"Climax" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about them, I pray. It is this woman who is seeking to entrap us. She has played some little comedy, and she chooses to-day above all others for its dnouement. It is her stage climax; her ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... parched and withered as his face, which had been bared to the heat of the Kansas prairies for so many years, parched and withered as his heart which had borne the brunt of sadness and sorrow and separation until the climax was reached and ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... and shivered. Presently he would leave her, and life would become again the same dull round of work. Only one spot of real importance remained unvisited,—the cavern bower above the Bay of Moons. Of this he had spoken frequently, and well she knew he held it the climax of his search. ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... you will, our attendances on services and sacraments, let them be as punctilious and regular as may be, are all 'sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.' Get side by side with God; that is the purpose of all these, and fellowship with Him is the climax of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... on, for which success was surer; how cold it was, outside; how Joel piled on great fires, and went off on some mysterious errand, having "other chores to do than idling and duddering;" how the day rose into a climax of perfection at dinner-time, to Mrs. Howth's mind,—the turkey being done to a delicious brown, the plum-pudding quivering like luscious jelly (a Christian dinner to-day, if we starve the rest of the year!). Even Dr. Knowles, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... some persons to death for breaking into Sir John Colquhoun's house and assaulting him and others, as well as robbing them, Eskgrove, after enumerating minutely the details of their crime, closed his address to the prisoners with this climax: "All this you did; and God preserve us! juist when they were sitten doon ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... of delight at this climax of their perilous trip?—Harkness told himself that this was so. But he swung back to the helm of the ship. He glanced at instruments that again were registering; he saw the air-pressure indicator that told of oxygen and an atmosphere ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... persuaded, or affected to be persuaded, that the devil, with all his hellish crew, was conspiring to frustrate the beneficial intentions of a pious Protestant prince. Infernal despair and rage reached the climax when the marriage with the Danish princess was to be effected. But, far from being terrified by so formidable a conspiracy, he gloried in the persuasion that he was the devil's greatest enemy; and the man who shuddered at the sight of a drawn sword was not afraid to enter the lists ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... Berkeley," said Thorndyke, "you had better take Miss Bellingham out into the gallery, where there is more air. This has been a tremendous climax to all the trials that she has borne so bravely. Go out with Berkeley," he added gently, laying his hand on her shoulder, "and sit down while we develop the other negatives. You mustn't break down now, you know, when the storm has passed and the sun is beginning to shine." He held the door open, ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... Allison who brought matters to a climax. "I refuse to listen," said she, with something very like a stamp of her plump little foot. "Mr. Elmendorf forgets himself entirely when he attempts ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... this is not the climax of the absurdity which we are told that, if we are reasonable persons, we must accept. It appears that the "Memoirs" which, we are told, Justin heard read every Sunday in the place of assembly in Rome ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... laud of Civa,[31] so after the completion of the Book of Peace, itself a late addition to the epic, and one that is markedly Vishnuitic, there was, before the Genealogy of Vishnu, an antithetic Book of Law, which is as markedly Civaitic. In these books one finds the climax of sectarianism, in so far as it is represented by the epic; although in earlier books isolated passages of late addition are sporadically to be found which have much the same nature. Everywhere in these ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... declares that he is not her husband. It is the moment of the Vespers, and Tancredi falls among the first slain by the Sicilians. He implores Imelda for a last kiss, but wildly answering that they are brother and sister, she swoons away, while Tancredi dies in this climax of self-loathing and despair. The management of a plot so terrible is very simple. The feelings of the characters in the hideous maze which involves them are given only such expression as should come from those utterly broken by their calamity. ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... shadow of the tall trees into the open glade effulgent with flowers, his gaiety seems to have reached its climax: it breaks forth in song; and for some minutes the forest re-echoes the well-known lay of "Woodman spare that tree." Whence this joyous humour? Why are those eyes sparkling with a scarce concealed triumph? Is there a sweetheart expected? ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... was passing away in the latter half of the fourteenth century. It has indeed been pointed out that the date at which Wyclif's career as a reformer may be said to have begun almost coincides with that of the climax and first decline of feudal chivalry in England. But, without seeking to interpret coincidences, we know that, though the influence of the Christian Church and that of its Roman branch in particular, has asserted and reasserted itself in various ways and degrees in various ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... hitherto been the conqueror in every such passage of arms. It was probably this long habit of prevailing that made the proud Earl so obstinate, since to submit in words had never heretofore been difficult to him. At last the dispute came to a climax, in the distinct refusal of Douglas to give up his traitor-allies. "He said he myt not nor wald not," says a brief contemporary record. "Then the King said, 'False traitor, if you will not, I sall,' and stert sodunly till him ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... at its climax. The half-moon driveway outside the front entrance to the Royal Palm Hotel was crowded thick with waiting motor cars, whose occupants were at the hotel's semi-weekly dance. On the brightlit front veranda ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Gilly, another of the Durham prebendaries, who wrote the "Narrative of the Waldenses;" Seargill, a Unitarian minister, author of some tracts on Peace and War, &c.; and lastly, whom I have kept by way of climax, Coleridge and Charles Lamb, two of the most original geniuses, not only of the day, but of the country. We have had an embassador among us; but as he, I understand, is ashamed of us, we are hereby more ashamed of him, and accordingly ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... visited these people. And there they found Charles Lunt, a second-cousin of the Colonel's, a New-Yorker, and a graduate of Oxford. His father had sent him to England to be finished off, after Yale had done its best for him here. He and Percy fell in love immediately, and matters came to a climax. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... faces of the other men. They had worked and planned a long time for this single moment, the realization of a long pursued dream. Colonel Meadows was rubbing his hands together gleefully. The voice was reaching its climax. Success was assured. History had ...
— The Second Voice • Mann Rubin
... pole, a desirable pair of parallel bars, a remarkably elastic spring-board,—these are matters of personal pride, and described from city to city with loving enthusiasm. The gymnastic apostle rises to eloquence in proportion to the height of the handswings, and points his climax to match ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... was on the 15th of December, things reached a climax. When Ida came down to breakfast she found her father busy poring over some ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... work. No! she sought the home of him who had come like a blight on their domestic peace. She carried with her no feeling of resentment—her heart was full of love and compassion. She had undergone a dreadful struggle. The climax had arrived. She must choose between her parents and her lover. It was a hard, hard task, but it was over. House and parents, all that had been associated with her early and happy years, sacrificed for one whose past life had brought ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... It is the climax of the poem. The Emperor's army burst upon the scene, frantic with anxiety; but no eye was open to give them greeting. Roland was dead with his slaughtered rear-guard, and lying with his face to the foe. For three days the sun stayed its motion, at Charlemagne's frenzied petition, and the Moors ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... with an eagerness and avidity, a keen, fiendish expression of impatience for more, from which scene, a memory too tenacious upon this subject will not allow me to escape; the kidneys and heart were in like manner immediately consumed, and as a climax to these revolting orgies, when the whole viscera were removed, a quantity of blood and serum which had collected in the cavity of the chest, was eagerly collected in handsful, and drunk by the old man who had dissected the body; the flesh ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... he was obliged to conceal himself for a time; and to cap the climax, the conduct of his son, who was still in Paris, ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... its possibilities, they so identify themselves with it by their deeds that they thenceforth personify to the world the movement which brought them forth, and of which their own achievements are at once the climax and the most dazzling illustration. Fewer still, but happiest of all, viewed from the standpoint of fame, are those whose departure is as well timed as their appearance, who do not survive the instant of perfected success, to linger on subjected to the searching tests of common ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... wearing their richest green seemed as far from being walked upon as the blue sky above them. Whether it was that Mark was nervous about the result of the coming interview or whether it was that his first visit to High Thorpe had been the climax of so many new experiences, he was certainly much more sharply aware on this occasion of what the Castle stood for. Looking back to the morning when he and Father Rowley sat with Bishop Crawshay in his bedroom, he realized ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... time to give a large children's party is when there has not been one for a long period. The Rennsdale party had that misfortune, and its climax was the complete and convulsive madness of the gentlemen's dressing-room during those final moments supposed to be given to quiet preparations, on the part of guests, ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... his surprise at finding himself installed, not in some mean garret, but in the study of one of the leading Jews of the town. The climax was reached when he handed some coppers to the housewife, and asked her to get him some ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... one word as to the manner in which this book has been used by my highest class, as a collection of Rules for reference in their construing lessons. In construing, from Thucydides especially, I have found Rules 5, 30, 34, 36, 37, and 40a, of great use. The rules about Metaphor and Climax have also been useful in correcting faults of taste in their Latin and Greek compositions. I have hopes that, used in this way, this little book may be of service to the highest as well as to the ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... individual helplessness of the man whom the multitude, in this case, were ready to arm with unlimited power over their own welfare—that physical weakness, already so strenuously insisted on by Cassius, at last attains its climax in the representation, when, in the midst of his haughtiest display of will and personal authority, stricken by the hands of the men he scorned, by the hand of one 'he had just spurned like a cur out of his path,' he falls at the foot of Pompey's statue—or, rather, 'when at the base of Pompey's ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... and physiological reasons for the persistence of this dualistic attitude in the very nature of the sex act itself. Until the climax of the sexual erethism, woman is for man the acme of supreme desire; but with detumescence the emotions tend to swing to the opposite pole, and excitement and longing are forgotten in the mood of repugnance and exhaustion. This tendency would be very much ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... lifted his thin hand and continued: "Now here is where you drop the shepherd figure and put in a banquet and so lose the fine climax of completeness in ...
— The Song of our Syrian Guest • William Allen Knight
... the houses themselves, they had a very chilly appearance, and looked far less tempting than the houses of this description in New England when we first saw them, each in its pretty clean lawn, and surrounded by a lovely foliage. To return to this town—and, as a climax to its perfection, it has, out and out, the most comfortable hotel we have seen in America. It is quite a bijou, with a very pretty facade, and, being new last year, everything is in the best style. The ground floor, as is generally the case in this country, consists, like the Hotel du Louvre in ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... fancy and by occasional lights of humor so reserved and dainty that they never disturb the pictorial harmony. The capacity for unaffected utterance of feeling on matters common to humanity reached a climax in the poem of 'Baby Bell,' which by its sympathetic and delicate description of a child's advent and death gave the author a claim to the affection^ of a wide circle; and this remained for a long time probably the best known among his poems. 'Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book' is another of the earlier ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... bartered it but for a single draught; one well-remembered, miserable day, when the little faces were raised to hers, and found upon it no trace of motherly affection, only that dark foreboding look, and grew pale with fright when desire had reached that relentless climax which leaves the victim no choice but of madness or gratification, she had fiercely summoned her usual messenger, sent for her usual drink, and sat grimly waiting for it. In vain that trusty messenger, to whose care the wretched father had confided ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the Psalmist himself felt when he did not close with the fourth verse, otherwise so natural a climax. He knew that weariness and death are not the last enemies of man. He knew that the future is never the true man's only fear. He remembered the inexorableness of the past; he remembered that blood-guiltiness, ...
— Four Psalms • George Adam Smith
... The climax of the drama had now arrived, and everybody stood aside for the wretched Fidelia. Mrs. Slapman proved equal to the great occasion. Directing one look to heaven, as if for strength, and pressing a hand over the jewelled bodice which ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... to this title as a mistake by an editor is groundless; for though the following lines are addressed to the land or people as a whole, their climax is upon the fate of the royal house, the choice of ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... but one circumstance will not fail to strike the reader as a strange omission in these frequent enumerations of the exports of Ceylon. I have traced them from their earliest notices by the Greeks and Romans to the period when the commerce of the East had reached its climax in the hands of the Persians and Arabians; the survey extends over fifteen centuries, during which Ceylon and its productions were familiarly known to the traders of all countries, and yet in the pages of no author, European or Asiatic, from the earliest ages to the close of the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... and read the end; for it is all utterly unreasonable (though it is, alas! not unaccountable) and suicidal. 'Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this.' Unbelief in Christ is, by Himself, declared to be the very climax of sin, and its most flagrant evidence (John xvi. 9); and of all the instances of unbelief which saddened His heart, none struck more chill than that of these Nazarenes. They had known His pure youth; He might have reckoned on some touch of sympathy and predisposition to welcome ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... more delighted when he succeeded in getting one of his works, a comic opera called Picaros et Diego given at the theatre in the Chateau of Compiegne, in honour of the marriage of my sister Louise and the King of the Belgians. But lo! at the climax of the piece, the principal performer came forward, before the newly married couple, the Royalties, and all the great personages forming the audience, and burst forth with a ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... South Sea, the renowned Francisco Pizarro. It was an expedition full of romantic adventure, replete with peril and suffering, crowded with bold ventures and daring deeds. But we must pass over all the earlier of these and come at once to the climax of the whole striking enterprise, the story of the seizure of the Inca of Peru in the midst of his army and the tale of his ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... leading men of the community—the most active, vigilant and sensible—and one can easily perceive that much ill-will might have accumulated in the hearts of those whom they saw fit to report. Such ill-will had its day of triumph when the Salem tragedy reached its climax. ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... was, it seemed beyond question that all the knowledge of Hugh shewn by the old lay-sister, of his person his attitude, his very words, could have come to her by Divine revelation alone. That being so, how could the Prioress presume to doubt the climax of the vision, when our blessed Lady placed her hand in Hugh's, uttering the wondrous words: "Take her. She hath been ever thine. I have ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... inland states, and for Texas, and California, and Oregon";—a statement which is among the happiest achievements of American humour. He calls his verses "recitatives," in easily followed allusion to a musical form. "Easily written, loose-fingered chords," he cries, "I feel the thrum of your climax and close." Too often, I fear, he is the only one who can perceive the rhythm; and in spite of Mr. Swinburne, a great part of his work considered as verses is poor bald stuff. Considered, not as verse, but as speech, a great part of it is full of strange and admirable merits. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... climax of Cappy's indignation over the disaster to the Valkyrie was not attained until a few months later when, in conversation on the floor of the Merchants' Exchange with the skipper of the schooner Tarus, who happened to have been in Papeete at the bombardment, he learned he had ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... This was the climax! It brought down the house! Never before had they seen such an actor. He was inimitable, and the people made the usual demand for an encore with tremendous fervour, expecting that Signor Twittorini would repeat the scene, probably with variations, and finish off with the promised ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... taken back to prison. He wrote; he received a kind but vague reply; delays followed, and investigations into the truth of his story; his anguish of mind was reaching a climax in which he felt that his dagger would be his best friend after all. A citizen of the place, a M. Kamke, a total stranger, offered to go bail for him: his story had got abroad and excited the deepest sympathy. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... from the supermundane came as a climax to a series of worldly annoyances that would have upset the equanimity of a very Job—and the Rev. Samuel, in temper at any rate, was the reverse of Job-like. His troubles began in the closing years ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... had it been at my disposal, to have been safely at home; and it was only the dread of being laughed at, which prevented me from begging my brothers to take me there. And when darkness had entirely settled over the earth, and the night-owls set up their discordant screams, my fears reached a climax. I had never before listened to their hideous noise, and had not the slightest idea of what it was. I had often heard old hunters speak of a wild animal, called the catamount, which they allowed had been seen in the Canadian ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... landscape. In the painting the grass, flowers, shrubbery etc., are in the foreground, then come the hills and if there be a mountain range it is in the background. If the mountain range were in the foreground it would obscure everything else. So in making a song. If it tells a story and reaches a climax the climax should come near the end of the song. When the singer has carried his audience with him up to a great emotional height then all it needs is to be brought back safely and quickly ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... too, were born for the stage. Your climax, it was magnificent, tres chere; pity that you spoiled it with an anti-climax." And she shrugged her shoulders. "My poor little story! You would not even let me finish it. No matter; perhaps it ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... his study of the French language. But again did our poor Tommy get into trouble, and serious trouble indeed this time, for it involved his French master's pretty young daughter as well as himself. Frantic with wrath and despair at the unfortunate climax of events, young Newcome embarked for India, and quitted the parents whom he was never more to see. His name was no more mentioned at Clapham, but he wrote constantly to his father, who sent Tom liberal private remittances to India, and was in ...
— Boys and girls from Thackeray • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... time, the feud between the uncles and relatives of King Henry, in England, as related in a preceding chapter, had been going on, and was now reaching a climax. The leaders of the two rival parties were, as will be recollected, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, or Cardinal Beaufort, as he was more commonly called, who had had the personal charge of the king during his minority, ...
— Margaret of Anjou - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... individual responsibility—and that for the express purpose of realising his highest potentialities: it is only when we accept such a reading of the facts as this that we escape from that worst of nightmares which reaches its climax in hurling its foolish defiance at the Most High, challenging His right to punish the instruments of His own will, those "helpless pieces of the game He plays," impotent items in ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... glow of their wonderful experience at the Interpreter's hut and the magnificent climax of that day's adventure, the children had determined to go yet farther afield. It was true that their father had threatened dire results if they should continue the acquaintance begun at the foot of the Interpreter's ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... actions on any of the fronts will be fought for a few days yet, although the battle between the Vistula and the Bug Rivers, where the German Field Marshal von Mackensen's army is advancing toward the Lublin-Chelm Railroad, has about reached a climax. Here, according to the German official communication issued this afternoon, the Germans have succeeded in breaking the obstinate resistance of the Russians at several points ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... finally withdrew his army into the Isle of Walcheren, into whose fever-laden swamps Napoleon had refused to send a single French soldier. A tottering remnant was all that survived by the close of the year: and the climax of our national disgrace was reached when a court-martial acquitted the commanders. Napoleon would have ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Booth died, the wife of the famous "General," the "Army" reported her as "Promoted to Glory from Clacton-on-Sea." It was extremely funny. Clacton-on-Sea is such a prosaic anti-climax after Glory. One was reminded of ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... Mr. Hall as a Christian advocate, it appears almost bordering on the anti-climax, to name, that a great accession to this his distinction as a writer arose from his exquisite taste in composition, sedulously cultivated through life; and which (as the reward of so chastened a judgment, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... They were not even self-supporting. The colony held on because constantly fed with men and provisions by the "Supplies." There was dissatisfaction in London; in James Towne misery and often despair. The climax of disappointment and suffering was reached in the spring of 1610, ever since known as the "Starving Time." In that season of horror, the settlement almost ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... acting as men of a high standard ought to act. But in this case, mistakes and defeat were the least of what the Board brought on themselves. This was the last act of a long and deliberately pursued course of conduct; and if it was the last, it was because it was the upshot and climax, and neither the University nor any one else would endure that it should go on any longer. The proposed attack on Mr. Newman betrayed how helpless they were, and to what paltry acts of worrying it was, in their judgment, right and judicious to condescend. ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... tete-a-tete dinner. Such a dinner! Even after a lapse of all these years I am unable to think of it without a shudder. Half famished though we were, we could not do much more than look at the greater part of the dishes which were set before us; and the climax was reached when we were served with an astonishing compote, made up, so far as I was able to judge, of equal proportions of preserved plums and mustard, to which vinegar and sugar had been superadded. Both the signorina and I partook of this horrible mixture, for it really looked ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... great. It attained its climax when Rosendo came to him one day to discuss the Alcalde's conduct and the change of sentiment which seemed to be stealing rapidly over the hearts of the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... following April), which gained currency with remarkable rapidity, added to the unrest. It required only that brilliant phenomenon of the heavens, with its wonderful tail—none other than Halley's Comet—to bring the whole to a climax. This was altogether too much for the superstitious Chinese, and he looked upon the comet as some evil omen organized and controlled by the foreigner especially for the working of his own selfish ends in the Celestial Empire; and a number believed it to be a heavenly ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... cannot be evil because it means a fuller life, and therefore an opportunity for fuller and further service. Faith will not let a man hasten the climax; for it is in the hands of love, as he himself is. But death is the climax of life. For if all life is an argument for death, then so also all death ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... so little of what good acting really meant. Tragedy? Well! passons! Their heavy, large-boned actresses might manage one or two big scenes where a commanding presence and a powerful voice would not come amiss, and where prominent teeth would pass unnoticed in the agony of a dramatic climax. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... who has neglected such matters overlong; reversed his position; slept again. The young corn, deep green in the bottomland, moved with a staccato flurry, and the dust ghost of a mad whirling dervish sped up the main road to vanish at the bridge in a climax of lunacy. The stirring air brought a smell of blossoms; the distance took on faint lavender hazes which blended the outlines of the fields, lying like square coverlets upon the long slope of ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... play tonight was the sort of anti-climax that is almost invariable in a London romance. How he looked forward to it! For after Vincy came in only a few banalities had been said. He was to see her now for the last time—the first time since he had given himself away to her. Probably it was only her usual kindness to ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... was the Baton of a Marshal, yet, never in my life, had I felt so utterly alone as at that moment. And Lotzen's recent sneer, that I could hope to hold the Crown only if the Princess Dehra were my Queen, struck me in all its truth. Surely, it was the climax of absurdity for me to aspire to rule this people, to whom I was a stranger and in whose eyes I would be, in effect, ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... place at the table. This was the climax, he thought, the ne plus ultra of it all! He was to contribute a dollar a week to his mother-in-law to make up a loss caused by the advice of a detested, silly-ass brother-in-law, who had always hated him, Skinner. Surely, ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... December 1944 was the climax of months of friction between black seamen and white marines. A series of shootings in and around the town of Agana on Christmas Eve left a black and a white marine dead. Believing one of the killed a member of their group, black sailors from ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... a rhythmic plaint. After this came a climax of devout triumph—passing from the subdued adoration of a ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... glorious night it was! More wonderful than yesterday even! Or any of her many yesterdays! This hour, the climax of her love, had transported her through the mystery of immeasurable joy. She would never again be the old Tessibel. She was Frederick's wife! Her breath came in sudden, quick, happy sighs, for just then she heard his ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... the executioner. How could I hope to find any judge so mild, so benevolent as to pronounce me innocent, soiled as I was with a triple murder, stained with the blood of so many citizens? Was this the glorious climax of my travels that the Chaldean, Diophanes, had so confidently predicted for me? Again and again I went over the whole matter ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... had often been alone together without the slightest embarrassment, but now, perhaps from the reaction, and being a little unstrung, she felt a most distressing sensation of it, besides which the anti-climax of his occupation after her overwrought anticipations of their mutual fate, gave her an hysterical inclination to ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... he had uttered that half-articulate little sentence his captive was possessed by a sudden conviction of approaching climax. He knew, somewhere deep in the tangled roots of consciousness, that either he or the other must go down that night, that one was destined to win and that the other was destined to lose, that the ancient fight was about to be settled, and ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... preponderance, preponderation; vantage ground, prevalence, partiality; personal superiority; nobility &c. (rank) 875; Triton among the minnows, primus inter pares[Lat], nulli secundus[Lat], captain; crackajack * [obs3][U. S.]. supremacy, preeminence; lead; maximum; record; [obs3], climax; culmination &c. (summit) 210; transcendence; ne plus ultra[Lat]; lion's share, Benjamin's mess; excess, surplus &c. (remainder) 40; (redundancy) 641. V. be superior &c. adj.; exceed, excel, transcend; outdo, outbalance[obs3], outweigh, outrank, outrival, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... perfectly motionless and fast on a sand bank. Those who soonest recovered themselves were greeted by the captain with cheering voice and hearty shakes of the hand. Wiping the numerous drops of anxiety from his brow, he congratulated us on what seemed the climax of ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... waxing warm in the employment, drives the stick furiously along the smoking channel, plying his hands to and fro with amazing rapidity, the perspiration starting from every pore. As he approaches the climax of his effort, he pants and gasps for breath, and his eyes almost start from their sockets with the violence of his exertions. This is the critical stage of the operation; all his previous labours are vain if he cannot sustain the rapidity of the movement until the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... approaching climax of the chase. Even hardened veterans of the Psychodeviant Police don't look forward to the possibility of having their minds taken over, controlled by ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... the climax of our trip. We of the plains had longed and dreamed of the peaks. To us the White Mountains were at once the crowning wonder and chief peril of our expedition. They were to be in a very real sense the test of our courage. The iron crest of Mount ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... in "the monumental caves of death," as described by Congreve. Sir Joshua truly declares that "all arts address themselves to the sensibility and imagination"; and no one thus alive to the appeal of sculpture will marvel that the infuriated mob spared the statues of the Tuileries at the bloody climax of the French Revolution,—that a "love of the antique" knit in bonds of life-long friendship Winckelmann and Cardinal Albani,— that among the most salient of childhood's memories should be Memnon's image and the Colossus of Rhodes,—that an imaginative girl of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... as the mere cloak of a possible blush that darkness gives courage; it is because it lulls detailed self-realization, such conscious self-realization being always a source of fears, and the blush their definite symbol and visible climax. It is to the blush that we must attribute a curious complementary relationship between the face and the sacro-pubic region as centres of anatomical modesty. The women of some African tribes who go naked, Emin ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... touch of my coin this old beggarwoman smiled beneficently and said, "Go with God," or, as she put it in her Spanish, "Vaya vested con Dios." Immediately I ought to have pressed another coin in her palm, with a "Gracias, madre; muchas gracias," out of regard to the literary climax; but whether I really did so I cannot now remember; I can only hope ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... And then the climax arrived, with anticlimax following so swiftly upon it that the two were almost simultaneous. I saw the worker on the roof cautiously poise himself in the opening, hunched up like some strange ape. The next moment he ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... size; her complexion very fair, her eyebrows and hair dark brown, her teeth superb, her smile enchanting, and her whole person graceful. She was seen almost always in a demi-toilet, remarkable only for neatness and good taste. I do not think I ever once saw diamonds about her, even at the climax of her fortune, when she had the rank of Duchess ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... games, so that we "play games," it applies also to informal play activities, such as a child's "playing horse," "playing house," or playing in the sand. In such unorganized play there are no fixed rules, no formal mode of procedure, and generally, no climax to be achieved. The various steps are usually spontaneous, not predetermined, and are subject to individual caprice. In games, on the contrary, as in Blind Man's Buff, Prisoners' Base, or Football, there are prescribed acts subject to rules, ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... of direct failure in the event, as understood to have been predicted by the Oracle, not unfrequently accompanied by tragical catastrophes to the parties misled by this erroneous construction of the Oracle; 4. (which is, perhaps, the climax of the exposures possible under the superstitions of Paganism), A public detection of known oracular temples doing business on a considerable scale, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... sounds; another minute and he was gone, and the crushing of branches and the rush of many feet on the high bank above, was followed by the prolonged cry of some poor fugitive animal,—a doe, or fawn, perhaps,—in the very climax of mortal agony; and then the lonely recesses of the forest took up that fearful death-cry, the far-off shores of the lake and the distant islands prolonged it, and the terrified children clung together in ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... despoliation more rife than in the time of which we write. It had reached its climax of horrors, day after day recurring, when Colonel Miranda became military commandant of the district of Albuquerque; until not only this town, but Santa Fe, the capital of the province itself, was menaced with destruction by the red marauders. Not alone the Navajoes on the west, but the Apaches ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... to believe that her love and her aversion were equally insincere. When she had brought her husband into the condition of perplexity, she managed that a passionate letter should fall into his hands. One evening in the midst of the admirable catastrophe which she had thus brought to a climax, madame threw herself at her husband's feet, wet them with her tears, and thus concluded the climax to ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... taken to a Catholic laundress. He has followed to nurse her. No one is left in the deserted house to attend to the young lady, except Sister Gonzaga, a good little nun, one of the three who were allowed to remain in the old convent near you, but early this morning, to cap the climax of misfortune, the kind old woman scalded her fingers while heating a bath. The Catholic priest has faithfully remained at his post, but what can we men do in nursing the sick girl! You doubtless now suspect why I brought you with me. You ought not and cannot become ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... shoes and gloves and having her try on some ready-made gowns so that they might be quickly altered for her use. Patsy also bought her a set of soft and pretty furs, thinking she might need them on the journey if the weather continued cool, and this seemed to cap the climax of Myrtle's happiness. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... little run away with him; perhaps he gives us a little too much of it, and avails himself too freely of the license, at least of the temptation, to digress which the introduction of such persons as Elie Magus affords. And it is also open to any one to say that the climax, or what is in effect the climax, is introduced somewhat too soon; that the struggle, first over the body and then over the property of Patroclus-Pons, is inordinately spun out, and that, even granting the author's mania, he might have utilized it better by giving us more of the harmless ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... of way, that a "shadow" was once more lurking on his trail, as he left the house, he was almost indifferent to the fellow's intrusion, so much more disturbing had been the climax of ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... reached the climax of his fortunes, the furthest limit of the good which he was permitted to accomplish by his own free will, and the sky began to be overcast. The enthusiasm of his people became unmanageable, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... direction of the door, and flickered unsteadily on the bed, I remained unmoved to a certain degree, although passively alive to the significance of the incident. I realised that the ultimate issue was at hand, but either because I was emotionally exhausted, or from some other cause, the pending climax ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... On a spear, and above him were tauntingly swung; While that beggar, Chey Lee, like a conjurer sat Pullin' out eggs and chickens from Johnson's best hat; And Bates's game rooster was part of their "loot," And all of Smith's pigs were skyugled to boot; But the climax was reached and I like to have died When my demijohn, empty, came down the hillside,— Down the hillside— What once held the pride Of Robertson County Pitched ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... their climax in a time of fermentation. The impatience, the feeling of uneasiness and restraint, is felt in the drama of these days, which was wholly under the control of the Chambers. The stage, that "mirror of the times," is often ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... peroration was for the moment overwhelming. A dead silence prevailed throughout the court-room. Garrulous Old Jim attempted no sarcastic criticism; he rolled his blear eyes in the direction of the backwoodsman and shook his head as if to say, "I give it up." The climax of the day's oratory, however, was yet to come. Daviess took his seat and Clay instantly sprang up to answer him. "Harry of the West," already a popular idol, was the most celebrated speaker in Kentucky. Not yet thirty years ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Republican Army to his Chief of Staff discussing the possibility of enlisting the germs of typhoid and glanders in their noble fight for freedom. The House listened with rapt attention until Sir HAMAR came to the pious conclusion, "God bless you all." Amid the laughter that followed this anti-climax Mr. DEVLIN was heard to ask, "Was not the whole thing concocted in Dublin Castle?" Well, if so, Dublin Castle must have developed a sense of humour quite foreign to its traditions. Perhaps that is the reason why the PRIME MINISTER, earlier in the Sitting, expressed the opinion that "things ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... "The climax of the remarkable day was now at hand. There is no man in the Senate for whom a deeper feeling of esteem is felt than John Sherman. He saw the Republican party born, he has been its soldier as well as its sage, he has sat at the council table of Presidents. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... affair becomes even more complex; his jealous torments reach a climax, and those same two questions torture his fevered brain more and more: 'If I repay Katerina Ivanovna, where can I find the means to go off with Grushenka?' If he behaved wildly, drank, and made disturbances in the taverns in the ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... regarded this confederacy with a jealous eye; the Union viewed them and the Emperor with the like distrust; the Emperor was equally suspicious of both; and thus, on all sides, alarm and animosity had reached their climax. And, as if to crown the whole, at this critical conjuncture by the death of the Duke John William of Juliers, a highly disputable succession became vacant in the ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... this rude fingering of his idol. Was it possible that Mrs. Memorall did not see what an anti-climax such a marriage would have been? Fancy Rendle "making an honest woman" of Silvia; for so society would have viewed it! How such a reparation would have vulgarized their past—it would have been like "restoring" a masterpiece; and how exquisite must ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... recitation and thereby spoiling the effect of the rhythm, or of trusting to his artistic temperament and going on as if nothing was happening. I did the latter, and went on unmoved by the exploding shells. I thought the Major would see that the climax of the poem had not yet been reached and was worth waiting for. I was mistaken. He became more and more restless, till at last he said, (p. 196) "Excuse me, Canon, but I think I must be hurrying on." He left me standing in the road with the last part of the poem and its magnificent climax still ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... place," said Mr. Fox, thinking to begin with the least important exaction, and gradually reach, a climax in his extortion, "I wish permission to pay my addresses to your ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... such violations of international law; and President Grant, seeing no other way out, recommended in 1869 and again in 1870 that the Cuban insurgents be recognized as belligerents, but still the Senate held back. The climax came in 1873, when the Spanish authorities in Cuba captured on the high seas the Virginius* with a filibustering expedition on board and executed fifty-three of the crew and passengers, among them eight Americans. For a time war seemed imminent, ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... making a wilful anti-climax to her speech, and, as Stair knew very well, not in the least finishing as she had meant to. But her housekeeping pride was aroused. He must eat. She would heap his plate. She had heard him late last night moving ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... unfailing, reliable upbuilder for brain-workers, nervous folks, tired-out, or broken-down folks of any kind at all is"—here Dr. Surtaine paused, looked about his entranced audience, and delivered himself of his climax in a ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the climax came. Early in the spring of that year the harassed mission at Ville Marie learned that several hundred Iroquois, who had wintered on the upper Ottawa, were coming down, and that another horde, approaching by way of the ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... being Brutus, is an object for derision; and the way in which he eats these, his everlasting bonnes-bouches, divides derision with disgust. The passage must be given, otherwise the abstract of the poem would be incomplete; but I cannot help thinking it the worst anti-climax ever fallen into by ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... a wonderful purifier is death! These who fell beside us varied in character; like other men, they had their strength and their weaknesses, their merits and their faults. Yet now all stains seem washed away; their life ceased at its climax, and the ending sanctioned all that went before. They died for their country; that is their record. They found their way to heaven equally short, it seems to us, from every battle-field, and with equal readiness our love ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser
... removal, the violent tension and revulsion of feeling caused by his awakened conscience, his confession, and the gnawing sense of shame, the failure of his ambition, and then his mother's death coming as the awful climax of the calamities he had undergone, and followed by the cold unfeeling harshness of his guardian, and the damping of his hopes—all these things had broken the boy's spirit utterly. Disgrace, and sorrow, and bereavement, and the stings of remorse, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... a singular coincidence, that Norway in these days, when it has brought the Consular question to a climax, has begun to carry out a general rise in the Fiscal rates; the mercantile interests of "the land of Free Trade" Norway evidently do not lie so ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... would against it. She waited silently and watched, and twice or thrice made ineffectual efforts to rouse him. Her father came in once. He showed anxiety; that was unmistakable, but was it the anxiety of guilt of any kind? She said nothing. At five o'clock matters abruptly came to a climax. Jen was in the kitchen, but, hearing footsteps in the sitting-room, she opened the door quietly. Her father was bending over Sergeant Tom, and Pierre was speaking: "No, no, Galbraith, it is all right. You are a fool. It ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... stopped whispering. BROTHER came on, and his brother as the MAN. The tempo was perfect, the acceleration blood-quickening. Laughs came at unexpected places, friendly and cordial. The girl was like a melody in low tones; she built up her climax ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... The climax came the third week in May, when Young Thomas, who had been keeping house for himself for three weeks, received a letter and an express box from his cousin, Charles Everett, out in Manitoba. Charles and he had been chums in their ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the cue for fresh demonstrations and for the display of flags and banners bearing mottoes, "For Queen and Empire," "Welcome, Brother Colonists," and the like; and by the time the Canadians had landed patriotic feeling had reached its climax. Then public enthusiasm literally seemed to burst all bounds. The streets, windows, verandahs, roofs, were packed with an excited, surging, shouting, cheering throng, and the air was thick with hats, and flags, and handkerchiefs, waving a hearty welcome to our British ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... "is the climax of wisdom. A man has done something if he has only added a 'thing of beauty' to the joys of a friend's imagination; what others do by hard work you do by mere existence. Be quiet, Argus!" For, while he was speaking, the hound had risen, and had gone snarling to the door. In spite of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... from her seat on the piano stool, after they had sung it through a couple of times, "I believe that the last verse of that song should be sung first. The climax seems be in the first verse, and the rest, beginning with the last, merely lead up to it. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... author has produced a book which no one who has loved or hopes to love can afford to miss. The story fairly leaps from climax to climax. ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... drunkard was a forced or willing accomplice of the events of last night was part of a question that had become more and more repugnant to him as he was leaving the scene of it forever. It had come upon him, desecrating the dream he had dreamt that last night and turning its hopeful climax to bitterness. Small wonder that Barker, walking by his side, had his quick sympathies aroused, and as he saw that shadow, which they were all familiar with, but had never sought to penetrate, ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... been prepared by the dramatist in a charming, reminiscent vein. The present Editor is privileged to make use of one, describing the evolution of "In Mizzoura," and this inclusion removes from him the necessity of commenting too lengthily on that play, for fear of creating an anti-climax. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: In Mizzoura • Augustus Thomas
... indeed, might well have been its initial aim in view of the foredoomed futility of its ostensible object. Certainly President Wilson espoused the peace proposal for the same reason; but, as shown in the following chapter, the efforts of both were in vain. The real climax ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... his heels struck a plank, and he fell backward, to all appearance knocked down with a stream of milk. His humiliation was received with shouts of derisive laughter, and even the carpenters at work laid down their hammers and joined in the chorus; but his revenge was swift and capped the climax. Cold and wet as we all were, and completely tired out, we commenced to disrobe and get ready for the tea party. Unfortunately I had forgotten to lock my door, and in walked Cousin Charley with a quart bottle of liquid blacking, which he prepared to empty on my devoted ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... So far the entertainment, if not precisely novel, was better than anything they had hoped for, and everyone had an agreeable conviction that there was still something in the way of a sensation in store. Perhaps it was eagerness for the expected climax which induced them to keep tolerably quiet during the remainder of Mr. O'Rourke's speech. He set forth at some length the glorious achievements of his party in the past, and explained the opportunities of future usefulness which lay to be grasped if only the necessary funds were provided. He ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... of encountering an anti-climax, an heroic, an unheroic. Lucy did her best to be a heroine, but her temperament was against her. Her imagination was very easily kindled, and her reasons much at the mercy of the flames. By how much she was exalted, by so much was she dashed. But she had a conscience ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... its climax when the Ministry of the Interior was confided to M. Plehve. His immediate predecessors, though sincere believers in autocracy and very hostile to Liberalism of all kinds, considered that the Liberal ideas might be rendered harmless by firm passive resistance ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... seat at the piano, and says in French to Mrs. Gold). Madam, you have reached the climax of the beautiful in music. I count it one of the happiest moments of my artistic tour to be allowed to breathe out my soul at the piano, in the presence of one like yourself. What a loss, that your position must prevent you from elevating the German opera to its former greatness, ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... Belleport was a subdued one, bringing to an afternoon that had been rich in sunshine a climax of shadow. The Galbraiths were far too stunned by the startling revelations of the day to wish to prolong a meeting that had lapsed into awkwardness, and until they had had opportunity to readjust themselves they were eager to be alone; nor ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... one morning the climax was reached when Miss Newman came into her school-room to find on the board a very good caricature of herself, with under it written: "Ugly, old Miss New," in scrawling letters. Clara came into the school-room late, and slipped into her seat after ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... Hieronymus speaks of having heard it on the Mount of Olives when it was played in the Temple at Jerusalem. To add to the mystery surrounding this instrument, it has been proved by several learned authorities that it was merely a large drum; and, to cap the climax, other equally respected writers have declared that this instrument was simply a large shovel which, after being used for the sacrificial fire in the temple, was thrown to the ground with a great noise, to inform the people that the sacrifice ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... voice of the mimic strolling player addressing his mimic audience. The appeal of the tenor to the voiceless galleries, "Underneath this little play we show, there is another play," seemed indeed the very voice of Kerr repeating itself. And with the climax of the sharp tragedy in the middle of the comic stage she placed him again, but placed him this time in the mimic audience looking on, neither applauding nor dissenting; but rather as if he watched the play and played ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... come the Christmas wines. Therefore we drank rich and strong Tavel, and delicate Ledenon, and heavy Frontignan—the cloyingly-sweet Mouscat de Maroussa—and home-made champagne (the clairette, with a superabundance of pop and fizz but undeniably cider-like), and at last, for a climax, old Chateauneuf-du-Pape: the dean of the Provencal vinous faculty, rich, smooth, delicate, with a slightly aromatic after-taste that the dallying bees bring to the vine-blossoms from the blossoms of the wild-thyme. Anciently it filled the cups ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... at the evening session and the address was delivered by Rev. Chas. C. Weith, of Ardmore. This address, delivered in the cool of the evening, marked the climax of interest. In an eloquent and forceful manner he recalled the events that led to the first declaration of independence, which was for the freedom of the soul by Luther in Germany in 1517; traced the growth of this sentiment ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... Emperor kept his gravity. Leaning heavily on the golden cone at the right of his chair, his chin depressed, his eyes staring, scarcely breathing, he waited, knowing, that having gone so far, there was before the speaker an unavoidable climax; and seeing it in his face, and coming, he presently aroused, ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... moreover, he comes to study allied forms brought from countries not now continuous, in which case he can hardly hope to find the intermediate links between his doubtful forms, he will have to trust almost entirely to analogy, and his difficulties rise to a climax. ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... forks came to play over golden stony lips, and lick the mullions and buttresses around. Then came a fresh explosion, as pent-up gases, generated by heat, burst forth to augment the fire with hiss, crackle, and flutter, as it seemed to gain its climax, and then sank down with a low ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... movements from the obsequious Warman, who took care to question Mrs. Granger's coachman in the course of conversation, in a pleasant casual manner, as to the places to which he had taken his mistress. She waited and made no sign. There was treason going on. The climax and explosion would come in ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... run away to sea, or join strolling players, and have in consequence to beg their bread at the end of their days. The almshouse or the county gaol is the natural end of his villains, and he paints to the life the evil courses which generally lead to such a climax. Nobody describes better the process of going to the dogs. And most of all, he sympathises with the village maiden who has listened too easily to the voice of the charmer, in the shape of a gay sailor or a smart London footman, and has to reap the bitter consequences of ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... berth, the rhythmic pounding of the engines, the muffled sound, at intervals, of feet upon the deck, all were soothing; but the remembrance of that discussion, with its mortifying climax, made sleep impossible. This childish sensitiveness she fully realized,—and despised,—but nerves achieved ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... Darrell. "If Mark Antony made such a goose of himself for that painted harridan Cleopatra, what would he have done for a blooming Juliet! Youth and high spirit! Alas! why are these to be unsuitable companions for us, as we reach that climax in time and sorrow—when to the one we are grown the most indulgent, and of the other have the most need? Alban, that girl, if her heart were really won—her wild nature wisely mastered, gently guided—would make a true, prudent, loving, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... citizens of death's gray land, Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows. In the great hour of destiny they stand, Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows. Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives. Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds, ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... that we were now approaching "the supreme and terrible climax of the War," has spoken of the late Duke of Norfolk as a man "diffident about powers which were in excess of the ordinary." Is not that true of the British race as a whole? Only now, under the stress of a long-drawn-out conflict, is it discovering the variety ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... being, I take it, the final death of Home Rule. And now comes the wonderful peroration, in which the whole great adventure is brought to its dignified and eloquent climax. It runs into twenty-three stanzas, of which I will give you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... out in volume to a dramatic climax as a puff of smoke burst forth beneath the point of the whirling drill. Nyoda adroitly caught the spark in a bed of tinder and raised it to her lips, blowing gently to fan it into flame, ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey
... seafaring man who refused the king's service when "admonished" thereto had short shrift. He was "first knocked down, and then bade to stand in the king's name." Such, literally and without undue exaggeration, was the later system which, reaching the climax of its insolent pretensions to justifiable violence in the eighteenth century, for upwards of a hundred years bestrode the neck of the unfortunate sailor like some monstrous Old Man of ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... child may understand it; so profound, that the mightiest intellect cannot go beyond its depths. It is so essentially rich that it turns every language into which it is translated into a classic. At one moment it is plain narration; at another, it is all drama and tragedy, in which cataclysmic climax ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... strong current, and awaited events. But here in the open Miss Honnor had regained her confidence and usual composure; and in the end the continuous pressure of the green-heart top was too much for him; he began to yield—fiercely fighting now and again to get away, to be sure; but the climax was a sudden flash of Robert's steel clip, and a heavy-shouldered fifteen-pounder was out on the stones. Old Robert, smiling grimly at the success of his young mistress, but saying nothing, had to "wet" ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... the great struggle for existence. It is suggestive of strikes, the great struggle between Labour and Capital, between class and class, between principal and interest, between those with moral principles and those without them. It is suggestive of the very climax of melodramatic sensation, and, being suggestive of all this to the majority, the majority will be disappointed when it doesn't get all that this very responsible title has led them to expect. Those who know the French novel will be dissatisfied with the English adaptation of it, filtered, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various |
