"Fathom" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... do—and that for two reasons: the first, because by this means he should escape reproaches, recriminations, and prayers; the second, because he was not sorry to have an opportunity of reading his own thoughts and endeavoring, if possible, to fathom those of this woman. ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... quite as well from this pantomime of negation as from the dialogue our sad fate, and submitted to it. Some adventurous spirit demanded whether any trains would go on the morrow. The Capo-Stazione, with an air of one who would not presume to fathom the designs of Providence, responded: "Who knows? To-day, certainly not. ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... in Norey's Chart, The very place it tells: I think it says twelve fathom deep, Clay bottom, ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... you see, he has got us out of it. If these beastly fellows hadn't been led by him to come after our money, we would not have had this schooner, and how we should have got those bags away without her,—to say nothing of ourselves,—is more than I can fathom. It is my belief that no craft ever comes within twenty miles of this coast, if she can help it. So I vote for letting him off. He didn't intend to do us any harm, and he didn't intend to do us any good, but it seems to me that the good he ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... recriminations which the latter had no business to make, since it was to be regarded as having received the two routine doses of poison. But the Sphex sees its victim come to life, understands this fact, and without seeking to fathom the cause judges that a new struggle and new blows of the sting are necessary; he understands that it is necessary to begin afresh, since the usual result has not been attained. He is then capable of reflection, and the series of acts which he accomplishes are not ordained with such inflexibility ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay
... blame for such an accident? It was not his cigarette that had started the blaze. In her overwrought condition she passed from a terrible love to a sharp hate, and back and forth. Was he a fool or was he more noble than she could fathom? He should have seen her sooner, he should not have left her a prey to her morbid thoughts. Time and again she became convinced that he had ceased to love her, that he was more concerned over his burnt printery. She twisted ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... always been one of the inscrutable mysteries in natural philosophy that I never could fathom, why men do not faint. Certain it is, I never yet heard of a man swooning from excess of surprise or joy, and perhaps that may account for Sir Norman's not doing so on the present occasion. But he came to an abrupt stand-still in their rapid career; and if ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... should therefore desist from examining too closely the reasons, which we can never hope to fathom. ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... gallery is almost entirely given over to sculpture, with one exception which is notable so far as the dear public is concerned - a painting, "The Arch of Septimius Severus," by Luigi Bazzani. I cannot fathom why Luigi Bazzani should go to all this trouble in trying to imitate a photograph when the result over which he so painfully laboured could be done by any good photographer for less than five dollars. It seems to me an absolutely ...
— The Galleries of the Exposition • Eugen Neuhaus
... there none of your own subjects in want of it? Take that sword away from my sight, it dazzles and pains me. It has done its work only too well; the sceptre is abandoned. Great is the career for kings of your stuff, and you are still far from the term; time presses, you have not a moment to lose. Fathom well your heart, O Frederick! Can you dare to die without having been the greatest of men? Would that I could see Frederick, the just and the redoubtable, covering his states with multitudes of men to whom he should be a father; then will ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... position, in having charge of the deep-sea line, which was something short of two fathoms in length. He was stationed at the bows, and ever and anon proclaimed aloud the depth of water in language that he fondly believed to be English. As we dashed along in one fathom water, he seemed perfectly at his ease, and drew the small lead from the river, and again tossed it before him with a studied grace, turning round occasionally, with an air of affected indifference, to read admiration in our eyes. As the water shoaled to four feet, his brow contracted and his motions ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... was extremely gratified, and really esteemed this one of the greatest compliments his science had ever received; Dr. Spencer could not help observing, 'I did not think it was in him to do such a wise thing. I never can fathom the rogue. I hope he was not bitten during his ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 13: Take an opportunity of going unnoticed to a "bear-stack," and fathom it three times round. The last fathom of the last time you will catch in your arms the appearance of your ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... of necessity good confidential agents, or whether a fire-proof man was as a matter of course trustworthy, Frederick Trent threw himself into a chair, and, burying his head in his hands, endeavoured to fathom the motives which had led Quilp to insinuate himself into Richard Swiveller's confidence;—for that the disclosure was of his seeking, and had not been spontaneously revealed by Dick, was sufficiently ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... that since the night of the opera house meeting Lorne had been "all worked up." She watched him with furtive anxious looks, was solicitous about his food, expressed relief when she knew him to be safely in bed and asleep. He himself observed himself with discontent, unable to fathom his extraordinary lapse from self-control on the night of his final address. He charged it to the strain of unavoidable office work on top of the business of the campaign, abused his nerves, talked of a few days' rest when they had settled Winter. He could think ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... His face was set towards Rotherwood, and in spite of his loitering pace there was an intent and watchful look in his eyes; but what his purpose or design might be was best known to himself; for wonderful and devious are the ways of man, and who can fathom them? Presently a tempting tangle of honeysuckle attracted him, and he clambered up the bank in search of it. The bank was dry and slippery, and the honeysuckle was difficult to reach, but Malcolm ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... this prince was such, that, like the bee, he gathered the most perfect substance from the best and most beautiful flowers. He tried to fathom men, to draw from them the instruction and the light that he could hope for. He conferred sometimes, but rarely, with others besides his chosen few. I was the only one, not of that number, who had complete access to him; with me he opened his heart upon the present and ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... imperfectly frozen snow borders this sea; and Franz never planted his feet till he had first ascertained the nature of the surface with his pole. Some of these fissures are of an amazing depth, and, taking out my watch, I tried to fathom one of them by dropping large fragments of granite; and calculating by the time that elapsed before reaching the bottom, we judged it to be over ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... could again open his eyes and breathe freely. He was not free from that nervous pressure under which he had been working, but the worst of the inner tension had relaxed and he felt the need of taking a survey of what had happened, of summarising and trying to fathom what could have been underlying his apparently unaccountable experiences. The literary outcome of this settling of accounts with the past was The Road ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... with this resolution, Badang said to the hantou, "Give me the gift of physical strength; let me be strong enough to tear down and to uproot the trees; that is, that I may tear down, with one hand, great trees, a fathom ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... Now, at sixty-four fathom a conger may come And nose at the bones of a drowned submarine; But—late in the evening Kilmeny came home, And nobody ...
— The New Morning - Poems • Alfred Noyes
... you deeply, only you do not believe it. Gauged by a woman's love, many men love, marry, and die, without even approximating the real grand passion themselves, or comprehending that which they have inspired, for no one but a woman can fathom a woman's love." ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... ourselves by throwing small pieces of money into the water, where it was about a fathom deep, for the boys to dive after; they gained them too easily; we went to another part in the cut, where it was much deeper, and threw in a dollar. The boys stood naked on the rocks, like so many cormorants, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Point Hunter and Nepean-Island is a very good one, there being three fathoms water close to Nepean-Isle, and nine fathoms in mid-channel. There lies a rock off Point Hunter in the direction of south-west with one fathom and a half on it, but it is out of the passage. The tide occasions a very strong race between the islands, which makes it very difficult for vessels to have communication with the shore, as they cannot anchor, the bottom being rocky. The ebb ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter
... that portion of the city where our shot and shell could do the least harm. We did not destroy the Russian Fleet, for the sufficing reason that the Russian Commander-in-Chief sank all his three-deckers full fathom five in ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... maybe a little over a fathom," said the mate, "but the villains would let me go no nearer. I think I was in the channel, though. 'Tis more open inside, as I mind me of it. There's a kind of a hole there, and if we get in over the shoals just beyond where I was ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... pray the good God that you may never have!' As he spoke, there was such an almost irresistible gravity of conviction in his manner that I abandoned my remonstrance about his solitary life. I felt that I was in the presence of some secret influence which I could not fathom. To my relief, for I knew not what to say, ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... along the rocks in three-fathom water, watching the pollock catch prawns, and the wrasses nibble barnacles off the rocks, shells and all, when he saw a round cage of green withes; and inside it, looking very much ashamed of himself, sat his friend ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Unable either to fathom or forecast the workings of the drink-maddened mentality masked by that rat-like face, Lanyard waited with a hand covertly grasping the automatic in his pocket. There was no telling; at any moment that murderous mania might veer his way. And he was not content to die, not yet, not ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... it came to, and before sunset was reddening the western skies behind the Cheviots. We went a long, long way out—far beyond the thirty-fathom line, which is, as all sailors acquainted with those waters know, a good seven miles from shore; indeed, as I afterwards reckoned, we were more than twice that distance from Berwick pier-end when the affair happened—perhaps ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... obtain all the information within his reach. His reflections assured him that some one had chosen the role of an impostor for the purpose of accomplishing some treasonable object, and he was anxious to fathom the mystery for his country's ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... uxorious husband. The first burst of his wrath had long since passed away, and he was not disposed severely to censure what could not now be amended. The wily Lady Calista, accustomed from her earliest childhood to fathom the intrigues of a court, and watch the indications of a sovereign's will, hastened back to the Queen with the speed of a lapwing, charged with the King's commands that she should expect a speedy visit from him; to which the bower-lady added a commentary founded on her own observation, tending ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... philosophy, promoted his popularity; and by comparison with the French critics on the dramatic or scenical proprieties he is ever profound. His plummet, if not suited to the soundless depths of Shakspeare, was able ten times over to fathom the little rivulets of Parisian philosophy. This he did effectually, and thus unconsciously levelled the paths for Shakspeare, and for that supreme dominion which he has since held over the German stage, by crushing with his sarcastic shrewdness the pretensions ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... learned that the "Audacious" was too far off the Irish coast to permit of talk of shallow water, and that neither guns nor 30,000-ton warships are raised from fifty-fathom depths. ...
— The Audacious War • Clarence W. Barron
... was a coil of small rope. He cut it into two-fathom lengths, giving one to Raoul and, retaining one for himself, distributed the remainder among the women with the advice to pick ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... reason that Mr. Fenelby could not fathom Kitty laughed merrily at this, and then they all went in to dinner. It was a very good dinner, of the kind that Bridget could prepare when she was in the humor, and they sat rather longer over it than usual, and then Mr. Fenelby proposed that he should ...
— The Cheerful Smugglers • Ellis Parker Butler
... which they are continually surrounded in the paths of life; while those who hesitate on the brink of iniquity may he terrified from plunging into that irremediable gulph, by surveying the deplorable fate of Ferdinand Count Fathom.[181] ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... curtain of mist that brooded low over the scene, under the sombre clouds of uncertainty that hung drizzling and oppressive above the whole land, was enacted a drama whose grandeur has not been surpassed in history. The deep significance of that event it is not easy for the mind to fathom. As the accumulating majorities for the Union came rolling in, like billows succeeding billows, heaping up the waters of victory, it was not alone the ship of state that was lifted bodily over the bar, but all her costly freight of human liberties and human hopes was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... From an upper window I just observed Sam cross the road and come sneaking into his own house with blue spectacles on! Why? There's a mystery in the air that I mean to fathom—for the wife who would allow her husband to have a secret all to himself does not deserve to have a mother to instruct her in the wicked ways of the male sex in general, and married men in particular! ...
— Three Hats - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Alfred Debrun
... the 4to Mrs. Cowley appends the following note: 'This is the expression, I am told, which had nearly prov'd fatal to the Comedy. I should not have printed it, but from the resolution I have religiously kept, of restoring every thing that was objected to.' Imagination and ingenuity fail to fathom the cryptic indecency. The School for Greybeards is, in fine, a modest and mediocre ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... exhausted. At every step of study its immensity is discovered. Even when the general arena of success in life has been closed out of consideration, as in these pages, Success- Magnetism defies any single mind to fathom it or to ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... inmost, Hewson felt justly punished by the laughter. He had been unworthy of his apparition in lightly exposing it to such a chance; he had fallen below the dignity of his experience. He might never hope to fathom its meaning while he lived; but he grieved for the wrong he had done it, as if at the instant of the apparition he had offered that majestic, silent figure some grotesque indignity: thrown a pillow at it, or hailed it in tones of ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... down through the clearest, calmest water without a struggle; the story of the punt which got its painter under its keel and drowned three men; the story of the full-rigged ship which got driven across the seven-fathom part of the Dogger—the part that looks like a man's leg in the chart—and which was turned upside-down through the bank breaking. The skipper and the mate got outside and clung to her bottom, and a steam-cutter tried to get them off, but smashed ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... down through the silent streets walked the minister and for days and weeks his soul was troubled. He could not understand the temptation that had come to him nor could he fathom the reason for its coming. In a way he began to blame God, saying to himself that he had tried to keep his feet in the true path and had not run about seeking sin. "Through my days as a young man and all ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... opinions in a series of Italian dialogues and Latin poems will not discourage those of his admirers who estimate the conspicuous failure made by all elaborate system-builders from Aristotle to Hegel. To fathom the mystery of the world, and to express that mystery in terms of logic, is clearly beyond the faculty of man. Philosophies that aim at universe-embracing, God-explaining, nature-elucidating, man-illuminating, comprehensiveness, have justly, therefore, become objects of suspicion. The ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... ran toward Sir Mordred, crying, Traitor, now is thy death day come. And when Sir Mordred heard Sir Arthur, he ran until him with his sword drawn in his hand. And then king Arthur smote Sir Mordred under the shield, with a foin of his spear throughout the body more than a fathom. And when Sir Mordred felt that he had his death's wound, he thrust himself, with the might that he had, up to the bur of king Arthur's spear. And right so he smote Arthur with his sword holden in both his hands, on the side of the head, ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... one of annoyance, but this was quickly replaced by a desire to fathom the motives ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... all which is, that Josephine Harris had determined to fathom the whole of the mystery lying between Richard Crawford and his cousin, no matter what deceptions she might be called upon to pursue in carrying out her plan, or what amount of time and trouble might be necessary ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... eyes had a worried, puzzled expression, and his voice bespoke puzzled wrath. It was evident his slow moving peasant's mind was grappling with the bloody fact of a hell-ship. It was something new in his experience. He was trying to fathom it. Why were he and his mates thumped, when they willingly did their work? What for? "Nils iss goot boy," he said to us. "So hard he vork, ja." Then he bent over the bunk and resumed the application of his old folk remedy, the placing of wetted ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the doll sat staring at them with eyes of blank blue and her vacuous smile. A vague sense of injury was over Ellen, in spite of her delight and her gratitude—a sense of injury which she could not fathom, and for which she chided herself. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... his horse, he picked it up, wondering, and with some difficulty made out the writing on it. Where had it come from; to whom did it belong; who was Dolores—it was too much for his slow mind to fathom. But of one thing he was certain—it must be taken to the Father; he would know if it was of moment. And then it was he thought of his son and his absence. Hardly in his own mind did he connect it with the bit of paper; and yet the suspicion, ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... persons of late than perhaps at any former time. It would be impertinent to particularise largely; but if the famous adaptation and amplification of the old Pyrrhus story in the counsel of Spadassin and Merdaille to Picrochole were printed in small type as the centre of a fathom-square sheet, the whole margin could be more than filled with extracts, from German books and newspapers, of advice to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Nor is there anything, in literature touching history, where irony has bitten more deeply and lastingly into Life and Time than the brief record of Picrochole's ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... trip to the North, Mr. Boyer held a consultation with the Vice-President and General Superintendent of the company. He freely admitted his inability to fathom the mystery surrounding the loss of the money, and thought the officers of the company did Maroney a great injustice in supposing him guilty of the theft. He said he knew of only one man who could bring out the robbery, and he was living ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... time they sat in silence. His own whirling thoughts were of a sort that he could not fathom; they possessed him completely, they destroyed, seemingly, all power of analysis, they made him dumb; and they were tangled inextricably in the blended impressions ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... vain attempt of so many eminent sort, and illustrious Antecessors, to explain in self- consistency the differing functions of the Roman Csar, and in what sense he was legibus solutus. The origin of this difficulty we shall soon understand.] wit could as little fathom as the fleets of Csar could traverse the Polar basin, or unlock the gates of the Pacific, are best symbolized, and find their most appropriate exponent, in the illimitable city itself—that Rome, whose centre, the Capitol, was immovable ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... does it mean?" Symphony of fine musician, or sunset, or sea-waves rolling up the beach—what do they mean? Undoubtedly in the most subtle-elusive sense they mean something—as love does, and religion does, and the best poem;—but who shall fathom and define those meanings? (I do not intend this as a warrant for wildness and frantic escapades—but to justify the soul's frequent joy in what cannot be defined to the intellectual part, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... she saw us—or rather him, for she hardly seemed to notice my presence. I learned afterward that this aunt had been greatly instrumental in bringing these incongruous natures together; that for reasons of her own, which I have never attempted to fathom, she thought Edwin Urquhart the best husband that her niece could have, and not only introduced him into the house, but stood so much his friend during the first days of his courtship that she gradually imparted to her niece her own enthusiasm, till the poor girl saw—or thought she saw—the ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... might. Being tolerably quick in observing, and putting things together, and unwilling to trust to intuitive judgments of what was safe or unsafe in the moral atmosphere, she set to work with all her wits, and not without some measure of success, to fathom the secrets of the tantalizing freemasonry which piqued her curiosity. By listening to all that was said, laughing when others laughed, keeping silent when she was puzzled, comparing results and drawing deductions, ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... the two, he joins issue with a third who thinks to find him overjoyed and to gladden him with news of his own discomfiture. He came spurring against him; but before he has the chance to say a word, Cliges has thrust his lance a fathom deep into his body. To the fourth he gives such a blow on the neck, that he leaves him in a swoon on the field. After the fourth, he gallops against the fifth, and then after the fifth, against the sixth. Of these, none stood his ground against him; rather does Cliges ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... with the mouth, but mentally; at other times he would utter piteous sighs to Him; at other times he would weep copiously, or smile silently. He often seemed to himself to be flying in the air, and swimming between time and eternity in the depth of the Divine wonders, which no man can fathom. And his heart became so full from this, that he would sometimes lay his hand upon it as it beat heavily, saying, "Alas, my heart, what labours will befall thee to-day?" One day it seemed to him that the heart of his heavenly Father was, in a spiritual and indescribable ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... that composition," observed Shirley, as Moore concluded. "Your censor-pencil scored it with condemnatory lines, whose signification I strove vainly to fathom." ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... a story that was "broad." While the others laughed, Susan gazed at him with a puzzled expression. She wished to be polite, to please, to enjoy. But what that story meant she could not fathom. Miss Anstruther jeered at her. "Look at the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... your letter, to hear you have not been well, and that you partly attribute it to want of exercise. I wish you were here amongst the green plains; we would take walks which would rival the Dolgelly ones, and you should tell stories, which I would believe, even to a CUBIC FATHOM OF PUDDING. Instead I must take my solitary ramble, think of Cambridge days, and pick up snakes, beetles and toads. Excuse this short letter (you know I never studied 'The Complete Letter-writer'), and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... Eliot lost the companion of her literary life. And yet two years afterward—at the age of fifty-nine—she surprised her friends by marrying John Walter Cross, a man much younger than herself. No one can fathom that mystery. But Mrs. Cross did not long enjoy the felicities of married life. In six months from her marriage, after a pleasant trip to the Continent, she took cold in attending a Sunday concert in London; and on the 22d of December, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... would sail upon the tropic seas, Where fathom long the blood-red dulses grow, Droop from the rock and waver in the breeze, Lashing the tide to foam; while calm below The muddy mandrakes throng those waters warm, And purple, gold, and ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... everything but what fear constrain them to keep; crafty, timorous, quick of apprehension, ingenious enough in their own works, as may testify their weirs in which they take their fish, which are certain enclosures made of reeds and framed in the fashion of a labyrinth or maze set a fathom deep in the water with divers chambers or beds out of which the entangled fish cannot return or get out, being once in. Well may a great one by chance break the reeds and so escape, otherwise he remains a prey to the fishermen the next low water which they fish with a net ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton
... his life, and be content with such miserable famine, nasty usage, in a stinking ship; if there were not a pleasure and hope to get money, which doth season the rest, and mitigate his indefatigable pains? What makes them go into the bowels of the earth, an hundred fathom deep, endangering their dearest lives, enduring damps and filthy smells, when they have enough already, if they could be content, and no such cause to labour, but an extraordinary delight they take in riches. This may ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... found it (certain travellers having declared they had seen it in the distance) they would not have been allowed to approach it. This fact was the one point that chiefly dwelt in her mind—a secret of science which she puzzled her brain to fathom. What could be the unseen force that guarded the city?—girding it round with an unbreakable band from all exterior attack? A million bombs could not penetrate it,—so had said the Voice travelling to her ears on the mysterious Sound Ray. She ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... with an entire change of tone that startled me into renewed interest, "I haven't any doubt that you have always regarded me as a queer sort of chap, more or less shrouded by a mystery you could not fathom. ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... Muscovites, each of them weighing 18,000 lbs. weight, and carrying a bullet of 96 lbs. weight, as much more as the greatest whole cannon carries. There was also a basilisk of nineteen feet in length, very extraordinary, and a great mortar-piece of brass of a fathom and three fingers in diameter at the mouth of it; with many other pieces of brass ordnance taken from the Poles in their wars with them, which were now but of little use; nor were those huge pieces capable to be drawn into the field for any ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... State; there was no further taxation. A "mile," being about one-third of an English mile, and, therefore, in square measure one-ninth of an English square mile, consisted of 300 fathoms (taking the fathom roughly), and its superficies contained 900 "acres" of which 80 were public under the above arrangement, 820 remaining for the eight families owning this "well-field"—so called because the ideograph for a "well" represents nine squares: a four-sided square in the centre, ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... daggers and fingers to tear them out here and there, the rocks being most hard of that mineral spar aforesaid, which is like a flint, and is altogether as hard or harder, and besides the veins lie a fathom or two deep in the rocks. But we wanted all things requisite save only our desires and good will to have performed more if it had pleased God. To be short, when both our companies returned, each of them brought also several sorts of stones that appeared very fair, but were such as they found ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... would doubtless come out in time, but Triffitt had a strong desire to be beforehand with them. In spite of the douche of cold water which the news editor had just administered, Triffitt knew his Argus. If he could fathom the Herapath Mystery in such a fashion as to make a real great, smashing, all-absorbing feature of a sensational discovery, the Argus would throw police precaution and official entreaties to the first wind that ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... We fathom not the mighty plan, The mystery of God and man; We women, when afflictions come, We only ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... What I have heard, Is plain, thou sayst: but wherefore God this way For our redemption chose, eludes my search. "Brother! no eye of man not perfected, Nor fully ripen'd in the flame of love, May fathom this decree. It is a mark, In sooth, much aim'd at, and but little kenn'd: And I will therefore show thee why such way Was worthiest. The celestial love, that spume All envying in its bounty, in itself With such effulgence blazeth, as sends forth ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... I trust so; I should not be what I am, Still less what I will be, if hate did not Pursue me as my shadow. Ah! fair wife, Thou knowest not Burgos. Thou hast yet to fathom The depths of thy ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... market. Neither has any attention been paid to the original cost of European articles, in fixing the tariff by which they are sold to the Indians. A coarse butcher's knife is one skin, a woollen blanket or a fathom of coarse cloth, eight, and a fowling-piece fifteen. The Indians receive their principal outfit of clothing and ammunition on credit in the autumn, to be repaid by their winter hunts; the amount intrusted to each of the hunters, varying with their reputations for industry ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... water it is completely covered to a depth of four or six feet, but at low water it is almost bare. This vast reef prevents the sea from breaking against the island. Outside the reef there is no anchorage ground, as no cable could fathom the depth. Inside, the water is smooth and beautifully clear, but no ship of any size can pass through the reef. There are several passages for canoes and boats, and one for a vessel of forty-five tons. This is, however, a very great advantage to the inhabitants in a ...
— Ben Hadden - or, Do Right Whatever Comes Of It • W.H.G. Kingston
... In my opinion, she is the subject of an insane delusion. In your opinion, she is in possession of her senses, and has some mysterious motive which neither you nor I can fathom. Either way, there can be no harm in putting Mrs. Lecount's description to the test, not only as a matter of curiosity, but for our own private satisfaction on both sides. It is of course impossible to tell my niece that she is to be made the subject of such ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... Samos and Halicarnassus stood almost empty; legal slavery seemed here a haven of rest compared with the torments to which the free provincial succumbed, and even the patient Asiatic had become, according to the descriptions of Roman statesmen themselves, weary of life. Any one who desires to fathom the depths to which man can sink in the criminal infliction, and in the no less criminal endurance, of all conceivable injustice, may gather together from the criminal records of this period the wrongs which ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Sand-man growing any fainter in my imagination. His intercourse with my father began to occupy my fancy ever more and more; I was restrained from asking my father about him by an unconquerable shyness; but as the years went on the desire waxed stronger and stronger within me to fathom the mystery myself and to see the fabulous Sand-man. He had been the means of disclosing to me the path of the wonderful and the adventurous, which so easily find lodgment in the mind of the child. I liked nothing better ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... about to be adopted. Who could hereafter propose on any similar occasion that the Chamber should declare itself without discussion, when a desire was felt, previous to voting in favour of a resolution so honourable to the memory of a great man, to fathom, to measure, to examine minutely and from every point of view monuments such as the Mecanique Celeste and the Exposition du Systeme du Monde? It has appeared to me that the report drawn up in the name of a committee of one of the three great powers of the State might worthily ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... to Roderick's heart, but he had to master his own agony a moment, in the effort to support Pauline who had utterly broken down. When she had recovered sufficiently, he protested tenderly that there was a mystery in all this which he was unable to fathom, and entreated her to help him discover it by telling him minutely all that had happened since they had last met. She gradually summoned strength and composure enough to do so, relating in detail the scene in Cathedral square; the arrival of the Lieutenant-Governor's aide-de-camp; ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... The people were brought into the Hall, and enjoyed their meal with great appetites, being also treated to a glass of wine and a fathom of tobacco and a ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... that he rode always with closed helm, he was for the first time anxious himself to hide his face from the sight of men. Not from fear, for he knew not fear, but from some inward impulse which he did not attempt to fathom. ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... turn over the leaves of the book of the past, and study its economic aspect, as we have studied its political and literary aspect. We must follow living nations through their divers periods of development, and fathom the causes of the destruction of those that are dead. When we are dealing with the comparative study of the economic destinies of nations, our investigations are limited to a small number of individual nations—a further reason not to omit any, and above all, to scrutinize, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... fascinating ideal life she had seen a lover with whom she could walk down through the years, whose life would touch hers at all points, who could fathom the depths of the nature that so puzzled herself, who could measure and supply the yearning reaches of intellect; who could awake in her soul a love, strong, deep, and unquestioning, so fervent, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... warned, 'Thus far, and no farther!' To oppose this force or make any personal effort to rebel against it, is no part of my faith,—therefore at such moments I had always yielded instantly and obediently as I yielded now. I was not allowed to fathom the occult source of my happiness, but the happiness remained,—and when I retired to rest it was with more than ordinary gratitude that I said my usual brief prayer:—For the day that is past, I thank Thee, O God my Father! For the night that has come, I thank Thee! As ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... on this for a time, and then he said, "I cannot fathom your meaning, sir. Buying and selling, gold and money, all these have no meaning to me. Surely the twin blessings of an appetite and food abundant ready and free before you ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... but they were as shifty as the maiden's were steady, and whilst the blue of hers deepened with anger, his assumed a greenish tint that was both uncomely and cruel. For a moment he stared into the azure deeps before him, trying to fathom ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... double-lock the doors, and begin to study timetables with a view to quitting Paris on the first train leaving for anywhere, the only drawback to a speedy consummation of this happy prospect being that no living creature can fathom the meaning of ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... FULL fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong. Hark! now I hear them— ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... desire to fathom a most interesting secret, indispensable to us all. The beloved maiden attracts us, as a ray of light attracts the wanderer in the dark. Yet we know that every creature of her kind can shed this radiance about her, and that it is simply our own accidental receptivity that, among so many thousands, ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... speculation," said the cardinal; "but none can fathom the mysteries of Divine interposition. This coming council may save society, and on that I would speak to you most earnestly. His holiness has resolved to invite the schismatic priesthoods to attend it, and labor to bring about the unity of Christendom. ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... fathom all this, but the more he thought of what Frye had said the more certain he became that kindly regard for his own welfare did not enter into that shrewd schemer's calculations. He was more and more disgusted, also, each day, with his employer's cynical indifference to all ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... say of him what one of the Peripatetic philosophers of old said long ago, that in men, as in the mixing of colours, the most opposite qualities combine. I will therefore only describe his disposition as far as I have been able to fathom it. ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... peacemaker, which delicate task she fulfilled by making in an impassioned manner small statements which seldom contained a new or healing view of existing difficulties. She often spoke of herself as a "buffer" between contending forces. Sir John Blore had been known to remark that he could not fathom what Aggie meant by that expression, as it certainly was not appropriate to the domestic circle at The Towers, consisting, as it did, of one rheumatic Anglo-Indian worm, and one ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... fathom the full extent of his speculations; but there were five separate businesses which he avowed and carried like a banner. The Thirteen Star Golden State Brandy, Warranted Entire (a very flagrant distillation) filled a great part of his thoughts, and was kept before the public in an eloquent ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... transfixed the Briton as he endeavoured to rally his flying people—he died grimly on the weapon which had passed more than a fathom through his body, and exerted his last strength in a furious but ineffectual blow with his mace." "Heaven is just," said Eveline; "may his sins be forgiven to the man of blood, since he hath fallen by a ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... an assumed name, but the priest of the district knows he can be no other than Grettir, and he asks Grettir what had become of the men who were lost. Grettir bids the priest come with him to the river. There was a waterfall, and a sheer cliff of fifty fathom down to the water, and under the force was seen the mouth of a cavern. They had a rope with them. The priest drives down a stake into a cleft of the rock and secured it with stones, and he sate by it. Grettir said, "I will search ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... Assuming that, in some sense which I am for the moment unable to fathom, you are in earnest, Mr Barnabas, may I ask what this has to do ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... mystery of God shall be finished, his judgments will be made manifest;" hitherto, "his way is in the sea, and his judgments are a great deep." We know that his way is perfect; but witness many things in the divine administration, which we do not understand. We have no line to fathom the depths of providence. ...
— Sermons on Various Important Subjects • Andrew Lee
... foil this deeper-laid, wider-spread, and more diabolical conspiracy than any that darkens the page of history. Other men—and women, too—were instrumental in dragging the dark iniquity to light; but they failed to fathom its full enormity, and to discover its point of outbreak. He did that; and he throttled the tiger when about to spring, and so deserves the lasting gratitude of his country. How he did it I propose to tell in this paper. It is a marvellous tale; it will read more like romance than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... maintained the justness of Shakspear's delineations of aerial beings, while others denied it. By no violent transition, Ariel and his songs were introduced, and a lady, celebrated for her musical skill, was solicited to accompany her pedal harp with the song of "Five fathom deep thy father lies"... She was known to have set, for her favourite instrument, all the songs ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... in my aim I strive To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach. I cease to wonder, and no more attempt Thine height t' explore, or fathom thy profound. But, O my soul, sink not into despair, Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand Would now embrace thee, hovers o'er thine head. Fain would the heav'n-born soul with her converse, Then seek, then court her for her promis'd bliss. Auspicious queen, thine heav'nly pinions spread, And ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... it once when the gipsy stole the pa'son's mare, thinking to please him, but pa'son were quite upset. Whatever Servant David were thinking about when he made a Psalm that nobody can sing without disgracing himself, I can't fathom! Now then, the Fourth Psalm, to Samuel Wakely's ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... glory. The likeness to God by nature is found in all men, but is imperfect. The likeness by grace is far more perfect, and is found in the just only; while it is seen in its full perfection in the blessed. We shall, therefore, endeavor to fathom the meaning of St. John, when he says, "We shall be like Him: because we shall see him as He is;" as well as the saying of St. Peter, who asserts that we shall be "made partakers of the divine nature." Let us begin ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... looked at the priest as if he would fathom the inmost nature of the man. Then he ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... four fathoms, sixteen cattees; white Parcallas twelve cattees; Salalos Ytam twelve and fourteen cattees; Turias and Tape Turias one and two cattees; Patola of two fathoms, fifty and sixty cattees; those of four fathoms and of one fathom at proportional prices; for twenty-eight pounds of rice, a dollar; Sago, which is a root of which the natives make their bread, is sold in bunches, and was worth a quarter of a dollar the bunch; velvets, sattins, taffetics, and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... seemed to anger Blake. He was still dimly conscious of the operation of forces which he could not fathom. There were things, vague and insubstantial, which he could not understand. But he nursed to his heavy-breathing bosom the consciousness that he himself was not without his own undivulged powers, his own private ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... day foretold of them who dwell in the dust of the vineyard. Bow and be silent, ye children of God and ye of far countries. Consider how many lie low in the old, immemorial vineyard. Deep—fathom deep—is the dust of the dead 'neath the ...
— Vergilius - A Tale of the Coming of Christ • Irving Bacheller
... own judgment, he rather reluctantly decided to call on a banker in an adjacent town, with whom he enjoyed a slight acquaintance. In thinking the matter over he was greatly perplexed to determine how to introduce the subject. Of course it would not answer to allow the cashier to fathom his secret purpose, and yet he was oppressed with a vague consciousness that only a translucent film hid his thought from the world. Once or twice, in driving over on the unfamiliar errand, weak and irresolute he half ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... face less homely? Above all, has she style? The answer is in a stout affirmative. Ask Kenneth. He knows. Many a time he has had to go behind a door to roar hilariously at the old lady. He has thought of her as a lark to tell his mates about by and by; but for some reason that he cannot fathom, he knows now that he ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... present because it was haunted by some particularly atrocious ghosts. I had heard of him in a place called Dongola, in the Island of Celebes, when the Rajah of that little-known seaport (you can get no anchorage there in less than fifteen fathom, which is extremely inconvenient) came on board in a friendly way, with only two attendants, and drank bottle after bottle of soda-water on the after-sky light with my good friend and commander, Captain C——. At least I heard his name ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... Mrs Jane. "When did you ever see a man that could fathom a woman? Good, simple soul that he was!—she made him think black was white with holding up a finger. She glistened bravely, and he thought she was gold. Well!—we shan't have much peace now,— take my word for it. Eh, ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... fathom what was going on in his mind. Was he preparing to burst into a tirade of ridicule, or was he really considering ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... other than honorable to himself and to them. He persistently praised John Brown for his bravery and his endurance; and he was just as firm in declaring him the victim of shrewd and designing men, whose schemes he would yet fathom. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... with surfaces. It can name the thickness of reality, but it cannot fathom it, and its insufficiency here is ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... lady Broughton said solemn things to her, and she never saw the point of them; but when mistress Amanda half closed her eyes and looked at her in snake-Geraldine fashion, she met her with a full, wide-orbed, questioning gaze, before which Amanda's eyes dropped, and she sank full fathom five towards the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... might be, a closer alliance with him, which she could not have because she had once rejected the chance of it. Martin did not know; he was aware that there was a great deal going on in the house that he did not fathom. Amy, his sister, knew. There was an alliance between his mother and his sister deep and strong, as he could see—he did not yet know that it was founded very largely on dislike and fear ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... are truths in Christianity which reason cannot fathom. Not because they are opposed to reason, but because they are beyond its reach. They are infinite, while man's reason is finite. But it is only by the light of reason that man can see any consistency ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... forgotten. I followed Catiline for his own sake; And I shall watch o'er him with zealous care. Here stands he all alone amidst these hosts Of paltry knaves and dissolute companions. They cannot comprehend him,—he in turn Is far too proud to wish to fathom them. ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... Southwest, a quarter to the North and South. And on the sayd Isle there is good pebble (M47) stone to drie fish vpon: But to the West thereof there is a very faire countrey: and there is a banke of sande, which runneth the length of a cable, hauing not past one fathom water vpon it. From the sayd Isle along the firme land the coast lyeth East and West, and you shall see as it were a great forrest running eastward: and the Easterne Cape is called Cape du Chapt, and is great and red toward ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt
... all agreed Sea-bathing is the thing they need, Let's drop these hinfants off the quarter!" (They did, in fourteen fathom water). ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... first time now that he saw her subdued, not troubling to exert it save mechanically. He was sorry for that lassitude of hers, and after supper, walking under the elms down the lush valley, he tried to fathom it. ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... to—secrets of dark places down, fur down, where the sun doesn't shine; secrets of joy and happiness, and hope that had gone down, and wuz carried under the depths—under the depths that we hadn't no lines to fathom. ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley |
