"Precipice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the wounded man, exerting all his strength, arose, and suffered himself to be led into the hut. Passing quickly out by a door at the back, the preacher and the bride found themselves on a narrow ledge of rock, from one side of which was the precipice down which Big Tim had made his perilous descent. Close to their feet lay a great flat rock or natural slab, two yards beyond which the ledge terminated ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... thundering like distant artillery. Watching that grim facade across the river he saw, once or twice during the day, those masses plunge and leap, ten thousand tons of ice and snow and rock and crushed timber shooting over ledge and precipice to end with fearful crashing and rumbling in the depth of ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... never in the day or night dream yourself to be upon some lofty overhanging precipice? did you never in imagination look down over its extreme verge upon the dark coast that skirts the foot of it, so far below you that you only distinguish the Rocks themselves by the white foam of the blue wave that breaks over them? Did you never hold by a bush while you ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... I the angry Victor has recalled His Ministers of Vengeance and Pursuit, Back to the Gates of Heavn: The sulphurous Hail Shot after us in Storm, overblown, hath laid The fiery Surge, that from the Precipice Of Heaven receiv'd us falling: and the Thunder, Winged with red Lightning and impetuous Rage, Perhaps hath spent his Shafts, and ceases now To bellow through the vast and ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... subject at the end of my book on the 'Variations of Domesticated Animals and Plants' (My father asks whether we are to believe that the forms are preordained of the broken fragments of rock tumbled from a precipice which are fitted together by man to build his houses. If not, why should we believe that the variations of domestic animals or plants are preordained for the sake of the breeder? "But if we give up the principle in one case,...no shadow of reason can be assigned for the belief that variations, alike ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... we were closely followed by another carriage, in which were crowded five Montenegrins and Albanians, who were evidently bent on making the pace. The Montenegrins are ever reckless drivers; they dash round sharp corners at full gallop, with a precipice of several hundred feet below—and there is never sufficient parapet to prevent a carriage dashing over—so that one involuntarily leans to the inner side of the carriage with that uncomfortable sinking feeling which can ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... Greenland, or he may be making his way back to New York without knowing it. So, keeping up steam only when sun or star is visible, he at length finds that he is approaching the coast of Ireland. Then he has to grope along much like a blind man with his staff, feeling his way along the edge of a precipice. He can determine the latitude at noon if the sky is clear, and his longitude in the morning or evening in the same conditions. In this way he will get a general idea of his whereabouts. But if he ventures to make headway in a fog, he may find himself on ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... who have subscribed the Thirty-nine Articles, and acknowledged in explicit terms the queen's supremacy, have been the most forward in leading their flocks, "step by step, to the very verge of the precipice." The honour paid to saints, the claim of infallibility for the church, the superstitious use of the sign of the cross, the muttering of the liturgy so as to disguise the language in which it is written, the recommendation of auricular ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... he made his presence known Billy never afterwards could conjecture. No sound could have been audible above the clamour of the train. Yet by some means—some electric battery of the mind—he made the girl below aware of him. On the very verge of the precipice she stopped, stood poised for a moment, then turned herself back ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... O'er the high precipice unmov'd she bent, A fearful path the beams of morning shew, The pilgrim reach'd with toil the rude ascent, And saw her ...
— Poems (1786), Volume I. • Helen Maria Williams
... flames leaped on exultantly. They leapt chasms like a waterfall taking a precipice. Now they are here, now there, always pressing on into the west and through to ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... place known to the train men as "The Devil's Gate." This was a very large rock extending out over the road running close to the creek with a precipice below. We had to use great care and precaution in handling our mules around this rock to take the road. We saw several broken wagons at this point where several freighters had ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... went up to her room, her heart was beating wildly. This sudden plunge into the unknown was blinding, even though she longed to make it. Having come to the edge of the precipice she feared the leap, in spite of the conviction ...
— Flower of the Dusk • Myrtle Reed
... down the main road, seeking shelter under the muzzles of Holcroft's guns; some sought refuge in the houses; others raced to the landing only to find the boats no longer there. Not a few, hot pressed by Brant's avenging Mohawks, threw themselves over the precipice, preferring suicide to the redman's tomahawk. Others plunged into the Niagara, essaying to swim its irresistible eddies, only to be blown out of the green water by Holcroft's grapeshot or sucked down by ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... monastery of Einsiedeln was plundered and burned; the miraculous picture of the Virgin was, however, preserved. Upper Valais also submitted, after Sion and the whole of the valley had been plundered and laid waste. The peasantry defended themselves here for several weeks at the precipice of the Dala. Unterwalden offered the most obstinate resistance. The peasantry of this canton were headed by Luessi. The French invaded the country simultaneously on different sides, by water, across the lake of the four cantons, and across the Bruenig from ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... discussion. But it is well that they should know by the example, too little known, of Buddhism, what becomes of man if he depends on himself alone, and if his meditations, misled by a pride of which he is hardly conscious, bring him to the precipice where Buddha was lost. Besides, I am well aware of all the differences, and I am not going to insult our contemporary philosophers by confounding them indiscriminately with Buddha, although addressing to both the same reproof. I acknowledge willingly all their additional merits, which are considerable. ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... this "fellness" is occasioned by "inner entity." But perhaps the line has some deeper meaning, which we are unable to fathom. We have seen a better picture than that of Goethe in the hour of inspiration, when his forehead was like a precipice dim with drifting sleet. "Schiller" is well drawn; evidently from Thorwaldsen's gigantic statue of the poet. Miss Barrett paints "Milton" in his blindness as seeing all things in God. But Mallebranche had already taught that God is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... the rocky precipice of Sinai, we found the wady narrow and choked up with huge blocks of granite which had tumbled from the sides of the adjacent mountains. We could now see the olive-ground of the deserted convent of el-Arbain, situated in the bottom of the narrow valley. Passing through ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... attend such an expedition: with it, neither heat, nor torrents, nor tempests, nor the simoom, nor unhealthy climates, nor wild animals, nor savage men, are to be feared! If I feel too hot, I can ascend; if too cold, I can come down. Should there be a mountain, I can pass over it; a precipice, I can sweep across it; a river, I can sail beyond it; a storm, I can rise away above it; a torrent, I can skim it like a bird! I can advance without fatigue, I can halt without need of repose! I can soar above the nascent cities! ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... precarious, critical, ticklish; slippery, slippy; hanging by a thread &c. v.; with a halter round one's neck; between the hammer and the anvil, between Scylla and Charybdis, between a rock and a hard place, between the devil and the deep blue sea, between two fires; on the edge of a precipice, on the brink of a precipice, on the verge of a precipice, on the edge of a volcano; in the lion's den, on slippery ground, under fire; not out of the wood. unwarned, unadmonished, unadvised, unprepared &c. 674; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... had been concealed for some time before, for that nefarious purpose,) and falling upon the troops, teams and drivers, and the guard of twelve men before mentioned, they killed all the men but three on the spot, or by driving them, together with the teams, down the precipice, which was about seventy or eighty feet! The Indians seized Stedman's horse by the bridle, while he was on him, designing, no doubt, to make his sufferings more lasting than that of his companions: but while the bloody scene ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... himself. Our hunt, tho' not much sport to English taste, yet was most amusing. The magnificence of the horses and riders; their equipage and management of the animal; riding at speed, as tho' they were on the point of being dashed to pieces, against a wall or down a precipice, at once coming to a dead stop. Riding at each other, delivering the jareed, firing their pistols and wheeling short round in an instant, and at speed in the opposite direction. We had greyhounds and ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... be away then. I feel as if I never—never wanted to see this valley again—ever. It all seems wrong. It all seems like a nightmare now. I feel as if at any moment the ground might open up, and—and swallow me right up. I—I feel like a dizzy creature standing at the edge of a precipice. I—I feel as if I must fall, as if I wanted to fall. I shall be so ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... of the two, which zigzagged backwards and forwards across the rocks. At one place I saw a thing which moved me very strangely. This was a heap of bones, green, slimy, and ill-smelling, with some tattered rags of cloth about them, which lay in a heap beneath a precipice. The thought that a man could fall and be killed in such a place moved me with a fresh misery. What that meant I could not tell. Were we not away from such things as mouldering flesh and broken bones? It seemed not; and I climbed madly away ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... three miles to go if we could have flown like birds; but the way lay in and out of rocks, with quite a little precipice to descend at times, so that the journey must have been double that length. The hope of a good meal, however, made us trudge on, and after a few stops to rest I saw that we must now be nearing the shore, for the ground ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... and it is hard to tell. Here are some three millions of you, as I count: so many of you fallen sheer over into the abysses of open Beggary; and, fearful to think, every new unit that falls is loading so much more the chain that drags the others over. On the edge of the precipice hang uncounted millions; increasing, I am told, at the rate of 1200 a day. They hang there on the giddy edge, poor souls, cramping themselves down, holding on with all their strength; but falling, falling one after another; and the chain is getting heavy, so that ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... upon solitary refugees high up on the scarred mountain slopes, with nothing but a staff to lean upon and a deer-skin to keep them warm. I saw more than one twisted form lying motionless at the foot of a precipice. I witnessed a battle between two half-crazed, ravenous bands, with murder, and cannibalism, and horrors too grisly to report. I observed brave men resolutely trying to till the soil, whose productive powers had been ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz
... "Groves are never more agreeable than in the opening of spring."—Id. "His Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, soon made him known to the literati."—See Blair's Lect., pp. 34 and 45. "An awful precipice or tower from which we look down on the objects which are below."—Dr. Blair cor. "This passage, though very poetical, is, however, harsh and obscure; and for no other cause than this, that three distinct metaphors are crowded ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... quite well that your house, with all that therein is, stands on the edge of a precipice, and that at any moment a landslip might topple it over into everlasting ruin. And yet you behave as though your house was planted in the midst of a vast and secure plain, sheltered from every imaginable ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... most, suddenly he subsides into such pathetic gentleness, such tearful remorse, that I feel as if resentment to one so helpless, desertion of one who must fall without the support of a friendly hand, were a selfish cruelty. It seems to me as if I were dragged towards a precipice by a sickly child clinging to ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a taste for scenery is to climb a mountain. You don't get up so quick, but you don't come down so sudden. Even then, there's a chance that a fellow may slip and fall over a precipice, but not unless he's foolish enough to try short-cuts over slippery places; though some men can manage to fall down the hall stairs and break their necks. The path isn't the shortest way to the top, but it's usually the ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... likewise defends half of the peninsula; for no guns from the other side of the harbour can touch it, and no ship carrying guns dare enter for the breastwork at the point. The other side of the peninsula is either a precipice, or defended against ships by shoals and breaches, so that there remains only the narrow neck that is naturally fortified; and if thirty leagues of a wilderness will not do that, it may be artificially fortified in twenty ways. In short, it may be made impregnable; and there are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... arrived in the hollow in the rock where the nest was. The boy departed with his father up the precipitous mountain side. When they had nearly reached the nest the father placed a long stick across a precipice and ordered his son to climb on it and seize the nest. The son duly climbed—carrying with him his grandmother's stick. When he had reached the top the father did all he could to shake the son down into the chasm, and even removed ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... sight of this block, which looked as though it might be seized by stretching out his hands, a thrill of joy passed through Cuchillo's heart; and hanging over the precipice with extended arms, he gave utterance to the cry which had been heard by ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... jumbled hills appeared, and one bluff-faced mount was more conspicuous than the rest. Nearer to me, and almost under my feet, was the gorge through which the river passes, and it appears to be the only pass through this chain. I approached the precipice overlooking the gorge, and found the channel so flooded by the late rains, that it was impossible to get the horses up through it. The hills which enclosed it were equally impracticable, and it was utterly useless to try to get horses over them. The view ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... from other influences; and Saurin, partly from prudence, partly because he was making a struggle to escape from the net which he felt that evil habits had thrown around him. He was like one who has been walking in a fog along the brink of a precipice, and discovers his position by setting a foot on the very edge and nearly falling over. He shrank from the abyss which he now saw yawning for him. At the same time he exerted himself to become popular, and since he was no longer anxious ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... be had. In the creek below are small boats for hire. Beaulieu is really a beautiful place. It is situated in one of the most sheltered nooks of the Riviera, at the foot of gigantic cliffs with patches of strata of reddish sandstone. The edges of this grand precipice are fringed with trees, which in the bright atmosphere look almost as if they were transparent; while below, groves of stately olive trees cover the base and struggle as far up as they can by the fissures ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... rocks of the mountain tops all crimson and purple with the sunset; and there were bright tongues of fiery cloud burning and quivering about them; and the river, brighter than all, fell, in a wavering column of pure gold, from precipice to precipice, with the double arch of a broad purple rainbow stretched across it, flushing and fading alternately in the wreaths of spray. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... favourite sport squirrel shooting, and the still solitudes had echoed and reechoed with the reports of his gun. Panting and fatigued, he threw himself, late in the afternoon, on a green knoll, covered with mountain herbage, that crowned the brow of a precipice. From an opening between the trees he could overlook all the lower country for many a mile of rich woodland. He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its silent but majestic course, with the reflection of a purple cloud, or ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... promontory, so remarkable for its human-like profile, that it seems part of a half-buried sphinx, protrudes into the deep green water. On the other—less prominent, for even at full tide the traveller can wind between its base and the sea—there rises a shattered and ruined precipice, seamed with blood-red ironstone, that retains on its surface the bright metallic gleam, and amid whose piles of loose and fractured rock one may still detect fragments of stalactite. The stalactite is all that remains of a spacious cavern, which once hollowed the precipice, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... was not dangerous, but it was undeniably muddy, and they both wore white; with very good cause they hesitated. And while they hesitated, the opportunity was lost. Tony sprang forward, scrambled up the precipice hand over hand, swung out across the stream by the aid of an overhanging branch and secured the flowers. It was very gracefully and easily done, and a burst of applause greeted his descent. He divided ...
— Jerry Junior • Jean Webster
... sun shines intensely in a cloudless sky, and beautifies the "cloth" which floats on Table Mountain, undulating on its surface, or pouring over its edge like a Niagara of wool, to be warmed into invisibility before tumbling half-way down the mighty precipice ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... ridges of mountains which are styled by the Arabian geographers the "Stony Girdles of the Earth." The highland robbers were subdued or extirpated; but great numbers of men and horses perished in the snow; the Emperor himself was let down a precipice on a portable scaffold—the ropes were one hundred and fifty cubits in length—and before he could reach the bottom, this dangerous operation was five times repeated. Timur crossed the Indus at the ordinary passage of Attock, and successively ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... when he had been out late and she had sat up he had been much annoyed; but after she got in bed she lay for hours listening for the sound of the wheels. At last she fell asleep and dreamed that Ned and her husband were standing at the end of a precipice grappling fiercely together in a life and death struggle. She was awaked at last by a knocking at the door; she glanced at her watch, which hung above her head; it was ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... purely compassionate in the beginning of their intercourse; his intentions had been purely kind afterward; but he had gone on blindly to the edge of a slippery precipice. Human nature should avoid such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... stretched out, but just then the train struck a curve and I went up in the air till the ceiling hit me, and then I bounced over to the edge of the precipice and hung there, trembling ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... in a daze, but a great sense of security was over her. She had not the slightest doubt of this strange little creature who was befriending her. She felt like one who finds a ledge of safety on a precipice where he had feared a sheer descent. She was content to rest awhile on the safe footing, even ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... hills. At Carrickrohane your left is bounded by a huge precipitous rock, covered from base to summit with ivy and other greenery, a great grey building on the very brink of the abyss, flanked by Scotch firs, peering over the precipice. A fine stone bridge, garrisoned by salmon-fishers, leads to the Anglers' Rest, and here I found a splendid character, one Dennis Mulcahy, who boasted of his successful resistance to the Land League. Having told me of his adventures in America, and how his oyster-bar experiences ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... wasted it profligately. And now that he abandoned an old position he did it as thoroughly as he had dissipated his father's money. He was plunging from what had so long seemed to him a great height. Plunging; not cautiously lowering himself inch by inch down a dizzy precipice of self-respect, not looking the while for the first ledge upon which he might rest; plunging headlong from the zenith of self-conceit to the nadir of self-contempt. And the depths into which he hurled himself seemed to him ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... initiation into a secret society. He was blind-folded, and two companions were leading him along the edge of a cliff over a deep ravine, when the earth gave way, or they slipped and fell from the precipice, and Leggett was so injured that he died in two hours. There was no allegation or suspicion of blame. There was, indeed, an attempt of some enemies of the Cornell University—a hostility due either to supposed conflict of interests or sectarian jealousy—to stigmatize the institution, ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... the sorrow that now seems insupportable—you would not believe me. But I do say to you, that you are a man, and that you must prove your courage. I say even more: fight against thoughts of Marie-Anne as a traveller on the verge of a precipice fights against the thought ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... brigadiers now finally surveyed that line of cliffs which Montcalm had declared a hundred men could hold against the whole British army. It was defended here and there by small posts. Below one of these, a mile and a half above the city, the traces of a zigzag path up the bush-covered precipice could be made out, though Wolfe could not see that even this was barricaded. Here, at the now famous Anse du Foulon, he decided to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Buttermilk Creek, in the immediate vicinity of the city of Albany, N. Y. Though there is no poetry in the name of this little stream, there is sweet music made by its rippling waters, as they rush rapidly along the shallow channel, fretting at the rocks that obstruct its course, and racing toward a precipice, down which it plunges, some thirty or forty feet, forming a light, feathery cascade; and then, as if exhausted by the leap, creeping sluggishly its little distance toward the broad Hudson. The white spray, churned out by the friction against ...
— The Runaway - The Adventures of Rodney Roverton • Unknown
... month. A resolve approved by all her better nature was growing firm within her heart; and that which an hour before would have seemed too dreadful to contemplate was losing half its terrors. How often an ascent, which looks in the distance a bare precipice, shows us, when we approach its face, the notches by which we may climb!—and not a few of the difficulties of life yield to our will ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... still it has an actual resting-place and tangible support under it—it is not suspended on nothing. It differs from poetry, as I conceive, like the chamois from the eagle: it climbs to an almost equal height, touches upon a cloud, overlooks a precipice, is picturesque, sublime—but all the while, instead of soaring through the air, it stands upon a rocky cliff, clambers up by abrupt and intricate ways, and browzes on the roughest bark, or crops the ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... again," and away we gallop, like DICK TURPIN on Black Bess, and we leave girls dressed as boys behind us, and provincial JOANS OF ARC going out fighting for Church and King; and then, just as we are hanging suspended in mid-air over an awful precipice, there is a last gallant effort, and we awake to find ourselves gasping for breath, and awake to the fact that "Q.'s Pegasus" is a nightmare. It recalls memories of LOUIS STEVENSON'S Black Arrow, but distances it by miles, while here and there its vivid descriptions ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... ominous shiver Riddell put on his cap and sallied out in the direction of the Fourth. A man about to throw himself over a precipice could ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... weeds, like sea-beasts with rough hair, stood out black from the deep blue water that lay round the rocks. He loved to hear the heavy plunge of the great waves around his bastions, the thin cries of the sea-birds that sailed about the precipice, or that lit on their airy perches. Everywhere was a brisk sharp scent of the sea, and the fresh breeze, most unlike the close sour smell of the little houses. He felt himself free and strong and clean, and he thought of all the things ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... branches and leaves that they almost entirely excluded the sunlight from the waters of a stream which there rolled foaming and roaring between the hills and over and against the rocks of its precipitous bed, or, plunging down some frightful precipice, lay as if stunned or exhausted by the fall in the chasm below, mirroring in its still bosom with a gloomy reflection the craggy steeps rising majestically above it—in this dark and lonely pass, we say, was a party of human beings, to whom the proper development ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... his history, of the fall of this great favourite, which serves to throw a melancholy veil over the splendor of his life, and demonstrates the extreme vanity of exterior pomp, and the danger those are exposed to who move on the precipice of power. It serve[s] to shew that of all kind of cruelty, that which is the child of enthusiasm is the word, as it is founded upon something that has the appearance of principles; and as it is more stedfast, so does ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... that the coal fields of Alabama were sliding down an incline and pouring off over a precipice at the rate of 11,201,000 tons per year, how long would it take the people of the United States to do something to try to stop such a waste? Yet what else are we doing when we sit idly by and let the water of these streams go to waste over a precipice ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... made it as if it had never been. From the charmed ring beneath the beech-tree she took possession of her world; for her the wind murmured, the birds sang, insects hummed or shrilled, the green saplings nodded their heads. Flowers, and the bedded moss, and the little stream that leaped from a precipice of three feet into the calm of a hand-deep pool spoke to her. She was happy. Gone was the house and its inmates; gone Paris the schoolmaster, who had taught her to write, and whose hand touching hers in guidance made her sick ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... silenced these better demands in gratifying its own caprice. It takes us a very long time to learn the danger of trusting our fallible natures too far. The man who goes forward to defy temptation, telling himself he will not fall, is running down towards a steep precipice, and has not the power of self-control when he reaches ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... beast. King Olaf answers, "That we must try, bonde, and it will go as God pleases. Come here in the morning with your yoke, and come yourself with it, and let us then see. When we come to the sloping precipice, what chance there may be, and if we cannot devise some means of coming over it with horses ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... in Acarnania called Leucrate [1] on the Top of which was a little Temple dedicated to Apollo. In this Temple it was usual for despairing Lovers to make their Vows in secret, and afterwards to fling themselves from the Top of the Precipice into the Sea, where they were sometimes taken up alive. This Place was therefore called, The Lovers Leap; and whether or no the Fright they had been in, or the Resolution that could push them to so dreadful a Remedy, or the Bruises ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... top. The natives affirm that there is a lake of water on its summit, and they frequently go round the bottom of the precipices, during the rainy season, and pick up large turtles, which have tumbled over the precipice and killed themselves. Saw many very picturesque and rocky hills during the march, and in the evening halted at the village of Falifing, which is situated on the summit of the ascent which separates the ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... Charles Reed died; and in 1883 the family was again plunged into grief by the sad death of Talbot's eldest brother ("my 'father confessor' in all times of trouble," Talbot used to say of him), the Reverend Charles Edward Reed, who was accidentally killed by a fall over a precipice while he was on a walking expedition in Switzerland. Lady Reed, it may be here ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... purity how near she goes to a fall. Here, in her sister's house, passionately loved by her sister's husband! She calls him 'brother,' whose eyes cannot look at her without telling their story of wicked love. She walks on the edge of a precipice—self-deceived. Were I to abandon her she might fall. My affection is her only safeguard; and by winning her to myself I shall snatch her ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... return. But it would grieve us sorely for you to come back to such scenes as you have already witnessed. Judge and act from your own impressions. If we do not see you, send me the result of your interview at the precipice.—[The name the Queen gave to Mr. Pitt]—'Vostra cara picciolca Inglesina' will deliver you many letters. After looking over the envelopes, you will either send her with them as soon as possible or forward them as addressed, as you may ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... amphitheatre of the most gloomy forest, ringed round in the distance by sheer-sided hills. Into this forest there ran a river which drained the swamp, placidly enough upon the level. But it was not always level, for within three hundred yards of them it dashed suddenly over a precipice, of no great height but very steep, falling into a boiling rock-bound pool that the light of the ...
— Black Heart and White Heart • H. Rider Haggard
... mountaineers the wife is a chattel from whom it is permissible to extract all the usefulness possible, and whom it is allowable to sell when a bargain can be struck. The Kabyle woman's sole recreation is her errand to the fountain. This is sometimes situated in the valley, far from the nodding pillar or precipice on which the town is built. There the traveler finds the good wives talking and laughing together, bending their lively—sometimes blonde and blue-eyed—faces together over their jars, and gossiping as in Naples ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... unused to such a position of comparative danger, and whose head was not capable of standing the sight of a precipice descending from his very feet into a roaring stream, began to feel giddy, and would have given the world to return; but he felt ashamed to confess his weakness, and endeavoured, by gazing earnestly into the bank at his side, to steady himself, ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... to enjoy saying bold and dangerous things to me, and saying them in the presence of her protector, under his vigilant eye, only exercising barely enough caution not to arouse his suspicions. It is well known that walking on the brink, on the very edge, of the precipice is woman's favourite pastime. 'Yes, I was there,' whispered Musa, without any change of countenance, except that her nostrils were faintly quivering and her lips twitching. 'Yes, and if Paramon Semyonitch asks me what I am ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... crag to crag, often trooping along the lofty shelves of the mountains, under the guidance of some venerable patriarch with horns twisted lower than his muzzle, and sometimes peering over the edge of a precipice, so high that they appear scarce bigger than crows; indeed, it seems a pleasure to them to seek the most rugged and frightful situations, doubtless from a ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... which this castle can be left either with dignity or safety; but as there is the main gate and guard, and the chief street of the upper city, it is not to be thought of by escaping prisoners. In all other directions an abominable precipice surrounds it, down the face of which (if anywhere at all) we must regain our liberty. By our concurrent labours in many a dark night, working with the most anxious precautions against noise, we had made out to pierce below the curtain about the south-west corner, in a place they call the Devil's ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... horrible fate that awaited us should one of them fall or falter!... The Seora ——- and I shut our eyes and held each other's hands, and certainly no one breathed till we were safe on the other side. We were then told that we had crossed within a few feet of a precipice over which a coach had been dashed into fifty pieces during one of these swells, and of course every one killed; and that if instead of horses we had travelled with mules, we must have been lost. You may imagine that we were not sorry to reach Sopayuca; where the people ran out to the ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... was betrayed by the treachery of a deserter, who indicated to the Barbarians a secret and neglected staircase, scooped out of the rock that hangs over the stream of the Tigris. Seventy chosen archers of the royal guard ascended in silence to the third story of a lofty tower, which commanded the precipice; they elevated on high the Persian banner, the signal of confidence to the assailants, and of dismay to the besieged; and if this devoted band could have maintained their post a few minutes longer, the reduction of the place might have been purchased by the sacrifice of their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... not where the way led. My brain was in a whirl. I felt as though I were fleeing from a crumbling precipice. In a flash I understood Virginia's tactful attempts at warning. She had tried to make me understand but my head was too easily turned by the fine speeches and flattering attentions of the musician. I have been vain and foolish but I've had my lesson. It still hurts and yet ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... like which fixedly, Long adown the precipice look, Adown THEIR precipice:— Oh, how they whirl down now, Thereunder, therein, To ever deeper profoundness whirling!— Then, Sudden, With aim aright, With quivering flight, On LAMBKINS pouncing, Headlong down, sore-hungry, ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... nervous excitement; while imagining myself wide awake, I would really doze into momentary unconsciousness, and come suddenly out of it with a physical jerk which nearly wrenched my joints apart—the delusion of the instant being that I was tumbling backward over a precipice. After I had fallen over eight or nine precipices and thus found out that one half of my brain had been asleep eight or nine times without the wide-awake, hard-working other half suspecting it, the periodical unconsciousnesses began to extend their spell gradually ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... one walked over it, as Gottlieb did, leaning on his staff of Church- truth, reading diligently in his book, and trimming ever and anon his lamp, such a light fell upon the narrow path, and the darkness so veiled the precipice, that the pilgrim did not know that there was any thing to fear. But not so when you stopped to look—then it became terrible indeed; you soon lost all sight of the path before you; for the brightest lamp only lighted the road just by your feet, and that seemed rising ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... from one of the shoes being loose. A terror—strange even to my experience—seized me, and I hastened home. The sounds gradually died away as I descended the hill. Could they have been an echo from some precipice of the mountain? I knew of no road lying so that, if a horse were galloping upon it, the sounds would be reflected from the ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... Prairie,[14] On the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry,[15] Gitche Manito, the mighty, He the Master of Life, descending, On the red crags of the quarry Stood erect, and called the nations, Called the tribes of men together. From his footprints flowed a river, Leaped into the light of morning, O'er the precipice plunging downward Gleamed like Ishkoodah, the comet. And the Spirit, stooping earthward, With his finger on the meadow Traced a winding pathway for it, Saying to it, "Run in this way!" From the red stone ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... mind with other places, or altered for a moment in the crowd of scenes a traveller can recall. Apart from the realities of this most picturesque city, there are associations clustering about it which would make a desert rich in interest. The dangerous precipice along whose rocky front Wolfe and his brave companions climbed to glory; the Plains of Abraham, where he received his mortal wound; the fortress so chivalrously defended by Montcalm; and his soldier's grave, dug for him when yet alive, by the bursting of a shell, are ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... cavalcade to fetch home one snivelling goatherd. It was four by the time they were off, seven before they were at Abano, eight when they reached the foot of Monte Ortone and faced the deep chestnut woods in which that precipice dips his flanks. But though it was getting dusk there were eyes sharp enough on the top of the mountain to watch for what sharp ears had heard—a most unaccustomed sound in those leafy solitudes—trotting horses and jingling steel. Castracane from the summit saw it all; and what is more, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the happy-go-lucky confidence, or perhaps it was their simple trust in God, with which these people had built their houses in the most alarmingly insecure places, sometimes hanging on the very edge of a sheer precipice, sometimes with the several stories built on different levels, climbing the hill like steps. About them there was a pleasant air of foreign quaintness—little railed balconies across the fronts, outside stairways leading up to the ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... perpendicular position. He was considerably pained, but not seriously hurt. His rifle had fallen from his hand, and was not found again until daybreak, as not knowing where he stood, whether upon the edge of some precipice or ravine, he scarcely ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... picturesque pile of Santa Maria a Pozzano, perched aloft above the roadway, we pass along the edge of the sea-girt precipice, rounding the Capo d'Orlando, until we reach the pretty little town of Vico Equense, with its churches and gay-coloured villas nestling amidst groves of olive and orange trees. Vico owes its prosperity in the first instance to the patronage of "Carlo ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Turning his horse up the course of the stream, he soon came in sight of his brother on the ledge before him. With a suppressed scream of rage, he rode headlong at him, and, ere he had time to make the least defence, hurled him over the precipice. The helplessness of the strong man was uttered in one single despairing cry as he shot into the abyss. Then all was still. The sound of his fall could not reach the edge of the gulf. Divining in a moment that ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... armed bower! In front of all the forest Thy coral-loaded branches tower. Thou shrine of love, whose depth defies The axe—the tempest of the skies; Whose boughs in winter's frost display The brilliant livery of May! Grove from the precipice suspended, Like pillars of some holy fane; With notes amid thy branches blended, Like ...
— The Poetry of Wales • John Jenkins
... and the Utes yelling behind them, the herd war fairly mad with fright; and there war no saying where they would go to, for, you know, a herd of buffaloes, when fairly stampeded, will go clean over a precipice a hundred yards high, and pile themselves up dead at the foot till there is not one left. It war a bad fix, you bet, for I war sure that the Utes war after us, and not after the buffaloes, for they kept on, though they could soon have killed as many of the herd as they ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... the wind suddenly failed us; and the current hurried us with such velocity directly towards the point, that we expected momentarily to be dashed in pieces; but on coming within twice the length of the ship of the perpendicular precipice, which was some hundred feet high, the eddy swept her round three several times with great rapidity. The Captain would have dropped the anchor, but an old Chinese fisherman, whom we had taken on board to pilot us, made signs that it was too deep, and, at the same time, that there was no danger, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... "A broken path—a precipice—a ford, and a morass!" said the knight interrupting him,—"Sir Hermit, if you were the holiest that ever wore beard or told bead, you shall scarce prevail on me to hold this road to-night. I tell thee, that thou, who livest by ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... sprang up from the pile of sticks he had heaped and fired with a match. The light from the fire soon threw the outer world into black darkness. They could not make it seem possible that there, almost within reach of their hands, was a precipice dropping down nearly two hundred feet. But the thought caused them to keep well to the rear of ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls in the Hills - The Missing Pilot of the White Mountains • Janet Aldridge
... elements are so perfectly adjusted that the balance is never in doubt. Their character is superior to circumstance. But they are rare. They are the stars that dwell apart from our human struggles. Most of us know what it is to be on the brink of the precipice—know, if we are quite honest with ourselves, how narrow a shave we have had from joining the black sheep. Perhaps, if we are still honest with ourselves, we shall admit that the thing that turned the balance ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... him now. He had disgraced himself,—had sunk below his education,—had been false to all his better knowledge and the past expectations of his friends, living a mean, miserable, dishonorable life,—and now the ground was fast sliding from under him, and the next plunge might be down a precipice from which there would be no return. What he had done up to this hour had been done in the roystering, inconsiderate gamesomeness of boyhood. It had been represented to himself only as "sowing wild oats," "having steep times," "seeing a little of life," and so on; but this ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the feline race, the leopard soon came in sight of a fine bushbok, whose sleek sides drew from him an irrepressible snicker of delight. But the bushbok was not within spring-range. He was at the foot of a low precipice. Creeping to the top of this with great caution the leopard looked over with a view to estimate distance. It was yet too far for a spring, so he turned at once to seek a better way of approach. In doing so he touched a small stone, which rolled over the krantz, bounded from crag ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... all their pretended dreams or visions of their god he has always a crooked leg, like the Egyptian Thau. Supposing that those who were reported to have perished in this cave had fallen over some precipice, we went well provided with lights, ladder, lines, &c.; but it turned out to be only an open cave, with an entrance about ten feet square, which contracts into two water-worn branches, ending in round orifices through which the water once flowed. The only inhabitants ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... schooner lying in the bay. This wise move had not long been accomplished, when a huge section of the ground occupied by the cottages slid down the great cliff and the next morning there was little to be seen but a sloping mound of lias shale at the foot of the precipice. The villagers recovered some of their property by digging, and some pieces of broken crockery from one of the cottages are still to be seen on the shore near the ferryman's hut, where the path ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... it," Jack agreed, stretching his lazy length on the grass at her feet. "The hill has formed a sort of shallow precipice and the lake sure does look great ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... he said that whoever tried to come in here to find the lost mine was certain to get into trouble? It seems to have worked pretty well with us so far. I lost my way and you fell and bruised your leg, to say nothing about trying to slide over the precipice and land in the ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and Simon's Mine • Ross Kay
... swiftly through her mind as she stood half turned from Amy, looking down the deep stair that sank like a precipice before her. She heard nothing, but Amy started and turned to the door. She was following her, when Amy said, in ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... if any should be lost, they alone would be to blame? Stumbling over roots, dodging trees and rocks, they plunged wildly along until finally they saw a light spot ahead and a moment later came out suddenly upon the edge of a precipice, from which they could look straight down into a deep valley below. The goats were there before them huddled together an the brow of the cliff, bleating piteously. Bello sat on his haunches with his tongue hanging out and looked at the scenery! Seppi ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... gazing on the prospect in its entirety, one after another, the moss-grown fortresses and other hoary relics of ancient Erse architecture claim our reverent attention; for the Hebridean chieftains, an amphibious race, almost invariably chose the extreme verge of ocean-precipice for the site of their fortresses, thus securing facilities for friendly communication, and defence against the attacks of hostile clans. Dunstaffnage, though left some distance to our right, is still sufficiently in view for us to discern ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... following morning to his father's wishes. Of the other sojourner in his house the Duke had thought nothing; but the other sojourner had thought very much of the Duke. Frank Tregear was fully possessed of that courage which induces a man who knows that he must be thrown over a precipice, to choose the first possible moment for his fall. He had sounded Silverbridge about this change in his politics, and had found his friend quite determined not to go back to the family doctrine. Such being the case, the Duke's ill-will and hardness and general ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... flung herself deep into the abysses of her dream, for though she often returned bearing on her brow, as if from vast heights, some luminous reflections, oftener she seemed to carry in her hand the flowers that grew beside a torrent she had followed down a precipice. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... infallibility of Apostles and Evangelists. Meanwhile, I suspect that he is not by any means without a suspicion that he is on a platform beset with far greater dangers, himself. He has walked a little this way, and that way; and his "common sense" has shewn him that there is an ugly precipice on every side. Nay; he perceives that the ground trembles, and cracks, and shakes,—and even ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... at their master's threat With quicker steps the sounding champaign beat. And now Antilochus with nice survey Observes the compass of the hollow way. 'Twas where, by force of wintry torrents torn, Fast by the road a precipice was worn: Here, where but one could pass, to shun the throng The Spartan hero's chariot smoked along. Close up the venturous youth resolves to keep, Still edging near, and bears him toward the steep. Atrides, trembling, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... desires, overmaster her soul. She floats in a dim, delusive anticipation of her happiness; and her feelings become excited to their utmost tension. She stretches out her arms finally to embrace the object of all her wishes and her lover forsakes her. Stunned and bewildered, she stands upon a precipice. All is darkness around her. No prospect, no hope, no consolation—forsaken by him in whom her existence was centred! She sees nothing of the wide world before her, thinks nothing of the many individuals who might supply the void in her ...
— The Sorrows of Young Werther • J.W. von Goethe
... hundred yards from his house, on the top of a rock whose sides were steep, rugged, and encumbered with dwarf cedars and stony asperities, he built what to a common eye would have seemed a summer-house. The eastern verge of this precipice was sixty feet above the river which flowed at its foot. The view before it consisted of a transparent current, fluctuating and rippling in a rocky channel, and bounded by a rising scene of cornfields and orchards. The edifice was slight and airy. It was no more than a circular area, twelve ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... hiding-place was certainly on the other side of the Jordan, and this Wadi is probably the Valley of Achor, spoken of in the Book of Joshua. On the opposite side of the canyon, half-way down the face of the precipice, clings the monastery of Saint George, one of the pious penitentiaries to which the Greek Church assigns unruly ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... time it occurred to him to see where these tracks went to, and he followed them until they merged with others in a travelled road, ending at a precipice on the side of Katahdin ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... universal animating idea, capable of binding them together in unanimous accord, imparting the necessary force and velocity in the direction of treason, when started and impelled by the efforts of their leading men. Slavery was just such a principle; it was the gravitating power which hurled them down the precipice, and gave the tremendous impetus of ruin which they have exerted in their awful descent. But, in truth, this mischievous power has been accumulating ever since the Government was founded. It grew out of the antecedents of existing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the heart disdains, And friendship shudders at the moral tale. My friend, the fearful precipice is past, And danger dare not meet us more. Fly swift, Ye better angels, waft the welcome tidings Of pardon to my ...
— The Earl of Essex • Henry Jones
... follows the upward rush of the mighty acclivity, steep after steep, till it wins the cloud-capt summit, when the measureless mass seems to swing and sway overhead, and the nerves tremble with the same terror that besets him who looks downward from the verge of a lofty precipice. It is wholly grim and stern; no touch of beauty relieves the austere majesty of that presence. At the foot of Cape Eternity the water is of unknown depth, and it spreads, a black expanse, in the rounding ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... opinion that thundered at a distance, and should be able, by some logical apparatus or unexpected turn of the argument, to prevent the vessel of the state from being hurried forward with the progress of improvement, and dashed in pieces down the tremendous precipice of human perfectibility. Then comes Mr. Malthus forward with the geometrical and arithmetical ratios in his hands, and holds them out to his affrighted contemporaries as the only means of salvation. "For" (so argued the author ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... a precipice, you calculate the distance of the solid points with astonishing accuracy. In the first place, you dangle your legs as if to measure the space, which you divide in your judgment, by the motions of your feet; then you throw yourself exactly upon the wished-for spot, the distance ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... the progress of the evening told him, that he had anticipated the hour at which it had been agreed to meet. He accordingly descended the Grassy Quarry, and sat on a mossy ledge of rock, over which the brow of a little precipice jutted in such a manner as to render those who sat beneath, visible only from a particular point. Here he had scarcely seated himself when the tread of a foot was heard, and in a few minutes Nanse M'Collum stood ...
— The Dead Boxer - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... has learned to obey—he will not know how. The one great thing life has to teach you is—obey. There was a young bear once that was bound to go his own way. The old bear told him it wouldn't do to jump over a precipice, but, somehow, he couldn't believe it and jumped. 'Twas the last thing he ever did. It's often so with the young. Their own way is apt to be rather steep and to end suddenly. There are laws everywhere,—we couldn't live without them,—laws of nature, God, and man. Until we learn the law and ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... murderers; I, who should have gone to bed and slept as sound as a rock under such circumstances till I was called in the morning, could not, now I was about to return to my kindest friends, and to make myself and my father happy, I could not sleep one moment. Gracious God! upon what a precipice had I stood! from what a world of misery was I rescued, by the kind hand of Providence! for if I had gone upon such an errand, and if I had been instrumental in robbing one human being or fellow creature ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... monasteries is that of Camaldoli, near Arezzo, in Tuscany, on the frontiers of the ecclesiastical state, thirty miles east from Florence, founded by him about the year 1009. It lies beyond a mountain, {376} very difficult to pass over, the descent from which, on the opposite side, is almost a direct precipice looking down upon a pleasant large valley, which then belonged to a lord called Maldoli, who gave it the saint, and from him it retained the name Camaldoli.[2] In this place St. Romuald built a monastery, and by the several observances he added to St. Benedict's rule, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... soul, endowed with every gift of excellence; yet lost in spite of all its gifts! Unbridled passions and bad companionship corrupt his heart, urge him on from crime to crime, until at last he stands at the head of a band of murderers, heaps horror upon horror, and plunges from precipice to precipice into the lowest depths of despair. Great and majestic in misfortune, by misfortune reclaimed, and led back to the paths of virtue. Such a man shall you pity and hate, abhor yet love, in the Robber Moor. You will likewise see a juggling, fiendish knave ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... before Roger again obtained news. Bathalda had injured his leg in a fall down a precipice, while stalking a deer; and was obliged to lie up in the hut for more than a fortnight. As soon as he was well enough to get about again, he joined Roger in a turkey hunt, and started the next day ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... attain the dimensions of a considerable lake. There is no timber in this valley, and accordingly the scenery, though on a large scale, is neither impressive nor pleasing; the mountains are large swelling hummocks, grassed up to the summit, and though steeply declivitous, entirely destitute of precipice. Truly it is rather a dismal place on a dark day, and somewhat like the world's end which the young prince travelled to in the story of "Cherry, or the Frog Bride." The grass is coarse and cold-looking—great tufts of what is called snow-grass, and spaniard. ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... for climbing up that precipice of yours. What on earth possessed you to come to this ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... weather—was to be found on the Cliffs of Moher. Sometimes he stopped out all night, till hunger would bring him back when the Lonergans were rejoicing at his disappearance. He knew every inch of the Cliffs, and spent half his time lying on the edge of the grey precipice, looking down at the sea, six hundred feet below, or watching the clouds of sea-birds; he found new paths down the cliff-side and clambered like a goat; he knew where the gulls nested, but never robbed them, and the caves where the seals lived, and the seals shouldered ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... cunning of the Greeks, and should they have discovered the ship by any chance, this was the point they would defend, in the hopes of destroying all those engaged in the expedition together. Darkness was around them, the rugged cliff on one side, a precipice on the other, and beneath their feet a steep path or rough steps, and yet no one hesitated to follow where he led. The most perfect silence reigned over the scene, except the sound of their tread, which could just be heard above the dash of the water on the rocks below, and the scream ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... the hill first, the French meanwhile firing on the boats, killing and wounding some of the occupants; but "the main body of our army soon got to the upper ground, after climbing a hill or rather a precipice, of about three hundred yards, very steep and covered with wood and brush." By ten the army was drawn up in order of battle,—"in a masterly manner," John Nairne said later,—on the Plains of Abraham, the bag-pipes of the Highlanders screaming a wild ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... corridor. Lady Southminster, with an awful start, seized her bag and sprang after him, but was impeded by other passengers. She caught him only after he had descended to the platform, which was at the bottom of a precipice below the windows. He had just been saluted by, and given orders to, a waiting valet. She caught him sharply by the arm. He shook free and walked quickly away up the platform, guided by a wise instinct for avoiding a scene in front of fellow-travellers. She followed close after him, talking with ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... Jove! after a year in a log-hut on the wrong side of a precipice, you're glad to get your feet on London pavement, and smell London smells again. And look there, Ted! There isn't a lovelier sight on God's earth than a well-dressed Englishwoman. Where are we going? How about ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... away, and leaning across the rail, stared at the high bluffs, red-bronzed by the autumn sun. A score of miles beyond that precipice was a long low building of stone, surrounded by spreading trees,—the school for young ladies, celebrated throughout the West, where our mothers and grandmothers were taught,—Monticello. Hither Miss Virginia Carvel had gone, some thirty days since, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... miles, and then it narrowed apace, and was not above as broad as the Thames is at Windsor, or thereabouts; and, after another day, we came to a great waterfall or cataract, enough to fright us, for I believe the whole body of water fell at once perpendicularly down a precipice above sixty foot high, which made noise enough to deprive men of their hearing, and we heard it above ten miles ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... the verge of the crater, at the very summit of the mountain, commanded a view of all the surrounding country. The rock upon which it was built projected over a precipice whose abysses were concealed by creeping plants, cactus, and bamboos. The species of table-rock thus formed had been encircled with a railing, and transformed into a terrace on a level with the sleeping-room, by my predecessor in this ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... reposed. She arose when they opened their eyes, and looked kindly at them; but said no word, and passed from their sight into the wood. When the children looked around they saw they had been sleeping on the edge of a precipice, and would surely have fallen over if they had gone forward two steps further in the darkness. Their mother said the beautiful child must have been the angel who watches over ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... down the flags and stepped into nothingness—thirty feet sheer precipice into the ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... question before us, I would first ask: How are we now situated? For more than two and a half years we have fought for our just rights, and what do we see if we take a retrospective view? Are we making progress, or are we gradually going down the precipice? I have been in correspondence with my officers in all parts of the country, and have received information from them as to the condition of affairs, but I must tell you that from all that information there is nothing to show me that our cause is progressing, not even by ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... lets Aram in. So Amaziah lives, so ends his reign, Both by their traitorous servants justly slain. Edom at first dreads his victorious hand; Before him thousand captives trembling stand. Down a precipice, deep down he casts them all; The mimic shapes in several postures fall: But then (mad fool!) he does those gods adore, Which when plucked down had worshipped him before. Thus all his life to come is loss and shame: No help from gods, who themselves ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... think," said his mother, ... "that you could wish better." "Yes," adjoined Arnaud, "for that wish should be that I ever had remained unborn."' He polishes the broken blade of a sword, and views himself therein; the sight so horrifies him that he determines to throw himself over a precipice, but draws back at the last moment. He goes to a cavern, and conjures up the prince of hell. "Arnaud knew himself to be interrogated. What he required.... What was that answer the effects explain.... There passed in liveliest portraiture the various men distinguished for that ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... be a pleasanter situation than the one I was placed in, when one day, having climbed to the summit of the highest iceberg in the neighbourhood, I beheld a light blue smoke ascending in the distance. Taking the exact bearings of the spot, I slid down an almost perpendicular precipice, of three hundred feet at least, at an awful rate, and then ran on as fast as my legs would carry me, for after a solitude of eight months I longed to see my fellow-creatures, and hear again the human voice. On I went, but still to my disappointment no ship appeared in sight, till at ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston |
