"Foothold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the winter of the coffee men's discontent. Floundering about in a veritable slough of cereal slush, without secure foothold or a true sense of direction, coffee advertising went miserably astray when its writers began to assure the public that their brands were guiltless of the crimes charged in the cereal men's indictment. In this, of course, they unwittingly aided and abetted the cereal fakers. For ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... inrush of water and dashing through its foaming crest, his gallant horse swam until he got a foothold upon the rocks at the base of the cliff. Now was the crucial moment. With absolute recklessness, Jim urged his powerful horse over the foam-covered rocks, striving to get around the prow of the headland before the ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt
... again started and, after travelling several miles, entered a narrow valley with very steep sides, with trees and brushwood growing wherever they could get a foothold. He now adopted a careless and indifferent carriage and, although he kept a sharp lookout, no one who saw him would have supposed that he had any ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... ever come up or not. It was at this time that Tip O'Neill, a daring young buck of Freekirk Head, performed the highly dangerous feat of walking from her main to her forerigging along the weather run, which fact shows there was foothold on her uppermost side for a man crazy ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... balancing himself on a rotten stump or root, now walking the length of some fallen tree, so decayed and water-eaten that it mashed to a pulp beneath his feet, and then leaping to some other precarious foothold, progressing rapidly all the time and with such skill that ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... answer to this observation, and we trudged along for a time in silence, keeping well down to the water's edge, where the sands afforded a good foothold. ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to the north, the Count of La Marche undertook the conquest of Gascony. He soon made himself master of St. Emilion, and of the whole of Perigord. The surrender of La Reole opened up the passage of the Garonne, and the capture of Bazas gave the French a foothold to the south of that river. Only the people of Bordeaux showed any spirit in resisting Hugh. But their resistance proved sufficient, and he ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... which swung in its orbit a million and a quarter miles from the great planet. Far off to the west, separated by two million miles of empty space, floated Ganymede, the third satellite, on which the people of the United States were now gaining a foothold with their newly ...
— The Space Rover • Edwin K. Sloat
... the disease has obtained a foothold in the body its course, like one of Napoleon's campaigns, is short, sharp, and decisive. Beginning typically with a vigorous chill, sometimes so suddenly as to wake the patient out of a sound sleep, followed by a stabbing pain in the side, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... his way out of this predicament, he scrambled on, handing himself from branch to branch, and once losing his foothold and hanging ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... silence reigned supreme the sailor, evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself closer at hand, the noise of his bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on the ground where it apparently awoke a horse of the cabrank. A hoof scooped anyway for new foothold after sleep and harness jingled. Slightly disturbed in his sentrybox by the brazier of live coke the watcher of the corporation stones who, though now broken down and fast breaking up, was none other in stern reality ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... pioneers for the wide land of the Old Southwest and who in the end had received their dust and treasured it with honor in the little soil remaining to them? Always the new boundary lines drew closer in, and the red men's foothold narrowed before the pushing tread of the whites. The day came soon when there was no longer room for them in the land of their fathers. But far off across the great river there was a land the white men did not covet yet. Thither at last the tribes—Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... Bacon returned to the United States. In November, Dr. Eli Ayres was sent over as agent, and the U.S. schooner Alligator, commanded by Lieutenant Stockton, was ordered to the coast to assist in obtaining a foothold for the colony. Cape Montserado was again visited; and the address and firmness of Lieutenant Stockton accomplished the purchase of a ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... least support to the uprising, but in the east, where the Cubans and negroes raised and ground cane, or grazed their herds, discontent at the system of favoritism and race discrimination was an important political force. Here the insurgents soon gained a foothold in the provinces of Santiago, Puerto Principe, and Santa Clara. From the jungle or the mountains they sent bands of guerrillas against the sugar mills and plantations of the ruling class, and when ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... before her was to become to her that magic thing we call "home," for men still regarded California as a place to "make their pile" in and then shake its dust from their feet. Her stay here was very brief, for her husband had gone at once to Nevada in the hope of getting a foothold in the silver-mines, which were then "booming," and ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... confess that I thought you were jesting. [He gets up and speaks confidentially and half-humorously.] Now, you don't mean to say you're really capable of undermining the ground here where a friend of yours has been fortunate enough to get a firm foothold? ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... come in, confused to sure, but still one finds something like a foothold. I am thunderstruck, annihilated. I listened to Hooker's best friends but can hardly help crying. Hooker is a failure as a commander of a large army. Hooker is good for a corps or two, but not for the whole command and responsibility. From all that I can learn, Hooker fights well, courageously, ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... foolish,'" contradicted Brice. "As it happens it's just what he wants to do. I don't know just why. But I mean to find out. He wants me away from a house over there. A house I had a lot of trouble in getting a foothold in. It's taken me the best part of a month. And now I don't mean to spend another month in getting ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... Good Hope, by De Gama, who landed on the Malabar Coast in 1498, the Portuguese continued to navigate these seas, and were allowed by the Chinese a shelter on this point. In the year 1550, having obtained a foothold, by degrees they built themselves stone houses and forts, and commenced the ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... medium of a world's intercourse, and that it very suitably belongs to Israel, in whose hand will be the destiny of the world. It is the lion of languages. It will grow anywhere, and by reason of its tenacity when once it gets a foothold it abides. It is peculiarly suited to the humanities of every race, clime, and condition; there is no limit to its expansive adaptability. It is in a special manner voracious in the destruction of other languages; wherever it ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... is by no means slow in forming his estimate of the person he has to deal with, is received into the confidence of the tribes, when, after sufficient trial, he has been proved worthy of their esteem and friendship. When once he has gained a foothold in the affections of the savages, his task assumes the condition of pleasure rather than severe labor; but, if he is ignorant of the minute workings of his business, he is generally imposed upon and always disliked to ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... system, gave tangible expression to the growth of the new movement in 1874; and four years later, with the opening of his laboratory of physiological psychology at the University of Leipzig, the new psychology may be said to have gained a permanent foothold and to have forced itself into official recognition. From then on its conquest of the world was but a matter ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... which was one of the tools of her trade, left always at the foot of the lightning oak, and with it skirted the swamp to the east where the tussocks were large. Then, throwing her board before her from one foothold to another, she crossed the swamp. Twice she had fallen, and her dress was wet. She was muddy to the knees, but she wrung out her heavy skirts and ran along the path she knew to the ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... to the spirit of man to which God has denied the repose of certainty. We crave knowledge which is withheld more earnestly than we desire faith or hope, and we eagerly make even its semblance a foothold. It appears to me, my friend, with whom I am grown bold, that you and I may find in our less material beliefs as false a haven as the pilgrim finds in ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... foothold soon after his arrival by sticking to his post in Seoul during the uprising against foreigners that followed the attack by the Japanese and the reformers on the Cabinet and their seizure of the King and Queen. When Min Yung-ik, the Queen's ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... once acquired a foothold among the Saxons its progress was rapid. In no country were monastic institutions more firmly planted. Monasteries and churches were erected in the principal settlements and liberally endowed by ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... and let the swift current flow by us. We dared not go deeper; we could feel the round stones grinding against each other as they were carried down, and we were all afraid. It was difficult to keep one's foothold, and Capt. Mellon's words were ever ringing in my ears, "He who disappears below the surface of the Colorado is never seen again." But we joined hands and ventured like children and played like children in these red waters ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... us. From our camp that evening we had a splendid view of the mountains to the east. Mount Helmer Hansen was the most remarkable of them all; it was 12,000 feet high, and covered by a glacier so rugged that in all probability it would have been impossible to find foothold on it. Here were also Mounts Oskar Wisting, Sverre Hassel, and Olav Bjaaland, grandly lighted up by the rays of the sun. In the distance, and only visible from time to time through the driving mists, we saw Mount Thorvald Nilsen, with peaks rising to 15,000 feet. We could only see those parts ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... would neutralize the effect of such disclosures. By getting the Comte de Gondreville to confide the news of that mission to old Grevin before it was publicly made known, he had flattered the old man's vanity and obtained a certain foothold in his mind. Moreover, he determined, when the time came, to forestall the old notary's distrust by seeming to distrust himself, and to propose, as a precaution against his old habits of extravagance, to introduce a clause into the marriage-contract ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... inspiration or desperation, with a quick movement stripped off her short, corduroy tramping-skirt, and, looking very lithe and boyish in slender-cut pongee bloomers, ran along the sand and dropped the skirt for a foothold for the slowly revolving wheels. Almost, but not quite, did the car stop, then, gathering way, with the others running alongside and shoving, it emerged ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... said Mr. North, "we are afraid that slave-holding may get a foothold in Massachusetts; so we have to challenge every one who comes here with a slave, to show proof that he or she is not holding the servant to ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... remained in them none of the vital quality of illusion which would make them wonder or speculate, else a religion might have grown up around these mysterious visitations. But the men of Fish were beyond all religion—the barest and most savage tenets of even Christianity could gain no foothold on that barren rock—so there was no altar, no priest, no sacrifice; only each night at seven the silent concourse by the shanty depot, a congregation who lifted up a prayer of dim, ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... foreign ports, inspects all ships that enter American harbors, and holds them in quarantine until they and their passengers are given a clean bill of health. Cholera and other dangerous diseases have thus been prevented from gaining a foothold on American soil. ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... baronet, as it might be, in undisturbed enjoyment of all the local homage. Sir Wycherly had once been a member of Parliament, and only once. In his youth, he had been a fox-hunter; and a small property in Yorkshire had long been in the family, as a sort of foothold on such enjoyments; but having broken a leg, in one of his leaps, he had taken refuge against ennui, by sitting a single session in the House of Commons, as the member of a borough that lay adjacent to his hunting-box. This session sufficed ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... a moment, though; the next she had cowered, like some animal doubled up within itself. She peeped down the great rugged cliffs—the descent would be easy enough, as they were not precipitous, and the great boulders afforded plenty of foothold. Suddenly, as she grazed, she saw at some little distance on her left, and about midway down the cliffs, a rough wooden construction, through the wall of which a tiny red light glimmered like a beacon. Her very heart seemed to stand still, the eagerness of joy was so great that ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... he had determined to bring to light at once everything they knew. He devoted sudden attention now to Webster, whom he knew by reputation—a lawyer thirty years of age, brilliant in the criminal courts, and at present striving for a foothold in the more remunerative ranks of civil practice. He had never been introduced to him, however, before meeting ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... of nightmares which repel me; I am not certain that his hell is correct, and some of his assertions do not convince me. What he calls the 'night obscure' is incomprehensible; 'The sufferings of that darkness surpass what is possible,' he cries on each page. Here I lose foothold. I can imagine, though I have not experienced them, the moral and terrible pangs, of the deaths of friends and relations, love betrayed, hopes which failed, spiritual sorrows of all kinds, but such a martyrdom as he proclaims ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... without the trouble of a regular campaign, he sent off raiding parties up the Thames. According to his own account, these parties 'penetrated sixty miles into the settled part of the province.' According to Brock, they 'ravaged the country as far as the Moravian Town.' But they gained no permanent foothold. By the beginning of August Hull's position had already become precarious. The Canadians had not proved friendly. The raid up the Thames and the advance towards Amherstburg had both failed. And the first British reinforcements had already begun to arrive. These ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... vigorous efforts of the Rev. Nathaniel Stacy, an itinerant preacher, the doctrine of Universalism gained a strong foothold in this region. Under his ministrations the society at Fly Creek was organized in 1805, said to be the first society of the Universalist denomination established in this State. Stacy was a man of small stature, ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... was marching—marching—down the colossal bridge. It moved swiftly, in some unthinkable way intelligently. It swathed the Akka, and closer, ever closer it swept toward the approach upon which Yolara's men had now gained foothold. ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... still fighting for foothold and finding it against the leg of the table, "That you, Larpent? ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... been going to certain death, since they would have preferred to take their chance of mercy at the hands of the brigands. Moreover, these gentry themselves had driven the mules into the abyss whither those wise animals would never have gone unless there was some foothold for them. ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... secretary to one of the instructors in her college. They understood that it was a situation which would pay fairly well, and give her associates who gained an added glory in the minds of these humble folk by their distance. In short, it would be a foothold in the white people's world; and Grant Payson's mother trembled for her son, while the mother of Mary Jackson feared to lose, once for all, her daughter. The two Southern-bred black women could see in such things as the girl reported ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... high wall that hid their mother, and at first glance it seemed impossible that they could ever climb it. But Ivra did not stop to wonder. She ran up and down, hunting for a foothold. At last she reached the end of the wall and disappeared around the corner. Eric and the Wind Creatures followed. When they came up to her she had already found a place where the stones were laid a bit unevenly, one on the other, and was half way to ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... it. Although only a working man, he had, by sheer force of character, made himself a power in the village. A total abstainer and non-smoker, a Dissenter in religion and lay-preacher where Dissent had never found a foothold until his coming, and an extreme Radical in politics, he was naturally something of a thorn in the side of the vicar and of the ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... In 1862 and 1866 this disease was imported by a ship that had come from Havana. Since then it has not appeared in the definite South American form, and therefore does not seem to have obtained the foothold it has in Senegal, where a few years ago all the money voted for the keeping of the Fete Nationale was in one district devoted by public consent to the purchase of coffins, required by an overwhelming outbreak ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... came the youth who wanted to cut his name above Washington's, and who found, to his horror, when half-way up, that he must keep on, for he had left no resting-places for his feet at safe and reachable distances—who, therefore, climbed on and on, cutting handhold and foothold in the limestone until he reached the top, in a fainting state, his knife-blade worn to a stump. Here, too, in another tunnel of the cavern, flows Lost River, that all must return to, at some time, if they drink of it. Here, beneath the arch, is the dark stain, so like a flying eagle ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... crept cautiously along the cliff-top, as near to the edge as I dared, till I was some twenty feet from the spot where I had heard the voice. Then I looked down again carefully, searching every handbreadth for a firm foothold or path down the rocks, with an opening at the end, through which a big man could squeeze his body. No. There was nothing. No living human being could get down that cliff-face without a rope from up above; and even If he managed to get down, there seemed to be nothing but the sea for ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... forward portion of the ship was being rapidly broken to pieces, and it would not be any great time before the stern followed suit, some of the cabin furniture below having already been shaken down, while the poop did not offer a very firm foothold, trembling every now and then from the washing in and out of the waves below, as if, the poor thing were seized with a ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... hastily collected what remained of my provisions and set off as fast as I could go towards it. As I drew near it seemed to me to be a white ball of immense size and height, and when I could touch it, I found it marvellously smooth and soft. As it was impossible to climb it—for it presented no foothold—I walked round about it seeking some opening, but there was none. I counted, however, that it was at least fifty paces round. By this time the sun was near setting, but quite suddenly it fell dark, something like a huge black cloud came swiftly over me, and I saw with amazement that ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... immediately after the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713. Very soon afterwards the nascent spirit of fanaticism began to obtain a foothold in England; and although large numbers of negro slaves were owned in Great Britain, and, as I said before, were daily sold on the public exchange in Lon-don, questions arose as to the right of the owners to retain property in their slaves; and the merchants of London, alarmed, submitted ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Now he had foothold. Now the ground beneath lent its aid to his endeavor; he was no longer altogether at the mercy of the water. He bounded forward toward the shore in such a direction that he could approach it without opposing himself entirely to the waves. The point that stretched ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... would, he could see nothing in the remotest degree resembling a pass through those encircling sierras, the upper portion of the sides of which appeared to be everywhere practically vertical, without even as much projection or ledge anywhere as would afford foothold to a goat. Nor was there the least semblance of a road or path of any description leading to the house, save a narrow and scarcely perceptible footpath leading down to the great road which encompassed the lake. Harry turned ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... much to me. I have told Mr. Swain, under secrecy, what I think. He is one of the ablest lawyers that the colony owns, Richard, and a stanch friend of yours. He took your case of his own accord. But he says we have no foothold as yet." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the blow, and when I rallied my business was swept away, and the firm of Critchet was known only by its debts. I struggled for a time against the stream, but I could not gain a foothold, and at last yielded and gave up all thoughts of resuming business. My family was supported by a small settlement of one hundred pounds which had been left to my wife by an aunt, and by music lessons ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... of old marbles and this digging out of columns or slabs grew wearisome to the lad, but not often, for there was too much exciting incident in their travels through gorge and gully—along shelves where the horses could hardly find foothold, but slipped and scrambled, with terrible precipices beneath, such as at first made the travellers giddy, but at last became so common, and their horses gave them so much confidence, that they ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... not the worst sailors, but the best! The two outermost men on the mizzen-top yard of the Hermione that night, determined to escape the threatened flogging. They made a desperate spring to get over their comrades crowding into the ratlines, missed their foothold, fell on the quarter-deck beside their furious captain, and were instantly killed. The captain's epitaph on the unfortunate sailors was, "Throw the ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... cause of the Confederate quietness, we finally took the aggressive, determined to regain our former position south of the river. An. early morning attack won us the bridge and the town beyond, while heavy forces rushed the available fords, and after some severe fighting, obtained foothold on the opposite bank. Hastily throwing up intrenchments these advance troops succeeded in repulsing two charges before nightfall. This brought an end to hostilities. During the hours of darkness reinforcements were hurried across the stream. By dawn the opposing ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... about for some time in a swamp, was forced to halt and swing my hammock between two saplings under enormous sheer cliffs that looked like great medieval castles in the night, their white faces spotted by the trees that found foothold on them. Happily I had dropped well down out of the clouds that hover about Esperanza and the cold mountain wind was now much tempered. The white mountain wall rising sheer from my very hips was also somewhat sheltering, though it was easy to dream ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... came to the hard working scouts, and their allies, the two guides. The fire was completely routed, bag and baggage, before it managed to get a good foothold in the dry woods. And perspiring as though it were the good old summer time, the boys hastened to get more clothes on them, for fear of ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... inequalities. Monopolies, perpetuities, and class legislation are contrary to the genius of free government, and ought not to be allowed. Here there is no room for favored classes or monopolies; the principle of our Government is that of equal laws and freedom of industry. Wherever monopoly attains a foothold, it is sure to be a source of danger, discord, and trouble. We shall but fulfill our duties as legislators by according "equal and exact justice to all men," special privileges to none. The Government is subordinate to the people; but, as the agent ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Johnson • Andrew Johnson
... sense. False pleasure will be, is, chastened; it has no [20] right to be at peace. To suffer for having "other gods before me," is divinely wise. Evil passions die in their own flames, but are punished before extinguished. Peace has no foothold on the false basis that evil should be concealed and that life and happiness should still attend [25] it. Joy is self-sustained; goodness and blessedness are one: suffering is self-inflicted, and good is the ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... so I feel it sometimes; but if I could only feel that there was a shore, I would try to get my foothold. Oh, ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Isles of the Demons. Again for a moment Acadia echoes of the Sorbonne and of Arcadian poesy. Again the unblenching "preux chevalier" Champlain stands with his back against the gray cliff of Quebec fighting red and white foe alike, famine and disease, to keep a foothold in the wilderness, with the sublime faith of a crusader and the patient endurance of a Prometheus. Again the zealous but narrow rigor of Richelieu, flowering in his native land in the learning of the Sorbonne and preparing for ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... four-poster bed. It was a corner room. Through the windows on one side Hortense could look out over the orchard slope that ran down to the brook. Beyond the brook rose a shadowy mountain whose side was so steep that trees could hardly find a foothold among the rocks. On the other side of the room, the windows opened upon the lawn bordered by a hedge. Beyond the hedge was the little house in front of which Hortense had seen the boy, but he was no ...
— The Cat in Grandfather's House • Carl Henry Grabo
... Mahmud of Ghazni. He invaded first the plains of the Panjab, then Multan, and afterwards other places. Year after year he pressed forward and again retired. In 1021 he was at Kalinga; in 1023 in Kathiawar; but in no case did he make good his foothold on the country. His expeditions were raids and nothing more. Other invasions, however, followed in quick succession, and after the lapse of two centuries the Muhammadans were firmly and permanently established at Delhi. War followed ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... for this sharp dodge, Mr. Smithers is for a moment unable to check his headlong plunges, and shoots past the opening a yard or two before the wet sidewalk affords him a foothold. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... trenches near the great north bastion of the town, when it occurred to them to scale the wall of the fort and see what was going on inside. They threw some planks across the ditch, and taking half a company of soldiers, climbed cautiously up. They obtained a foothold before the alarm was given. There was a fierce hand to hand struggle, and sixteen of the party fell, and nine of the garrison. The rest fled into the city. The Governor Gysant, rushing to the rescue without staying to put on his armour, ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... For weeds left to themselves, even late in the fall, grow in the cool moist weather with astonishing rapidity, and, almost before one realizes it, transform the well kept garden into a ragged wilderness, where the intruders have taken such a strong foothold that they cannot be pulled up without tearing everything else with them. So we let them go—and, left to themselves, they accomplish their purpose in life, and leave upon the ground an evenly distributed supply of plump ripe seeds, which next spring will cause the perennial exclamation, ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... Smoot in the Senate is one expression, was not made yesterday. It had its birth in the year of the Edmunds law and its drastic enforcement. In that day, black for Mormons, it was resolved to secure such foothold, such representation in the Congress at Washington, that, holding a balance of power in the Senate or House, or both, the Congressional Democrats or Republicans would grant the Mormons safety for their pet tenet of polygamy as the price of Mormon support. The Mormons ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... or if he had been the kind of Abraham that expected that angels would come hurrying and scurrying after one in a spectacle like this. "What has a man," says Blank in his Angels of the Nineteenth Century,—"What has a man who consents to be a knee-bumping, elbow-jamming, foothold-struggling strap-hanger—an abject commuter all his days (for no better reason than that he is not well enough to keep still and that there is not enough of him to be alone)—to do with angels—or to do with anything, except to get done with it as fast ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... dramatic companies who introduced theatrical plays in the colonies. They went from London to Philadelphia, New York, Williamsburg (Va.), and Charleston (S. C.), but eventually established their strongest and most enduring foothold in New York. ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... This guinea pig's name was Jeff, and he and I became good friends. A long-haired French rabbit was hopping about, and a tame white rat was perched on the shoulder of one of the boys, and kept his foothold there, no matter how suddenly the boy moved. There were so many boys, and the stable was so small, that I suppose he was afraid he would get stepped on if he went on the floor. He stared hard at me with his little, red eyes, and never even glanced at a queer-looking, gray ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... the West African market are a simple matter compared with the vagaries of the Exchange. The mystery of the mark, for instance, is so utterly beyond that, in trying to understand it, I do not even know where to begin. I see no mental foothold anywhere. ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... notches with his muscular fingers, and using those lower down for a foothold, as best he could, Nick hurriedly began the ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... the two old sovereigns, Alpenstock in hand, and short, stocky rifles slung over the shoulder, go toiling up and down the mountains, along the edges of great precipices, tracing their steps along paths that to the uninitiated would seem to afford no foothold to any living thing, save a goat or a chamois. Sometimes they are overtaken by snowstorms while up in the mountains, and are unable to see their way, or to move either backwards or forwards, for whole hours together, while at other times they are forced to lie down ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... almost to its summit, sought their safety in flight. But some of them found none, for the rush of those above pressing with ever increasing force upon their friends below, drove many to their death, since here on the pyramid there was nothing to cling to, and if once a man lost his foothold on the path, his fall was broken only when his body reached the court beneath. Thus in fifteen short minutes all that the Spaniards had won this day was lost again, for except the prisoners at its summit, none of them remained alive upon ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... clamber, losing him now and again in the shooting foam, and now and again, as the spray cleared off, seeing him safe, and ever a foot higher than before. How I followed him 'twould be hard to say. Yet the rock seemed riven into cracks which gave us a tolerable foothold, the better as we got higher up; and had it not been for the constant dash of the water, and the darkness, it might have been accounted passable enough. As it was, but for Ludar's strong arm above me, I should have lost my feet twice, and in my fall, perchance, might have carried ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... his slippers and gripping the curb for support, lowered himself into the pit. A rush of cold air like a breath from an open grave enveloped him. Finding foothold in the crevices of the green damp stones, digging his fingers into slimy crannies, panting, slipping, bruising his flesh without feeling the hurt, this frail hypochondriac went to the aid of the child who somehow had ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... footprints or other marks anywhere. Go round there to the left, and you will be satisfied that the most experienced mountaineer that ever lived could not make a descent, or even anywhere get over the edge of the cliff. There is no ledge or foothold within fifty feet." ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... of an hour it required cool heads to keep the trail of cattle moving into the water and the passageway clear on the opposite landing. While they were crossing, the herd represented a large letter "U," caused by the force of the current drifting the cattle downstream, or until a foothold was secured on the farther side. Those of us fortunate enough to have good swimming horses swam the river a dozen times, and then after the herd was safely over, swam back to get our clothing. It was a thrilling experience to us younger lads of the outfit, and rather attractive; ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... destroy the enemy's transports in that stream and some gunboats which I knew he was building. The navigation, however, proved so much better than had been expected that I thought for a time of the possibility of making this the route for obtaining a foothold on high land above Haines Bluff, Mississippi, and small class steamers were accordingly ordered for transporting an army that way. Major-General J. B. McPherson, commanding seventeenth army corps, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... back through history and allow our thoughts to run down the highway of the ages, we perceive the effects such struggles have had upon the Jew. We think of the time when ancient Babylonia stretched out its arm from the East to gain a foothold on the Mediterranean and to grasp the power of the world. What was the effect upon the Jews? The Babylonian captivity. Many hundreds of years after, Rome—the Babylonia of the West—lunged out toward the East in the same search for universal dominion; ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... her new pupil, such was not the case with regard to the subject which she taught. The lesson dealt with the coming of the Virginia colonists, their settlement in Jamestown and the final burning of the town. Miss Atkins' vivid description of the colonists' determined struggles to gain a foothold in the New World was well worth listening to. The reading of extracts from special reference books pertaining to that gallant expedition into the treacherous forests of an unknown, untried country made the lesson seem doubly interesting. When the ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... the cell was very narrow but high; about ten feet above his head he found an opening, secured by iron bars. All attempts to reach this proved futile, and he could secure no foothold on the ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... desired haven of her rest. Indeed, she began to doubt if even her poor power of charming him, as at first she had been able to do, with the sparkle of her wit and the half- unconscious display of her natural grace, was not on the wane, and if she was not near to losing her precarious foothold in his esteem and affection. The thought that he might be tiring of her struck her like a freezing wind, and for a moment turned ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... whether it's deep in them, for I doubt their depth; but I know it's in their joints. The first spring of a Frenchman comes of vanity. That you can't say of the English. Peace to all! but I abhor cosmopolitanism. No man has a firm foothold who pretends to it. None despises the English in reality. Don't be misled, Miss Halkett. We're solid: that is the main point. The world feels our power, and has confidence in our good faith. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had won his brilliant little naval victory over the English fleet on Lake Erie, and had written to the Secretary of the Navy with Caesar-like conciseness: "We have met the enemy, and they are ours!" By land, too, the British had been met and beaten back at every point, till now they were without a foothold on ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... chimneys; the rain dashed on the window-panes with a rattle as of musketry; far below she could hear the awful booming of the Atlantic breakers. The gusts that drove against the high house seemed ready to tear it from its foothold of rock and whirl it inland; or was it the sea itself that was rising in its thunderous power to sweep away this bauble from the face of the mighty cliffs? And then the wild and desolate morning that followed! Through ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Tonty. Could that brave and true-hearted officer, and the three or four faithful men who had remained with him, make good their foothold on the Illinois, and save from destruction the vessel on the stocks, and the forge and tools so laboriously carried thither,—then, indeed, a basis was left on which the ruined enterprise might be built up once more. There was no time to lose. Tonty must be succored soon, or succor would ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... midday sky? Who grants them power to stalk so lifelike from Memory's halls, and, pointing to their wounds, thus confront the Present with the Past? Are they, then, messengers? Does the half-death of sleep give them foothold in our brains, and thus upknit the cut thread of human kinship? That was Caesar's self, I tell thee, who but now stood at my side and murmured through his muffled robe warning words of which the memory is lost to ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... on the nature of this force means, first, that rising of the consciousness into the spiritual world, already described, which gives the one sure foothold for Meditation; and then, from that spiritual point of vantage, not only an insight into the creative force, in its spiritual and physical aspects, but also a gradually attained control of this wonderful force, ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a public benefactor, would seem to proclaim that Oklahoma is peopled with philanthropists, for the sturdy pioneers who braved hardship and ridicule in order to obtain a foothold in this promised land, have, in five or six years, completely changed the appearance of the country. A larger proportion of ground in this youthful Territory shows that it is a sturdy infant, and it is doubtful whether in any part of the United ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... common ground is needed, where they may meet; and nature, the shadow which the Infinite causes the finite to project, is just that medium. Man, looking upon this shadow, mistakes it for real substance, serving him for foothold and background, and assisting him to attain self-consciousness. God, on the other hand, finds in nature the means of revealing Himself to His creature without compromising the creature's freedom. Man supposes ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... —ahead, astern, this side, and that, —within the wide expanded circle commanded at so great a height. When in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in the rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea is hoisted up to that spot, and sustained there by .. the rope; under these circumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in strict charge to some one man who has the special watch of it. Because in such a wilderness ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... my lad," said the lieutenant; and, getting hold of the hook, the coxswain moved into the centre on one side as the crew seized the keel and dragged it down, while the man, boathook in hand, climbed up, finding good foothold on the clinker-built boat, steadying himself with his pole as he worked. At last he stood upright on the side of the keel, reached over and fixed his hook upon one of the rowlocks; then holding on ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... morasses, he grasped his own pole, and sprang from tussock to tussock, till he had reached the bank of the ditch or water-course in which the unfortunate sportsman was floundering. He was a large, powerful man, but this was of no avail, for the slough afforded no foothold. The further side was a steep built up of sods, the nearer sloped down gradually, and though it was not apparently very deep, the efforts of the victim to struggle out had done nothing but churn up a mass of black muddy water in which he sank deeper every ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... think me immodest in my demands," she went on in hasty exculpation. "I'm not even aiming my remarks at you ... I'm only thinking aloud.... But you see, I can't get any real foothold in society until—until my affairs are more clarified.... To run about the drawing-rooms as an example of frivolous heedlessness—that's not my way.... I can always hear them whisper behind me: 'She doesn't take it much to heart, that shows ...' No, I'd rather stay at home. I have ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... few short trips, and occasional brief sojourns in Paris, in the one foothold which his father had retained there, he was constrained by necessity to remain beneath the family roof-tree. They gave him his food and his clothing, but no money. He suffered from this, and groaned and grumbled as if he were in a state of slavery. Nevertheless, his unquenchable good humour ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... missionary to the Indians and French on the St. John, was a man of courage and of patriotic impulses. He deemed himself justified in making every possible effort to keep the English from gaining a foothold north of the Bay of Fundy, but it does not appear that he ever incited the Indians to indulge their savage instincts, or that he was guilty of the duplicity and barbarity that have been so freely ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... ten thousand fail where one succeeds in getting even a foothold—to climb, as you ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... From his vantage point, Russell could pick out the most dangerous places, and chart a course through the rapids accordingly. But throughout these ten miles of granite, the walls are sheer and smooth for the first fifteen hundred feet of their rise. Russell could find no foothold, and the men for the first time faced the necessity of ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... lake is very curious, a series of natural canals run in all directions through vast swamps which only afford foothold in the height of summer. The thrifty peasants utilise the dry season to plant fields of maize, for the scorching sun dries these swamps in a very short space of time. In the winter or early spring, they are nearly or quite under water. As the lake is reached, small islands of dense willow ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... of an uncertain nature takes its place. To outward appearances the development of the empire was a brilliant one. A colonial empire was established—mostly in Africa—nearly five times as great in area as the home empire; she had large possessions in the Pacific and had gained a foothold in China. The rich potash and iron deposits of Alsace increased her wealth and marvelously built up her industries and she became one of the greatest manufacturing nations of modern times. Her population doubled, her foreign trade increased four fold, her shipping grew by leaps and bounds. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... army of the unemployed in agriculture and industry—of those who have lost their foothold in the lower middle class,—and of those who have been expropriated (robbed) of their little possessions by taxes, debts ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... this to do with love? Must it not be holiness? Yao and Shun[63] still yearned for this. Seeking a foothold for self, love finds a foothold for others; seeking light for itself, it enlightens others too. To learn from the near at hand may be called ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... most dangerous, but they were the most offensive. Their doctrines were too absurd to gain a lasting foothold in the West. But they made great pretensions to advanced thought, and engrafted on Christianity the speculations of the East as to the origin of evil and the nature of God. They were not only dreamy theosophists, but materialists under the disguise of spiritualism. I shall have ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... facts" of the immense reptilian development in the Mesozoic can only be understood on the supposition that they were evolved "to keep down the coarser vegetation, to supply animal food for the larger Carnivora, and thus give time for higher forms to obtain a secure foothold and a sufficient amount of varied form and ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... we had also succeeded in throwing back upon the Meuse the enemy, who was endeavoring to gain a foothold on the left bank. Our successes continued on the 28th in the woods of Marfee and of Jaulnay. Thanks to them we were able, in accordance with the orders of the General in Chief, to fall back on the Buzancy-Le ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... edge of the hill which here fell almost sheer to the level of the lake, and the old McConachans had no doubt chosen their site for its unscalable position. Indeed, the place must always have been impregnable from that side, the rock offering no foothold to a goat till within twenty feet of the base of the tower, where the surface was broken and uneven, and had, in places, been built up with solid masonry. In the crevices up there, seeds had germinated and grown to tall plants and bushes. Ivy hung about the face of the escarpment like ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... south, to Cape Chidley on the north. Along these eight hundred miles it is a constant succession of bare rocks scoured clean and smooth by the ice and storms of centuries, with not a green thing to be seen, save now and then a bunch of stunted shrubs that have found a foothold in some sheltered nook in the rocks, and perchance, on some distant hill, a glimpse of struggling spruce or fir trees. It is a fog-ridden, dangerous coast, with never a lighthouse or signal of any kind at any point in its entire ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... progression in a hurricane became a fine art. The first difficulty to be encountered was a smooth, slippery surface offering no grip for the feet. Stepping out of the shelter of the Hut, one was apt to be immediately hurled at full length down wind. No amount of exertion was of any avail unless a firm foothold had been secured. The strongest man, stepping on to ice or hard snow in plain leather or fur boots, would start sliding away with gradually increasing velocity; in the space of a few seconds, or earlier, exchanging the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... balancing himself with his feet wide apart, and then he started staggering doggedly down the stony grade, groping, at each step, for a foothold. In the light of the sinking moon the slowly plodding rescuer offered an inviting target, with both hands engaged beyond the possibility of drawing or using a weapon, but no ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... tops of their voices, they started on a frantic run up through the woods, never pausing as they crossed the main road to glance the way of the bridge. Anne, clinging desperately to her precarious foothold, saw their flying forms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come, but meanwhile her position was a ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... in Sigurd's ear: "He is wise to lie low as long as possible. It is a great thing to get a good foothold before the whirlwind ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... that time; and so strong and prophetic was Wilson's admiration of his patron, that he publicly gave him the name of "The Great Magician" before the first "Waverley Novel" was published. Within ten years from his getting a foothold on Windermere banks, he had raised periodical literature to a height unknown before in our time, by his contributions to "Blackwood's Magazine"; and he seemed to step naturally into the Moral Philosophy Chair in Edinburgh in 1820. Christopher North has perhaps conveyed to foreign, and untravelled ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... much more likely to be regarded as mere pedantry. In both these countries, though, Latin was still the language of the Church, of the universities, of all learned writing, and the means of international intercourse, and after the new humanism had once obtained a foothold it was welcomed by scholars as a great addition to existing knowledge. Erasmus, the foremost scholar of his day, not only labored hard to introduce the new learning in the schools, but welcomed the restored Roman tongue as an international language for scholarship, as a potent ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... Cawker poked a head from a window and looked anxiously toward the gaping mouth of the ravine. The darkness of night was already settling in its gloomy depths. The homely shed looked black and forbidding. Aloft on each side were precipitous slopes affording but slight foothold. Little likelihood was there of rioters sliding down to attack them, but, suppose they pried loose, or blasted out, some of those huge rocks up the mountain and sent them rolling, bounding, crashing down? What might ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... there was scarce foothold for either, and the brethren said as they watched them: if Caesar were to miss his footing and fall over the edge, the last link would be broken and Jesus would go over after him. But sheep and goats never miss their footing, a brother answered. It is fortunate, another replied, that Caesar ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... creating the joint kingdom of the Netherlands, suited the Powers which made it. It suited England, since it placed the Belgian provinces, and especially Antwerp, out of the reach of France. It suited Prussia, which acquired a strong foothold on the plateaux commanding the Meuse and the right to interfere in the affairs of Luxemburg. It suited Holland, whose position was considerably strengthened by the addition of rich and populous provinces. It suited Austria and Russia, ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... with the accuracy of the baseball pitcher that he was, hurled it at the swaying figure upon the barrel. The club caught Simmons fair in the mouth, who, being, none too firmly set upon his pedestal, itself affording a wobbling foothold, landed spatting and swearing in the arms of his friends below. With the mercurial temper characteristic of a crowd, they burst into a ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... . . were beetling cliffs, with ledges and crannies that afforded foothold only to ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris |
