"Predicament" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... after luncheon at the foot of the hotel elevator—for in a town the size of Avalanche, Waring had found it necessary to put up at the same hotel as the enemy or take second best, an alternative not to his fastidious taste—rallied him upon the predicament in which he ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... thinking of this evening when he wrote (Memoirs, ed. 1815, i. 147):—'Those whom he could not always vanquish by the force of his intellect, by the depth and range of his arguments, and by the compass of his gigantic faculties, he silenced by rudeness; and I have myself more than once stood in the predicament which I here describe. Yet no sooner was he withdrawn, and with him had disappeared these personal imperfections, than the sublime attainments of his mind left their full effect on the audience: such the whole assembly might be in some measure ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... have been ideally happy, for they had forgotten their mess-box, and had only a light lunch. They had only their lap-robe for bedding. They were in a predicament; but the girl's chief concern was lest "Honey-bug" should let the wolves get her. Though it is scorching hot on the desert by day, the nights are keenly cool, and I was wondering how they would manage with only their lap-robe, when Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, who cannot hold ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... used to tell a story of a man who had but one idea, which was a wrong one. The couple who dote upon their children are in the same predicament: at home or abroad, at all times, and in all places, their thoughts are bound up in this one subject, and have no sphere beyond. They relate the clever things their offspring say or do, and weary every company with their prolixity and absurdity. Mr. Whiffler ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... found this out to his cost, for while one end of the stock stuck fast to the eagle's back, he was unable to let go his hold of the other end, and was consequently trailed by the eagle-clad giant over rocks and forests, until he was almost torn to pieces. Loki in this predicament began to sue for peace, but Thjassi told him that he should never be released from his hold until he bound himself by a solemn oath to bring Iduna and her apples out of Asgard. Loki very willingly gave ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... which to direct his course. Every now and then he comes upon an impassable swamp, which throws him out of his track, and causes him infinite difficulty before he can get round it, and then he begins to doubt of his true direction. This is certainly, an awkward predicament; and nothing is so easy as for inexperienced bushmen to lose their way. When once a man begins to doubt whether he is right, he loses all confidence in himself; he wanders first in one direction and then in ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... hundred fold! Yours will, no doubt, be a grand discussion; but it will horrify the world at first more than my whole volume; although by the sentence (page 489, new edition (First edition, page 488.)) I show that I believe man is in the same predicament with other animals. It is, in fact, impossible to doubt it. I have thought (only vaguely) on man. With respect to the races, one of my best chances of truth has broken down from the impossibility of ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... capsule, receptacle, quiver, chest; event, happening, instance, circumstances, condition, affair, plight, predicament, dilemma, contingency. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... prepared, and his portmanteau ready, and might have remarked that Mr. Bowls's countenance, when the latter conducted him to his apartments, wore a look of gravity, wonder, and compassion. But the thought of Mr. Bowls did not enter his head. He was deploring the dreadful predicament in which he found himself, in a house full of old women, jabbering French and Italian, and talking poetry to him. "Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!" exclaimed the modest boy, who could not face the gentlest of her sex—not even Briggs—when ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... men of the speed launch—did any smuggling it was not diamonds they smuggled. It was opium. And they were probably running Chinese across the border as well. Ruth knew that she was in a very serious predicament when she had swiftly thought this out, if she ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... our approach. For two days we cruised up and down the Channel trying to tell some one, who would listen, that we were friends; but no one would listen. After our encounter with the first warship I had given instructions that a wireless message be sent out explaining our predicament; but to my chagrin I discovered that both sending and receiving instruments ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... curiosity. He forgot himself in it: it was as if he were considering somebody else's strange predicament. But even that sort of interest was dying out when, looking to his left, he saw the accustomed shapes of the other bungalows looming in the night, and remembered the arrival of the thirsty company in the boat. Wang would hardly risk such a crime in the presence of ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... he was powerless because, to his physical weakness, the storm presented an unsurmountable obstacle. Except for Mother Moll, he was alone in the house with Tess and the Waldstricker child. Here was a terrible predicament. He'd already lost many years of his life, because he was present when Waldstricker's father was killed. He'd done what he could to avert that crime and paid a heavy penalty, for his interference. What to do, now, ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... vain that the Major remonstrated after he understood the predicament in which he was placed; in vain he appealed to the auctioneer—to the company present; it was too good a joke, and they would have given it against him under almost ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... Pat related all he knew and surmised concerning Haldane's woful predicament, saying ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... way she held herself responsible for his present predicament. She had felt a deep sense of guilt ever since that afternoon in New Haven when, listening to Howard's importunities and obeying an impulse she was powerless to resist, she had flung aside her waitress's apron, furtively left the restaurant and hurried ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... much as the irritans. Again, the ground being hot enough to burn the soles off one's boots, with the thermometer at something like 180 degrees in the sun, and the choking from thirst at every movement of the body, is enough to make any one pause before he foolishly gets himself into such a predicament. Discretion in such a case is by far the better part of valour—for valour wasted upon burning sands to no purpose ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... revealed his relations with Siraji, confessed that he had bribed Abdullah to administer a powerful drug to her, and expatiated on the very awkward predicament in which her ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... on his hands and knees, wavered along the cliff wall until he was again faced with angry water. To drop into that would be a mistake. He hesitated—and now more than his own predicament ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... would be a combination of the Alimentive and Cerebral types and would have the Alimentive's fat body with a large highbrow head of the Cerebral. The possession of these two highly developed but opposite kinds of systems places their owner constantly in the predicament of deciding between the big meal he wants and the small one he knows he should ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... it that we were left in such a predicament—that of the inexperienced girl, or the chaperon's? What is a chaperon for? Mrs. Whitney has treated me shamefully, shamefully! Here I am all by myself, and I don't know what ...
— The Bacillus of Beauty - A Romance of To-day • Harriet Stark
... number, with no tale to be continued. The girl blushed, the clerk did not understand, and we had to explain by the continental system, and the girl got her corsets, but suppose there had not been a Latin scholar standing around there waiting for his wife to buy a package of safty pins, what a predicament the girl would have been in. On behalf of the people, THE SUN thanks the board of education for adopting the continental system of pronounciation, only they ought to go further, and make it a crime punishable with suicide for ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... You will not be surprised at hearing this from a one-time Dutch Republican when you take into consideration that all of us who have surrendered are fully aware of the fact that we were the aggressors, and that our statesmen are to blame for our present predicament. A large number of Boers, of course, will never come to view the matter in this light. That, of course, is not the result of thought and reflection, but utter and total ignorance. When Miss Hobhouse was here I frequently ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... "Citizen Fusilier, do you know me no better?"—"Citizen Fusilier, if you will but listen!"—such were the fragments of his efforts to explain. The old man was not so confident as he pretended to be that Frowenfeld was that complete proselyte which alone satisfies a Creole; but he saw him in a predicament and cast to him this life-buoy, which if a man should refuse, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... urging the Radicals to seize this opportunity of compelling the Government to go their lengths, and to make such compliance the condition of their support. Government are so indignant that they want to break off with the 'Chronicle' altogether; but then they will be left in the awkward predicament of having no morning paper whatever in their service. What nettles them the more is, that they made the 'Chronicle' what it is, and raised it by their exertions from the lowest ebb to its present very good circulation. Just before Peel's hundred days it was for sale, and had then ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... of the first few could even read, while five or six English steamboats took books for all their men. On a preceding Sunday (at Erith), I did not meet one man, even a bargee who could not read, and all up the Seine only one in this predicament. Truly there is a sea-mission yet to be worked. Good news was told on the water long ago, and by the Great ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... So here was my predicament: I knew that within myself was a Golconda of memories of other lives, yet I was unable to do more than flit like a madman through those memories. I had my Golconda ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... expected to use but three legs again. I believe William suspected the devil had something to do with this diabolical gravel, for he never gave way to impatience as a natural man would have done in such a predicament. Upon the occasion I have mentioned, he helped the old hypocrite back into the stable with a mildness that exasperated me as I watched with my hat on from the window, for it was already past the time when we ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... bewildered judgment a query as to whether or not he ought to keep on carrying the burdensome rifle. It was not only heavy, but when daylight came it might attract attention, and his bulging coat would certainly invite curiosity. He was in a predicament; nevertheless, he decided to hang on to ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... started to take the place of the Irish brigade, I noticed that Barney appeared to be holding up his pants, but I made no inquiry as to the reason for his so doing. When we took our first position in advance of where the Irishmen had fought, and began firing, Barney had to use both hands, and his predicament was at once revealed. He had held up his pants by a strap around his waist without suspenders. This strap had given out, and that accounted for his holding up performance. When he began loading and firing he had to ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... painful. His standpoint in regard to most matters was that of the sympathetic humorist who would be glad to have the victim of circumstance laugh with him, but was not too much vexed when the victim could not. He laughed now when his wife, with careful preparation, got the facts of his son's predicament fully ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... house, he's in a predicament," he said cheerfully. "I went to police headquarters, and the first officer I spoke to told me to go to hell. So I went into the next office, where all the big panjandrums hide—and some of the little ones—and they told me what you know, sir, that the house is ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... began to boom a few miles west of us, and our infantry was seen rapidly moving in that direction. As I lay there helpless on the ground, I could not avoid worrying somewhat about the outcome of the battle. If our forces should be defeated, we sick fellows would certainly be in a bad predicament. I could see, in my mind's eye, our ambulance starting on a gallop for Devall's Bluff, while every jolt of the conveyance would inflict on me excruciating pain. But this suspense did not last long. The artillery practice soon began moving further towards the west, and was only of short duration anyhow. ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... Nevertheless, a certain number of looters, averaging about a dozen a day, were caught and put into the Guard Room. We were glad of their assistance, as there was much filthy cleaning up to be done, so, fools that came to loot, remained to scavenge. Once we had an awkward predicament, for the sergeant of the guard, having confined in the same lock-up some looters, whose detention should be for twenty-four hours, and some prisoners, whose detention should be for the duration of the war, could not ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... him. Could that judge, however, by any means be quietly spirited away from Edinburgh before the date fixed for the trial, with almost equal certainty he might count on a favourable verdict. In this predicament Lord Traquair turned his thoughts to Christie's Will; if anyone could aid him it ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... a calm and steadfast courage that filled me with admiration, although the questions that she put to me from time to time rendered it perfectly clear that she very fully realised the desperate nature of our predicament. ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... A very different thing is a revolution in the method of holding landed property. Few things are more dangerous than to meddle with laws of inheritance: if care be not taken, the whole fabric of society may be overthrown. The unpleasant predicament which the French have got into on this account is most alarming—far more terrible than the wildest of their revolutions. How they are to get out of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... A lawsuit followed, in which the sister swore that the name signed to the draft was not in her handwriting. She won her case, but some officious person laid the matter before the district attorney. The forger was arrested and his sister was summoned before the grand jury. Here was a pleasant predicament. If she testified for the State her brother would undoubtedly go to prison for many years, to say nothing of the notoriety for the entire family which so sensational a case would occasion. She, therefore, slipped out of the city and sailed for Europe the ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... constantly reproducing the same alarming circumstances—a congested National Treasury and a depleted monetary condition in the business of the country. It need hardly be stated that while the present situation demands a remedy, we can only be saved from a like predicament in the future by the removal ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... of a centralized power, laugh at the trepidation of ours. But the fault is not in the principle of self-government, but in the accident which brought to the helm such an amount of inexperience. Monarchy with a feeble head is even in a worse predicament. Louis XV., the Spanish and Neapolitan Bourbons, Gustavus IV., &c., are thereof ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... burrs would parch and give him their brown chestnuts. I was contemplating a metaphysical burr. I wanted to remain true to Phyllis, though there wasn't any sense in my doing so. Had Gretchen resembled any one but Phyllis I never should have been in such a predicament. I should have gone away the day after my arrival. Here I was going into my second week. My assistant in London was probably worrying, having heard nothing from me during that time. As matters stood it was evident ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... high tides every twenty-four hours, and at every high tide, night and day, for a week, there were two steam tugs pulling and hauling on the Snark. There she was, stuck, fallen between the ways and standing on her stern. Next, and while still in that predicament, we started to use the gears and castings made in the local foundry whereby power was conveyed from the engine to the windlass. It was the first time we ever tried to use that windlass. The castings had flaws; they shattered asunder, the gears ground together, and the windlass was out of commission. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... in chairs. They importuned friends and winners to put them back in the game, and kept at it until fortune again smiled on them. I laughed heartily at this, not thinking the day was coming which would find me in the same ludicrous predicament. ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... the gentlemen can think of nothing new, and can go no further, they quickly call in a diminished seventh chord to help them out of the predicament." ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... have no souls. And a like book was written at Nashville, Tennessee, in Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, by the Reverend Hubert Parsons of the Methodist Episcopal Church (South), showing that negroes were in a like predicament. But a more notable instance of the danger of a specialty is the Reverend Cotton Mather, who investigated the subject of witchcraft and issued a modest brochure incorporating his views on the subject. He succeeded in convincing at least one man of its verity, ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... fastidious aristocrat, was really a man of the people, sharp to a miracle in all the detail of the humblest kind of life, and apparently unable to keep from exposing himself to scandal in many sorts of mean and vulgar predicament. ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... table that night she recounted her experience: "The very courteous gentleman who informed me of your predicament happened to be a cousin of Mr. Banks, of Head and Banks. (They supply your grain, I believe?) Mrs. Howe (isn't it R. E. Howe who is president of the Newcomb Club?) was at my elbow. The salesgirl has Sam junior's Sunday-school class. Doubtless it will interest them ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... their several characters and histories to avoid saying what might give offence. In this particular, those who frequent the world would have a great advantage, as they know better where to be silent, and can speak with greater confidence; yet even they sometimes let fall absurdities; in what predicament then must he be who drops as it were from the clouds? It is almost impossible he should speak ten minutes ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... bluebirds will prefer this to an artificial box." But, lo and behold, it already had bluebirds in it! We had not heard a sound or seen a feather till the trunk was in our hands, when, on peering into the cavity, we discovered two young bluebirds about half grown. This was a predicament indeed! ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... an instant later a wild-eyed, haggard lion rushed forth ready to face the devil himself were he edible. When Numa saw Tarzan, fat and sleek, perched in the tree he became suddenly the embodiment of frightful rage. His eyes and his nose told him that this was the creature responsible for his predicament and also that this creature was good to eat. Frantically the lion sought to scramble up the bole of the tree. Twice he leaped high enough to catch the lowest branches with his paws, but both times he fell backward to the earth. Each time he became more furious. His growls ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was afloat, the muskets were taken up, and a volley fired into the midst of the savages, who were wading in after us. It had the effect of keeping them back till we were out of their reach. Yet what a fearful predicament we were in—a storm raging outside, while we dare not approach the shore. The savages had canoes, so that we could not even wait under the lee of the land for fine weather. Owen announced his determination to stand ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... there used to be. This does not make the country easier to govern, and just now, Ireland, if given the opportunity, would have a hard task to govern itself. But Ireland would not be the only country in the world in that predicament. The schoolmaster has been abroad, and where you have education without liberty there is bound to be trouble. The only cure is, not to suppress education, but to ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... Dikaiopolis for concluding a peace with the Lacedaemonians, and determine to stone him. He undertakes to speak in defence of the Lacedaemonians, standing the while behind a block, as he is to lose his head if he does not succeed in convincing them. In this ticklish predicament, he calls on Euripides, to lend him the tattered garments in which that poet's heroes were in the habit of exciting commiseration. We must suppose the house of the tragic poet to occupy the middle of the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of course. I had been laughing at my friend's predicament, in being left to meet a lady he'd never seen before. ...
— The Albany Depot - A Farce • W. D. Howells
... was treating her case; but she was ill at ease in her city quarters, partly because she was unaccustomed to her surroundings, partly because she was never certain, when the captain was away from her, that he was not doing some unheard-of thing which might bring him into a serious predicament. And now here was this trouble between Jim, of whom she and the captain were so proud and so fond, and her grandson, and the disgrace of the latter; so that just now her bed was not one of roses, and she longed for the quiet and peace ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... President, it would have been a tacit deception. In the ethics of some persons such a course is allowable. But you can not stand even upon that questionable ground. The "history" of your connection with this transaction, as written by yourself, places you in a different predicament, and shows that you not only concealed your design from the President, but induced him to suppose that you would carry out his purpose to keep Mr. Stanton out of office by retaining it yourself after an attempted restoration by the Senate, so as to require Mr. Stanton ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... the end of my resources. I had always thought I could talk on ordinary topics as well as the average man, but in the presence of this girl, with everything in the world unsaid, I could not think of one word to say. The doctor soon saw my predicament and hastened to assist me, and the remark which he selected shows again his wonderful self-possession in the midst of overwhelming difficulties. He waved his hand gently toward me to attract her attention ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... certainty to me, and I want to know why, if there is a God of infinite power and goodness, he should have made me thus. And in answer I am told that my question is "practically without importance," because there may be an endless series of beings who, in their several degrees, are in a similar predicament to myself. Perhaps they are; but if so, the moral evil with which I am directly acquainted is made all the blacker by the fact that it is thus but a drop in an infinite ocean of moral imperfection. ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... secretly married in order that he might wed a second. Kate at first hesitated, but remembering that there was an elopement, with a carriage overturned in a muddy lane, she decided upon looking it through again. Another book related the love of a young lady who found herself in the awkward predicament of not being able to care for anyone but her groom, who was lucky enough to be the possessor of the most wonderful violet eyes. The fourth described the distressing position of a young clergyman who, when he told ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... called cocks-all-round: anyone admitted to the set, was entitled to feel the others' cocks. I felt theirs, but again to my mortification, the tightness of my prepuce caused jeering at me; I was glad to hear that there was another boy at the school in the same predicament, though I never saw his. This confirmed me in avoiding my companions, when they were playing at cocks-all-round; being a day scholar only, I was not forced at all times into their intimacy, as I should have been had I been ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... act, if we allow her. But Lansing, instead of trusting to her good faith and reserving all our rights under international law and usage, imagines that he can force her to agree to a code that the Germans now agree to because, in Germany's present predicament, it will be especially advantageous to Germany. Instead of trusting her, he assumes that she means to do wrong and proceeds to try to bind her in advance. He hauls her up and tries her in court—that's ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... there was Morty sitting in it not four feet away from me. He had his cap on and his leather coat, and I saw at once that I had made a terrible mistake. Before I could even think what to do he saw my predicament and leaped out, insisting that I—should take his place. I murmured something about being sorry and tried to move away, but he caught my arm and wouldn't let go. He was so eager and excited and made such a scene that I allowed myself ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... some inklings of taste, but in that moment he preferred to pretend that her artistic perception was on a level with that of William and Mary. They boarded the steamer again, and took their old places; and the menacing problem of their predicament was still ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... only I knew what it was she had asked Sir Aubrey that night—what it was she wanted him to do. Never in my life before had I been in such an awful predicament. And then suddenly it flashed upon me that some day she would for certain meet the real Sir Aubrey Belston again, and what would happen then when she referred to this meeting in the train and he stoutly denied—as of course he would—meeting ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... voice to a high pitch. "I've certainly got trouble on my hands. But I'm glad she's not here to share it. She wanted luxuries—I gave 'em to her. We'd both be in a fine predicament now, wouldn't we? All my money gone—sunk in Ward's schemes! Oh, they're a fine combination—Ward and my wife!" he declared bitterly. "She thought herself too good for me, too virtuous to remain my wife! You've read of Ward's failure—the papers must ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... months he sat looking steadfastly, at all moments, into the eyes of Death; he too who had eyes to see Death and the Terrors and Eternities; and surely it was with perfect courage and piety, and valiant simplicity of heart, that he bore himself, and did and thought and suffered, in this trying predicament, more terrible than the usual death of men. All strength left to him he still employed in working: day by day the end came nearer, but day by day also some new portion of his adjustments was completed, by some small stage his task was nearer done. His domestic and other affairs, of ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... met—and such a meeting!—in the midst of men and women, elbowing, crowding, embracing, exclaiming, rejoicing, chaffing, weeping! It was an awkward state of things, but as every one else was in the same predicament, and as all were more or less swallowed up in their own affairs, Miles and his mother were fain to make the best of it. They retired under the partial shelter of a bulkhead, where block-tackles and nautical debris interfered with their footing, and tarry odours regaled their noses, ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... this cliff would have observed, perhaps ten feet below, a narrow ledge projecting from the face of the rock. He would have imagined if he were to drop on that ledge there would be no way to get off and he would be in a worse predicament. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... love me. Her jesting tones, and a little gleeful movement that escaped her, expressed nothing beyond a girlish, blithe goodwill. I told her about my distress and the predicament in which I found myself, and asked her ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... suggested; but he could no more impart his misgivings than his impressions; he could no more tell Matt that his father would be embarrassed and compromised by his passion than he could tell him that he did not think Sue Northwick was worthy of it. He was in the helpless predicament that confidants often find themselves in, but his final perception of his impossibilities enabled him to return the fervid pressure of Matt's hand, and even to utter some of those incoherencies which serve the purpose when another ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... awkward. He could not come forward without encountering an agile opponent, whose exceeding skill with the sword was probably known to him. He could not turn tail, had his dignity allowed the course, without exposing himself to be spitted. He was in the predicament of the goat on the bridge. Yet was he gaping at us less in fear, I think, than in bewilderment. This Ferou, as I learned later, was one of his right-hand men, years-long supporter. Mayenne had as soon expected to meet a lion in the ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... getting into the whirr of fleeting platforms, the multiplication of lights. "I think you'll find," I said with a laugh, "that your predicament will disappear in the very fact that the philosopher ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... My fate! The weakest, most delicate girl in the room was the next to drop her pencil, and she was a pupil with a perfect record in deportment. The reader can imagine my embarrassment. I had threatened punishment, and so had to get out of the predicament as best I could. This experience effectually cured me of making such ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... principally of the editor, for with the proprietor I have had little direct connection. If you think it worth while, you shall, at some future day, see such parts of the correspondence as I have preserved. Mr. Southey is pretty much in the same predicament with them, though he has kept silence for the present.... I am properly served for having had any connection with such things. My only excuse is, that they offered me a very liberal sum, and that I have ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... "and M'sieu' is naturally surprised that one of my distinguished position should be now a tenant of an American jail. But if M'sieu' will do me the honor of listening for a few moments I will explain my present extraordinary predicament. I am Charles Julius Francois, eldest son of the late Oscar Odon, Duc de Nevers, Grand Commander of the Legion of Honor, and Knight of the Garter. I was born in Paris in the year 1860 at 148 Rue Champs Elysee; my mother, the dowager duchess, is now residing ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... materialists like Ludwig Buchner, or Vogt, or Moleschott, were idealists (in the moral sense) of the highest order. Look around you and see whether the belief or non-belief (for the Agnostic is in the same predicament here) in spirit is a dividing-line in conduct. There is no ground in fact for the confusion, and it has ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... had surveyed the battle-field. He was of opinion that the troops had come from the west coast—probably from the Bay of Tampa—and were marching to one of the forts to the northward. He acknowledged, too, that we were in a fearfully dangerous predicament, and that the fate which had overtaken the soldiers might be ours. What could our small force avail against many hundreds of fierce warriors flushed with victory? To turn back was as dangerous as to proceed. Should we be pursued, we might quickly be overwhelmed. ...
— In the Wilds of Florida - A Tale of Warfare and Hunting • W.H.G. Kingston
... predicament—and the glimpse I had of myself "hungry and homeless"—the humour of the whole situation suddenly came over me, and, beginning with a chuckle, I wound up, as my mind dwelt upon my recent adventures, with a ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... Fiammetta, she is the bride of your unworthy Antonio. She has been so gracious as to marry me between two of her theatrical seasons; in fact, we are here on our honeymoon. Why the deuce have you never married? A wife might keep you out of many a laughable predicament." ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... is being given. This is an aspect of human fellowship which we need to recognize before we talk much about Christian fellowship. Human fellowship is both heroic and tragic; it is both renewing and destructive; it is both healing and hurtful, but it is indispensable to life. This is our human predicament. ...
— Herein is Love • Reuel L. Howe
... was over head and ears in debt, because, in his confidence in the immediate success of his operas, he had had them printed at once, at his own expense. The opera-houses were very slow in accepting them, and this left him in a sad predicament. There were, moreover, enemies everywhere,—ignorant, old-fashioned professionals, who objected to his way of interpreting the masters (though it was afterwards admitted that he was epoch-making as an interpreter of their ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... are elastic, and even in their predicament Peggy found her heart almost singing within her at the beauty of the green little valley after their long, dusty journey over the ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... we believe, who observed of the schoolmen, that they had not genius enough to write a small book, and therefore took refuge in folios of the largest magnitude. We are getting as fast as possible into the predicament of the schoolmen. No one knows when he has written enough; but, like a player at chess, still goes on with the self-same ideas, merely altering their position. This must arise from early habits and prejudices, from having ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... he spoke of their catastrophe and their present predicament. He gave their approximate location and the names of their party. This after an interval of ...
— Curlie Carson Listens In • Roy J. Snell
... own conscience? Before I answer this, pray tell me in my turn what better defence is there against the machinations of a wicked, or the errors of a weak Monarch, than the impossibility of finding a minister who will lend himself to vice and folly? Every English Monarch, in such a predicament, would sacrifice his opinions and views to such a clear expression of the public will; and it is one method in which the Constitution aims at bringing about such a sacrifice. You may say, if you please, the ruler of a state is forced to give up his ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... Bavaria, dressed in their quaint little red coats, must stand with the hand to the hat as if in token of profound respect for the train while it passes. This one, when lathered and half shaved, was suddenly called by the train, and in this predicament he stands while it passes. The best new work in the exhibition was one in water colors by Professor Schwind, of Munich, setting forth the popular German myth of the seven ravens. It sold to a prince ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... person mengiring, without security for the debt, should the debtor die in that predicament the creditor loses his money, having no claim on ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... short vowel; as, "primitiv, derivativ, extensiv, positiv, deserv, twelv, proov, luv, hav, giv, liv." This mode of spelling, had it been adopted by other learned men, would not only have made v a very frequent final consonant, but would have placed it in an other new and strange predicament, as being subject to reduplication. For he that will write hav, giv, and liv, must also, by a general rule of grammar, write havving, givving, and livving. And not only so, there will follow also, in the solemn style of the Bible, a change of givest, livest, giveth, and liveth, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... could, therefore, afford to extend my sympathy to the sufferings of another. It was some vague prompting of this kind, that had caused me to draw up—some idea of offering consolation. The repelling reception was altogether unexpected, and placed me in a predicament. How was I to escape from it? By holding my tongue, and riding on? No; this would be an acknowledgment of having committed an act of gaucherie—to which man's vanity rarely accedes, or only with extreme reluctance. I ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... yet was perfectly unacquainted with the revolutions in the Armine family, had clearly comprehended that his grandson had obtained a commission without either troubling him for his interest, or putting him in the disagreeable predicament of refusing his money, there were no bounds to the extravagant testimonials of his affection, both towards his son-in-law and his grandson. He seemed quite proud of such relations; he patted Sir Ratcliffe on his back, asked a thousand questions about his darling ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... and I rather think did all sorts of awkward things; but so I dare say do other people in the same predicament, and I did not trouble my head much about my various mis-performances. One thing, however, I can tell you, if her Majesty has seen me, I have not seen her, and should be quite excusable in cutting her wherever I met her. 'A cat may look at a king,' it is said; but how about looking ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... greater part of his adult life. All that he cared to know was that resentment was in his heart,—resentment that the family of Rodaine should be connected in some way with the piquant, mysterious little person he had helped out of a predicament on the Denver road the day before. And, to his chagrin, the very fact that there was a connection added a more sinister note to the escapade of the exploded tire and the pursuing sheriff; as he walked along, his gaze far ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... I killed the dead one over again to make its flesh fit for consumption, and bled the other, which happily saved its life. But, notwithstanding my careful endeavour to make the best of a foolish matter, I felt myself in an awkward predicament. To my worthy father-in-law the loss of an animal worth thirty dollars was, at that time, particularly inconvenient; but his moral justice was high and his temper mild; so he listened meekly to my account of the misfortune, quietly ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... oppose their entrance into the town; besides, your appearance in the pulpit may lead to the sacrifice of your own most precious life, and the lives of many others who will no doubt stand forth in your defence. Whether, therefore, you ought, in such a predicament, to think of preaching, is a thing to be ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... short and stout, and made for digging rather than running. The latter operation he performs by short leaps, his belly scarcely clearing the ground. For a short distance he can make very good time, but he seldom trusts himself far from his hole, and, when surprised in that predicament, makes little effort to escape, but, grating his teeth, looks the danger squarely in ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... supplies have run out." We in turn were frequently appealed to for succour, but had to plead the same thing. The one redeeming feature of the critical position of the large fleet that was held in the grip of the wind for so long a time was the knowledge that we were all in the same predicament, and if we could not supply each others' wants we had at least the pleasure of companionship, and this kept us from losing hope until a slant of wind came to our aid and carried us into port. In this case we had been on very short rations for many days, and yet there was never a word ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... occur when in such a bad predicament, and it would be all over with the unlucky mariners who chanced to be on the ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... various breeds of hounds, it is possible by laughing in their faces not only to quell their rage, but to drive them to a distance. They seem in a way to be put to shame and at the same time hopelessly puzzled as to the nature of their predicament. In this connection we may note the very human feature that after you have cowed a dog by insistent laughter you can never hope to make friends with him. A case of this kind is fresh in my experience. A year or two ago I was imprudent enough to laugh at ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... well-known writer says with much boldness, both in the thought and expression, that 'a Lord is imprisoned in the Bastille of a name, and cannot enlarge himself into man'; and I have known men of genius in the same predicament. Why must a man be for ever mouthing out his own poetry, comparing himself with Milton, passage by passage, and weighing every line in a balance of posthumous fame which he holds in his own hands? It argues a want of imagination as ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... yet he could not believe that Denis had told her, and Vanessa and Tribe had surely not had time to do so. He had seen them ascend the steps of the terrace. Besides,—why should they? Nevertheless, the predicament was an awkward one. He had counted on speaking to ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... with her. I had been dreading that call all day. It isn't a very pleasant thing to go to a man you have recently refused to marry and ask him for money; and Melissa and I were both in that predicament. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... get out of her predicament, Miss Calthea took her position at the wheel and put one foot upon an almost horizontal spoke. Ida did the same, and then giving the word, both women raised themselves from the ground; Mrs. Cristie gave a great pull, and shouted, "Back!" ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... us by with an inarticulate good- evening. And the householders of Pont seemed very economical with their oil; for we saw not a single window lighted in all that long village. I believe it is the longest village in the world; but I daresay in our predicament every pace counted three times over. We were much cast down when we came to the last auberge; and looking in at the dark door, asked timidly if we could sleep there for the night. A female voice assented in no very friendly ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fond of Lorry and when she heard her predicament—a party to be given and not enough men—patted her hand and nodded understandingly. Times were changed—ah, if the girls had been in Virginia in the seventies! And after a brisk canter through her memories (she always had to have that) galloped back into ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... you would. The sooner we begin calling for help the better. I never expected to be in such a predicament as this, but it is wonderful how that young fellow worked out his plan of ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... least excited. I'll get you out of any predicament you may get into. Tricks do, sometimes, go wrong, but I'm used to that. I'll cover it up, somehow. However, I don't anticipate anything going wrong. Now take your place while I ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... equally impossible, that he would ever dream of returning, standing, as he must now do, in the danger of an infamous punishment. By degrees, and at different times, she had gained from him a full acquaintance with the predicament in which he would be placed by failing to appear on the day appointed, and the very small hope he could entertain of being ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... in a like predicament. Your poets are the most persuasive of springs to a lively general patriotism. They are in the Celtic dilemma of standing at variance with Bull; they return him his hearty antipathy, are unable to be epical or lyrical of him, are condemned to expend their genius upon the abstract, the quaint, the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... word slavery which seems to partake of the qualities of the insane root, and distempers the minds of men. That which would be true in relation to one predicament, they misapply to another, to which it has no application at all. Some of the virtues of a freeman would be the vices of slaves. To submit to a blow, would be degrading to a freeman, because he is the protector of himself. It is not degrading to a slave—neither is it to a priest or ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... a bugle, the proclamation rallied the patriotism of the country to fresh sacrifices and renewed ardor. It was a step that could not be revoked. It relieved the conscience of the nation from an incubus that had oppressed it from its birth. The United States were rescued from the false predicament in which they had been from the beginning, and the great popular heart leaped with new enthusiasm for "Liberty and Union, henceforth and forever, one and inseparable." It brought not only moral but material ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... like a flash of lightning. For a brief second they saw Blythe hanging from the collapsing structure. Then they saw him let go. Perhaps they did not know the full significance of Roy's predicament. They thought ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... construction upon her innocent actions, and informed him, as proof of his folly, and in the strictest confidence, that Colonel French was engaged to her Aunt Laura. She expressed her sorrow for his predicament, her profound belief in his innocence, and her unhesitating conviction that he would be acquitted of the ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... All the others in the room had taken their turn at the blood-sucking mechanism and now the frog-men croaked their order to the two fliers. They had forgotten their own predicament in the horror of the scene, but now it became real to them. They backed against the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... sufficient authority to settle the question, at least in my own mind. But even were there no other authority, than the general tenor of revelation, I should feel justified in my present exposition. To contend for a general resurrection, we are in the same predicament with the orthodox in ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... troubles. As he knew I had been flying in the French Aviation Corps for two years and had just been invalided home, I didn't think it necessary to establish an alibi. But I hastened to express my sympathy for his predicament. Fate had been kind to Dick Searles. In college he had written a play or two that demonstrated his talent, and after a rigid apprenticeship as scene-shifter and assistant producer he had made a killing with "Let George Do It," a farce that earned enough to put him at ease and make possible ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... as most other fellows in the same predicament do; you'd provide for them as well as you could; and if that wasn't sufficient, you'd desert them, or blow your brains out and leave them to ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... My "predicament" was first "awkward," then "foolish." "It was all along of" a woman. I may even say a "woman in white." "I was a pale young curate" then, but of a dissenting type. Twenty-two years of age. Very white in the face. Dark brown hair, enough to fill a mattress. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... ere to-morrow our path would be blocked up. America is the land of invention; and here we were, on the dreary shore, in the dusky twilight—a situation which requires the aid of philosophy. We were something in the predicament of the Russian sailors in Spitzbergen, we wanted light to guide us on the "blaze," without which we could not keep it; but beyond the gleam of a patent congreve, our means extended not. One of our company, however, a native of the ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... He seems in this predicament to have clung to the old idea of walking up wind, and it must be considered wholly providential that on this course he next struck Tent Island. It was round this island that he walked, finally digging himself a shelter on its lee side under the impression that it was Inaccessible ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... particular edification of his countrymen, found himself, one fine morning, desperately at a loss for something to write about. He is, perhaps, not the first writer of fiction who has been in a like predicament; and even if he were, it would be neither wonderful nor unpardonable, seeing that his average rate of production is about three volumes per month. There is a limit to all things, even to the imagination of a French romance writer; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... succinctly in a phrase through long usage grown proverbial: "Alone in London." These three words have come to connote in our understanding so much of human misery, that to Mr. Kirkwood they seemed to epitomize absolutely, if not happily, the various circumstances attendant upon the predicament wherein he found himself. Inevitably an extremist, because of his youth, (he had just turned twenty-five), he took no count of mitigating matters, and would hotly have resented the suggestion that his case was anything but altogether deplorable ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... body was resting, her mind was working actively, darting hither and thither in an effort to find a way of escape from their fearful predicament. ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... can I remember, the first morning I went out with four horses; I never slept a wink all night. I got a little flurried coming out of the yard, and looking round on the envious chaps who were watching me—it was as bad as getting married—at least, I should think so, never having been in that predicament myself. I have escaped that dilemma, for," he concluded, "when a man is always going backwards and forwards between two points, what is the use of a wife, a coachman could never be much more than half married. Now, if the ...
— Hints on Driving • C. S. Ward
... intelligent Admiration, all the better for coming straight from the heart without any style at all. If I thought that Mr. Lowell would not find these Athenaeums somewhere in Madrid, I would send them to him, as I would also to you in a like predicament. . . . ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... "If you are caught and arrested, demand to see the German Consul immediately," he said. "If you are in a bad predicament, we'll request your extradition on a criminal charge—burglary with arms, attempted murder—some non-political crime. We've got a treaty with Czechoslovakia to extradite Germans accused of criminal acts ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... dirt-floor. It was then that I caught a glimpse of a face peering at me from out the shadows,—the face of Toinette; and, alas for my eager hopes of surprising her heart and solving its secrets! the witch was actually laughing in silence at my predicament. The sight made my face flush in sudden indignation; but before I could find speech, ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... is not confined to childless couples. Others may find themselves in quite as unfortunate a predicament. A man may be the father of a large and thriving family and yet be as destitute patriarchally as if he had not a child to his name. His offspring may be of the wrong sex; they may all be girls. ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... I think, Lorenzo, you were a considerable gainer by that loss: If I remember right, Donna Agnes had a portion of ten thousand pistoles, half of which reverted to your Lordship. By St. Jago! I wish that I had fifty Sisters in the same predicament. I should consent to losing them every soul without ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis |
