreground, the great plateau ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... his chief title to distinction? You thought they did him honor? He would have writhed in his grave, as Miss Mayberry said. Like it? When the cheap jack or the social climber dies, he may like it, but not the gentleman or lady. Leading society girl? Why, every shop-girl who commits suicide is immortalized in the daily press as 'a leading society girl,' and every deceased ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... no better than he knew them. They had no money to waste on education. They needed all they could scrape together to keep the wolf out of Wall Street. He had no use in this direful emergency for frugal society leaders; he was after the prodigal climber. ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... pleasant. That he had been cleverly entrapped, and that by a child scarcely in its teens, was too evident to need reflection. And what a secure trap it was! The mountains ranged all around the valley were impossible to scale, even by an Alpine climber, and to one who was not informed of its location the existence of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... booby, I hope," Dick called down, as he went to still loftier heights. He was now among the slender uppermost branches, where a boy would need to be a fine climber in order to make such swift progress. Even Dick Prescott might readily enough snap a branch now, ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... he nor they see very clearly till they come to it. He has to discover what people really want, and then "provide the channels in which the growing moral force of their lives shall flow." What he does attain, however, is not the result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain-climber beyond that of the valley multitude but it is sustained and upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral. He has not taught his contemporaries to climb ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... little friend Vashti, now a well-grown girl of twelve, very straight and slim and with big dark eyes. She gave him when he went away the little Testament she had gotten as a prize, and which was one of her most cherished possessions. Other boys found the first honor as climber, runner, rock-flinger, wrestler, swimmer, and fighter open once more to them, and were free from the silent and somewhat contemptuous gaze of him who, however they looked down on him, was a sort of silent power among them. Vashti ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... a cage?" said the climber to himself, breathing hard and holding fast to the railing. The thin and creaking steps seemed to him extremely unsafe. After he had pulled the bell-rope, the door opened, and a lady dressed ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... like automatons rather than like human, thinking beings. Suffering, hunger, and drugs had dulled our senses. Only the will to escape somehow, the instinct of self-preservation, was fully awake in us. A sweep of the machete to cut a barrier bushrope or climber, one foot placed before the other, meant that much nearer to home and safety. Such was now the simple operation of our stupefied and tired brains, brains that could not hold one complex thought to its ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... hunting. He used to be called cock-of-the-woods, but the name was twisted around until it became woodcock, and some people believe that he is the gamey little bird we so much delight to shoot and eat. But they belong to different orders, one being a climber and the other a wader. Lester speaks of a rabbit, not knowing that there is no such thing as a wild rabbit in our country, and calls it Ortyx Virgiana, when he should have called it Lepus Virginianus, the name he uses being the one by which our quail is known to ornithologists. ...
— The Boy Trapper • Harry Castlemon
... twenty feet a half-spent bullet thudded against the cliff face at his elbow. Another grazed his side. At least one of the distant Apaches had turned about and was making uncomfortably close shots at the climber. Lennon stopped short. A bullet struck less than a span above his head. He hurried on up ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... Even a practised climber is occasionally compelled to look to his steps in passing the Junction. On my return I witnessed an accident in this place which proved at the same time the reality of the danger and the usefulness in sudden crises of the mountaineer's ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... the boy, regretfully. "I can't do that. I'm no climber. I make the signs and then they're put where they ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... larger kinds of climbers. The principal of these, with a leafless and almost branchless cable-like stem, sometimes two or three hundred yards in length, rises over the summits of the tallest trees, and connects one with another in its powerful folds, occasionally descending to the ground. Another climber, Lestibudesia arborescens, rises by its slender stems to the tops of the trees, hiding them in its cascade-like masses and graceful festoons of exuberant foliage. Besides several other exogenous woody climbers, of which a very remarkable one is a Bauhinia, with a compressed stem spirally ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... dreaming; this was not a make-believe home of the Alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations; no, for here was Mr. Girdlestone himself, the famous Englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable Alpine summits without a guide. I was not equal to imagining a Girdlestone; it was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... equipment of strength proportioned to our work,—shoes fit for our road. God does not turn people out to scramble over rough mountains with thin-soled boots on; that is the plain English of the words. When an Alpine climber is preparing to go away into Switzerland for rock work, the first thing he does is to get a pair of strong shoes, with plenty of iron nails in the soles of them. So Asher had to be shod for his rough roads, and so each of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... delight is to yield, not to claim. The crown of motherhood is pain. To serve the State at cost of ease and leisure; to spend his thought and labour upon a hundred schemes, is the man's ambition. Life is doing, not having. It is to gain the peak the climber strives, not to possess it. Fools marry thinking what they are going to get out of it: good store of joys and pleasure, opportunities for self-indulgence, eternal soft caresses— the wages of the wanton. The rewards of marriage are toil, duty, responsibility—manhood, ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... giving you Satan—that's his name," said the cowboy. "The foreman rides him often. He's the fastest, the best climber, and the best dispositioned horse ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... from Dammara Land in S. Africa, is remarkable from being the one known member of the Family which is not a climber; it has been described in 'Transact. Linn. Soc.,' xxvii. ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... yet, introduced into England, as a charming addition to the winter hothouse. As for the other plant, would that it could be introduced likewise, or rather that, if introduced, it would flower in a house; for it is a glorious climber, second only to that which poor Dr. Krueger calls 'the wonderful Norantea,' which shall be described in its place. You see a tree blazing with dark gold, passing into orange, and that to red; and on nearing ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... and then made a long circuit about it, finding nobody near. John, full of zeal and enthusiasm, volunteered to climb the tree and fasten the flag to its topmost stem, and Weber, after some claims on his own behalf, agreed. John was a good climber, alert, agile and full of strength, and he went up the trunk like an expert. It was an uncommonly tall tree for France, much more than a sapling, and when he reached the last bough that would support him he found that ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... now (I altered it this morning) and Mead the old one—the climber. Poor old chap, he'll ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... ahead and struggle for it? And, having achieved it, fix on another five feet farther on, and almost fail to get it? Because, if you have not, you know nothing of this agony of tearing lungs and hammering heart and throbbing muscles that is the mountain-climber's ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... means of verifying, the distance as well as the angle subtended by the height was obtained. Kevima, after working out his father's figures, informed me that the highest peak in view—the highest in Mars—was not less than 44,000 feet. No Martial balloonist, much less any Martial mountain-climber, has ever, save once, reached a greater height than 16,000 feet—the air at the sea-level being scarcely more dense than ours at 10,000 feet. Kevima indicated one spot in the southern range of remarkable interest, ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... in her most flattering manner, "that you are a famous climber, and that you have been to the top ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... that perhaps he might clamber down over the fender to the pole, and then walk along upon that a little way till he could gather up the reins. Then he thought that if he could get back again with them to the driver's seat, perhaps he could stop the horses. Marco was an expert climber. He had learned this art in his gymnasium at New York; so that he had no fears in respect to his being able to get down and back again. The only danger was, lest he might frighten the horses again and set them to ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... plant called by the Kandyans the Maha-pus-wael, or "Great hollow climber,"[1] has pods, some of which I have seen fully five feet long and six inches broad, with beautiful brown beans, so large that the natives hollow them out, and ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... thought had hardly taken possession of George's mind when his attention was attracted by shouts from below. Peering down he was astonished to see Matthew rapidly climbing the yew. The same thought had struck him also! Up the climber swarmed, higher and higher. Then he began without hesitation to crawl along some of the topmost branches that overhung the library roof. Outwards he crept, embracing tightly half a dozen of the long thin boughs; they seemed but little more ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... interlude. A coolie walks at the head of each horse, and reasons softly with him when he misbehaves. We rode for thirteen miles to the foot of the volcano, then at one o'clock we left the horses with one of the men and began to climb. Each climber was tied to a coolie whose duty it was to pull, and to carry the lantern. We made a weird procession, and the strange call of the coolies as they bent their bodies to the task, mingled with the laughter ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... I used to find the poet feeding his birds there: it has the same wall—moss-covered now—that overhangs the dell; a shady tree-walk shelters it from sun and rain,—it was the poet's walk at midday; a venerable climber, the Glycenas, was no doubt planted by the poet's hand: it was new to England when the poet was old, and what more likely than that his friends would have bidden him plant it where it has since ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... compared one with another." In this way we might perhaps say that the climbing of an ivy and a hop are analogical; the resemblance depending on the adaptive result rather than on community of blood; whereas the relation between a leaf-climber and a true tendril-bearer reveals descent. This particular resemblance was one in which my father took especial delight. He has described an interesting case occurring in the Fumariaceae. ("Climbing Plants", page 195.) "The ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... idleness. The women, however, were occasionally employed in manufacturing a thread called pita from the leaves of the aloe, which they carry to Quito for sale. Occasionally the men collected vanilla. It is a graceful climber, belonging to the orchid family. The stalk, the thickness of a finger, bears at each joint a lanceolate and ribbed leaf a foot long and three inches broad. It has large star-like white flowers, intermixed with stripes of red and yellow, which fill the forest ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... possible; but where windfall or precipice drives back from the bed of the river over the mountain spurs, the pathfinder takes his bearings from countless signs. Moss is on the north side of tree-trunks. A steep slope compels a zigzag, corkscrew ascent, but the slope of the ground guides the climber as to the way to go; for slope means valley; and in valleys are streams; and in the stream is the 'float,' which is to the prospector the one shining signal to be followed. Timber-line is passed till the forests below look like dank banks of moss. Cloud-line is passed ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... care to do it, but the runner could read Mr. Miller, without a glass, at one hundred paces' distance. He was of the climber type, a self-made man in the earlier and less inspiring stages of the making. Culture had a dangerous fascination for him. He adored to talk of books; a rash worship, it seemed, since his but bowing acquaintance with them trapped him frequently into mistaken identities ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Jay Peak showed hazy and indistinct. Below us the broken ranges of green hills surged like immense billows of some Titanic sea. The fresh verdure of every field and tree made up a landscape seldom equalled in tone of color, and one which amply repaid the climber. But while some were content with looking, other true Appalachians remembered the objects of the club. While one took photographs of the surrounding scenery, far and near, another made profile sketches of the distant peaks; while one attempted a bit of topographical work, another took measurements ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various
... tree-climber. It can mount a tree with the agility of a cat; and although so large an animal, it climbs by means of its claws—not by hugging, after the manner of the bears and opossums. While climbing a tree, its claws can be heard crackling along the bark as it mounts ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... perfectly safe for a practised climber, but Juliet's heart was in her mouth when she reached the projecting corner of cliff where the ledge narrowed to a bare eighteen inches and the rock bulged outwards as if to push off ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... was a question; but he remembered a friend who had a Coon-skin carriage robe. A few hairs of these were compared with those from the tree and left no doubt that the climber was a Coon. Thus Yan got the beginning of the idea that the very hairs of each, as well as its tracks, are different. He learned, also, how wise it is to draw everything that he wished to observe or describe. It was accident, or instinct on his part, but he had fallen on a sound ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... all assembled, Talbott headed northeast, the rest of us falling into our places behind him. Then I found that, despite the new motor, my machine was not a rapid climber. Talbott noticed this and kept me well in the group, he and the others losing height in renversements and retournements, diving under me and climbing up again. It was fascinating to watch them ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... brain—too fine a nerve-quality to face the forest alone. Bonpland made good all that he lacked. He used to call Bonpland his "Treasure." And surely such a friend is a treasure, indeed. Bonpland was a linguist, as most of the Swiss are. He was a mountain-climber, and had been a soldier and a sailor, and he knew enough of literature and science, so he ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... Parkman have told us in thrilling narratives; and columns of eager colonists we have seen press their way along the seashore, into forests, over mountains, across deserts, never halting, save to catch breath as a climber of a mountain does,—on, on, till a continent is white with the tents of millions. But the Indian aborigine, for whom the tepee was portable habitation, and the stretch of plain and hill and lake and river, hunting-ground ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... for certain, Master Steve. Some of these tribes are cannibals and some ain't, and I reckon by what I see going on that those villains are. Are you a good climber, sir?" ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... to our tamarind tree, and the next morning regained the trunk road, following it to the dawk bungalow of Doomree. On the way I found the Caesalpinia paniculuta, a magnificent climber, festooning the trues with its dark glossy foliage and gorgeous racemes of orange blossoms. Receding from the mountain, the country again became barren: at Doomree the hills were of crystalline rocks, chiefly quartz and gneiss; no palms or large trees of any kind appeared. The spear-grass ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... you old mummy!" shouted Bob. "A great mountain climber you are, sleeping here all day. Have you forgotten ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... tall, so the boys had patiently to await the pleasure of the wind. Walnuts and butternuts, on the contrary, were to be knocked down with well-aimed clubs; hazelnuts to be stripped from the bushes; and beech-nuts to be shaken down by a bold and practised climber. And in the woods the squirrels were busy ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... days on board, when the youngsters proposed a walk into the main top. I mounted the rigging with perfect confidence, for I was always a good climber; but I had not proceeded far, when I was overtaken by the captain of the top and another man, who, without any ceremony or preface, seized me by each arm, and very deliberately lashed me fast in the rigging. They laughed at my remonstrance. I asked what they meant, and the captain of the top said ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Nature is not quite a Turk, She laugh'd at first, then felt for her poor work. Pitying the propless climber of mankind, She cast about a standard tree to find; And, to support his helpless woodbine state, Attach'd him to the generous truly great, A title, and the only one I claim, To lay strong hold for help ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... of Northgalis, and he is of a hasty temper; wherefore, I beseech you, help me." "Well, lady," said Sir Launcelot, "I will serve you if I may; but the tree is hard to climb, for the boughs are few, and, in truth, I am no climber. But I will do my best." So the lady helped Sir Launcelot to unarm, and he led his horse to the foot of the tree, and springing from its back, he caught at the nearest bough, and drew himself up into the branches. Then he climbed till he reached the falcon and, ...
— The Junior Classics, V4 • Willam Patten (Editor)
... vine. Some have taken this to refer to the "red whortleberry," the botanical name of which is Vaccinium vitis Idoea; but as that is not a climber, it is more probably that the common vine is here meant. Idoean is from Ida, a mountain near ancient Troy (there was another in Crete), famous ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... reconnoitre the citadel on the side where it was strongest by nature, and therefore guarded with least care, when he observed one of the garrison descend the rock after his helmet, which had fallen from his head, pick it up, and return with it. Being an expert climber, he attempted the track thus pointed out to him, and succeeded in reaching the summit. Several of his comrades followed in his steps; the citadel was surprised, and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... fellow climber. "He's too far up. He must get to the top, and when he finds nothing but wind and leaves he may go sane again. Hark at him above there; you can just hear him ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... flowering gooseberry of California, cultivated for ornament, especially in England, and likely to succeed in the southern Middle States. It is trained like a climber; has small, shining leaves, very handsome flowers resembling those of a fuchsia, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... should pass your corner by? For still the Lord is Lord of might; In deeds, in deeds, he takes delight; The plough, the spear, the laden barks, The field, the founded city, marks; He marks the smiler of the streets, The singer upon garden seats; He sees the climber in the rocks: To him, the shepherd folds his flocks. For those he loves that underprop With daily virtues Heaven's top, And bear the falling sky with ease, Unfrowning caryatides. Those he approves that ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sixteen hands—it was sixteen miles. What I had taken for the horse's blaze face was a snow-capped peak. Miss Anna Peck might have felt at home up there, because she has had the experience and is used to that sort of thing, but I am no mountain climber myself. ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb |
