"Ripple" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... played badly. He was not to be put out, however, but acted as if he thought I had played charmingly, and then he sat down and played the whole thing himself, oh, so exquisitely! It made me feel like a wood-chopper. The notes just seemed to ripple off his fingers' ends with scarce any perceptible motion. As he neared the close I noticed that funny little expression come over his face, which he always has when he means to surprise you, and he then suddenly took an ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... in the stream he heard the water fill A jar; he heard it ripple clear and shrill, And shot an arrow, thinking he had found A trumpeting elephant, toward ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... when the hawks pursue, A barge across Loch Katrine flew; High stood the henchman on the prow, 290 So rapidly the barge-men row, The bubbles, where they launched the boat, Were all unbroken and afloat, Dancing in foam and ripple still, When it had neared the mainland hill; 295 And from the silver beach's side Still was the prow three fathom wide, When lightly bounded to the land The ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... was at last laid in her own bed, listening again to the ripple of the waters beneath her, Miss Silence sitting on one side looking as sympathetic as her insufficient nature allowed her to look; the Irishwoman uncertain between delight at Myrtle's return and sorrow for her condition; and Miss Cynthia Badlam occupying ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... soon we came to a creek that ran through the woods and I could see it was deep and all shaded by the trees. Oh, jiminy, it was fine. And you could hear it ripple too, just like the water of Black Lake up near Temple Camp. If I was a grown-up author I could write some dandy stuff about it, because it was all dark and spooky as you might say, and you could see the trees reflected in it and casting their something or other—you ...
— Roy Blakeley • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... the yard was thronged with people. They listened with smiles or a faint ripple of merry ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... moves in a sort of endless ripple, now telling of water-weeds and bank-flowers and birds, now lingering pleasantly over some of the traditions and old-world lore of which the Thames ...
— M. P.'s in Session - From Mr. Punch's Parliamentary Portrait Gallery • Harry Furniss
... mean by the term," responded Katherine, with a ripple of mirthful laughter. "I assure you I love a good time as ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... promise me. Then I'll come to you and pour down your windsails, and dry your washed clothes as they hang on the rigging, and just ripple the waves as you glide along, and hang upon the lips of my dear love, and press him in my arms. Promise me, then, on no account ever to recollect or mention ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... for centuries kept, Shall it pass like the ripple, unhonour'd, unwept: Unknowing the lance, and the victim unknown, Far from Aberffraw's halls ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... blues, one full of sunlight and the other purple—set these fountains of perennial brightness like gems in lapis-lazuli. At a distance the same olives look hoary and soft—a veil of woven light or luminous haze. When the wind blows their branches all one way, they ripple like a sea of silver. But underneath their covert, in the shade, grey periwinkles wind among the snowy drift of allium. The narcissus sends its arrowy fragrance through the air, while, far and wide, red anemones burn like ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... has the joyous art of sending a ripple of mirth across the faces of the Anglo-Saxon world recognizes this fact in a cheerful poem, called "The Morning Visit," and to which I gladly refer any of my readers who would like to know from the lips ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... surrounding objects, as the streams wind through the forests and fields on their banks. Though meandering through mountains, these rivers have few sharp falls or roaring rapids. Their current is usually gentle, broken here and there into a ripple over a slightly descending shallow, but observing ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... diligently wagging their tails in expectation of a signal for the onset. The position of Willis could be ascertained now and then by an eye of fire, which opened and shut as he inhaled or exhaled the fumes of his Maryland. The ripple beat gently on the sea-line of the boat, which oscillated with the regularity ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... religion seemed to be a matter of concern. The audience wore a look of interest, and, even after their first gaze of admiration and whispered criticism at the splendors of their new church, when at length the clergyman entered to begin the service, a ripple of excitement swept across the field of bonnets until there was almost a murmur as of rustling cornfields within the many colored ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... the Riva, we involuntarily held our breath as we came in sight of the huge lake, for it is easy to forget that this is the Adria. The waters lay unruffled before us, not a ripple disturbed those glassy depths which reflected every tree and cottage on the opposite bank. Each star found its double twinkling in that placid mirror, and mountain frowned back on mountain. It ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... The wide ripple of excitement caused by General Abercromby's reported arrival had crowded the railway station. Hugh Johnstone chuckled, "Evidently Hawke knows nothing," as the two old friends drove away in splendid state. But Major Hawke, an hour later, at his Club, was suddenly ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... did as one who loved him, as the old man was stark enough to have waded the water waist-deep. She was no longer in her war-gear, but was clad after her wont of Shadowy Vale, in nought but a white woollen kirtle. So she stood in the stream beside the stones, and let the swift water ripple up over her ankles, while the elder leaned on her shoulder and looked down upon her kindly. The Sun-beam followed after them, stepping daintily from stone to stone, so that she was a fair sight to see; her face was smiling and happy, and ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... 1500 B.C.—Return to use of light ground. Brown lustrous paint, fine surface to clay. Decoration naturalistic, flowers, cuttle-fish, shells, spirals, ripple patterns, white and orange dots and bands occasionally super-imposed on dark glaze (Figs. 7, 10, ...
— How to Observe in Archaeology • Various
... across the grass, the field has a ripple like a pond, and when it sweeps across the corn the field waves to and fro like a high sea. That is called the wind's dance; but the wind does not dance only, he also tells stories; and how loudly he can sing out of his deep chest, and how different it sounds in the tree-tops in ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... without sorrow. There was the old boatman with his rough kindly courtesy, and his droll ways of speaking; there was the rocky beach where she and her brother had often played on the verge of the ocean, watching with mysterious awe or sportive delight the ripple of the advancing waves, the glorious sea itself, the walks, the woods, streams, and rocks, which she now believed, as mamma and Uncle Geoffrey had often told her, were more beautiful than anything she was likely to find in Sussex. Other scenes there were, connected with her grandmother, ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... an ocean on which each littlest sound was afloat, so that each was given its true value almost like a musical tone. An awful, beautiful silence this, brooding back of every sound; nothing in such a place gives forth mere senseless noise; the ripple of frogs in marsh and spring branch fall upon the sense as sweet as bird-songs. The clamour of little falls, the solemn suggestion of wind in the pines, the sweet broken jangle of cow-bells, a catbird in a tree—a continuous yet zigzag sort of warble, silver and sibilant notes alternating,—the ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... only moments passed in that silence—whose speech was the soft ripple of the sea on the sand? Neither could have answered the question. At ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... lips to cry, "Now, Dave, pull!" but he could not speak, only watch the thin, keen, yellow man, whose eye glittered beneath his rough hairy cap as he slowly tightened the line, drawing it up till it was above the surface of the water, which began to ripple and play about it in long waves running off in different directions. There was so great a length that it was impossible to draw it tight without moving the spreader poles; and as the lads both thought of what the consequences would be if the line broke, the movement ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... wind, and no sign of any. The sky was cloudless, and there was not a ripple on the lagoon, not a rustle in the forest that bordered it. I had brought up a blanket and an old coat from the cabin to serve me as bed-clothes; and stretching myself on the cushions, I soon went to sleep. I did not believe ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... recollections. She could hear again the ripple of the water, the flapping sail. She could see the glint of the moon upon the bay, and could feel the soft, gusty beating of the hot south wind. A subtle current of desire passed through her body, weakening her hold upon the brushes and making ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... little it resembled the room she had just left! How much better it would be for her if she could sleep here in the fresh air, sleeping in peace amongst the ferns, with no other noise but the rustling of the leaves and the ripple of the water. ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... was lying. Very little was said during most of the way, except some subdued exclamations of delight as they passed out from the deep shadow of the overhanging rocks into the broad river, which glittered in the moonlight like a sheet of dazzling silver, roughened by the slightest ripple, and past point after point of luxuriant foliage, looking dream-like and unreal in the light that ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... pour into her lap such treasures of art, and to endow her masters with power to create such an art! The approach is so beautiful. Our big black Russian ship cut her way in utter silence through the bluest of blue seas, with scarcely a ripple on the sunlit waters, between amethyst islands studded with emerald fields, making straight for that which was at one time the bravest, noblest, most courageous, most ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... an uncompromising barrier across the way, stretched the lake and river, black as ink now under leaden sky and shadowing hills. The lake, which was three-quarters of a mile wide, dipped not only with the course of the river but appeared to dip also from one side to the other. Not a ripple or touch of white could be seen anywhere. All seemed motionless as if an unseen hand had touched and stilled it. A death-like quiet reigned and as we glided smoothly down with the tide we could ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... of the soft pad of the feet on the highway? To Jujubes, who went in like a cushion no matter where you prodded him, how describe the feel of a taut muscle, the mounting swell of it, the resistance, and the small, almost impalpable ripple and throb under the skin? He couldn't have described ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... gathered to satisfy their curiosity as to what sort of a looking individual it is who has crossed America awheel, and furthermore proposes to accomplish the greater feat of the circumlocution of the globe. A small sea of hats is enthusiastically waved aloft; a ripple of applause escapes from five hundred English throats as I mount my glistening bicycle; and, with the assistance of a few policemen, the twenty-five Liverpool cyclers who have assembled to accompany me out, extricate themselves from the crowd, mount and fall into line two abreast; ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... they held a revel this Little Fairy would fly away from the dance and wander down by the river to watch the ripple of the water as it flowed over the ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... augmented. Despite a most extraordinary censorship of education and of the press, western liberalism crept slowly into the Empire and the spirit of disaffection laid hold of increasing numbers of people. The revolutions of 1820 passed without eliciting response; those of 1830 occasioned but a ripple. But during the decade 1830-1840, and especially after 1840, the growth of liberalism was rapid. In 1835 the aged Francis I. was succeeded by Ferdinand I., but as the new sovereign was mentally incapacitated the dominance ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... was then about twenty-five or six years old, rather above the medium height, with thick blue-black hair that he had an artist-trick of allowing to ripple down to his neck, dark hazel eyes that were almost too deeply recessed in their bony orbits, and a troublesome growth of beard that, close-shaven as he always was, showed in strong blue outline through the thin and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... sleeping lake, And bids it ripple pure and fresh; It moves the green boughs till they make Grand music in ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... wreck, out in that night, Unseen, has foundered thundering. We sit here Snug on the shore, and feel the wash of it, The widening circles running to our feet. Can such a soul go down to glut the sharks Without one ripple? Here comes one sprinkle of spray. Listen!" And through that night, quick and intense, And hushed for thunder, tingled once again, Like a thin wire, the crowder's ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... as the young man moved through the water, there were millions of tiny organisms that would betray his presence, as they had the shark's, at the first ripple. These minute infusorians would glow with the pale gleam of phosphorescence if the water were ruffled. Therefore, he had to swim carefully and slowly, when each second his nerves cried out for ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... in language almost as brilliant as the sky itself, the whole heaven, "from the zenith to the horizon, becomes one molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every block bar turns into massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there are no words in language, and no ideas in the mind—things which can only be conceived while they are visible; the intense hollow blue of the upper sky melting through ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock
... a few feet of the northern shore. The summit of this ridge was crowned by the royal citadel, a massive edifice of stone, the northern wall of which ran close along the shore, so that the soldier on patrol could hear the ripple of the water on the rocks below. From either side of the citadel the town walls ran south at a distance of perhaps a hundred feet from the shore, meeting at a point about the same distance from the southern channel. Within the triangle thus formed, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... body was tensed for the deadly spring that would bring him down upon my throat. I saw a ripple of galvanizing energy race through his hands; then I managed an outcry. At the same instant he was ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... still in the dream that was made of music and moonlight, the ripple of the sea and the stirring of something new in her nature of which all these sweet and beautiful things seemed part. "Love! I never thought this could happen ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... path, calling her name. No answer came to his cries. Above him lay the hillside, dozing in the noonday sun; below, the Mediterranean, sleek and blue, without a ripple. He stood alone in a ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... High Mass at the Catholic Church on Sunday, when the Rev. Father Wix, in apprising parishioners of the near approach of Lent, caused an irresistible smile to ripple over the faces of his hearers. Toujours perdrix may sate in the long-run, but perpetually to faire maigre is attended with ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... after the battle of Pydna, the Roman State enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple here and there upon the surface. Its dominion extended over three continents; all eyes rested on Italy; all talents and all riches flowed thither; it seemed as if a golden age of peaceful prosperity and intellectual enjoyment of life had begun. The Orientals of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... to rend the strings. He toyed with the difficulties; his scales, his arpeggios were as a flash, a ripple of notes tumbling over one another, each one a pearl. His lion's mane caressed the violin; his cheek pressed it like a living thing, closely, passionately, and it answered like ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... to the wide lawn and sauntered down to a summer-house on the edge of the cliff, overlooking the whole mighty expanse of sea. It lay dreaming in the sunlight, with hardly a ripple upon the long white beach below. And here they came upon Muriel and Olga, sitting side by side ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... to himself, however, by a sudden little ripple of quick feminine laughter. Aghast, he dropped the manuscript among the chessmen and stared in bewilderment round the room. It was as empty and as still as ever. Again he stretched his hand out to the romance, and again came ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she put Baby Newcomb back into his basket. As she did so, a ripple of shrill, jerky laughter crackled through the room. Lorry put her hands to her ears. "You know I can't say anything. You'd keep quiet. ...
— I'll Kill You Tomorrow • Helen Huber
... over and joined the group. The padre smiled. It was a situation such as he loved to study: a strong man and a strong woman, at war. But nothing happened; not a ripple anywhere to disclose the agitation beneath. The man laughed and the woman laughed, but they spoke not to each other, nor looked once into each ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... to our arms caused, as was to be expected, considerable excitement all along the border; indeed, throughout India the announcement produced a certain feeling of uneasiness—a mere surface ripple—but enough to make those who remembered the days of the Mutiny anxious for better news from ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... a line were making a long ripple on the swell. They were the heads of three sea elephants moving like one. Then the line became the segment of a circle bending in shore. But the swimmers were not going to land; they kept parallel to the rocks and a few hundred yards out, and as they passed she could see clearly ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... moulded muscles there, Lowering the sail, is nearer it than I. I can write love-odes: thy fair slave's an ode. I get to sing of love, when grown too gray For being beloved: she turns to that young man, The muscles all a-ripple on his back. I know the joy of kingship: well, thou ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... weigh about 4.30 on Saturday afternoon, July 31st, being tugged out of the harbour at Granton. The Firth of Forth was then as calm as a lake, scarce a ripple to be seen on its surface. A previous thunderstorm had freshened the air, the rain which had fallen had ceased, and those lovely mists and tints usually to be seen after a storm, had taken the place of the dark clouds now rolling away ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... whose sunshine might have found its way even into his black heart. Oh! how soft, and mellow, and pure, the hurricane of the last night had left it! Not a cloud in the sky, not a breath to ripple the water, or to wave the long trailing locks of the hoary willows, which nodded ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... known to God alone, think not of the rushing torrents of this world! Envy not even the crystal stream which winds among the meadows. The ripple of its waters is sweet indeed, but it can be heard by creatures. Besides, the Field-flower could never contain it in its cup. One must be so little to draw near to Jesus, and few are the souls that aspire to be little and unknown. "Are not the river and the brook," they urge, "of more use than ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... was never a laugh so sweet With the ripple of fairy bells, And never a fairy foot so fleet Dancing ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... river to a flood, and it ran with barely a ripple where ordinarily the bushes were clear of the water. Full a hundred and fifty yards it spanned, and as they looked, they saw it carry past a dead ox and the rags of ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... o' the brown old earth, This autumn morning! How he sets his bones To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet For the ripple to run over in its mirth; Listening the while, where on the heap of stones The white breast of the ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... shadow of their leaves. And the river wanders and thither hither among the islets, and is smothered and broken up by the reeds, like an old building in the lithe, hardy arms of the climbing ivy. You may watch the box where the good man of the inn keeps fish alive for his kitchen, one oily ripple following another over the top of the yellow deal. And you can hear a splashing and a prattle of voices from the shed under the old kirk, where the village women wash and wash all day among the fish and water-lilies. It seems as if linen washed there should ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Commodore came to the wind as sharp and suddenly as if he had anchored; but on a second look, I saw his sheets were let fly, haulyards let go, and apparently all was confusion on board of her. I ran to the side and looked over. The long hearing dark blue swell had changed into a light green hissing ripple. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... again absorbed herself in her correspondence, and it is doubtful if she heard these last words. "Say, Sadie," she cried presently, a ripple of joyous excitement in her voice, "listen here to what Willie Barker says, 'If you don't come back soon, I'm a-going to lay right down an' die, or maybe ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... me, and I stood and smoked upon it, listening to the ripple of the half-golden, half-shadowy water, watching the revolutions of the green old wheel. I had laid out my plan of action. On my return to the inn I would insist on an interview with Miss Falconer, and would tell her that either she must return with me to Paris or ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... breathed a wind on me, Nor sound nor motion made: Its path was not upon the sea, In ripple or in shade. 455 ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... this world shall have five thousand million years been swept out the heavens, an extinct planet, and time itself will be so long past that on the ocean of eternity it will seem only as now seems a ripple ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... a citizen of the far North, whence he follows the mountains down to Carolina, and he is chiefly seen when he visits the Eastern States in the winter—hence his name. But few who see him then have heard his ripple-song—one of the sweetest bits of ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... A ripple of low, mild laughter, which only Kipping could have uttered, drifted forward, and the men exchanged glances and looked furtively ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... assuming the fineness of his own ear to be common to all mankind—"no one can fail to observe the sweetness and the strength, the outspokenness, the downrightness, and, at the same time, the nervous delicacy of pausation, the rhythm all ripple and suspended fall, the dainty but, the daintier and forsooth, as though the pouting of a proud reserve curved the fine lip of him, and had to be atoned for by the homeliness of ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... their hearts, than they fired upon them. Neal and Triplett were killed, and fell into the river.—Rowell was missed and escaped by swimming the Kenhawa, the Indians shooting at him as he swam. In a few days after the dead were found in a ripple and buried. The Indians had not been able to draw them from their watery grave, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... deeply, darkness and depth broken only by the glancing fins of little fishes, that slanted downward, catching a gleam as they went. No other light pierced the sullen, apprehensive flood that rolled past in tranquil gloom, leaden from the skies above, and without ripple or fall to break its glassy quiet. Beside the wall grew a witch-hazel; in my vague grasp at outside objects I saw it, full of wrinkled and weird bloom, as if the golden fleece had strayed thereby, and caught upon the ungainly twigs of the scragged bush, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... rich, rich verdure of England; and villages full of picturesque old houses, thatched, and ivied, or perhaps overrun with roses,—and a stately mansion in the Elizabethan style; and a quiet stream, gliding onward without a ripple from its own motion, but rippled by a large fish darting across it; and over all this scene a gentle, friendly sunshine, not ardent enough to crisp a single leaf or blade of grass. Nor must the village church be forgotten, with its square, battlemented tower, ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... company mentioned that incident, and he did not doubt that the story had extended itself as ripples do, when one throws a stone into the water; but where in the whole town, or indeed the land, had the ripple hit the exact point? He looked again at the envelope. It bore the stamp of the Copenhagen city mail: that was all. But that showed with some probability that the writer lived in Copenhagen, and maybe at this moment ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... among the slowly moving people there, the Inspector make a way for himself and his companion through the excited, talkative, good-humored Cockney crowd. "There it is! Can't you see it? Up there just like a little yellow worm." "There's naught at all! You've got the cobble-wobbles!" and then a ripple ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... suffering; it rolled along without care or uneasiness; she was not afraid of losing it; each morning it shone upon her, with the same blue sky, the same smile, the same sweet words. That clear, still lake was unruffled by any breeze, even a zephyr; she would fain have seen a ripple on its glassy surface. Her desire had something so infantine about it that it ought to be excused; but society is not more indulgent than the God of Genesis. Madame de Vandenesse, having now become intelligently clever, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... their head, to choose a rock convenient for a table, under the shelter of the rocks on the sands across the bay. Thither, when Walter returned, we bore our Connie, carrying her litter close by the edge of the retreating tide, which sometimes broke in a ripple of music under her, wetting our feet with innocuous rush. The child's delight was extreme, as she thus skimmed the edge of the ocean, with the little ones gambolling about her, and her mamma and Wynnie walking quietly ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... overweening yokels and the inventive faculties of Tom Fool. All the evening, one standing in any open spot of the castle might have heard, now on the one, now on the other side, renewed bursts of merriment ripple the air; but as the still autumn night crept on, the intervals between grew longer and longer, until at length all sounds ceased, and silence took up her ancient reign, broken only by the occasional stamp of a horse or ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... "downs" of soft, billowy snow we floundered for twenty-four miles, on the two following days. Not a wind-ripple could be seen. We were evidently in a region of comparative calms, which was a remarkable thing, considering that the windiest spot in the world was less than two hundred ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... without, though my bosom still bounded with excitement. I could not forget that I was navigating the clumsy craft in which I had embarked my fortunes, and which held the being most dear to me on earth. I felt that a heavy responsibility rested upon me. Not a sound was to be heard except the gentle ripple of the waters against the sides of the raft; and the ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... head from the cover, and beheld what he justly considered a prodigy of rashness and skill. The river had worn away the edge of the soft rock in such a manner as to render its first pitch less abrupt and perpendicular than is usual at waterfalls. With no other guide than the ripple of the stream where it met the head of the island, a party of their insatiable foes had ventured into the current, and swam down upon this point, knowing the ready access it would give, if successful, ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... swelling the song of the multitude. All now stood with hands uplifted and eyes fixed in anxious expectancy on the curtain. The figures and emblems on the hanging were invisible in the gloom—but now-now there was a stir, as of life, in the ponderous folds,—they moved—they began to ripple like streams, brooks, water-falls, recovering motion after long stagnation—the curtain slowly sank, and at length it fell so suddenly that the eye could scarcely note the instant. From every lip, as but one voice, rose a cry of admiration, amazement, and delight, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... underclothing.... But when The Girl Gets Left began, and the whimsical face of Cream was seen peering through the window of the scene, the lassitude was lifted and the men's eyes began to brighten again. The first words, the first gesture of comic helplessness, from Cream sent a ripple of laughter round the theatre, and immediately the place was full of that queer, uncontrollable ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... drops forgivingly And sadly, breaking not the general hush: The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze 75 Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days, Ere the rain falls, the cautious ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... was quiet and practically deserted when they drove into it. The farmers were too busy with the harvest to "come to town for trading" except on Saturdays, and the arrival and departure of the two daily trains did not cause more than a ripple of ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... breakfast in such a way that she could not see him, and with a dry smile gone off by himself. Down by the stream it was dappled, both cool and warm, windless; the trees met over the river, and there were many stones, forming little basins which held up the ripple, so that the casting of a fly required much cunning. This long dingle ran for miles through the foot-growth of folding hills. It was beloved of jays; but of human beings there were none, except a chicken-farmer's widow, who lived ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... noticeable ripple when Eileen Lorimer walked into the ballroom that evening in the winsome attire of a Quaker maid, with Professor Hodgson, as Pierrot, on one side, and the tall, commanding figure of Peter the Brazen, in a spick-and-span white-and-gold ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... tender leaves, great spikes of scarlet flaunt About the pools—the errant wild bees' haunt— And thick with bramble-blooms pink petals starred, And dew-stained buds of blue, the velvet sward. Scarce ripple stirred the sea; and inland wend Far bays and sedgy ponds; and rolling rivers bend. A land of leaf and fruitage in the glow Of palest glamours steeped. And far and low Great purple isles; and further still a rim Of sunset-tinted hills, ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... from Bateese. Bateese, who cared nothing for sport, had paddled up-stream to inspect the next reach of the river, and there, at the first ford, had found the moose lying dead and warm, with the ripple running over his flank and his gigantic horns high out of the water like ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... about a mile apart, with no lights to indicate their presence, were drifting idly with the ebb tide. It was an oppressively hot night in mid-August. Scarcely a ripple disturbed the surface of the sea, but the intense darkness and the absence of stars told of the heavy clouds above. The barometer had been falling rapidly for some hours and all the conditions seemed to ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... old lady Chia chimed in, "in the water-pavilion of the Lotus Fragrance Arbour, for (the music) will borrow the ripple of the stream and sound ever so much more pleasant to the ear. We can by and bye drink our wine in the Cho Chin Hall; we'll thus have ample room, and be ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... fell like a pleasant ripple upon the ear of Jeanette Roland, as she approached the altar, beneath her wreath of orange blossoms, while her bridal veil floated like a cloud of lovely mist from her fair young head. The vows were spoken, the bridal ring placed upon her finger, and amid a train of congratulating friends, she returned ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... to be roaming, where the crested waves are foaming, And the shy mermaidens combing locks that ripple to their feet; When the Gloaming is, I never made the ghost of an endeavour To discover—but whatever were the hour, it would ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley
... bag of lunch, the children wandered here and there over the island. It was larger than they at first supposed, and Bunny was glad of this. It was very still and quiet there, the ripple of the water, the wind in the trees, and the birds making ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... sand-banks are formed, and it is not always easy to decide which is the right channel to steer for. The watermen, however, are very expert, and can usually determine their course by the nature of the ripple on the water, which varies according to its depth. Frequently, however, from accidents of light or other causes, it is not possible to gauge the river in this way, so every boat is provided with long sounding-poles called "midra," by means of which ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... in a heap of pulverized plaster. The car bucked as a blast sent a ripple down the street. A manhole cover popped up, clattered a few feet, dropped from sight. Brett swerved, gunned the car. It leaped over rubble, roared along the littered pavement. Brett looked in the rear-view mirror. A block behind them the street ended. ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... dawn ushered in the morning on which the great and all-absorbing event was to take place. A clear sky, a sea so calm that scarce a ripple was to be seen, every sail spread to its utmost capacity, and the mellow tints of the rising sun playing over and investing them with a majesty of outline at once grand and imposing. And yet the massive hull scarce moved, so gentle was the breeze ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... came through the passage a few moments later, there was a sound of laughter in the parlor. He recognized the full, round lazy chuckle of Aunt Chloe, but there was a higher girlish ripple that he did not know. He had never heard Sophy laugh before. Nor, when he entered, had he ever seen her so animated. She was helping Chloe set the table, to that lady's intense delight at "Missy's" girlish housewifery. She was picking the berries fresh from the garden, buttering the Sally Lunn, ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... his gaiters, And in he goes: Down where the mermaids Pluck and play On their twangling harps In a sea-green day; Down where the mermaids, Finned and fair, Sleek with their combs Their yellow hair.... Bates and Giles- On the shingle sat, Gazing at Turvey's Floating hat. But never a ripple Nor bubble told Where he was supping Off plates of gold. Never an echo Rilled through the sea Of the feasting and dancing And minstrelsy. They called-called-called: Came no reply: Nought but the ripples' ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... light is excellent; bright gleams from the windows fall on some distant white statues on the rosy torso of a woman which comes out living from the shadowy obscurity. Beyond, as far as the eye can see, marble gods and emperors extend away in files up to the windows through which flickers the light ripple of the Arno with the silvery swell on its ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... clear and so light was the summer air that the one cloud in the eastern quarter of the heaven was the smoke cloud left by a passing steamer three miles distant and more on the invisible sea. When the voices of the pleasure party were still, not a sound rose, far or near, but the faint ripple at the bows, as the men, with slow, deliberate strokes of their long poles, pressed the boat forward softly over the shallow water. The world and the world's turmoil seemed left behind forever on the land; the silence was ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... past the floating Custom House at Gravesend, and onwards, skirting the little creeks and mudbanks where the Thames widens to the sea—when every sound of the tide flapping heavily at irregular intervals against the shore, and every ripple, were fraught with the terror of pursuit—exemplifies in the most striking way the rapidity and instinctive ease of Dickens's observation. ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... dark rock which rose on Mannering's right hand. In his front was the quiet bay, whose little waves, crisping and sparkling to the moonbeams, rolled successively along its surface, and dashed with a soft and murmuring ripple against the silvery beach. To the left the woods advanced far into the ocean, waving in the moonlight along ground of an undulating and varied form, and presenting those varieties of light and shade, and that interesting combination of glade and thicket, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... came forward at my bidding and extending his hand for mine. He bowed slow and sedately, in that peculiar way the Martians have, a ripple of gratified civility passing up his flesh; lower and lower he bowed, until his face was over our clasped hands, and then, with simple courtesy, he kissed my finger-tips! This was somewhat embarrassing. It was not like the procedure followed in Courts nearer to Washington than ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... was becalmed. Anne, Amanda and Amos looked over the smooth stretch of water, but there was not a ripple to be seen. Since sunrise, the boat had not moved. They had made the start at midnight, as they had planned, and had sailed away under a fair wind; but before the sun rose the wind had died away, ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis
... old-fashioned pulpit, half-fearfully sitting down upon the minister's chair, or standing on tip-toe to peep over the sacred desk at the busy group below. Young girls moved silently about "helping." Over their pale lips not a ripple of laughter broke. The fire of youth seemed to have died out of their sad eyes, quenched for a time by ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... congealed, though but for an instant or two. Then he threw off hat and coat, and stood alert and resolute to dive to Julius's rescue when he rose, while those who manned the yacht prepared to cast a buoy and line. Not a ripple or flash of water passed unheeded; the flood of sunshine rose fuller and fuller over the world; moments grew to minutes, and minutes swelled to hopeless hours under the doctor's weary eyes, till it seemed to them as if the universe were only a swirling, ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... a shout of warning, and with the shout Barry sprang below to his cabin. He returned on the run with a big-game rifle in time to hear a ripple of relief run from end to end of the ship; and his eyes opened wide with astonishment when he ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... paddle, and allowed the canoe to drift. The ripple of the water against the prow sounded clear and thin in the stillness. The world seemed asleep. The sun blazed down, turning the water to flame. The air was hot, with the damp electrical heat that heralds a thunderstorm. Molly's face looked small and cool in the shade of her ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... The sumptuous ripple and gleam of the young man's faultless coat, registered upon Banneker's subconscious memory as it had fallen at his feet, recalled ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the ripple Of the stream; I crept Where the waters wept - The floss in the foss Gurgling across The bosses of moss, Like a dryad's nipple ...
— Household Gods • Aleister Crowley
... evening, a long ripple is seen in the still water, where a musk-rat is crossing the stream, with only its nose above the surface, and sometimes a green bough in its mouth to build its house with. When it finds itself observed, it will dive and swim five or six ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... waiteen to show you to your bed,' the fellow said in a voice as soft as the ripple ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... stand a ripple of laughter which grew into a loud cheer traveled, as a bent and decrepit figure attired in a long black frock coat and high silk hat, the latter banded with crimson ribbon, came into sight down the field. It was the old fruit seller ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... of my story, forgotten under the dry sky, this ever- restless, ever-swelling tide of life swirled and eddied-swirled and eddied, but touched it not. On the west it swept even to the foot of the grim mountain wall. On the east one far-flung ripple reached even to the river—when Rubio City was born. But the Desert waited, silent and hot and fierce in its desolation, holding its treasures under the seal of death against the coming of the strong ones; waited until the man-making forces that wrought through ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... boys, who stood on the bow of the steamer, whirling their long canes and singing the depth monotonously, would shout a warning cry, but long before their lips had framed a caution, Yoka would have pulled the telegraph over to "stop." His eyes would have detected the tiny ripple on the waters ahead ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... silence—the sign of a perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of body, mind, and spirit. The man who preserves his selfhood ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence—not a leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; not a ripple upon the surface of shining pool—his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... is by my watch exactly three minutes too late for him to make that objection. The court cannot receive it now; for the line just this moment cited, the ink being hardly yet dry, is of the same identical structure. The usual iambic flow is disturbed in both lines by the very same ripple, viz., a trochee in the second foot, placid in the one line, bosom in the other. They are a sort of snags, such as lie in the current of the Mississippi. There, they do nothing but mischief. Here, when the lines are read in their entire ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... meet. Jim would find her in Kells's hands. Then there would be hell, Joan thought. The possibility, the certainty, seemed to strike deep into her, reviving that dread and terror. Yet she thrilled again; a ripple that was not all cold coursed through her. Something had a birth in her then, and the part of it she understood was that she welcomed the adventure with a throbbing heart, yet looked with awe and shame and distrust at this new, strange side of ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... evolved from stringed instruments or singing voices. By climbing up on the sofa in my sitting-room I could look out through the port-hole on the near sea, rippling close to me, and bringing, as I fancied, with every ripple a new cadence, a tenderer snatch of tune. A subtle scent was on the salt air, as of roses mingling with the freshness of the scarcely moving waters,—it came, I thought, from the beautiful blossoms ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... much, and then without waiting for the joy in every breast to burst forth, he began to read. It was curious to watch his triumph with the house. His carefully studied effects would reach the first rows in the orchestra first, and ripple in laughter back to the standees against the wall, and then with a fine resurgence come again to the rear orchestra seats, and so rise from gallery to gallery till it fell back, a cataract of applause from the topmost rows of seats. He was such a practised speaker that he ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... centuries old, of the strange great house strange Fate had brought her to, but through the shrouds of a ship on the watch for what the light of sunrise might show at any moment. She could hear the rush and ripple of the cloven waters under the prow, just as a girl who leaned upon the gunwale, intent for the first sight of land, heard it in the dawn over fifty years ago. She could seem to look back at the girl—who was, if you please, herself—and ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... the gladsome farandole standing in a circle, each a link in an endless chain. It is but a mirage; those who look down know that they are dancing on a silken thread stretched over an abyss that swallows up all who fall and shows not even a ripple on its surface. What foot is sure? Nature herself seems to deny you her divine consolation; trees and flowers are yours no more; you have broken your mother's laws, you are no longer one of her foster children; the birds of the field become silent ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... A ripple of gentle laughter, like a lightly dancing wave on a deep calm sea, passed from the platform to the outer door; the lamplighters went back to their seats; and the pastor with a change of voice said solemnly: ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... AIGRE. Also, an eddying ripple on the surface of flooded waters. A tide swelling above another tide, as in ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... turmoil of a battle, was to be in a region haunted, in the borderland of morning dreams, where care is a vague and far-off memory, and the elements study our desires. The lake spread out before us without a ripple, its selvedge at the shore repeating the picture on the brae. I looked on it with a mind peculiarly calm, rejoicing in its aspect Oh, love and the coming years, thought I, let them be here or somewhere like it—not among the savage of the hills, fighting, plotting, contriving; not ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... now stood before him in a crimson glow; every window-pane seemed on fire, and the red roses lay like drops of blood upon the dark green climbers beneath. And nearer and nearer rolled on the black clouds, as if to shroud the bright pile from sight. Not a leaf stirred, not a ripple curled the water. The baron looked down into the water for some living thing, a spider, a dragon-fly, and started back from the pale face that met him, and which at first he did not recognize as his own. There was a sultry, boding, listless gloom ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... heart too full and made a few happy tears drop on the hands so worn with hard work, when they ached to be holding a pen and trying to record the fancies that sung in her brain as ceaselessly as the soft sough of the pines or the ripple of the brook murmured in her ear when she sat here alone. She could not express the vague longings that stirred in her soul; she could only feel and dimly strive to understand and utter them, with no thought of fame ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... a double canoe. But I dare not take you ashore here; there are too many rocks, and it is impossible to see the ripple on them in this mist. We should sink the canoe. No, you must get in and I must paddle you home to Bryngelly, that's all. Now that I know where I am I think that I can find ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... husband entered she looked up, and her lips curved and parted; her eyelids fluttered twice or thrice—a movement remindful (Poesy forgive us!) of the tail-wagging of a faithful dog—and a little ripple went through her like the commotion set up in a weeping willow by a puff of wind. Thus she ever acknowledged his coming, were it twenty times a day. If they who sometimes sat over their wine in Coralio, reshaping old, diverting stories of the madcap career of Isabel Guilbert, could have ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... effect, and so tickling—this grim old veteran revealing in himself the Eternal Child who hides behind us all—that the Frenchmen at their guns, hearing in the silence the sudden ripple of a boy's laughter, whispered among themselves that the ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... foremast fall over the side. Our crew, as you may suppose, raised a loud cheer at the sight, and redoubled their efforts to be ready, should a breeze spring up, for again getting within range of our opponent. Scarcely had the hands reached the deck, when we saw a ripple playing over the ocean; the sails were trimmed, and once more, with eager hearts, we steered towards the French ship. We did not suppose that she would hold out long, but after the pluck her captain had exhibited, we fully expected to be at it again. In a ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... specks moving slowly back and forth. They were oxen, and Dromas was ploughing with them. It was so still that the children could plainly hear the breathing of the sheep as they cropped the grass, and the ripple of the little stream which spread out into a shallow river and ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... arches, whence now and then you could hear the half-shriek, halflaugh of a frolicsome girl, whom the shadow had betrayed into a young man's arms. Elder groups were seated on the fragments of pillars and blocks of marble that lay round the verge of the arena, talking in the quick, short ripple of the Italian tongue. On the steps of the great black cross in the centre of the Coliseum sat a party singing scraps of songs, with much laughter and ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... pain, and the joy that had hallowed it as no other spot in all the universe—the place where their first love had nursed them in its tenderness, where they had sat hand in hand in the gathering dusk, drinking the ripple of the water and the whirr of the wild duck's wing; where she had gone down into the valley of the shadow and their little children had come into their arms. And it was gone. He had sold it. Without so much as by-your-leave from the partner ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... infrequent. You have slipped down into a merely animal stratum of existence; you live to-day because you lived yesterday, and you do not forecast to-morrow. Perhaps you learn to assuage and deceive the hunger of your immortal soul by forcing your attention upon the petty ripple of daily events and duties, until you present, to the outsider, the appearance of a commonplace, non-tragic person, bearing no noticeable scars of the crime which society perpetrated on you. You perhaps ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... itself is the font, which appears to belong to the tenth century; three typical Norman pillars support the northern arcade of the roof, and there is a very fine Norman door at the south porch. The Vicar loved to interpret the zigzag moulding as the "ripple of the lake of Gennesareth, the spirit breathing upon the waters of baptism"; he was doubtless more correct in reading a symbolic meaning into the carved vine that creeps from the chancel down the church. On the furze and bracken-clad slope above the cliffs, not far distant, is the hut that ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... was very early that year, and although it was not yet May, the green tassels were on the maples and the wild flowers made the ground gay in places. All around the clearing ran a ripple of bird song. The sunshine was 15 dreamy, the wind ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... death—the mere act of dying, even the thought of annihilation, would not have stirred a ripple of fear in his heart, because, physically, he was bold, reckless, and defiant of personal danger—but the eternal instincts of his soul, developed by the providence of God, at the eleventh hour, sought their true destiny; they shrunk, ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... river that wus sweepin' along under sun and moon, bearing on every wave and ripple the glory ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... their simple and harmless occupations—if occupations they might be called—the breathless foliage rich in the depth of summer; behind, the old-fashioned house, unpretending, not mean, its open doors and windows giving glimpses of the comfortable repose within; before, the lake, without a ripple and catching the gleam of the sunset clouds,—all made a picture of that complete tranquillity and stillness, which sometimes soothes and sometimes saddens us, according as we are in ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Horace, looking eastward, saw the spire of Bow Church, rosy once more, the Guildhall standing clear and intact, and the streets and house-tops gradually reappearing. Only the flags, with their unrestful shiver and ripple of colour, had disappeared, and, with them, the waiting crowds and the mounted constables. The ordinary traffic of vans, omnibuses, and cabs was proceeding as though it had never been interrupted—the clank and jingle of harness chains, the cries and whip-crackings ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... modest wages of respectful consideration in payment for her valuable services. A splendid torrent of genius ought never to be checked, but it should be wisely guided into the deep channel of the stream, from whose surface it will then reflect Nature without a ripple. Genius dyes the hues that resemble those of the rainbow; Art fixes the colours that they may stand. In the race for fame purely artificial actors cannot hope to win against those whose genius is guided by their art; and, on the other hand, Intuition must not complain if, unbridled or with ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... territory, from out another vent, springs the Flora River, whose waters ripple over limestone bars in miniature cascades, from pool to pool, like pigmy reproductions of the lost terraces of New Zealand. Follow the edge of the great tableland around, and amongst the deep seams and fissures of its abrupt descent coastward, we suddenly come, midst ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... calculated to inspire confidence in the breasts of those to whom it was addressed. There was more of enjoyment in it than respect. Yet boys will be boys, and who can gauge the depths of a nature below the smiles that ripple on the surface? ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... ripple the gentle flow—which it were more descriptive perhaps to call stagnation—of life in that model village. From week-end to week-end scarcely a boat puts forth from the shelter of its weed-coated pier; for though Kirris-vean wears the aspect of a place of fishery, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... miles to the westward of the small island, which was low and rocky, lying about two miles and a half off a sharp, sandy point, with which it was nearly connected by some lumps of rock that almost closed up the passage. A long curved line of ripple ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... after her eldest brother by the alternate names of Festus and Frank, and when she mentioned Lance's disaster as his coup d'etat. And here was the last of these pleasant afternoons, full of still sweet sounds, midsummer hum above, the soft ripple of the water close by, the cawing of the rooks in the Close— all such peace, that her heart quailed as she looked forward to the din of the High Street at Bexley, and she strangled a sigh half way up ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I had seen him last, cat-smooth, gracefully alien, shrouded in a ripple of giddy crimsons. Behind him was a blackness. I waited till the painful blaze of lights abated, then, straining my eyes to see past him, ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... moonlight glided over each ripple, and reed, and closing water-lily; over her face, where the hood had fallen back from her loosened hair; over one hand trailing the water, and the other touching the flower at her breast; and, just above ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... curious to find such calm weather in Ross Sea; in the two months we have been here we have hardly had a strong breeze. Thus, when I was relieved at 2 a.m. on the 25th, I wrote in my diary '. . . It is calm, not a ripple on the water. The three men forming the watch walk up and down the deck. Now and then one hears the penguins' cry, kva, kva, but except these there is no other sound than the tuff, tuff of the motor, 220 times a minute. Ah, that motor! it goes unweariedly. It has now gone for 1,000 hours without ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... toiled on up the picturesque little glen for nearly a mile and a half. Its beauties were extraordinary, and the silence was unbroken save for the musical ripple of the water over the stones. Hidden there in the center of that great wood, no one had visited it perhaps for years, not even the keepers, for no path led there, and by reason of the tangle of briars and bush ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... that they were the most human eyes he had ever seen. Afterward, when he groped through his vocabulary for a more accurate description, he could not find one. There was shrewdness in Gideon Vetch's eyes; there was friendliness; there was the blue sparkle of contagious humour—a ripple of light that was like visible laughter—but above all there was humanity. Though Stephen did not try to grasp the vivid impressions that passed through his mind, he felt intuitively that he had learned to know Gideon Vetch through his look and manner ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... cocoa-palms. A long, deserted-looking jetty runs far out into the shallow sea, a few Chinese junks lie at anchor, in the distance a few Malay fishermen are watching their nets, but not a breath stirs, the sea is without a ripple, the gray clouds move not, the yellow plumes of the palms are motionless; the sea, the sky, the town, look all alike asleep in ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... they brought the harp to Sigurd, and he looked on the ancient man, As his hand sank into the strings, and a ripple over them ran, And he looked forth kind o'er the people, and all men on his glory gazed, And hearkened, hushed and happy, as the King his voice upraised; There he sang of the works of Odin, and the hails of the heavenly coast, And the sons of God uprising, and the Wolflings' gathering ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... the tones were pure And tender as a summer night, The full moon climbing to her height, The sob and ripple of the seas, The flapping of an idle sail; And then by sudden and sharp degrees The multiplied, wild harmonies Freshened and burst into a gale; A tempest howling through the dark, A crash as of some shipwrecked bark. A loud ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... The instant ripple of interest among the reporters caused Mildred to shrink back in sudden self-consciousness, her ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... July on the high Sierra, varying somewhat both in time and fullness with the weather and the depth of the snow. Toward the end of summer the streams are at their lowest ebb, few even of the strongest singing much above a whisper they slip and ripple through gravel and boulder-beds from pool to pool in the hollows of their channels, and drop in pattering showers like rain, and slip down precipices and fall in sheets of embroidery, fold over fold. But, however low their singing, it is ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... throng kept talking in very loud tones; and all these voices, echoing through the houses, made, so to speak, the continuous ripple of waves in a harbour. At intervals they ceased; and then could be heard voices ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... the edge of the ocean, but so far above the water that the flying spray never reached its lowest terrace; and only the strongest-winged seagulls could circle its towers and turrets. It was a strange, melancholy, beautiful place, where the light shimmered on the walls like the ripple of water, and in the shadows of the massive walls the flowers waved all day in the sea-wind like little princesses who would ...
— The Faery Tales of Weir • Anna McClure Sholl
... which were impudently offered to them as a substitute for melody. While these docile victims of the worst of all quackeries (musical quackery) were still toiling through their first hour of endurance, a passing ripple of interest stirred the stagnant surface of the audience caused by the sudden rising of a lady overcome by the heat. She was quickly led out of the concert-room (after whispering a word of explanation to two young ladies ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... over now, as she lay wakeful in bed, mixed up with the "forever—ever," and the dropping tinkle of that lovely trembling ripple of accompaniment, until the late moon got round to the south and slanted in between the white dimity curtains, and set a glimmering little ghost ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... If at the same time an important river-town could be stranded and left far inland, the happiness of the mischief-making giant was complete; and for many miles it would swirl and eddy and boil and ripple with exuberant glee over ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... mortal death, then perhaps these limitations of time and space, which suspended friendships, would exist no longer, and he could wait for that with a quiet hopefulness. But if it all passed away, and was as though it had never been, if life was but a leaping flame, a ripple on the stream, then how could one have the heart to tie ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... plumes of the Plynck and her Echo rippled as they breathed and slept, rather like water or fire in a little wind; and with every ripple they seemed to shake out a faint perfume that drifted across Sara's face in waves. And they both looked so lovely that she could not think of disturbing them, either. So she looked about to see if there might be any one ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... vaccination speedily became recognized and was constantly resorted to, but hardly any attempt at perfecting the practice was made until after more than fifty years had elapsed. His discovery—or, rather, his proof of the truth of a rustic tradition—fell like a pebble into the doldrums; the ripple soon subsided, and nobody was encouraged to start another. At the present time such an announcement would be promptly followed by investigations leading up to such doctrines as that of the attenuation of viruses and that of antitoxines. But the times were not ripe for anything ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... up with him, and found that we stood at the edge of the shallow pond Colonel Wragge had mentioned in his account the night before. It was long and narrow, filled with dark brown water, in which the trees were dimly reflected. Not a ripple stirred its surface. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... be another fight; certainly Akers would try to get back at him for the night before. But he set his jaw. He would learn where Lily was if he had to choke the knowledge out of that leering devil's thick white throat. His arrival in the foyer of the Benedict Apartments caused more than a ripple of excitement. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the big harbours of the world," he replied. "And I'd say it's not without advantages many of the finest of 'em lack. Those headlands we passed away back. Why, the Atlantic couldn't blow a storm big enough to more than ripple the surface here inside." He laughed. "What a place to fortify. Think of this in war ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... watched the three, she suddenly broke into a little ripple of laughter, and, upon being questioned severely as to the reason of such unseemly mirth, she said, gaily, "I was just wondering what poor Phil will do with three girls, and one ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield |
