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In the midst   /ɪn ðə mɪdst/   Listen
In the midst

adverb
1.
The middle or central part or point.  Synonym: midmost.  "Could he walk out in the midst of his piece?"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"In the midst" Quotes from Famous Books



... In the midst of the grove was a fine lawn, sloping down towards the house, near the summit of which rose a plentiful spring, gushing out of a rock covered with firs, and forming a constant cascade of about thirty feet, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... and sentiments and domestic situations appear in numerous tragedies, long-since forgotten, which in form, setting, and social level present no startling deviations from traditional standards. Little or no attention has been given to some of these obscure dramatists who in the midst of the Collier controversy attempted to illustrate in tragedy the arguments advanced in the third part of John Dennis's The Usefulness of the Stage, to the Happiness of Mankind, to Government, and to Religion (1698). Striving to demonstrate ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... In the midst of all this, we are diverting ourselves as cordially as if Righteousness and Peace had just been kissing one another. Balls, operas, and masquerades! The Duchess of Norfolk (447) makes a grand masquing next week; and to-morrow there ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... been rhubarb pills! They turned him aside, however, and, breaking through the left flank of the khedda, he took refuge in the thickest jungle he could find. The whole khedda followed in hot pursuit, crashing through overgrowth of canes, creepers, and trees, in the midst of confusion and rumpus utterly inconceivable, therefore beyond my powers of description! We had to look out sharply in this chase, for we were passing under branches at times. One of these caught my man Quin, and swept him clean off his pad. But he fell on his ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne

... character to keep mutual admiration glowing and growing. We might very justly fancy either correspondent saying at any time in those ten months to impatient or compassionate Cupid what Hilary is reported to have said on one of the greatest days between Manassas and Shiloh, in the midst of a two-sided carnage: "Yes, General, hard hit, but please don't put us ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable

... perfect paradise in the midst of an immeasurable wilderness. At last, having reached the place, and appeared before the altar of the deity, the priest, who was no stranger to Alexander's wishes, declared him to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... while higher up the bay the vast city appeared, extending for miles along its irregular shore, and running back almost to the foot of the Tijuca Mountains, with hills and heights in every direction. In the midst of this scene we dropped our anchor under the frowning fortress of Villegagnon, the first castle erected ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... right, and crost the plain of Barahona, and past near Berlanga; and they crost the Douro by a ford below the town, and rode on and came into the Oak-wood of Corpes. The mountains were high, and the trees thick and lofty, and there were wild beasts in that place. And they came to a green lawn in the midst of that oak forest, where there was a fountain of clear water, and there the Infantes gave order that their tents should be pitched; and they passed the night there, making show of love to their wives, which they badly fulfilled when the sun was risen, for this was the place where they thought ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... at the side door and waited, but there was no answer. I pushed the door open and there, in the midst of disorder and dirt, sat Ould Michael. I could hardly believe it possible that in so short a time so great a change could come to a man. His hair hung in long grey locks about his ears, his face was unshaven, his dress dirty and slovenly and his whole appearance and attitude suggested ruin ...
— Michael McGrath, Postmaster • Ralph Connor

... of mind may happen to be. I've known them that never could enjoy it at all, unless it was in the midst of a jollification, and them again that enjoyed it best in a corner. Some men have no peace if they don't find plunder, and some if they do. Human nature' is crooked in these matters. Old Tom seems to belong to ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... Sometimes we find ourselves in the midst of unusual surroundings where we can be of service if we know what to do and how to do it. A Scout is sometimes called upon to give First Aid, possibly to tie on splints, a bandage, or a sling; ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... have been amassed—most of them, indeed, in the past ten years. There has been a rapid growth of industry. The old Southern city has become a soft-coal factory center. A pall of smoke hangs over the center of the city where the factories roar and pound. In the midst of this gloom the workfolk are creating rivers of beer, carloads of shoes and woodenware, millions of garments and bags, and the thousand and one things necessary to fill the orders of hundreds of traveling salesmen in the Southwest territory—and in the South, too, for St. Louis is winning ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... asked what business we had out of our own islands, unless upon the score of trade or treaty, or to defend the coasts with our fleet. Above all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary standing army in the midst of peace and among a free people. He said if we were governed by our own consent, in the persons of our representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against whom we were to fight; and ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... Prussian Code. And yet, it was on the question of codification that this memorable controversy was carried on. The two principal combatants, while manfully battling, the one against the other, continued to hold each other in high esteem, and the profound study of law was developed in the midst of ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... of organized religion and men too broke to afford the neighborhood movie flocked to the churches. Brother Paul, now on a national hookup, repeated his exhortations to all Christians, urging them to join their Savior in the midst of the grass. There was great agitation for restraining him; more reserved pastors pointed out that he was responsible for increasing the national suicide rate, but the Federal Communications Commission ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... busyness of animals, the signs of the weather, the cares of the snowy season, the exquisite stupidity of sheep, the exquisite cunning of dogs: all these he could present so humanly, and with so much old experience and living gusto, that weariness was excluded. And in the midst he would suddenly straighten his bowed back, the stick would fly abroad in demonstration, and the sharp thunder of his voice roll out a long itinerary for the dogs, so that you saw at last the use of that great wealth of names for every knowe and howe ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... tragedy, of which we discern the proportions only in looking back, indeed a fateful one? A young New-Englander, rich, handsome, generous, and thoroughly taught by books and by ample experience of the Old World and the New to honor men and freedom, passes a few days in a Slave State, in the midst of that cruel system which could progress only from bad to worse; to which reform was death, and which with the instinct of self-preservation punished all open attempts to ameliorate the relations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... In the midst of the haying, however, came a message which he could not disregard,—a hasty summons from Mark Deane, who, seeing Gilbert in the upper hill-field, called from the road, bidding him to the raising of Hallowell's new barn, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... Boltrope, of one or two of her inferior officers, and of several common men who had died of their wounds in the night, were, with the usual formalities, committed to the deep; when the yards of the ship were again braced by the wind, and she glided along the trackless waste, leaving no memorial, in the midst of the ever-rolling waters, to mark the ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the difficulties of a foreign language, you realized that this Cockney sergeant was a man. For one thing he had a sense of humour; he had kept it in the midst of terror and death—kept it standing all night in trenches full of icy-cold water, with icy-cold water pouring down his collar. Also the sergeant had a sense of honour—there were things he could not do to a 'Un, even though the 'Un might do them to him. Jimmie had listened ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... four hundred strong, was disposed behind the work and abattis, holding a line not much more than a hundred yards long. The first rush carried the men close to the work, but they were stopped by the fallen timber, and dropped fast under the close fire of the enemy. Colonel Chenault was killed in the midst of the abattis—his brains blown out as he was firing his pistol into the earthwork and calling on his men to follow. The second brigade had started with an inadequate supply of ammunition, and the fire of the attacking party soon slackened ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... be more explicit," said Colonel Doller. "The tide of immigration has already overwhelmed this section; a great commercial wave is closely following it. Trade will soon locate its emporiums in the midst of us. Already two blocks to the south of this property a commercial mart has begun to invite the attention and the patronage of ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field

... labor, pain, and renunciation, which produce no results in the satisfaction of wants but are regarded as beneficial or meritorious in themselves, as a kind of gymnastic in self-control and self-denial. It is not to be denied that such a gymnastic has value in education, especially in the midst of luxury and self-indulgence, if it is controlled by common sense and limited within reason. Nearly all men, however, are sure to meet with as much necessity for self-control and self-denial as is necessary to their training, without arbitrarily subjecting themselves ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... who on this side of the water knew no complicated life but the simple life of primitive neighborhoods. Our task is very much more difficult. That sympathy which alone interprets public duty is more difficult for a public man to acquire now than it was then, because we live in the midst of circumstances and conditions ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson

... was a young lady (so he called her) as 'ad won his 'art, an' she was a cannibal as lived on a coal island in the Paphysic Ocean. Then he told her some stories about the coal island as made my blood run cold, and said his Flora behaved like a heroine in the midst of ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne

... the centre black pools of stagnant water marked an abandoned peat cutting; any spot less calculated to attract an agricultural eye would have been hard to imagine; but Blanchard set to work, began to fill the greedy quag in the midst with tons of soil, and soon caused the place to look business-like—at least in his own estimation. As for the Duchy, he did not trouble himself. The Duchy itself was always reclaiming land without considering the rights and wrongs ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... we were soon in the midst of the huddled houses of the Latin quarter. Tucked away between two larger buildings, we found a quaint Spanish restaurant. As we opened our tamales, my companion again ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray

... goes, but Barton himself shows what finding something to eat meant in those days, and Phillip's despatches prove that, although the food question was the practical every-day problem to be grappled with, he, in the midst of the most harassing famine-time, was able to look beyond when he wrote these words: "This country will yet be the most valuable acquisition ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... In the midst of all this came the dreaded examinations, then the fearful waiting till the last day of school when the decision would be announced. The winter before, at these mid-year examinations, Genevieve had not passed. She had not forgotten the mortification of that tragedy, nor ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter

... sunshine into this house of mourning. He came in with cheery look and manly spirit, and tried to reanimate the expiring heart of the poor money-digger, but it was all in vain. Wolfert was completely done over. If any thing was wanting to complete his despair, it was a notice served upon him in the midst of his distress, that the corporation were about to run a new street through the very centre of his cabbage garden. He saw nothing before him but poverty and ruin; his last reliance, the garden of his forefathers, was to be laid waste, and what ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... High, in the midst, a Pageant of a Throne In the extreme of Tinsel Splendor shone. No Sacred Ensigns, no Imperial Chair, Mark'd the high worth of those who counseled there; But, shaded by a Curtain's vivid green, A splendid, soft, luxuriant Couch was seen. The spangled Banners glitter'd ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe

... striking enough, and they form what may be thought at first only a bold, rude, Gothic outline. By comparing it with other characters of the same author we shall perceive the absolute truth and identity which is observed in the midst of the giddy whirl and rapid career of events. Macbeth in Shakespeare no more loses his identity of character in the fluctuations of fortune or the storm of passion, than Macbeth in himself would have lost the identity of his person. Thus ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... continued their first day's short journey. When, however, evening came, and the caravan halted, and Jesus was nowhere to be found, His parents sorrowfully returned to Jerusalem seeking Him. At last, on the third day, they went to the Temple, and found Jesus sitting in the midst of the aged and learned Jewish doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. "And all that heard Him were astonished ...
— Mother Stories from the New Testament • Anonymous

... basin of the lakes; whose gradually sloping sides, like some old pinnacled city, were everywhere bristling with the giant forms of the heaven-aspiring pine, and whose nearer recesses were pierced, in the midst, by the long, lessening line of the gleaming Umbagog; while around the whole circle of the horizon, scattered here and there far back into the blue distance, rose mountain after mountain in misty grandeur to ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... Sibylla a certain hour he thought a proper time for Jake Crouthamel to take his departure Sunday evenings, Fritz conceived the brilliant (?) idea of setting the alarm clock to "go off" quite early in the evening. He placed the clock at the head of the stairs, and in the midst of an interesting conversation between the lovers the alarm sounded with a loud, whizzing noise, which naturally made quick-tempered Sibylla very angry. She said on seeing Fritz the next morning: "It was not necessary to set the 'waker' ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas

... to expatiate on the battle. I have read in the correspondent's letter of a Northern newspaper, that in the midst of the company assembled the reader's humble servant was present, and in a very polite society, too, of "poets, clergymen, men of letters, and members of both Houses of Parliament." If so, I must have ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray

... any rods to scourge ourselves, since we carry them in our bowels, and that our souls are in a miserable captivity, if the light of grace and heavenly truth doth not shine continually upon us: and by our discretion to moderate ourselves, to be more circumspect and wary in the midst of these dangers. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... Dawson, but they could not throw over the civil and military powers who supported him in his demands. And had they thrown him over they would have been left to deal by their incompetent unaided selves with a strike in the midst of war which might have spread like a prairie fire over the whole country. But though they bent before Dawson, I am very sure that they did not love him, and that he will never be the Chief Commissioner ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... after that, musing, and Setanta, having replaced the sacred vessels in their chamber and having locked the door, strode away into the boys' hall. There was a great fire in the midst, and the boys sat round it, for it was cold. Cuculain broke their circle, pushing the boys asunder, and sat down. They tried to drag him away, but he laughed and kept his place like a rock. Then they called him "a Fomorian, and no man," and perforce ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady

... civic advance. This street must have been the main thoroughfare, for stone-paved lanes, still narrower, wound from it here and there, while it kept a fairly direct course to the little piazza on a height in the midst of the town. Two churches and a simple town house partly enclosed it with their seamed and shattered facades. The dwellings here were more ruinous than on the thoroughfare, and some were tumbled in heaps. But Lanfear pushed open the door of one of the churches, and found himself ...
— Between The Dark And The Daylight • William Dean Howells

... fine ladies and gentlemen were in the midst and within the tents, and there were Mr. ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood

... sigh for apparently no reason at all. Then Miss Toombs lent her a volume of Shelley, the love passages in which Mavis eagerly devoured. Her favourite time for reading was in bed. She marked, to read and reread, favourite passages. Often in the midst of these she would leave off, when her mind would pursue a train of thought inspired by a phrase or thought of the poet. Very soon she had learned 'Love's Philosophy' by heart. The next symptom of the ailment from which she was suffering was a dreamy languor (frequently punctuated by sighs), ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... what has happened?" she cried distractedly, just able to distinguish her husband's figure standing in the midst ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon

... had been cut in the winter, so that a few weeks since in spring the bluebells could be seen, instead of being concealed by the ash branches and the woodbine. Among them grew one with white bells, like a lily, solitary in the midst of the azure throng. A "drive," or green lane passing between the ash-stoles, went into the copse, with tufts of tussocky grass on either side and rush bunches, till farther away the overhanging branches, where the poles were uncut, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... on the shore made a wide arc of radiance across the sea. As Ross headed toward the wave-washed coast he began to hear shouting and other sounds which made him believe that the besiegers were in the midst of an all-out assault. Yet those distant fires and rocketlike blasts into the sky had a wavery blur. And Ross, making his way with the effortless water cleaving of the diver, surfaced now and then to spot film curling up from the surface of the ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton

... children, although it must be said that this phase of the law is generally disregarded. Again, in spite of the ample proof to the contrary, there are to be found persons who refuse to be vaccinated even in the midst of a smallpox epidemic. A law in New York State provides that no unvaccinated child shall attend public schools, the law being mandatory upon the school trustees. If this law were faithfully carried out, smallpox would entirely disappear from the ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... windward, he caught his boots in one hand and trousers in the other, and began hopping about the cabin with surprising agility, dodging or jumping over the sliding trunk and rolling bottles, and making frantic efforts, apparently, to put both legs simultaneously into one boot. Surprised in the midst of this arduous task by an unexpected lurch, he made an impetuous charge upon an inoffensive washstand, stepped on an erratic bottle, fell on his head, and finally brought up a total wreck in the corner of the room. Convulsed with laughter, the Major could only ejaculate disconnectedly, "I tell ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... commonly they are of a cyclonic character. The opposite distortions of the same coloured rays betray the fury of "counter-gales" rushing along at the rate of 120 miles a second; while their undisturbed sections prove the persistence of a "heart of peace" in the midst of that unimaginable fiery whirlwind. Velocities up to 250 miles a second, or 15,000 times that of an express train at the top of its speed, were thus observed by Young during his trip to Mount Sherman, August 2, 1872; and these were actually doubled ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... and a strange one. A little ledge of rock ran out into deep water, and upon it, rising from a heap of light-coloured clothing, like a white pillar, in the midst of the sombre green foliage, rose the naked carcass of Thomas Troubridge, Esq., preparing for a header, while at his feet were grouped three or four black fellows, one of whom as we watched slid off the rock like an otter. The reach was covered with black heads belonging to ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... Agatho, whose discourse was more sweet than the sound of any pipe in the world, were no good authority in this case; for it was no wonder that in their company the flute-girl was not regarded; but it is strange that, in the midst of the entertainment, the extreme pleasantness of the discourse had not made them forget their meat and drink. Yet Xenophon thought it not indecent to bring in to Socrates, Antisthenes, and the like the jester Philip; as Homer doth an onion to make the wine relish. And Plato brought in Aristophanes's ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... which caused much astonishment to the Dyaks who accompanied me, and produced a request to exhibit the compass when I returned. I was then surrounded by a larger crowd than before, and when I took my evening meal in the midst of a circle of about a hundred spectators anxiously observing every movement and criticising every mouthful, my thoughts involuntarily recurred to the lion at feeding time. Like those noble animals, I too was used to it, and it did ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... However, in the midst of this uproar the goings to and fro of Gilgan, Edstrom, Kerrigan, and Tiernan were nor fully grasped. A more urbanely shifty pair than these latter were never seen. While fraternizing secretly with both Gilgan and Edstrom, laying out their political programme most neatly, they ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... which the travellers sat in the midst of the thick mist of dust waiting, waiting for the next great throb, feeling that perhaps these were only the ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn

... dog was so irresistibly funny that the whole company were obliged to laugh; but in the midst of their merriment Mrs. Woffington's voice was ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... floor, or in some hiding-place among the skeleton rafters, or in a forgotten drawer, or in a heap of rubbish, she could not tell; but somewhere there was something which she was to find, and which, once found, was to be her talisman. She was in the midst of this eager search ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... tops of the mud huts in which the workmen lived—all this muddle, coloured to one tint by the darkness, gave the earth a strange, wild aspect that suggested the times of chaos. There was so little order in all that lay before me that it was somehow strange in the midst of the hideously excavated, grotesque-looking earth to see the silhouettes of human beings and the slender telegraph posts. Both spoiled the ensemble of the picture, and seemed to belong to a different world. It was still, and the only sound came from the telegraph wire droning its wearisome refrain ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... (a country she described as "that little Republic which, like a majestic eagle, lies in the midst of the vultures and cormorants of Europe") was at Geneva. An error of judgment, for the austere citizens of Calvin's town, setting a somewhat lofty standard among visitors, were impervious to her blandishments. "They were," she complained, "as chilly ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... Reading given by Charles Dickens anywhere, even privately, was that which took place in the midst of a little home-group, assembled one evening in 1843, for the purpose of hearing the "Christmas Carol," prior to its publication, read by him in the Lincoln's-Inn Square Chambers of the intimate friend to whom, eighteen years afterwards, was inscribed, as "of right," the Library Edition ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... burying of our gold, that made me mad: and she herself is not pleased with it, she believing that my sister knows of it. My father and she did it on Sunday, when they were gone to church, in open daylight, in the midst of the garden; where, for aught they knew, many eyes might see them: which put me into such trouble, that I was almost mad about it, and presently cast about, how to have it back again to secure it here, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... jurisprudence was an arduous but indispensable task. In the space of ten centuries, the infinite variety of laws and legal opinions had filled many thousand volumes, which no fortune could purchase and no capacity could digest. Books could not easily be found; and the judges, poor in the midst of riches, were reduced to the exercise of their illiterate discretion. The subjects of the Greek provinces were ignorant of the language that disposed of their lives and properties; and the barbarous ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... bell had begun to ring in the chateau, and there was a loud buzz of voices and a clatter of feet upon the stones. Hoarse orders were shouted, and there was the sound of turning keys. All this coming suddenly in the midst of the stillness of the night showed only too certainly that the alarm had been given. Amos Green threw himself down in the straw, with his hands in his pockets, and De Catinat leaned sulkily against ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... against him and his coadjutors in the government. At this time British soldiers were fighting in that country without the protection of the British flag, exposed to all the shame and hardships of a disastrous and disgraceful war. In the midst of the public anxiety on this subject, it was brought forward in the house of commons by Lord Mahon, who had been under-secretary for foreign affairs during Sir Robert Peel's administration. His lordship began by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... again the machine of civilisation when its parts have been distorted by a barbarian interlude, whether external or internal in origin, is the accumulation of capital. The next difficulty is the preservation of such capital in the midst of continual petty feuds and raids, and the third is that general continuity of effort, and that treasuring up of proved experience, to which a barbaric time, succeeding upon the decline of a civilisation, is particularly unfitted. For the surmounting of all these difficulties the monks of Western ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... aware, in the midst of her meditations, of eyes watching her intently. She looked up and ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... There in the midst of gloom the church-spire rose, And not a star lit any side of heaven; In glades not far the damp reeds coldly touched Their sides, like soldiers dead before they fall; There in the belfry clung the sleeping bat,— Most abject creature, hanging like a leaf Down from the bell-tongue, ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... were first the already existing and parliamentary institutions which had become revolutionary in spirit and methods of action. On the other hand there were the institutions produced by the revolution itself, emerging from the chaos in the midst of which the other, already functioning bodies, were trying to take a new and directing line. The most prominent of the first type of institution was the Duma, the legislative parliament of the old regime, and of ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,

... saints at Rouen—attempted to fly round the hippodrome at Constantinople, having Comnenus among the great throng who gathered to witness the feat. The Saracen chose for his starting-point a tower in the midst of the hippodrome, and on the top of the tower he stood, clad in a long white robe which was stiffened with rods so as to spread and catch the breeze, waiting for a favourable wind to strike on him. The wind was so long in coming that the spectators grew ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... originated in the following circumstances. I met Werner at S——, in the midst of a numerous and noisy circle of young people. Towards the end of the evening the conversation took a philosophico-metaphysical turn. We discussed the subject of convictions, and each of us had some different ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov

... be said to have been in his old age, not only the most beloved, but also the happiest of Americans. Many years he lived in the midst of posterity. His task was finished, and this he wisely understood. His deeds had been passed upon by the judgment of history, and irrevocably registered among the glories of his country and his age. His generous heart envied no one, and ...
— Model Speeches for Practise • Grenville Kleiser

... of the little grim, gray man's foresight, Bertrade de Montfort would have made good her escape that day. As it was, however, her fleet mount had carried her but two hundred yards ere, in the midst of the dark wood, she ran full upon a rope stretched across ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... friends wrote to England, at the time of her son's death, that the thought that her friends in England would be praying for her was one of the greatest sources of comfort to Mrs. Ahok. In the midst of her busy life in China she has never forgotten England nor her friends there. Some years after her return to China, she sent her greetings to her English friends by one of the returning missionaries, and bade her ask them: "Have you ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton

... spirit about her miserable condition, being so near her time, she would be often asking the Indians to let her go home; they not being willing to that, and yet vexed with her importunity, gathered a great company together about her and stripped her naked, and set her in the midst of them, and when they had sung and danced about her (in their hellish manner) as long as they pleased they knocked her on head, and the child in her arms with her. When they had done that they made a fire and put ...
— Captivity and Restoration • Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

... line of stabling rather than a church aisle. And lastly, while, in fine Gothic buildings, the entire perspective concludes itself gloriously in the high and distant apse, here the nave is cut across sharply by a line of ten chapels, the apse being only a tall recess in the midst of them, so that, strictly speaking, the church is not of the form of a cross, but of ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin

... of the Order, being warned a great scandal was ruining the sacred Society, called together all the Brethren of the Chapter, and made Fra Giovanni kneel humbly on his knees in the midst of them all. Then, his face blazing with anger, he chid him harshly in a loud, rough voice. This done, he consulted the assembly as to the penance it was meet to ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... taken. Six six-pounders were immediately brought up, in order to protect the position against a fresh attack of the enemy. Captain Richter, who commanded them, under the orders of Colonel Blumenstihl, was pierced in the thigh by a ball; he would not, however, leave the field, but remained in the midst of the fire. Two howitzers, commanded by Lieutenant Dandier, with the aid of a hundred Irishmen, who had arrived the night before from Spoleto, were placed in the open space in front of the farm, exposed ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... labres, half red, covered with scales only at the bottom of the dorsal and anal fins; chrysoptera, on which gold and silver blend their brightness with that of the ruby and topaz; golden-tailed spares, the flesh of which is extremely delicate, and whose phosphorescent properties betray them in the midst of the waters; orange-coloured spares with long tongues; maigres, with gold caudal fins, dark thorn-tails, ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... says, "It is a pretty, sentimental romance, showing that Jasmin possessed the brightness and sensibility of the Troubadours. As one may say, he had not yet quitted the guitar for the flageolet; and Marot, who spoke of his flageolet, had not, in the midst of his playful spirit, those tender accents which contrasted so well with his previous compositions. And did not Henry IV., in the midst of his Gascon gaieties and sallies, compose his sweet song of Charmante Gabrielle? Jasmin indeed is the poet who is nearest the region of Henry IV."{6} Me cal ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles

... monarch of all I survey, My right there is none to dispute: From the centre all round to the sea I am lord of the fowl and the brute. O Solitude! where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms Than reign in this horrible ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick

... made and unmade, piled up in the store below - and of his unknown friend, 'the dropped child,' calm upon the box-lid covered with a cloth. But there was something wistful and appealing, too, in his tiny face, as if, in the midst of all the hard necessities and incongruities he pondered on, he pleaded, in behalf of the helpless and the aged poor, for a little more liberty - ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... hotel in the Rue St. Antoine was lighted as for a fete. From its open windows came sounds of gay laughter and rattling dice. You might have thought them keeping carnival in the midst of a happy and loyal city. If the Lieutenant-General found anything to vex him in the present situation, he did not ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... boy looked darker against her white dress, as Bell bent over him, and commenced, in a low, silvery voice, an old angel legend. She was in the midst of a strange description of Paradise, when a tremulous ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... of one person can be paid but once, And that she has discharg'd: what thou wouldst do Is done unto thy hand: the last she spake Was 'Antony! most noble Antony!' Then in the midst a tearing groan did break The name of Antony; it was divided Between her heart and lips: she render'd life, Thy name ...
— Antony and Cleopatra • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... as dusty yet as in Redesman's song; for the autumn had been very dry, and the strip of green that edged the outside of the way was worn and dusty also. On the edge of it, half in the dusty road, half on the worn grass, was a long twine of briony red-berried and black-leaved; and right in the midst of the road were two twigs of great-leaved sturdy pollard oak, as though they had been thrown aside there yesterday by women or children a-sporting; and the deep white dust yet held the marks of feet, some bare, some shod, crossing each other here and there. Face-of-god ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris

... In the midst of this commanding effulgence, the calmer beam of Mr. Rodney might naturally pass unnoticed, yet its brightness was clear and sustained. The Rodneys engaged a dwelling of no mean proportion in that favoured district of South ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... seasons? Leonora's eyes wandered to the figure of Ethel reclining with shut eyes in the arm-chair. Ethel in her graver and more diffident beauty had already begun to taste the sadness of the world. Ethel might not stand victoriously by her lover in the midst of the drawing-room, nor joyously flip his ear when he struck a wrong note on the piano. Ethel, far more passionate than the active Milly, could only dream of her lover, and see him by stealth. Leonora grieved for Ethel, and envied her too, for her dreams, and for her solitude assuaged by clandestine ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett

... Cormoran had built up the Mount for a home for himself. When first he came to the spot it was all forest, with one large white rock in the midst of it. As he lay on this rock resting, he made up his mind to build himself a hill here, all of white rocks, like the one on which he reclined, where he could live in safety, and keep an eye ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... Their escape was accompanied by such blowing of horns and trumpets and beating of drums, that the noise and din of it all were too much for the poor knight's imagination which was now stirred to such a pitch that he believed himself in the midst of a real battle. He drew his sword and plunged against the Moorish horseman with such vehemence and force, cutting and slashing in all directions, that every one in the room was aghast at his madness, and ran to hide in safety. Master Pedro came within an inch ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... sir, when I was in the midst of class work in June. I was having a particularly good time, you may remember, when, one night, a messenger came to my rooms and said some one wanted to see me near the gate of the Square. It was a girl, sir, though she ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock

... say desperate. Here we were, a band of women fighting with banners, in the midst of a world armed to the teeth. And so it was not very difficult to understand how high spirited women grew more resentful, unwilling to be a party to the President's hypocrisy, the hypocrisy so eager to sacrifice life without stint to the vague hope of liberty abroad, while refusing to assist in ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens

... propaganda with which he has chosen to associate himself. To be capable of deliberately inciting and fostering race hatred at any time is to cease to be capable of enjoying the fellowship of decent and just men and women; to incite such hatred now, in the midst of such unprecedented suffering and the universal need of fellowship and healing, is ...
— The Jew and American Ideals • John Spargo

... and presently there stood in the midst of the group gathered about the unconscious captain, a man clad in a clerical dress and of a very dignified and ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston

... designed by the Emperor Hadrian about 130 A.D. (Fig. 53). It was a vast pseudodipteral edifice containing two cellas in one structure, their statue-niches or apses meeting back to back in the centre. The temple stood in the midst of an imposing columnar peribolus entered by magnificent gateways. Other important temples have already ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin

... of reverie by an experience far too common in those days. I had been sick the night before, and had worn my overcoat into battle. My horse was shot. The blood was spurting from him. As he seemed likely to fall, I leaped down. We were in the midst of a rapid advance and I had not time to throw off my overcoat. I was now carrying it swung over my arm. It was growing dark. A mounted soldier, whom I took to be an officer, rode up to my side and seized hold of the coat. He said, "I want that overcoat." ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague

... Shriftens, his Delmars remind us of people we have heard of somewhere, many times, without ever believing in their existence. His morality is honourable and conventional. There is cruelty in his fun and he can invent puns in the midst of carnage. His naiveties are perpetrated in a lurid light. There is an endless variety of types, all surface, with hard edges, with memorable eccentricities of outline, with a childish and heroic effect in the drawing. They do not belong to life; they belong exclusively ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... at too close quarters, in the midst of such a melee, to use guns without danger of getting one of one's own party. Thus it was a primitive ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... kept like an avenue, with white posts on either side, and built up to a considerable height above the broad tidal way which ran for some distance by its side. It had almost the appearance of a racing track, and its state of preservation in the midst of the wilderness ...
— The Vanished Messenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... The artillery was deafening. In the midst of a tremendous burst of sound D. H. Hill flung in the remainder of his division. Sumner came through the smoke. The grey and blue closed in a death grapple. From toward the centre, beneath the howling ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... next saw Draupadi and Dhaumya. That best of men duly made obeisance unto Dhaumya, and consoling Draupadi obtained leave from her. Then the learned and mighty Krishna, accompanied by Partha, went to his cousins. And surrounded by the five brothers, Krishna shone like Sakra in the midst of the celestials. He whose banner bore the figure of Garuda, desirous of performing the rites preparatory to the commencement of a journey, purified himself by a bath and adorned his person with ornaments. The bull of the Yadu race then worshipped the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... blessing, to wander 'any where, any where out of that world' which had a few weeks before been bright and joyous to me, but which I was now ready to pronounce a desolate waste. The desire to avoid society made me turn westward, and nearly one hundred miles east of our present residence I found myself in the midst of a people without churches, without schools, rude in appearance and in manners. Absorbed in the destruction of my own selfish happiness, I might have passed from among them without knowing that disease was adding its pangs to those inflicted by want, ignorance, and superstition, had not a ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh

... near eight o'clock in the morning, for my candle had expired in the midst of my perusal, leaving me no alternative but to get another, at the expense of alarming the house, or to go to bed, and wait the return of daylight. On my mother's account, I chose the latter; but how willingly I sought my pillow, and how much sleep it brought me, I leave ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... the conversation was a long one, and seemed interesting to both. In the midst of ...
— Struggling Upward - or Luke Larkin's Luck • Horatio Alger

... to spend an evening at her house. The company was composed mostly of young persons, in whom the flow of life was strong and buoyant. The beginning of the evening passed off amid much innocent enjoyment from conversation, singing, music, and reading. In the midst of this social pleasure, who should make his appearance but Mr. Round, accompanied by Mrs. Blunt? She introduced him to the company, and to be polite, as he thought, he shook hands with every one in the room. This performance took up the best part of half an hour, as he gave each one a brief ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... though in search of something in the midst of all his civility, and while the Major was sending Eugene to bring Mr. Arden—who was hanging back at the churchyard gate, unwilling to thrust himself forward—the faltering question was put, while the cheeks coloured like a girl's, "I hope my fair partner, my youngest cousin, Miss Aurelia Delavie, ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge

... she dreamed of the stage when the world was won, and when it seemed she had only to stretch her hands to the sky to take the stars. But in the midst of her triumph she perceived that she could no longer sing the music the world required; a new music was drumming in her ears, drowning the old music, a music written in a melancholy mode, and played on invisible harps. Owen told her it was madness to listen, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... a true solution can possibly be arrived at. These factors are divisible into three great categories—cosmical, social, and individual.[10] The cosmical factors of crime are climate and the variations of temperature; the social factors are the political, economic and moral conditions in the midst of which man lives as a member of society; the individual factors are a class of attributes inherent in the individual, such as descent, sex, age, bodily and mental characteristics. These factors, it ...
— Crime and Its Causes • William Douglas Morrison

... Tresco placed the digger upon the couch. In the midst of this operation the big card-player and his attenuated accomplice, whose unconsciousness had been more feigned than actual, were about to slip from the room, when Mr. Crewe's voice was heard loudly ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... still adverse, Germany not as yet restored to her senses, and experience having already proved to him how little he could act as his judgment directed. How often had he not been made use of and then suddenly neglected, been restrained, in the midst of his operations, by secret orders, been permitted to conduct the first or only the second part of a campaign, been placed in a subaltern position when the chief command was rightfully his, or been forced to accept of it when all was irremediably lost. Even on this ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... songs. The grass had withered. Rains and storms had discolored the fountain. Yet, although Nature seemed to have been engaged in contentious strife, still joy reigned supreme within the little cottage. Ragnar, the beloved husband, the darling son, had returned. Seated in the midst of his children beside his lovely wife, and with his arm encircling her waist, he listened with a countenance changing from cheerfulness to solemnity to a recital of all that had transpired ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen

... its thoroughly peaceful mission in perpetual readiness to fight. A railway through that region would have had to be preceded by a formal campaign for the pacification or expulsion of the Galla tribes, and could then have been constructed only in the midst of a permanent preparedness for war. This route had therefore, provisionally at least, to ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... time of day I suspect this epigram not to be quite original, but it served to give me for the nonce a high opinion of the pundit who read with me Cornelius Nepos and Caesar and some portions of that hopeless grammar, the Eton Greek, in the midst of his hard-breathing consumption of perpetual sandwiches ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... first introduced bruising and bloodshed amidst rural scenes, and transformed a quiet slumbering town into a den of Jews and metropolitan thieves. Some time before the commencement of the combat, three men, mounted on wild-looking horses, came dashing down the road in the direction of the meadow, in the midst of which they presently showed themselves, their horses clearing the deep ditches with wonderful alacrity. 'That's Gypsy Will and his gang,' lisped a Hebrew pickpocket; 'we shall have another fight.' The word Gypsy was always sufficient to excite ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... never directed to any person around. They seem to gaze into vacancy; altogether there is something curious, weird, almost uncanny, in this great, big whale of a man, intoning his monologue with that curious detachment of eye and manner in the midst of a crowded, brilliant, and intensely nervous and restless assembly of ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... lonely souls, estimated by sense-conscious humans. In the midst of the so-called pleasures and luxuries of the senses, a wise soul appears as barren of comfort as ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad

... later, and go away to earn the ready money to meet taxes and indispensable expenditures of the household, such as oil, and so on. "Pri khlyeby bez khlyeby" is their own way of expressing the situation, which we may translate freely as "starvation in the midst of plenty." Thus the extremes of famine-harvest and the harvest which is an embarrassment of riches are equally disastrous to the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... department had been alleviated and supplied in the most ample manner; the others, as a testimony of their gratitude for the generous reception they had met with during their residence in his country. It is to be observed, that though Omai lived in the midst of amusements during his residence in England, his return to his native country was always in his thoughts, and though he was not impatient to go, he expressed a satisfaction as the time of his return approached. He embarked with me in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... assault on the Hindenburg Line where the St. Quentin Canal passes through a tunnel under a ridge. The 30th Division speedily broke through the main line of defense for all its objectives, while the 27th pushed on impetuously through the main line until some of its elements reached Gouy. In the midst of the maze of trenches and shell craters and under crossfire from machine guns the other elements fought desperately against odds. In this and in later actions, from October 6 to October 19, our 2d Corps captured over 6,000 prisoners and advanced ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell

... remain some ruins, but which then was in existence, and was called Newcastle Abbey. It was built upon a vast site, independent at once of the plain and of the river, because it was almost a marsh fed by springs and kept up by rains. Nevertheless, in the midst of these pools of water, covered with long grass, rushes, and reeds, were seen solid spots of ground, formerly used as the kitchen-garden, the park, the pleasure-gardens, and other dependencies of the abbey, looking like one of those great sea-spiders, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... sixth of November, William's army began to march up the country. Some regiments advanced as far as Newton Abbot. A stone, set up in the midst of that little town, still marks the spot where the Prince's Declaration was solemnly read to the people. The movements of the troops were slow: for the rain fell in torrents; and the roads of England were then in a state which seemed frightful to persons accustomed to the excellent ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Canadian acquaintances made on shipboard and greatly interested in our first visits to sugar plantations. Vast cane-fields of waving green stretched mile after mile on the right and on the left, making it seem incredible that a Food Commissioner need beg the sweet tooth to deny itself in the midst of such riotous plenty. ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... astonishment; for there is no spirit in woman half so prevalent as that of contradiction, which is the sole cause of her perseverance. Let the whole family go dressed in a body, and call the bride to-morrow morning to her nuptials, and I'll undertake, the inconstant will forget her lover in the midst of all his aches. But if this expedient does not succeed, I must be so just to the young lady's distinguishing sense, as to applaud her choice. A fine young woman, at last, is but what is due from fate to an honest fellow, who has suffered ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken

... arrived at Rouen with his usual expedition, raised the siege, and drove the King of France quite out of Normandy. It was then that he agreed to an accommodation, and in the terms of peace, which he dictated in the midst of victory to his sons, his subjects, and his enemies, there was seen on one hand the tenderness of a father, and on the other the moderation of a wise man, not insensible ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... In the midst of his discourse the bell rung to dinner, where the gentleman I have been speaking of had the pleasure of seeing the huge jack, he had caught, served up for the first dish in a most sumptuous manner. Upon our sitting down to it he gave ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... used to living in the most miserable hovels, in the midst of vermin, and every kind of filthiness; or to sleep in the streets, and under the hedges, half naked, and exposed to all the inclemencies of the seasons. A large and commodious building, fitted up in the neatest and ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford

... when thou lookest least for me: on the lonely marsh maybe, or in the thick of the forest; or in the midst of the fierce battle, or on thy very death-bed; or it may not be at ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... of course, certain broad classifications of homicides. A considerable number, perhaps more than any other, come through the commission of robbery, burglary and larceny. In the midst of the act the offender is caught, and kills in an effort to escape. These murders fall under the heading of property crimes; the cause is the same, and the rules governing them are the same. The second group, with respect to numbers, grows from the relations of men and ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... the creek as it called tew me, "Pard, don't ye mind the mossy, green spot Whar a creek stood still fur a drowzin' spell Right in the midst of the old home lot? Whar, right at sundown on Sabba'day, Ye skinn'd yerself of yer meetin' clothes, An dove, like a duck, whar the water clar Shone up like ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... this way one day in each year when the survivors of the war might join with a later generation to revere the memory of those who had made for the common good the supreme sacrifice of life. For Americans it is an impressive thought that we are renewing this consecration today in Russia, in the midst of a civic struggle which recalls the deep trials of our own past and which is, moreover, inextricably bound up with the World War which has been ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... In the midst of the conversation there was a sudden bustle, and Tiney rose hastily from the table. Her father immediately left his chair, and went round to her place, and took her by the arm. There was a ghastly and disturbed look about poor Tiney's face, ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely

... disgusting centre the harvest of corruption which has come from the toleration and encouragements given by the legislature, the police, and the magistrates to immorality, vice, and sin; the awful fact is, that we are in the midst of the foul and foetid harvest of lust. Aided by some of the most exalted personages in the land, assisted by thousands of educated and wealthy whoremongers and adulterers, we are reaping also, in individual physical ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... horsemen. From mere objects that stood higher than any animal and moved with a purposeful directness, they presently became men who rode with the easy swing of habit which has become a second nature. They must have seen her sitting still upon her horse in the midst of that high, sunny plateau, for they turned and rode up the ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... stock-raiser I shouldn't feel very hospitably inclined toward a class of men who are always on the watch for a chance to jump down on me and steal my cattle. I wonder if I shall have pluck enough to dismount in the midst of all these dogs and make the arrest?" added Bob as the fierce brutes closed about him, all of them with their ears laid back close to their heads and their hair turned the wrong way, and some crouching at his side as if they ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon



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