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adjective
Current  adj.  
1.
Running or moving rapidly. (Archaic) "Like the current fire, that renneth Upon a cord." "To chase a creature that was current then In these wild woods, the hart with golden horns."
2.
Now passing, as time; as, the current month.
3.
Passing from person to person, or from hand to hand; circulating through the community; generally received; common; as, a current coin; a current report; current history. "That there was current money in Abraham's time is past doubt." "Your fire-new stamp of honor is scarce current." "His current value, which is less or more as men have occasion for him."
4.
Commonly estimated or acknowledged.
5.
Fitted for general acceptance or circulation; authentic; passable. "O Buckingham, now do I play the touch To try if thou be current gold indeed."
Account current. See under Account.
Current money, lawful money.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Current" Quotes from Famous Books



... Christ as the true High Priest on account of the atonement to be made by Him; and, after Isaiah, Zechariah says in chap. vi. 13: "And He sitteth and ruleth upon the throne, and He is a Priest upon His throne."—It has now become current to derive [Hebrew: izh] from [Hebrew: nzh] in the signification "to leap"—"He shall cause to leap. This explanation made its appearance at first in a very cautious way." Martini says: "I myself feel how very far from a right and ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg

... and its turbid green had faded, for the frost had touched the glaciers that fed it on the heights, but the stream ran fast, swirling round the island and breaking into eddies. In one place, a white streak marked a rebound of the current from an obstacle below, and it was across this spot the men dragged the pulley. A chain and hook hung from the latter, and they were fishing for the skip that was lost when the log ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... to occupy himself in despatching the last current business. He must hand over his official duties to his successor. There was a mocking expression in these words: ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... new to the movie-making branch of his business, spoke first. "I presume," he said finally, "that you're aware of the current feeling in our New ...
— Reel Life Films • Samuel Kimball Merwin

... usurped all the prerogatives and honors of royalty. All dispatches were sealed with her hand. Her effigy was stamped upon the current coin. She took her seat as presiding officer at the council. To confer a little more dignity upon the character of her imbecile brother, Ivan, she selected for him a wife, a young lady of extraordinary beauty whose father had command of a fortress ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... went she was very accomplished, but unfortunately, she fancied she spoke them perfectly, and was never happier than when she had people of different nations dining with her, each of whom she addressed in his own language. Many amusing mistakes of hers in speaking Italian were current in both Roman ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... point of view we can easily see the weakness and strength of current criticism of extension of the ballot. It is the business of a modern government to see to it, first, that the number of ignorant within its bounds is reduced to the very smallest number. Again, it is the duty of every such government to extend as quickly as possible the number of persons of ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... had for the last few minutes been behaving so much like a civilized being, that he was not prepared for such a sudden relapse into barbarity. But the entrance of Lady Joan, looking radiant, diverted the current of things. ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... considerable difficulties in dealing with the important questions which Harcourt had handed over to me from the Home Office, but as to which in many cases new departure was evidently needed which I had no authority to take. One such question was factory inspection. The current work was thrown on me, and I had to defend what the factory branch of the Home Office did. On the other hand, although I had the strongest opinion that the Inspectorate should be increased, and women ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... maid. We didn't forgit her in the highest places or the lowest. And after days and days had passed I felt guilty, and as if I hadn't ort to be happy, and no knowin' where she'd drifted to in the cruel under world, and wuz like sea-weed driftin' in the ocean current. And when we wuz out evenin's, no matter where I wuz, I watched the faces of every painted, gaudy dressed creeter I see, flittin' down cross streets, hoping and dreading to see Aronette's little form. Arvilly and Miss Meechim openly and loudly, and Dorothy's pale face and sorrowful ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... to borrow from "madame" the stale weekly "Courrier des Etats-Unis" for the rest of the room. From grammar, through sacred history, arithmetic, geography, mythology, down to dictation, Pupasse could pile up an accumulation of penitences that would have tasked the limits of the current day had not recreation been wisely set as a term which disbarred, by proscription, previous offenses. But even after recreation, with that day's lessons safely out, punished and expiated, Pupasse's doom seemed scarcely ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King

... Guam we crept straight across in the equatorial current, blistering hot by day, a white heat haze dimming the horizon, and an oily sea, not blue, but purple, running in swells so long and gentle that one could perceive them only by watching the rail change its angle. Once ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... to prevent them spreading out and getting too far down-stream, where there was danger from a number of snags of ti-trees, which showed above water in the middle of the creek. The cattle, however, kept well together, and when the deep part was reached, swam safely across, despite the rather strong current. ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke

... by time are not in the Fine Arts Palace. Its rooms are mainly filled with the latest work of artists of the day, exhibited under the Exposition's rule which limits competition in all departments to current production. This explains, for instance, why the French Government has placed its Meissoniers and Detailles, with Rodin's bronzes, in the French Pavilion. A Michelangelo, works of Benvenuto Cellini, and many old paintings ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... all others, are exposed to that fury, and the reason is very simple: ordinary life is the limpid surface, that of the roue is the rapid current swirling over and over, and at times touching the bottom. Coming from a ball, for instance, where they have danced with a modest girl, they seek the company of bad characters, and spend the night in riotous feasting. The last words they addressed ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset

... jacket yawning, all his magnificence seeming unconquerably alien. Winona did him the justice to recognize that this disarray was due to no wilfulness of its victim. He was helpless against a malign current of ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... spirits, in that he is shocked and appalled by nothing. He does not call it the best of worlds, but it is the only world that he knows; and the glowing interest, the passionate emotion, the vital rush and current of it, prove beyond all doubt that we are in touch with something very splendid and magnificent indeed, and that no misdeed or disaster forfeits our share in the inheritance. He is utterly at variance with the hideous Calvinistic theory, that God sent some of His creatures into the world ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson

... perfection made Sylvia's heart heavy with a sense of the plebeian inelegance of her own Saturday-morning play-clothes. Mrs. Hubert, obeying an impulse of curiosity, stopped to speak to the little Marshall girl, about whose queer upbringing there were so many stories current, and was struck with the decorative possibilities of the pretty child, apparent to her practised eye. As she made the kindly intended, vague remarks customarily served out to unknown children, she was thinking: "How can any woman with a vestige of a woman's instinct dress that lovely child in ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... a pathway for the old civilizations of the world to flow into Western Europe, and the sodden mass of barbarism was infused with a life-compelling current. This was not accomplished by placing before the inferior race a higher ideal of life for imitation, but by a mingling of the blood of the nations—a transfusion into Gallic veins of the germs of a higher living ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... the great painter, has returned to Paris from St. Petersburgh. Offensive reports were current respecting his journey: he had been paid, it was alleged, in most princely style by the Emperor, for his masterly efforts in translating to canvas the principal incidents of the Hungarian and Polish wars. He came back, it was declared, loaded and content, with a hundred thousand ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various

... more than Milton's love for music. He sung like a bard to the accompaniment of a harp. He lived in sweet sounds: forever conscious of a ceaseless flow of melody which, if resisted for a while by business occupations, would swell again in its natural current and break at his ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... without himself reposing a word of confidence in him? He would have thought, even if there were no such design as that, had he brought him there to play with his repressed emotions, and torment him? The current of these meditations would have been stayed sometimes by a rush of shame, bearing a remonstrance to himself from his own open nature, representing that to shelter such suspicions, even for the passing moment, was not to hold the high, unenvious course he had resolved ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... concerning the young Americans was soon current in the hotel, and Cora and her friends were favored with many strange glances, as they ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose

... Sile's father was an enthusiastic fisherman and had given his son more than a little good schooling. Up went the rod, and the line swing lightly back for a second, and then, with a perfect cast, the brilliant "spoon" flew over the water and alighted among the swift ripples. The current caught it and whirled it away, the polished silver glittering and dancing near the surface, but it was visible only for an instant. There came a rush and a plunge, and away out of the water sprang ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... current amongst the Babylonians has been preserved to us by the Syrian writer Damascius, who ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder

... who could patch up an old canoe though obliged to bear it half the way on their shoulders through miry bogs and interwoven willows. But the veteran trader, wedged in a box of skin with his wife, children, dogs, and furs, wheeled triumphantly through the current and deposited his heterogeneous cargo safely on the shore. The woods reechoed with the return of their exiled tenants. A hundred tribes, as gaily dressed as any burnished natives of the south, greeted our eyes ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin

... there was no creek or low land without the rocks, as is commonly observed on seacoasts; which gave them the more pain because within land the country appeared very fruitful and pleasant. They found themselves on the 13th in the latitude of 25 degrees 40 minutes; by which they discovered that the current set to the north. They were at this time over against an opening; the coast lying to the north-east, they continued a north course, but found the coast one continued rock of red colour all of a height, against which ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton

... Quarterly, published by the University of Arizona at Tucson the Colorado Quarterly, published by the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Prairie Schooner, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, are excellent exponents of current writing in the Southwest and West. All these magazines ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... a fight to the finish with Porter. His opponent had him throttled, but still he was game. The current-account ledgerman laughed ecstatically to himself. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen

... The well-trained servant moved so quietly about the room that his presence was only called to his attention by the frantic efforts of the smoke rings to retain their circular shape as they were caught in the current of air which he created and were sent whirling and twisting to dissolution, although to the last they clung to every object with which they came in contact in their futile struggle ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... before the accouchement of the countess. He excused his hurried departure on the ground of the importance of the business which had summoned him away; and speaking of his journey at table, he related a story current in the country whence he came, of a surprising event which he had all but witnessed. It was the case of a lady of quality who suddenly found herself in the most dangerous pangs of labour. All the skill of the physicians who had been summoned proved futile; the lady was at the point of ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... received by MESSRS. NICHOLS 25. PARLIAMENT STREET, or by the several LOCAL SECRETARIES. Members may compound for their future Annual Subscriptions, by the payment of 10l. over and above the Subscription for the current year. The compositions received have been funded in the Three per Cent. Consols to an amount exceeding 900l. No Books are delivered to a Member until his Subscription for the current year has been paid. New Members are admitted at the Meetings of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various

... copper;[710] indeed I was going to the market to buy flour, and was in the act of holding out my bag wide open, when the herald started shouting, "Let none in future accept pieces of copper; those of silver are alone current." ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... Monsieur Seguret was standing. He crouched down as if a gun had been aimed at him; Clarissa, however, did not see him; she fixed her gaze awhile upon the sweeping clouds and then closed the window. The President remained standing at his post some time longer and was unable to divert the current of his thoughts. Whom is she deceiving? he pondered, distressed—herself, or ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various

... pause to ponder on the importance of these little craft; on how much depended on their staunchness and stability; and on our possible success in preventing their destruction. The river was high from melting snows and the current was swift though ordinarily it is not a large river at this point. This season had been selected for the start because of the high water, which would tide us over the rocks till tributary streams should swell the normal volume; ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... comparison, which Mr. Mountague was beginning to enter into between her ladyship and Helen, he thought the best thing he could do was to walk to meet Mrs. Temple; wisely considering, that putting the body in motion sometimes stops the current of the mind. He had at least observed, that his schoolfellow, Lord George ——, seemed to find this a specific against thought; and for once he was willing to imitate his lordship's example, and to hurry about from place to place, without being in a hurry. He rang the bell, inquired ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... off to the stream below. There was a dam a half mile down, and even at this point the water was wide and deep enough to make any attempt at crossing dangerous. But half-way over an upheaval of rock parted the current, forcing the swirling waters to either side, and presenting a stern grey face to the shore. The marshal, pausing for nothing, flung himself bodily down the steep bank, unclasping his belt, as he half ran, half rolled to ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish

... destruction of that nation. He then saw a river as he went along, of such a nature as deserves to be recorded in history; it runs in the middle between Arcea, belonging to Agrippa's kingdom, and Raphanea. It hath somewhat very peculiar in it; for when it runs, its current is strong, and has plenty of water; after which its springs fail for six days together, and leave its channel dry, as any one may see; after which days it runs on the seventh day as it did before, and as though it had undergone no change at all; it hath also been observed ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... ancient Irish and also current among the Dalriadic invaders of Argyle, is taken from the translations in the Transactions of the ...
— The Book of Romance • Various

... free end, where the hackle fly reposed at a distance of fully twenty feet from the bank, was suspended barely two feet above the middle of the pool. She leaned forward, and gazed into its dark depths, which appeared to be scarcely stirred by the current, though five yards away the stream was making a merry ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham

... all the vast influence exercised upon a child in his family, 'technical education,' by which he means the ordinary school teaching, 'social education,' that is the influences which we imbibe from the current opinions of our neighbours, and finally, 'political education,' which he calls the 'keystone of the arch.' The means, he argues, by which the 'grand objects of desire may be attained, depend almost wholly ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen

... me way, old sea! I greet thee; Give me refuge in thy breast; Far and fast I've rush'd to meet thee— It is tine for me to rest. Cradled in Kazbek, and cherish'd From the bosom of the cloud, Strong am I, and all have perish'd Who would stop my current proud. For thy sons' delight, O Ocean! I've crush'd the crags of Darial, Onward my resistless motion, Like a flock, hath swept ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... fish within the waters, Not the largest, nor the smallests That thy husband cannot capture. It is well here for the maiden, Here the bride may live in freedom, Need not turn the heavy millstone, Need not move the iron pestle; Here the wheat is ground by water, For the rye, the swifter current, While the billows wash the vessels And the surging waters rinse them. Thou hast here a lovely village, Finest spot in all of Northland, In the lowlands sweet the verdure, in the uplands, fields ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.

... resolve to enter a monastery, it does not concern you to know my reasons. I can marvel at it myself, that the passage in my life of a being absolutely devoid of interest should have sufficed to change the current of that life. I can marvel that a creature whose sole merit was her beauty should have been permitted by the Creator to swing my destiny to such an unforeseen direction. The monastery at whose doors I knocked had the most valid reasons for doubting the stability of my vocation. What the world ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit

... and for every additional half-ounce or fraction of an ounce, fifteen cents; to any of the West India Islands, or islands in the Gulf of Mexico, ten cents, twenty cents, and five cents, respectively; upon each newspaper, pamphlet, and price-current to any of the ports and places above enumerated, three cents: inland postage to be added in all cases. The postmaster-general was to give the preference to such bidder as should propose to carry the mails in a steamship rather than a sailing-ship. Contractors ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon

... and apparently wished to prolong the talk. They withdrew out of the current of people passing ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... observed that drift-wood and wreckage seemed, in many places, to float towards the Pole. Trees that fall in the Siberian forests and float down the great rivers to the northern sea are frequently found washed up on the shores of Greenland, having apparently passed over the Pole itself. A strong current flows northward through Bering Strait, and it is a matter of record that an American vessel, the Jeanette, which stuck fast in the ice near Wrangel Land in 1879, drifted slowly northward with the ice for two years, and made its way in this fashion some four hundred miles towards the {141} Pole. ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock

... Current agricultural discussion would lead us to think that the farm problem is largely one of technique. The possibilities of the agricultural industry, in the light of applied science, emphasize the need of the farmer for more complete knowledge of soil and plant and animal, and for increased proficiency ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield

... the watch saw a sail; it was the Valkyria, a Danish corvette, sailing towards the Forward, bound to Newfoundland. The current from the strait became perceptible, and Shandon had to set more sail to ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... for the fate of the conquered ram; and her eyes filled again with tears as she washed his blood off her in the gay running current. But the water was soothing and fresh, the sun shone on its bright surface; the comfrey and fig-wart blew in the breeze, the heather smell filled ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida

... foreign lands I shall be able to recognise thee by this mail of thine! Surely, thy sire, O son, the divine Surya possessed of the wealth of splendour, is blessed, for he will with his celestial sight behold thee going down the current! Blessed also is that lady who will, O thou that are begotten by a god, take thee for her son, and who will give thee suck when thou art thirsty! And what a lucky dream hath been dreamt by her that will adopt thee ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... a fresh pang. For she had lost it! Three days ago it had somehow slipped from her possession. Had she left it lying on the table in the Public Library? Nobody there had seen anything of it. But on the very day of her loss she had been at the Library, examining the current numbers of all the illustrated papers, in the hope of gleaning some hint as to editorial tastes. She remembered reading Eleanor's last letter there, the letter in which her friend had written that she was to ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... plays I have added short strictures, containing a general censure of faults, or praise of excellence; in which I know not how much I have concurred with the current opinion; but I have not, by any affectation of singularity, deviated from it. Nothing is minutely and particularly examined, and therefore it is to be supposed that in the plays which are condemned there is much to be praised, and in ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... plate on a wooden drum, and revolving this drum, with an electrical needle pressing lightly on the ridges of copper, they got a varying degree of electrical current. Where the needle touched a high place in the copper plate the contact was good, and there was a strong current. When the needle got to a light place in the copper—a depression, so to speak—the contact was not so good, and there was only a ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton

... tie of friendship we may set that of the family. In old France this bond was much closer than it is in modern America. If a man rose in the world, the benefit to his relations was greater than now; and there was no theory current that a ruler, or a man in a position of trust, should exclude from the places under him those persons with whom he is best acquainted, and of whose fidelity to himself and to his employers he has most reason ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... are natives, and necessarily can only send me the rumours current in the bazaars, or known generally to the public; and their news is, for the most ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... found in 1783. The document attesting the embarking of these remains reads as follows: "I, the undersigned clerk of the King, our Lord, in charge of the office of the chamber of this Royal Audiencia, do certify that on the twentieth day of December of the current year, there being in this holy cathedral the Commissioner Gregorio Savinon, perpetual member and dean of the very illustrious municipal council of this city, and in the presence of the most illustrious and reverend friar Fernando Portillo y Torres, most worthy Archbishop of ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... man of science, was born near Ilchester in Somerset. His family appears to have been in good circumstances, but in the stormy reign of Henry III. their property was despoiled and several members of the family were driven into exile. Roger completed his studies at Oxford, though not, as current traditions assert, at Merton or at Brasenose, neither of which had then been founded. His abilities were speedily recognized by his contemporaries, and he enjoyed the friendship of such eminent men as Adam de Marisco and Robert Grosseteste, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... very pretty, with a finished, delicately fresh and aloof type of beauty which was singularly attractive to the intelligent and fastidious. And so there had already appeared, striking across the current of their placid lives, more than one acute observer who, divining certain hidden depths of feeling in the girl's nature, longed to probe and rouse them. But so far such attempts, generally undertaken by men who were a good deal ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... Massachusetts had absorbed; the infraction of the navigation laws; and the coinage of pine-tree shillings. The last named measure had been forced upon the colonists by the scarcity of a circulating medium. Until 1661 Indian wampum had been a legal tender, and far into the eighteenth century it remained current in small transactions. "In 1693 the ferriage from New York to Brooklyn was eight stivers in wampum or a silver twopence." [35] As early as 1652 Massachusetts had sought to supply the deficiency by the issue of ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... even breathing, looking at the tiny flame of the little lamp, which was small enough not to add to the heat of the tent and too weak to illuminate it more than partially, thinking deeply. He strove to stem the current of his thoughts, to keep his mind a blank, or to concentrate on trivialities—he followed with exaggerated interest the swift erratic course of a bat that had flown in through the open door flap, counted ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... you. I've taken parties there before, and there's a good spot to land, and a place to tie the boats to, which there isn't on every one of them islands. It's just an hour's row up from the weir, and less time to go back because of the current." ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... find it hard to dismiss the lad, for his is a besetting face, and besides, it stubbornly appears above the main current of all the story ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

... hour, comes to every man in the course of his life in which he afterward sees that the time was fulfilled. As the drops become mingled with the stream, so at that moment the things we have done and thought unite to carry us on a new current, either to salvation or perdition. Any moment may bring the crisis; for that reason the Christians are right when they call on one another to watch. You also must keep your eyes open. When the time—who knows how soon?—is fulfilled for you, it will determine ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of the set hedges, Orchards, watered Gardens, springing Fountaines, current streames in Marble Channelles, conteined, framed, and held in, with an incredible Art, greene Hearbes, still freshe and flowering, a sweete ayre, warme and spring windes, with a confused charme of singing and chirping birdes, ...
— Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Loue in a Dreame • Francesco Colonna

... after a month of dry weather, the shower brightens the dusty shrubbery of a suburban villa. The world is not so much in need of new thoughts as that when thought grows old and worn with usage it should, like current coin, be called in, and, from the mint of genius, reissued fresh and new. Love is an old story enough, but in every generation it is re-born, in the downcast eyes and blushes of young maidens. And so, although he fluttered in Eden, Cupid is young to-day. If ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith

... the river, the force of the current was directed against this particular spot, and had undermined it; and although strong enough to bear a man or a horse, under ordinary circumstances, yet down at once it thundered under the desperate leap of Satan. However, it did not signify, as nothing could have prevented ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... images of thought, returned to him new-clad, re-entering the desolate heart in a white-winged procession of consolation. On the heath beside him the Christ stood once more, and as the disciple felt the sacred presence he could bear for the first time to let the chafing pent-up current of love flow into the new channels, so painfully prepared for it by the toil of thought. 'Either God or an impostor.' What scorn the heart, the intellect, threw on the alternative! Not in the dress of speculations which represent the product of long past, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... or lack of all accommodations, the agente, who was on the vessel with us, expressed surprise, and seemed profoundly hurt. The stream is full of curves and bends, is broad, and notably uniform in breadth; it has considerable current, and is bordered closely by the tropical forest, except where little clearings have been made for fincas. Formerly, caimans, or alligators, were common, but they have become rare, through the diligent hunting to which they have been ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr

... the shades of their victims would pursue them incessantly, and disturb their slumbers. They go in a procession, and in full armour, to the nearest stream. At the moment they enter the water a diviner, placed higher up, throws some purifying substances into the current. This is, however, not strictly necessary. The javelins and battle-axes also undergo the process of washing." Among the Bageshu of East Africa a man who has killed another may not return to his own house on the same day, though he may enter the village and spend the night in a ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... remote part of the grounds; the paths that led to it were wild and tangled; the fairest flower, the foxglove, grew in tall clumps among the foliage of the thickets and shrubberies that divided the lawn into undulating glades of turf all round it; a sheet of water in which there was a rapid current—I am not sure that it was not the river—ran close by, and the whole place used to affect my imagination in the weirdest way, as the habitation of invisible presences of some strange supernatural ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... popular interest in these tragedies proves that the entranced auditors have dabbled in the eddies, so they feel a fervent interest in those hopelessly caught in the current, and from the snug safety of the parquette live vicariously their lives and the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... prospects improved; he took Lincoln, and marched to Lynn, whence he wont to Wisbech, intending to proceed by the Wash from Cross-keys to Foss-dyke, across the sands—a safe passage at low water, but covered suddenly by the tide, which there forms a considerable eddy on meeting the current ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... audiences at the Fulton Theater were astonished at the play's showing of sheer strength as acted drama. Possibly it might not interest the general public; probably it would be inadvisable to present it to them. But no thinking person, with the most casual interest in current social evils, could listen to the version of Richard Bennett, Wilton Lackaye, and their associates, without being gripped by the power of ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair

... was guided by any deep-seated moral principles. Politics were for him the art of the possible enlarged by the negation of the ethical. Ferdinand may, therefore, be described as an opportunist, who in current politics contented himself with following his nose. Of treaties and conventions he had signed a goodly number and broken some. Thus with Russia he had a secret agreement of a military nature, and also with Russia's rival, Austria-Hungary. With Serbia he ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... business in equal small amounts and share the profits in proportion to their purchases. The possibility of excessive profits to a single owner or a small group of owners is thus abolished. But the other evils of autocratic industry remain; laborers are hired for current wages, as by the capitalists, and the temptations to unfair treatment of employees and ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... to show by photographic evidence that the magnetic field developed by the passage of an electric current across the spark gap gives the first light emitted a different appearance from that emitted a few millionths ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various

... him, having with them the young son of the owner of the boat. And in some way the boat was overturned, as they came back towing the stag after them, when some hundred or more yards from shore, and in deep water where a swift current ran. Two men clung to the upturned boat; but the other must swim, holding up his son, who, though a big boy of fourteen, was helpless in the water. And I saw that it was like to go hard with both of them, for the current bore ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler

... of the channels that divide these islands; but meeting with a strong current setting against us, I bore up, and went to the leeward of them all. Toward the evening, the weather, which had been hazy all day, cleared up, and we got sight of a very lofty promontory, whose elevated summit, forming two exceedingly ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... Environment: current issues: deforestation; soil erosion; desertification; water pollution natural hazards: frequent earthquakes, landslides, volcanic activity; periodic droughts international agreements: party to - Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... story the pilot told, with his back to his hearers,— Keeping his hand on the wheel and his eye on the globe of the jack-staff, Holding the boat to the shore and out of the sweep of the current, Lightly turning aside for the heavy logs of the drift-wood, Widely shunning the snags that made ...
— Poems • William D. Howells

... because it introduces what follows; that after I had had this discourse with him, I asked him, how far it was from our island to the shore, and whether the canoes were not often lost? He told me there was no danger, no canoes ever lost; but that after a little way out to sea, there was a current, and a wind always one way in the morning, the ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... wide brim, you mean? and his face was pale—a youngish face?" Mary pressed her, with a white-lipped intensity of interrogation. But if the kitchen-maid found any adequate answer to this challenge, it was swept away for her listener down the rushing current of her own convictions. The stranger—the stranger in the garden! Why had Mary not thought of him before? She needed no one now to tell her that it was he who had called for her husband and gone away with him. But who was he, and why ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton

... through the telescope. He would train the device upon a building across the street, then cut down the current until the unseen vibration penetrated inside the building. If there was nothing there of interest he would gradually increase the power, and the ray would extend out and still out into other rooms and beyond them to still others. Blinky had a lot of fun, but he never forgot the practical application ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various

... the river with her hands tied, although the current was strong and when she slipped the old woman screamed, first with joy and then for fear she might be drowned. And when they had dragged Eudena to shore, she could not stand for a time, albeit they beat her sore. So they ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... low islands to the north, which we had already past, and which now lay to windward of us. I immediately changed our course, and endeavoured to approach them by dint of tacking, but a strong easterly current, which increased as we drew nearer to the land, almost baffled our efforts. We succeeded with much difficulty in getting within eleven miles and a half of the western extremity of the group, distinguished by a ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... kind, and it was only in the monasteries that men were supposed to know how to read and write. Even kings and queens were often without these polite accomplishments, and the right of the sword had not yet been questioned. Then, it must be taken into consideration that current ideas regarding education in Italy in this early time were quite different from what they are to-day. As there were no books, book learning was impossible, and the old and yellowed parchments stored away in the libraries of the monasteries were certainly ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... for this special purpose. The market begins and concludes at a fixed time, indicated by the ringing of a bell. In this hall the dealers have stands, furnished with desks, at which they may always be found, and here sacks of samples are pitched. There is a clerk of the market, and the current prices are posted up, and afterwards sent to all the local newspapers. The cattle-market used to be carried on entirely in the streets, each farmer selling his own beasts or sheep by private treaty with the dealers. The streets were then often filled with cattle from one ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... she saw now, with a clearness that surprised her, that the situation had really challenged her imagination. She had been too calm, too collected, too well-poised, full of smug over-confidence. She had read in the current novels of the day how hysterically unsophisticated heroines conducted themselves in tight corners and she had followed their writhings with ill-concealed impatience. She never had really put herself in their place, but she had had a vague notion that ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... discrepancies which nearly break the heart of him who would fain make his list clear. But here, on the whole, is presented to the reader with fair accuracy a list of the works of Cicero, independent of that continual but ever-changing current of his thought which came welling out from him daily in his speeches and his letters. Again, however, we must remember that here are omitted all those which are either wholly lost or have come to us only in fragments too abruptly broken for the purposes of continuous study. Of ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... really formed the main current of his life from his teens onward. During his business ventures in Kentucky and elsewhere this current came to the surface more and more, absorbed more and more of his time and energies, and carried him further and further from the conditions of ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs

... strong, and bold Conspiracie, O loyall Father of a treacherous Sonne: Thou sheere, immaculate, and siluer fountaine, From whence this streame, through muddy passages Hath had his current, and defil'd himselfe. Thy ouerflow of good, conuerts to bad, And thy abundant goodnesse shall excuse This deadly blot, in ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... not answer, but meditated in silence. At that moment they reached the Pasig and the banka began to ascend the current. Over the Bridge of Spain a horseman galloped rapidly, while a shrill, prolonged whistle ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... can feel the pull of the current; I am still clinging to the sluice-gate, but if I let go, I ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... current that John C. Dancy, the Negro United States Collector of Customs for this port, has been notified to leave the city and will be waited upon if orders are not ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... I don't look out. I am social but not gregarious. I do not thrive in clubs, I do not smoke, or tell stories, or drink, or dispute, or keep late hours. I am usually as solitary as a bird of prey, though I trust not for the same reason. I love so much to float on the current of my own thoughts. I mix better with farmers, workers, and country people generally than with professional or business men. Birds of a feather do flock together, and if we do not feel at ease in our company we may be sure we are in the wrong flock. Once while crossing ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... Mormon family. I think the experiences through which the people have passed have given them a quality of cheerful patience. They have been schooled to bear persecution with quiet fortitude. Tragedy sweeps by them in the daily current of life. A young man goes on a mission, and dies in a foreign land; and his parents accept their bereavement like Spartans, almost without mourning, sustained by the religious belief that he has ended his career gloriously. Taught to devote themselves ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... was evidently in a very communicative frame of mind, for from that moment she talked rapidly on current musical topics. She knew the latest operas, and loved the spirit of unrest, the unsettled minor chords of the new school of music; preferred the leit motif to the aria, music drama to opera, and was altogether ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein

... in the edge of the wood, he continued a hundred yards on foot till he came to the stream. Twenty feet wide it was, without perceptible current, cool and inviting, and he was very thirsty. But he waited inside his screen of leafage, his eyes fixed on the screen on the opposite side. To make the wait endurable, he sat down, his carbine resting on his knees. The minutes passed, and slowly his tenseness relaxed. At last he ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... cutter to buy wood for dyeing mats to sell to the natives of Malekula, and he kindly took me with him. We sailed through the channel one rainy morning, but the wind died down and we had to anchor, as the current threatened to take us back. We profited by the stop to pay a visit to a Mr. R., who cultivated anarchistic principles, also a plantation which seemed in perfect condition and in direct opposition to his anti-capitalistic ideas. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... reaped the full benefit of the change, and the extensive acquaintance of the Spanish trader with merchants in all the Mediterranean ports enabled him to turn a large share of the new current of trade into the hands of Geoffrey and himself. The capital which he transferred from Spain to England was very much larger than that employed by the majority of English merchants, whose wealth ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... impression that the community is a new discovery or social invention were he to read only the current discussions. It is, however, a form of social organization as old as agriculture itself, but which was very largely neglected in the settlement of the larger part of the United States. This new emphasis on the community is, ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... on a mass of tangled brushwood by the riverside. Scrambling down to this through the wild vines and briars, we succeeded, after many fruitless attempts, in gaining the water's edge. There was no place to cross and the current was far too swift to attempt jumping, so we had to turn back. While deliberating on the right path, a little girl, looking very wretched, with blurred face and torn clothes, came round a corner, and asked us if we ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough

... when revived hatred and persecution had thrown the camp of the emancipators into disorder, and the most ardent of the anti-Rabbinic champions, like Lilienblum and Braudes, had been driven to the point of raising the flag of Zionism, Gordon alone of all was not carried along with the current. His skepticism kept him from embracing the illusions of his friends converted ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... is either current, or strange, or metaphorical, or ornamental, or newly-coined, or ...
— Poetics • Aristotle

... institutions being at once left to their own control; others would go so far as to say they were glad that the war was ended, and they had never had any confidence in the confederacy; others protested that they had been opposed to secession until their States went out, and then yielded to the current of events; some would give me to understand that they had always been good Union men at heart, and rejoiced that the war had terminated in favor of the national cause, but in most cases such a sentiment was expressed only in a whisper; others again would grumblingly insist upon the restoration ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... so hard to revive him that he recovered, and the next morning was well enough to leave the fort with his brother, both of them having been given substantial presents of copper. The story was told among the tribe as a miracle, and the belief became current that to his other virtues the brave Captain added that of being able to raise men from the dead. Then one of Powhatan's warriors secretly secured a bag of gunpowder and pretended that he could use it as the English did. His ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... the ten thousand Greeks, is his most famous book. But his "Cyropaedia," in which the history of Cyrus is the subject, although still used as a classic in colleges for the beauty of the style, has no value as a history, since the author merely adopted the current stories of his hero without sufficient investigation. Xenophon wrote a variety of treatises and dialogues, but his "Memorabilia" of Socrates is the most valuable. All antiquity and all modern writers unite in giving to Xenophon ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... recollects,—two parallel military currents, flowing steadily on, shooting out estafettes, or horse-parties, on the right and left; steadily submerging all Silesia as they flow forward. Left column or current is in slight pause at Glogau here; but will directly be abreast again. On Tuesday, 27th, Schwerin is within wind of Liegnitz; on Wednesday morning, while the fires are hardly lighted, or the smoke of Liegnitz risen among the Hills, Schwerin has done his feat with the usual ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... he gives any consistent account of his greatest contemporaries, would be too much. He is full of whims, and moreover, full of spite. He cannot be decently fair to anyone who deserted his father, or stood in Conway's light. He reflects at all times the irreverent gossip current behind the scenes. To know the best and the worst that can be said of any great man, the best plan is to read the leading article of his party newspaper, and then to converse in private with its writer. The eulogy and the sarcasm may both be ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... Don't remember much about it myself." The sparkle of wit in this brief notice of the circumstances of her birth is very characteristic. All through her life little ripples of fun were continually playing on the surface of that current of intense thought and feeling in which ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe

... robbed of and was prepared to defend, as he would have defended his little hoard of money, the home he had built, with the berserker fury of his ancestors. He was conscious of his might, conscious that there were few men on earth who could stand up against him in the rough and tumble fighting current in the far wilderness. He knew that he could go through such a crowd as was threatening his friend like a ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... I may as well now as at any other time speak to a certain matter of fact not wholly unrelated to the question under your consideration. We, who would persuade you to revert to the ancient policy of this kingdom, labor under the effect of this short current phrase, which the court leaders have given out to all their corps, in order to take away the credit of those who would prevent you from that frantic war you are going to wage upon your colonies. Their cant is this: "All the disturbances in America have been created ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... cases uncouth or even unpresentable to ears polite, in all scarcely intelligible to the untravelled English reader; for it must be remembered that, with the exception of the Adventures of Raja Rasâlu, all these stories are strictly folk-tales passing current among a people who can neither read nor write, and whose diction is full of colloquialisms, and, if we choose to call them so, vulgarisms. It would be manifestly unfair, for instance, to compare the literary standard of such ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... of the literature of the Greeks; a literature whose continuous current has rolled down from remote ages to our own day, and whose influence has been more extensive and lasting than that of any other nation of the ancient or modern world. Endowed with profound sensibility and a lively imagination, surrounded by all the circumstances that could aid in perfecting the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... purity from the faintest taint of suggestion, will not suffice to confer merit on what does not otherwise possess it. Whether, as I rather think, Fielding pursued the plan he had formed ab incepto, or whether he cavalierly neglected it, or whether the current of his own genius carried him off his legs and landed him, half against his will, on the shore of originality, are questions for the Schools, and, as I venture to think, not for the higher forms in them. We have Joseph Andrews as it is; and we may be abundantly thankful ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... dear reader, tell you whether this pleasant abode be washed by the waves of the Atlantic or by the turbid current of the Mississippi; whether it be fanned by the flower-laden zephyrs of the South, or by the health-inspiring breezes of the North. The exterior must indeed have been left wholly to your imagination, had I not fortunately obtained a sketch from a young friend, an amateur artist, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... of the house came open with some noise, and Pedro entered, pressing the edge of a loaded tray to his breast. His big, hairy head rolled a little, his feet fell in front of each other with a short, hard thump on the floor. The arrival changed the current of Ricardo's thought, perhaps, but certainly of ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad

... second party stationed by the side of a good sized boat, into which all three stepped upon her arrival; the two strangers seizing the oars and striking boldly out for the Canadian side of the river. Although rapid the current at the point of their crossing, so admirably did they manage their craft and lustily did they pull, they did not deviate much from the light on the opposite shore, which seemed to gleam from some cottage window, and which they took as a beacon and guide to their course. In the space of about half ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... is a perennial stream emptying itself into the blue Mediterranean waters four miles north of Jaffa. Its average width is forty yards and its depth ten feet, with a current running at about three miles an hour. Till we crossed it the river was the boundary between the British and Turkish armies in this sector, and all the advantage of observation was on the northern bank. From it ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... versions of the Scripture, such a prohibition is not unintelligible. It should be borne in mind that French was the language of the educated and was the official language of the English law courts and of the Parliament till after 1360. The French or Latin versions then current were, therefore, amply sufficient for those who were likely to derive any advantage from the study of the Bible, while at the same time the metrical paraphrases of the important books of the Old Testament and of the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, and the English prose translation ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... but three or four feet deep, with a slow current and, for some little distance up, was too brackish to be used. It was not until they entered the line of forest that it was found fresh enough. The men in the first cutter proceeded to fill their ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty

... German money market, did not consider it necessary to follow England's example. The German Reichsbank has therefore not exceeded the rate of 6 per cent. Worse yet was the fact that England, on Aug. 2, was obliged to require grace on exchange, and France, on Aug. 3, grace on its accounts-current and Lombard loans. Although along with England and France, also Russia, Austria, Italy, Belgium, and other nations required temporary credit, Germany to date has not deemed it necessary to ask for time in meeting its obligations. Savings ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... anemia. In malaria, syphilitic or gouty patients, constitutional treatment must be given for those diseases before the neuralgia will be better. The systematic use of galvanic electricity, properly used, is the most valuable means at the physician's disposal, especially in the descending current, beginning with the mild current and gradually increasing in strength. Internally: Arsenic, bromine, ergotinc, aconite, gelsemium, valerian, ether, cannabis indica and quinine are recommended. Opium may be used in the very severe forms, but it must be used ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... And, swimming, how, amid the watery roar, A knight a weighty anchor in his throat Had fix'd, and so had dragged him to the shore, As men against the current track a boat. This while Oberto comes; who, if his lore, Who told the tale, were true, desires to note; While his invading army, far and wide, Ebuda burn and waste on ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto



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