"Parlous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... who could not find room elsewhere," mused the MEMBER FOR SARK, looking on from one of the side galleries, "was in 1886, when GLADSTONE introduced his first Home Rule Bill. Twelve months earlier, under guidance of Land League, Ireland was in a parlous state. Coercion Act in full force. Jails thronged with patriots convicted under its rigorous clauses. Still there were left at liberty enough to maim cattle and shoot at landlords. If Germany had happened to step in at that epoch it would have been a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 147, August 12, 1914 • Various
... wholly there that in ten years I had hardly been in as many Boston houses. As I have said, I met Doctor Holmes at the Fieldses', and at Longfellow's, when he came out to a Dante supper, which was not often, and somewhat later at the Saturday Club dinners. One parlous time at the publisher's I have already recalled, when Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Autocrat clashed upon homeopathy, and it required all the tact of the host to lure them away from the dangerous ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... easily. "It is not lack of trust in you, my good friend. But you are the holder of an office, and knowing as I do the upright honesty of your character I feared to embarrass you with things whose very knowledge must give you the parlous choice of being false to that office ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... I, 'frank as you have been with us, I can scarce be equally so with you, without the permission of the gentleman who has just left the room. He is the leader of our party. Pleasant as our short intercourse has been, these are parlous times, and hasty confidences are apt to lead ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... crew it was a subject for frequent comment that Rufus Craig had not appeared in the north country to take command of his forces in those parlous times when the Three C's interests were threatened. In council Lida and her advisers began to wonder how much information regarding the Flagg operations had filtered to the outside or whether the defeated Comas bosses were not apprehensively withholding ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... passes of the hand hither and thither—if there be any magic in ce doux demi-jour so loved in France, in stuff for flattery ready pointed and feathered, in freedom of admiration, "and all in the way of business"—then is a lovable sitter to a love-like painter in "parlous" vicinity (as the new school would phrase it) to sweet heart-land! Pleasure in a vocation has no offset in political economy as honor has ("the more honor the less profit"), or portrait-painters would ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... we're in a parlous case. The forest laws are dev'lish severe here: an they catch us trespassing upon their hunting ground, we shall pay a neat poll-tax: nothing less ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... ocean swept through this narrow channel like a mill-race. The first swell tossed us up ten feet, and we rode on it fifty before Teta could disengage us from its clasp, and, without capsizing, divert our course westward instead of toward the parlous shore. One such jeopardy succeeded another. We were in a quarter of an hour directly under black and frowning heights from which a score of cascades and rills leaped into the air, their masses of water, carried ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... end of her story, which was commended of all, Filomena, by the queen's good pleasure, proceeded to speak thus: "The story told by Neifile bringeth to my mind a parlous case the once betided a Jew; and for that, it having already been excellent well spoken both of God and of the verity of our faith, it should not henceforth be forbidden us to descend to the doings of mankind and the events ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... poet doth not lie for that matter: I am neither more nor less than merry Sir Thomas always. Wilt sup with me? by God, I love a parlous wise fellow that smells of a politician ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... latest reports are not reassuring. Like his celebrated prototype of fable, the ill-fated "Don't Care," he runneth a chance of being "devoured by lions"! At least he appears to have sought the company of those parlous beasts in their native Afric wilds. We hear that "the lions kept him tucked up one night," which same news (—gathered from a diurnal intituled the Johannesberg Star—) hath a fearsome and ill-boding sound. That he is—for the time at least—in every sense "tucked up," is only too obviously ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various
... same time, as I have already remarked, the question remains as to what these people would have done had they been left absolutely unprotected and unprovided for among the remnants of what had once been their homes. It was certain that Miss Hobhouse's pamphlet revealed a parlous state of things, but did she realise that wood, blankets, linen and food were not things which could be transported with the quickness that those responsible heartily desired? Did she remember that the British troops ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... by the help of its light pronounces all these zealous worshippers alike, to be but "Infidels and Turks," and says to all, in language not quite so polite as that of Touchstone, "Truly, shepherds, ye are in a parlous state," herself makes no such public demonstration of her faith. To an Eastern infidel travelling in the West, she would even appear, to outward eye, a tenfold greater infidel than her neighbours. Except on one day in seven, he would seldom find a place of public ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... my bluntness, but these are parlous times for wayfarers and I cannot afford to have a tin can tied to ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... immediate danger of extinction. The smaller toothed whales, the killers, dolphins, and porpoises (though one of them—the bottle-nosed whale—is being killed out), are not as yet seriously threatened by commercial man. But the whalebone whales are in a parlous state. The Right whales, as they are called, are the chief of these. They are huge creatures, 60 ft. in length, with an enormous head: it is as much as one third of the total length in the Greenland ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... cartoon-drawing absolutely between them—no other hand making one at all for six-and-thirty years), there appeared 314 cartoons in about 286 weeks. It sometimes happened that Punch appeared without a cartoon at all, especially in those parlous cashless days of 1842, and again in 1846 and 1848; but, on the other hand, two cartoons were frequently given in the same number, usually from different hands, though occasionally Leech would do both. The 314 designs were made ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Highness's sudden departure. He says openly that it is contrary to both military discipline and, I regret, mon Prince, to honour. He says if all his generals permitted themselves to run after their mistresses when it suited them, the army would be in a parlous state.' Indeed the Elector of Hanover had expressed ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and the column was decimated before it had passed. I expected to see the return journey made by another road, which would wind round and avoid the fatal cliff. Not at all. The nymph-laden band resumed the parlous path and the Goldfish received a double windfall: the Ants and their prizes. Rather than alter its track, the column was decimated a ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... his part had saved the situation; but he lacked humour, and while Nelly, even as she spoke, knew she was talking nonsense and only waited his reminder of the inevitable in a friendly spirit, yet, when the reminder came, it was couched in words so forcible and so direct, that for a parlous moment her own sense of humour ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... pointing to a bright-red cliffy peak, "Ab'l-brid," on the left bank of the Wady, and to others whose heads were blue enough and low enough to argue considerable distance. He had intended his cousin Gabr to be the real guide, and to take to himself all the credit; but I had sent off the parlous "judge" in another direction. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the Picture (WARD, LOCK) is that it would be better worth reading if it contained less of the tale—which, to speak quite candidly, is parlous nonsense—and more of the trimmings. The trimmings are mostly concerned with art bargain-hunting, and are excellent fun. Most of us have the treasure-trove instinct sufficiently developed to like reading about a young man who picks up Gainsboroughs for ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... big gun being now useless, and the Su-chen herself in a very parlous condition, it was obviously out of the question to think of attempting to conclude the fight by means of the light guns and small-arms alone; the ship would not float long enough for that. Some other plan of action must therefore be adopted, and Frobisher gave his attention ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... was greatly complicated by the hundreds of thousands of civil refugees who all, more or less, looked to Wrangel as their leader, and grouped themselves around him—all of them, however, in an equally parlous plight. ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... examples of perseverance; in a great many cases no church, chapel, or Sunday-school; the street for playground, exercise, observation, and talk; what kind of young men and maidens are we to expect that these boys and girls will become? If this were the exact, plain, and naked truth we were in a parlous state indeed. Fortunately, however, there arc in every parish mitigations, introduced principally by those who come from the city of Samaria, or it would be bad indeed for the next generation. There ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... my own salvation not In a parlous state? And oft Do I question if my life Still be ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... In the very word is something from which we shrink; it seems to signify nothing less than a national apostasy, a denial of the faith in which we won our glory. The democratic Englishman is, by the laws of his own nature, in parlous case; he has lost the ideal by which he guided his rude, prodigal, domineering instincts; in place of the Right Honourable, born to noble things, he has set up the mere Plebs, born, more likely than not, for all manner of baseness. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... his porter's work," answered the officer, his face respectfully wrinkled with the trace of a smile. "Though one could say from his exhaustion that he received other favour than coin. The very thought of his filthy repast drives the rascal to most fearful retchings. He is in a parlous way, and if your lordship deign forbearance...."—"Heigh!" He was interrupted by the exclamation of Saburo[u]zaemon, now examining the leaf most intently. "I say now! An oak leaf, the broad reminder of the kiri (paulownia imperialis), such might come from ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... escaped us, that he here for the first time made the acquaintance of a "great many large vultures, called buzzards, the shooting of which is prohibited, as they feed upon carrion, and contribute in this manner to the salubrity of the country." This "parlous wild-fowl" has the honor to attract the attention of his Highness again in Charleston, where he informs us that its life is, in like manner, protected by law, and where it is called from its resemblance to another bird, the turkey-buzzard. . . . ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... their present situation. Now I have seen superb potatoes grown literally in the sand at Scheveningen, and was not surprised to hear that Omey Island was once so famous for the national staff of life that few cared to grow anything else. But there are difficulties everywhere, and it is parlous work to break up ground at Omey. There is too much fresh air; for it blows so hard that people are afraid to disturb the thin covering of herbage which overspreads the best part of the island. "If ye break the shkin of 'um, your ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... of our visit the republic was in a parlous state. H.E. Mr. Gardiner, the new President, refused to swear in the Upper House, and the Lower refused to acknowledge the Presidential authority. Consequently business had been at a standstill for six weeks. We were disappointed in our hopes of being accompanied by the Honourable Professor ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... woebegone, screamed shrilly at sight of her. The lady's nerves were in a parlous condition—"on a raw edge" was her own phrase—and the relief of seeing her errant charge again was so great that the ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... will last you, eight yeares, a tanner Will last you eight yeares full out, or nine. Ham. And why a tanner? [I1] Clowne Why his hide is so tanned with his trade, That it will holde out water, that's a parlous Deuourer of your dead body, a great soaker. Looke you, heres a scull hath bin here this dozen yeare, Let me see, I euer since our last king Hamlet Slew Fortenbrasse in combat, yong Hamlets father, Hee that's mad. Ham. I mary, how came he madde? ...
— The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke - The First ('Bad') Quarto • William Shakespeare
... innavailing language, Or bought an Elegie of his condolement, That th' world might have tane notice, he had beene An Asse, 't had beene some favour. Mir. Thou sayest true, Wise Andrew, but these Schollars are such things When they can prattle. And. Very parlous things Sir. ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... relations. Thus, when we regard the manners of the dog, we see a romantic and monogamous animal, once perhaps as delicate as the cat, at war with impossible conditions. Man has much to answer for; and the part he plays is yet more damnable and parlous than Corin's in the eyes of Touchstone. But his intervention has at least created an imperial situation for the rare surviving ladies. In that society they reign without a rival: conscious queens; and in the only instance of a canine wife-beater that has ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... why there's sprung up now a new devotion? Good Gentlewoman, no. Do you see this fellow? He is a Scholler and a parlous Scholler, Or whether he be a Scholler or no 'tis not a doy't matter: He's a fine talker and a zealous talker; We can make him thinck what we list, say what we list, Print what we list and whom we list ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... merely a bitter jest. Look for a moment at the tale that these profits show! The Projectile Company has multiplied its 1913 profit thirteen times over! Five or six years ago its affairs were in so parlous a state that 19s. had to be written off as lost from each 20s. share. Now, as Mr. Charles Duguid reminds us, "it is paying a first dividend of 50 per cent and is returning to the shareholders 3s. 6d. out of the 19s. they regarded as lost." The ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... done me a parlous ill turn, Cousin Reuben," he said sadly to his cousin, "by bidding me hide this matter from my wife. A few more such secrets, and I should be a ruined man. Never before have I known her seized with a desire for such prodigality of vesture. I have looked upon her, all these years, as a sober ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... that she had some special news of a similar sort to give him: the election was close at hand, and he knew that Simon and his gang were desperately anxious to defeat him. Although Simon had been elected to the Mayoralty, his party in the Town Council was in a parlous position—at present it had a majority of one; if Brent were elected, that majority would disappear, and there were signs that at the annual elections in the coming November it would be transformed into a minority. Moreover, ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Florence with an uneasy feeling that their fulfilment might be nearer after Lorenzo died and was succeeded by his son. Piero dei Medici sent the preacher away from the city, for he knew that men whispered among themselves that the Dominican had foretold truly the death of Innocent and the parlous state of Florence under the {45} new Pope, Alexander VI (Alexander Borgia). He did not like the predictions of evil for his own house of Medici, which had now wielded supreme power in Florence for over sixty years. It would ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... my guiding rein, I swear * I'll meet on love ground parlous foe nor care: Good sooth I'll vex revilers, thee obey * And quit my slumbers and all joy forswear: And for thy love I'll dig in vitals mine * A grave, nor shall my vitals weet ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... always, and to regard her course as one wherein she has accepted a degree of responsibility second only to a mother's, and not a by-path leading merely to pleasure and for the idling away of an unoccupied hour. Potential manhood is a difficult force to handle, and none should embark upon the parlous enterprise of arousing it without due regard for the consequences. We may not let loose a young lion from its leash, and, when dire consequences follow, excuse ourselves on the score that we thought the devastating feature was ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... and holding his drawn sword in his teeth, since both hands were needed for the parlous descent, he commenced his task while the others ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... hut, I found the lady so impolitely named "the Old Cow" in a parlous state. There she lay upon the floor, an unpleasant object because of the blood that had escaped from her wound, surrounded by a crowd of other women and of children. At regular intervals she announced that she was dying, and emitted a fearful yell, whereupon ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... he felt that he must make a bold stand, so he summoned a meeting and spoke somewhat as follows:—'Never before have I addressed you with such 58 feelings of anxiety for you, or with such indifference to my own fate. That plans are being laid for my destruction I am glad enough to hear: in such a parlous case as this I look for death as the end of all my troubles. It is for you that I feel shame and pity. It is not that a field of battle awaits you, for that would only accord with the laws of warfare and the just rights of combatants, ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... our dear land was in parlous state. A vogue for asceticism had sprung up, just as other vogues have become popular in other ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... Gentlemen; You seem to have a snuffing in your head Sir, A parlous snuffing, but this same ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... dialogue, and after nearly 200 pages of argument, in which the unfortunate herb gets no mercy, one of the interlocutors, a trader in tobacco, is so convinced of the iniquity of his trade, and of his own parlous state if he continue therein, that he declares that the two hundred pounds' worth of this "beastly tobacco" which he owns, shall "presently packe to the fire," or else be ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... would not object to Jill's presence, she closed with the offer. At Mrs Scatchard's invitation, she spent the evening in the sitting-room downstairs, where she was introduced to Mr Scatchard. If, as had been alleged, Mr Scatchard was a pillar of the throne, that august institution was in a parlous condition. He was a red-headed, red-eyed, clean-shaven man, in appearance not unlike an elderly cock; his blotchy face, thick utterance, and the smell of his breath, all told Mavis that he was addicted to drink. Mavis wondered how this fuddled man, whose wife ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... first to build in this virgin waste," mused the young man aloud. "Rough and parlous were the days when he came to this land, Zachariah. There was no town of Lafayette, no neighbours save the rude, uncultured trappers. Now see how the times have changed. And, mark my guess, Zachariah, there ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... reason of their journey, and he said, 'I purpose to go with my brother, this sick man, to the holy woman, her whose prayers are answered, so she may pray for him and God may make him whole by the blessing of her prayers.' Quoth the villager, 'By Allah, my son is in a parlous plight for sickness and we have heard that the holy woman prayeth for the sick and they are made whole. Indeed, the folk counsel me to carry him to her, and behold, I will go in company with you. And they said, 'It is well.' So they passed ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... and below me stood the walled-in town that paid tribute to the good and bad Rothhoefens in those olden days: a red-tiled, gloomy city that stood as a monument to long-dead ambitions. A peaceful, quiet town that had survived its parlous centuries of lust and greed, and would go on living to ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... a long story of it? You must know that it was the most parlous and fierce and fearful battle that ever has been fought in our day. Nor have there ever been such forces in the field in actual fight, especially of horsemen, as were then engaged—for, taking both sides, there were not fewer ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... to inquire with the solicitude of seeming friendship, but outside that house he was busy breathing life into a scheme of broad and parlous scope, and in all but a literal sense that scheme was a violation ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... calling was peaceful. The year 1702 alone must have caused him some disquiet, when during the war the city of Cremona was taken by Marshal Villeroy, on the Imperialist side, retaken by Prince Eugene, and finally taken a third time by the French. That must have been a parlous time for the master of that wonderful workshop whence proceeded the world's masterpieces, though we may almost fancy the absorbed master, like Archimedes when the Romans took Syracuse, so intent on his labor that he hardly heard the din and roar of ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... prospects. The same philosophy, or lack of it, that had always made life full of merry hope when their stomachs were filled, taking no thought of the morrow, animated them now. Fate had given Mayo and his associate an ideal crew for that parlous job. It was not a question of union hours and stated wages; they worked all night just as cheerily as they worked ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... beneath the fortress and the forest a parlous passage wherein dwells the fiend, the which I have much discomfit of. But with ye aside me, fair knight, there ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... a parlous time to go over. The French had defeated one army after another, of the Allies, and were in the hey-dey of their first success. The trouble seemed to be lack of unity of command, and lack of able leadership. The ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... seem an odd thing that this lady should so readily have taken a stranger into her confidence. Yet reflect upon the parlous condition in which she found herself. Deserted by her dispirited grooms, her enemies hot upon her heels, she was in no case to trifle with assistance, or to despise an offer of services, however frail it might seem. With both hands she clutched at the slender hope I brought ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... if the confident demeanor of the paddling warriors in the canoes were destined to be justified, the big steamer was in parlous state. Her vast bulk and sheer walls of steel did not daunt them. They came on steadily against the rapid current, and spread out into a crescent when within a few hundred yards of the ship. Then three men, crouching in the bows of different ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... me away, and anon they blindfolded me, and led my horse. What a mercy poor Whitefoot was sure footed, and did not stumble, for the way was parlous difficult. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... "Hi, hi! That's parlous odd. Keep her as you have her, and have out Bill, the carpenter, to see if there's any iron overside. Nay, let her off a little more, for that's a hard-looking piece of shore out yonder, for all of the palms and ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... STORY. Melchizedek the Jew, with a story of three rings, escapeth a parlous snare set for him by ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... strange that he should take so much notice of thee as to exchange blows with thee with his own hand. Haply thou art either very quick or parlous ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... all sail as quickly as possible, and were now running away before the wind in order to go about and stand up on the starboard tack to engage the English vessels and relieve their companions, which were in a somewhat parlous state. ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... his best to champion our cause. A great crowd gathered round; but no conclusion was reached. They broke up with an understanding that the inquiry should be completed another day; and now they are all agog to see which will win and prove his case. You all see how parlous and precarious is our position, depending on a single mortal. These are the alternatives for us: to be dismissed as mere empty names, or (if Timocles prevails) to enjoy our ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... personality that loomed large, in those years, on the Midland—Samuel Swarbrick, the accountant. His world was finance, and in it he was a master. So great was his skill that the Great Eastern Railway Company, which, financially, was in a parlous condition and their dividend nil, in 1866 took him from the Midland and made him their general manager, at, in those days, a princely salary. Their confidence was fully justified; his skill brought the ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... fearless boatmen, pursue the shark in his own element, and make a pastime of their incomparable surf. On shore they flee equally from toil and peril, and are all turned to carpet occupations and to parlous frauds. Nahinu, an ex-judge, was paid but two dollars for a hard day in court, and he is paying a dollar a day to the labourers among his coffee. All Hawaiians envy and are ready to compete with him for ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... almost uncanny knowledge of the kinks and obliquities of the criminal mind. In the phraseology of logic, Winter applied the deductive method and Furneaux the inductive; when both fastened on to the same "suspect" the unlucky wight was in parlous state. ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... cold again,'" she repeated. "What a heavenly thing to happen to a pair of creatures—if—" she paused and regarded Robin, who at the other side of the room was trying to decide some parlous question of dances to which there was more than one claimant. She was sweetly puckering her brow over her card and round her were youthful male faces looking eager and even a trifle tense with repressed anxiety for ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... there's early death looking out of his eyes," Jane Marks would say. "Such blue eyes belong to the sky, Minnie, and there's more to it than his angel face, because the child's so parlous good that it ain't straining truth to say the Old Adam be left out of him. And granted that, this vale of tears is no place for such a boy. Heaven's his home," Mrs. Marks would say, "and so you must fortify yourself ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... liar!" shouted the boy. Lescott, standing at his side, felt that the situation was more than parlous. But, before the storm could break, some one rushed in, and whispered to Wile McCager a message that caused him to raise both hands above his ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... say differently before long. If you will fight in a fight you must have tools. Now you have none, and your situation is very parlous.' ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... not. After the tractor killed you, and you were buried, what good would such fantasies be, even if they existed? No, we simply reincarnated you by pooling our magic. Though it was a hazardous and parlous ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... immediate. He rushed off at so furious a rate dead to windward that for a great while we had all our work cut out to keep her free by baling. The sea had risen a little, and as we leapt from one wave to another the spray flew over us in an almost continuous cloud. Clearly our situation was a parlous one. We could not get near him; we were becoming dangerously enfeebled, and he appeared to be gaining strength instead of losing it. Besides all this, none of us could have the least idea of how the ship now ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... him two one-dollar bills. As I handed them over I noticed that one of them had seen parlous times. Its upper right-hand corner was missing, and it had been torn through the middle, but joined again. A strip of blue tissue paper, pasted over the ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... heads hewn off: and besides the dead that fell, many a wounded man, that never rose again, for the sore press there was. The din and uproar were so great from this side and from that, that God might have thundered and no man would have heard it! Great was the medley, and dire and parlous was the fight that was fought on both sides; but the Tartars had the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the 18th they had achieved a height of over 6,000 feet, and by that time the sledges were in such a parlous state that Scott had all of them unpacked and the runners turned up for inspection. Horrid revelations followed; one sledge remained sound, and Scott promptly decided that there was one course and only one to take, and that was to return to the ship as fast as they could. Had two sledges been ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... that the mark has fallen, and that the German financial fabric is in a parlous condition. But that fabric is kept from crumbling away by the war, just as the Egyptian papyrus is preserved so long as it does not come into contact with the air. Moreover, common prudence should impel us to find out at what a cost to ourselves we have reduced the value ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... that these imply five obvious and generally advantageous lines of action, namely: "if a certain road is short, it must be followed; if an army is isolated, it must be attacked; if a town is in a parlous condition, it must be besieged; if a position can be stormed, it must be attempted; and if consistent with military operations, the ruler's commands must be obeyed." But there are circumstances which sometimes forbid a ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... the center-table, cheap magazines; on the stage, vaudeville—these are habits that sap the ability for slow, ruminative pleasure in the arts. Luckily, they are not the only modern manifestation, else were we in a parlous state, indeed! The trouble with Scott, then, may be resolved in part into a trouble with the modern ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... quoth Sir Hacon, "though 'tis a far cry to Belsaye and I love not to be pent within walls, and with Red Pertolepe threatening our flank 'tis a very parlous case, methinks." ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... Fez he lingered, subtle SMITHEZ, being bound To contract Commercial Treaty with the minions of MAHOUND. Full eight weeks' negociations smoothed that Treaty's parlous way; On the fifth July the Sultan swore it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... been ill, but is much better again; she now goes donkey rides with an old woman, who compliments her on her French. That old woman - seventy odd - is in a parlous spiritual state. ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... parlous words an we wish to honor the memory of our New England grandsires; and let us remember that these negative toilet traits were not peculiar to them, but dated from the fatherland. A century ago the English were ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... the dog was born; the gathered crowd Cheered their approval of this wise remark; A glad tail wagged its pride, and clear and loud Rang out the music of the earliest bark, While envious Nature sighed, "O parlous miss! I was a silly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 13, 1914 • Various
... Andrew Johnson's term the currency grew stable; We bought Alaska and we laid the great Atlantic cable; And then there came eight years of Grant; thereafter four of Hayes; And in his time the parties fell on fierce and parlous days; And Garfield came, and Arthur too, and Congress shoes were worn, And Brooklyn Bridge was built, and I, ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams
... the German authorities—getting foodstuffs to prevent a famine here. The Minister got off an urgent telegram to the Consul to get to work and have them released, and also saw von der Lancken about it, with the result that the wires are hot. I hope to hear to-night that they are free. These are parlous times ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... no use," he muttered despairingly, as he looked above him again, and, as he did so, saw that the men were laughing at his predicament, for, as Touchstone the clown told the shepherd, he was "in a parlous case." ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... everything that ever came out of a human mouth had a human meaning; and not one of the fixed fools of history was such a fool as he looks. And when our great-uncles or great-grandmothers told a child he might be drowned by breaking the Sabbath, their souls (though undoubtedly, as Touchstone said, in a parlous state) were not in quite so simple a state as is suggested by supposing that their god was a devil who dropped babies into the Thames for a trifle. This form of religious literature is a morbid form if taken by itself; but it did correspond to a certain reality in psychology which most people ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... white lie, child," she chided. "You've come, Dannie, poor lad! t' be a white liar. 'Tis a woful state—an' a parlous thing. For, child, if you ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... appetite for ritual was disappearing; the people were beginning to assert themselves against the land-owners; the land-owners were encroaching upon the power of the ruling princes; and China was in a parlous state. ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... day within my hall, A winter day of wind and driving foam. They tell me that my girl is sick—and yet Not very sick. I may not hour by hour, More than one watching of a moon that wanes, Make chronicle of change. A parlous change When he looks back to that same moon ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... astonished when they heard that Wigfall had been carrying on negotiations in Beauregard's name, and stated that, to their certain knowledge, he had had no communication with Beauregard. They spoke of the matter with great delicacy, for Wigfall was a parlous man, and quick to settle disputed points with the pistol. Anderson replied with spirit that, under the circumstances, he would run up his flag again, and resume the firing. They begged him, however, not to take action until they had had an opportunity to lay the whole subject before ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... Ten years are on my soul, And on my conscience. I've an incubus: My one distinction, and a parlous toll To glory; but hope ...
— The Man Against the Sky • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... than the most studious and strenuous of all scholiasts who ever claimed acquiescence or challenged dissent on the strength of his lifelong labours and hard-earned knowledge of the letter of the text. Such an one is indeed "in a parlous state"; and any boy whose heart first begins to burn within him, who feels his blood kindle and his spirit dilate, his pulse leap and his eyes lighten, over a first study of Shakespeare, may say to such a teacher with better reason than Touchstone said to Corin, ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... parlous state, shepherd, thought I; and it then occurred to me that my own acute, philosophic temperament was one of the things I ought to be thankful for. But I couldn't feel thankful; I could only feel powerless and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... I know not well what urged thy act, Whether thou'lt pass in palace, or die rackt; But then, shone on the guns, a sublime soul.— A Bayard-boy's, bound by his pure parole! Honor redeemed though paid by parlous price, Though lost be sunlit sports, wild boyhood's spice, The Gates, the cheers of mates ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... to the top of the rise where we were encamped, and sat down alone to think matters over. Our condition was somewhat parlous; all our beasts were now dead, even the second donkey, which was the last of them, having perished that morning, and been eaten, for food was scanty since of late we had met with little game. The Strathmuir men, who now must carry the loads, were almost worn out and ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... reviewing the whole situation in her room. She was compelled to admit, however outraged her feelings may have been the previous night, that should Peg carry out her intention to desert them, the family would be in a parlous condition. The income from Mr. Kingsnorth's will was indeed the one note of relief to the distressed household. She had passed a wretched night, and after a cup of tea in her room, and a good long period of reflection, she decided to seek the aid of the head of ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... "These be parlous times, sir," he said, half in apology, I thought. And then: "You have made friends with my little maid, and I owe you somewhat ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... a rushing noise; it is usually red-hot when it falls, by friction against the air; it is mostly composed of native iron and other heavy metallic bodies; and it does its best to bury itself in the ground in the most orthodox and respectable manner. The man who sees this parlous monster come whizzing through the clouds from planetary space, making a fiery track like a great dragon as it moves rapidly across the sky, and finally ploughing its way into the earth in his own back garden, may well be excused for regarding it as a fine specimen of the true antique thunderbolt. ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... letter are always the most keenly pleased to hear the news of an engagement. There was the sober sheet (crossed) from the elderly relative living in the country, who, never having been married herself, takes the opportunity of giving four pages of advice to one about to enter that parlous state. There was the fatherly letter from the country rector who christened Millicent, and thinks that he may be asked to marry her in a fashionable London church—and so to a bishopric. On heavily-crested stationery follow the missives of the ladies whose daughters would make sweet bridesmaids. ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... thus, and I marvelled greatly to see a man whose heart, if full of evil, I had yet deemed stout enough, stricken by fear into so parlous and pitiful a condition. ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my. Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk, by the way. (He touches the keys again) Minor chord comes ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... has pretty well the whole world for its parish. Wherefore the best one can do, is to get it sound, well roasted, and as fresh as may be. Much as I love and practice home preparation, I am willing to let the Trust or who will, roast my coffee. Roasting is parlous work, hot, tedious, and tiresome, also mighty apt to result in scorching if not burning. One last caution—never meddle with the salt unless sure your hand is light, your memory so trustworthy you will not ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... sense of that somewhat hackneyed phrase. At the opening of the sixteenth century every established institution—political, social, and religious—was shaken and showed the rents and fissures caused by time and by the growth of a new life underneath it. The empire—the Holy Roman—was in a parlous way as regarded its cohesion. The power of the princes, the representatives of local centralized authority, was proving itself too strong for the power of the Emperor, the recognized representative of centralized authority for the whole German-speaking ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... in her dismay, confronted by a parlous choice. Consent to Diana's accompanying her in this condition she could not; ride on alone to Mr. Wilding's house was hardly to be thought of, and yet if she delayed she was endangering Richard's life. By the very strength of her nature she was caught in the mesh of Diana's scheme. She saw that ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... necessarily add to his. "What does give me happiness, then?" he asked himself; "what could conceivably increase my zest for life? Evidence of power, exercise of faculty: so far as I know, nothing else whatever. A parlous state of affairs. But it is the difference, I presume, between a giving creature and a getting one which explains all. Is a man, then, never to give, and be happy? Has he ever tried? Is a woman not to get? Has she ever had a chance of it?" ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... this may sound, the way has been long and lonely until that elusive goal was reached; and, even now, in the heat of the controversy which ensues, we find ourselves sometimes in a somewhat parlous position, placed, as it were, between two fires; on the one side are those who, though not without sympathetic feeling for the well-intentioned, earnest-minded believers in the errors now being exposed, yet cast ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... Unfortunately, the glory of the view does not make up to them for the lack of town bustle and nightly "movies," so it isn't always easy to make comfortable summer arrangements. As you start so you go on, for changing horses in mid-stream has ever been a parlous business. A temperamental high-school boy who came to drive the motor and water the garden, though he appeared barefooted to drive me to town, and took French leave for a day's fishing, pinning a note to the kitchen door, saying, "Expect me when you see me and don't wait dinner," afflicted ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... He had told them exactly what he had feared, he had shown them the inside of this scheme as instinct had revealed it to him, and he had begged for aid. One man alone, surrounded by enemies, and in a country where all things were possible, was in a parlous position if once the extent of his knowledge were surmised. So far, the plot had not yet matured. So far, though the clouds had gathered and the thunder was muttering, the storm had not broken. The reason for that he knew—the one person needed, ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... blessed Sunday morning, November 8, 1868, to this good day, I have known no other life and had no other aim. Those were indeed parlous times. It was an era of transition. Upon the field of battle, after four years of deadly but unequal combat, the North had vanquished the South. The victor stood like a giant, with blood aflame, eyes dilate and hands uplifted again to strike. The victim lay prostrate. Save self-respect ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... nobles who had followed the three ex-Emperors into the Southern lines in 1352 fell into two cliques, each advocating the nomination of a different successor. This discord exercised a debilitating influence, and when Go-Murakami died (1368), the Southerners found themselves in a parlous condition. For his son and successor, Chokei, failing to appreciate the situation, immediately planned an extensive campaign against Kyoto from the east and the south simultaneously. Then Kusunoki Masanori passed into the Northern camp. Few events have received wider historical comment in ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Lord Treasurer," said Elizabeth, addressing Sir Percevall, "that your petition hath reference to a monopoly. Know you not, Sir Knight, that these be parlous days for making of new monopolies? Our subjects murmur, and 'tis said that we have already been too generous with these great gifts. Have you ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... of a single word you have said, my dear Prince," the Prime Minister remarked, "there is another aspect of the whole subject which I think that you should consider. If you find us in so parlous a state, it is surely scarcely dignified or gracious, on the part of a great nation like yours, to leave us so abruptly to our fate. Supposing it were true that we were suffering a little from a period of too lengthened prosperity, ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was not The Job's, but his, for exploration of the parlous lands of romance that lie hard by Twenty-eighth Street and Sixth Avenue. But he had to go out to lunch with Charley Carpenter, the assistant bookkeeper, that he might tell the news. As for Charley, He needed frequently ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... Peter. What saist thou, bully Bottome? Bot. There are things in this Comedy of Piramus and Thisby, that will neuer please. First, Piramus must draw a sword to kill himselfe; which the Ladies cannot abide. How answere you that? Snout. Berlaken, a parlous feare ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... from his chair. Ernest had no time to cry out. Jean-Christophe had hurled himself on him, and rolled with him into the middle of the room, and beat his head against the tiles. On the frightful cries of the victim, Louisa, Melchior, everybody, came running. They rescued Ernest in a parlous state. Jean-Christophe would not loose his prey; they had to beat and beat him. They called him a savage beast, and he looked it. His eyes were bursting from his head, he was grinding his teeth, and his only thought ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... time of privation may soon end, and that I may not see a soul from below till the snow disappears." These days of the early forties when England was engaged with the Chartist risings at home and her Chinese wars abroad, were surely parlous times up on this edge of empire. The Fort Simpson journals of February 4, 1843, record, "The Cannibal, with young Noir, and others of the party of Laman, arrived this evening in the last stage of existence, being compelled by starvation ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... their opinions there would be no morality. Foreign travel makes you feel there is something in the idea. Who cares what a parcel of jabbering strangers think about his actions? The moment you lose touch with your environment, the moment you cease to vibrate to its nuances, your morality is in a parlous condition. Better go home and sit down on the well-known couch of Catullus, and feel once more that people are real and life is earnest and the horizon is not its goal. What is this mania for movement? If you travel unintelligently you see nothing that you couldn't ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the Academy of Music Lillian Nordica's American Dbut German Opera Introduced at the Metropolitan Opera House Parlous State of Italian Opera in London and on the Continent Dr. Leopold Damrosch and His Enterprise The German Singers Amalia Materna Marianne Brandt Marie Schroeder-Hanfstngl Anton Schott, the Military Tenor Von Blow's Characterization: ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... and obviously he could not explain what she felt to be a rebuff. To make full disclosure of certain transactions would have stripped Eben Tollman of disguise and brought results as parlous as those he had feared on the afternoon when he left his strong box unlocked. Structures of self-delusion might have fallen into shapeless debris under the batteries of her frank questioning. Eben Tollman could dismiss from ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... who seeks for a 'song surpassing sense,' and tries to reproduce Mr. Browning's mode of verse for our edification, may seem to be in a somewhat parlous state. But Miss Caroline Fitz Gerald's work is better than her aim. Venetia Victrix is in many respects a fine poem. It shows vigour, intellectual strength, and courage. The story is a strange one. A certain Venetian, hating one ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Boers walking comprised 150 burghers without horses, who refused to surrender to the Portuguese, and who had now joined the trek on foot. Of the 1,500 mounted Boers 500 possessed horses which were in such a parlous condition that they could not be ridden. The draught cattle were mostly poor and weak, and the waggons carrying provisions and ammunition, as also those conveying the guns, could only be urged along with great difficulty. In the last few months our cattle ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... tribe were in a parlous state. The netting of the tabu had been tangled by the death of the King-God, Kawa Kendi, and the unprecedented act of the overthrow of the idol. Kawa Kendi's body, which had not been recovered so that the doctors could release his ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... that the saints may favor his design, and would especially recommend that our noble brother propitiate with prayers and offerings the holy Saint Hubert. We, ourselves, have importuned this holy saint, and he has proved marvellously helpful on parlous occasions. ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... hundred trite classical quotations (no great evidence of scholarship, but made jestingly familiar by the old school curricula) which our fathers could use with safety in any chance company of the society to which they were accustomed; but even the most familiar of them would be a parlous experiment in small talk to-day. They have vanished from common conversation even more completely than they have disappeared from the debates of the House of Commons. And this is only a type of the change which has come ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... being constructed. This critic imagined that the Turk knew only what the English papers told him. If the Turks' knowledge had been confined to what the War Office Intelligence Branch gave him credit for he would have been in a parlous state. While this ruling of the authorities at home prevailed it was impossible for me to give the names of officers or to mention divisions or units which were doing exceptionally meritorious work. Unfortunately the bureaucratic ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey
... we had effected our entry through the room which had been my very own, and made our parlous way across the lighted landing, to the best bedroom of those days and these, that I really felt myself a worm. Twin brass bedsteads occupied the site of the old four-poster from which I had first beheld the light. The doors were the ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... had been four hours in the water, found me in a parlous condition in the tide-rips off Mare Island light, where the swift ebbs from Vallejo Straits and Carquinez Straits were fighting with each other, and where, at that particular moment, they were fighting the flood tide setting up against them from San Pablo Bay. ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... called the Inner Route in consequence of its desirability for steamers, and our business has been to mark out this Inner Route safely and clearly among the labyrinth-like islands and reefs within the Barrier. And a parlous dull business it was for those who, like myself, had no necessary and constant occupation. Fancy for five mortal months shifting from patch to patch of white sand in latitude from 17 to 10 south, living on salt pork ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... deposits the boots as according to rule in the ottoman, and crosses to the fire. There must be something on David's mind to-night, for he pays no attention to the game, neither gives advice (than which nothing is more maddening) nor exchanges a wink with Alick over the parlous condition of James's crown. You can hear the wag-at-the-wall clock in the lobby ticking. Then David lets himself go; it runs out of him ...
— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie
... a rather parlous state. The country was disgusted with their mismanagement of the Irish Council Bill. Branches of the United Irish League had ceased to subscribe to the Party funds and it was evident that a temper distinctly ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... criminal. Finally, to workmen who have been influenced or persuaded to do anything by anybody except another workman, is given a suit for damages against the person so persuading them. The lot of the employer in Oklahoma is indeed a parlous one! ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... whiskers and dressed in the uniform of a butler in the British Navy, ask a German waiter if the pork pie is built. Ja, Ja, replies the waiter. Archy's suspicions are awakened, and he climbs into the pork pie through an air hole, and prepares his soul for parlous times. The naval butler takes the pie on board a launch, and Archy, watching through one of the portholes of the pastry, sees that they are picked up by a British cruiser "an inch or two outside the three-mile line." ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... End labour. He described the scheme, but in such a way as rather to damn it than praise it; and as for the Bill itself, which he had undertaken to compare with former Factory Bills, when he sat down he left it, indeed, in a parlous case—a poor, limping, doubtful thing, quite as likely to ruin the East End as to do it a hand's ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... parlous one for the vixen, and as she pulled herself together for flight along the side of the slope she doubtless regretted bitterly the curiosity which had impelled her to visit the den of her ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... of that night—Dec. 27, 1836—is Pollard's graphic picture of the Devonport mail snowed up at Amesbury. Six horses could not move it, and Guard F. Feecham was in parlous plight. Pollard's companion picture of the Liverpool mail in the snow near St. Alban's on the same night is equally interesting. Guard James Burdett fared little better than his comrade on the ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... buxom girl with a heavy tread, carrying a large rag doll, made the flight very slowly. She didn't trust "them cakes of ice," knowing full well that packing cases, however stoutly built, and however ably disguised in white cheese cloth, were parlous things for a lady of her weight. The prompter urged her in an audible voice to get a move on, to which she retorted sharply, "Shut up, I ain't going to break any of my legs ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks
... concerning the See of Avranches. Its bishopric and its cathedral were alike destroyed during the parlous times of the bickerings and ravages of Royalists and Republicans of the Revolutionary period. All that remains to-day is a trifling heap of stones which would hardly fill a row-boat,—a fragment of a shaft on ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... when we regard the manners of the dog, we see a romantic and monogamous animal, once perhaps as delicate as the cat, at war with impossible conditions. Man has much to answer for; and the part he plays is yet more damnable and parlous[13] than Corin's in the eyes of Touchstone. But his intervention has at least created an imperial situation for the rare surviving ladies. In that society they reign without a rival: conscious queens; and in the only instance of a canine wife-beater that has ever fallen under my notice, ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I have seen and attended more than enough of them out here. At this present moment a friend, a New Zealander, is in parlous plight. He was shot in the right shoulder, the wound soon healed, but the arm was almost useless, so the massage fiend here used to come and give him terrible gip. Then doctor No. 3 came along, said he had been treated wrongly, that the artery was severed, etc., and operated on him. The operation ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... sight of Lesley's inaction needed but this last breath to fan it into a very blaze of wrath. And what he said to them touching themselves, their country, and the Kirk Committee that had made sheep of them, was so bitter and contemptuous that none but men in the most parlous and pitiable of conditions could ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... somewhat anxious as to what might be happening on the other side of the river—with considerable justification, for if we had been driven back on to the one bridge which crossed the river we might have been in a parlous state. ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... barley in a gentle breeze and the prayer was over. Esther removed her hand from her eyes and looked up at the minister. For a tiny second his glance met hers. A thrill shot through her, a thrill of dismay. With all the force of a new idea, it came to her that she and he were in the same parlous case. He loved ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... An absurd period, excusable only on the score of its brevity. A parlous condition! A traitorous guide, froward, inspired of all manner of levity, pursuant of hopeless phantasms, dupe of roseate and pernicious myths (love-at-first-sight, and the like), butt of the High Gods' stinging laughter, deserving of nothing kinder than mockery from the aged ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... played a second time. I went home that night acutely sympathetic towards the worries of the Prime Minister. Mulross would be abroad in a day or two, and Vennard and Cargill were volcanoes in eruption. The Government was in a parlous state, with three demented Ministers on ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan |
