"Tumbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... kitchen. There the thought occurred to her that it was an excellent morning to clean the high-shelf over the sink. For years past whenever she had had occasion to put anything up there, showers of dust and rolls of lint had come tumbling down upon her head. Under such circumstances it was but natural that a determination to some day clean the shelf should have slowly but surely been developed. Accordingly she climbed up on the edge of the sink and undertook the initiatory proceedings. ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... passed that night in tossing and tumbling [about in my bed]. In the morning, I went again and presented myself [to wait on the princess], and entered the seraglio along with the confidential servant, and saw the same scene I had seen the day before. The princess received me kindly, and sent every ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... his way into the narrow space he was to occupy, and he augured well of the fact, since it proved that no opposition had been encountered. Half an hour of forest silence followed, that was only interrupted by the tumbling of the waters over the natural dam. At the end of that weary period, a shout was heard in front of the mills, and the party raised their pieces, in a vague apprehension that some discovery had been made that was about ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... doubted whether any spot of earth can, in desolateness, furnish a parallel to this group. Abandoned cemeteries of long ago, old cities by piecemeal tumbling to their ruin, these are melancholy enough; but, like all else which has but once been associated with humanity, they still awaken in us some thoughts of sympathy, however sad. Hence, even the Dead Sea, ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... huts were, to her, all the better because they were deserted—she did not see the keen eyes watching her from a dozen points, from tumbling doorways, from behind tottering granaries. In utter unconsciousness of impending danger she started up the village street because it offered the ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... unusual one. I have known only one person of that name." Leaver walked slowly over to a decayed and tumbling bench beneath an apple-tree, whose boughs had been so long untrimmed that they spread almost to the earth. He sat down upon it, rather heavily, and lifted the clove-pink to his nostrils again. His dark brows contracted slightly. He looked at the house. "It will have to ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... here's a flock of people coming; my hair is in a toss, and Nan's without her shoe; run! fly, girls! or the Philistines will be upon us!" cried Di, tumbling off her ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... among the children. Pip had been a baby, entirely absorbing his mother, in those terrible days nine years ago, but Julia had been a delicious, confidential two-year- old, with a warm soft hand, and a flushed little friendly face under tumbling curls. Harriet had bathed her, dressed her, fed her, and taken her for silent walks. And on many a moonlit night the unconscious little body had been held tight in Harriet's arms, and the unconscious little face ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... to food, and thoroughly appreciative of a country strange to the most travelled Englishman. Fleur's wisdom in refusing to write to him was profound, for he reached each new place entirely without hope or fever, and could concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and tumbling bells, the priests, patios, beggars, children, crowing cocks, sombreros, cactus-hedges, old high white villages, goats, olive-trees, greening plains, singing birds in tiny cages, watersellers, sunsets, melons, mules, great churches, pictures, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thrust a black bristle through the hole of the cave, and when they saw that wriggling snout, those curving tusks, that red fierce eye, the wolves fled yelping, tumbling over each other, frantic with terror; and I behind them, a wild cat for leaping, a giant for strength, a devil for ferocity; a madness and gladness of lusty, unsparing life; a killer, a champion, a boar who ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... gloom and deafening roar came the torrent of rain. It was a cloud-burst. It was like solid water tumbling down. For long Madeline sat her horse, head bent to the pelting rain. When its force lessened and she heard Stewart call for all to follow, she looked up to see that he was starting once more. She shot a glimpse at Dorothy and as quickly glanced away. Dorothy, ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... said Bee, decidedly. "It would be like going up two steps and then tumbling back two steps. No, it would be worse, it would be like going up two and tumbling back three, for every naughty day would make it still harder to begin again on the ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... these matters in a general way. I don't want you to underestimate the value of any sort of knowledge, and I want you to appreciate the value of other work besides your own—music and railroading, ground and lofty tumbling and banking, painting pictures and soap advertising; because if you're not broad enough to do this you're just as narrow as those fellows who are running the culture corner, and your mind will get so ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... every direction and carts and camions loaded with cases making their way with difficulty through the mud. Occasionally a light case or bale would fall off, and quantities of small boys who seemed always on the spot would precipitate themselves, tumbling over each other to pick up what fell, and there would be protestations and explanations in every language under the sun. It was a motley, picturesque crowd—the costumes and uniforms making so much colour in the midst of the very ordinary dark clothes the civilised ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... lakelet, where the woodland beasts In free peace gathered. Wandering onward thus, The Princess saw far-gliding forms of dread— Pisachas, Rakshasas, ill sprites and fiends Which haunt, with swinging snakes, the undergrowth. Dark pools she saw, and drinking-holes, and peaks Wherefrom break down in tumbling cataracts The wild white waters, marvellous to hear. Also she passed—this daughter of a king— Where snorted the fierce buffaloes, and where The gray boars rooted for their food, and where The black bears growled, and serpents in the grass Rustled and hissed. But ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... endeavour at chocking her little sister; but the light in Kate's eye, and the responsive face, drew Grace on to ask, "She didn't punish you, I hope, for your tumbling off the bracket?" ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... centuries back from you, and of saying mass to the patrician ghosts from the tombs under your feet and there is nothing at all impossible in the Renaissance angels and cherubs in marble, floating and fatly tumbling about on the broken arches ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... interregnum to enjoy a rest on my bed and read the reliable items in the "Citizen," when a shell burst right outside the window in front of me. Pieces flew in, striking all round me, tearing down masses of plaster that came tumbling over me. When H. rushed in I was crawling out of the plaster, digging it out of my eyes and hair. When he picked up beside my pillow a piece as large as a saucer, I realized my narrow escape. The window-frame began to smoke, and we saw ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... don't know what you'll do, Toppy," he said, controlling his dismay enough to speak. "Run down and skin through the fellows' rooms on first floor. Oh, good gracious!" he groaned, "it's all up with getting it now," as a swarm of boys came tumbling ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... with Sir W. Doyly, and so away to Mrs. Martin's lodging, who was gone before, expecting me, and there je hazer what je vellem cum her and drank, and so by coach home (but I have forgot that I did in the morning go to the Swan, and there tumbling of la little fille, son uncle did trouver her cum su neckcloth off, which I was ashamed of, but made no great matter of it, but let it pass with a laugh), and there spent the evening with my wife at our flagelets, and so to supper, and after a little reading to bed. My ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... marched more than four miles, when he was stopped by a torrent, wide, deep and impetuous, tumbling over rocks all white with foam. On each shore rose precipitous cliffs, which bewildered the eyes and chilled the heart of man. There was no way of getting across, of turning to the right ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... talk of Henri and the King, who are 100,000 each, joining hands by the post of Arnau, or some weak point of Lacy's well north of Konigsgratz; thus of cutting off the meal-carts of that back-to-back copartnery, and so of tumbling it off the ground (which was perfectly possible, says Schmettau); and small detachments and expeditious were pushed out, General Dahlwig, General Anhalt, partly for that object: but not the least of it ever took effect. "Futile, lost by loitering, as all ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... first to appear at the landing. Several voices repeated the cry to hang the colonel. At that moment a shot was heard, and the first ruffian came tumbling down the steps. The next instant the one behind him shared his fate, and both of them lay motionless at the foot ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... new powers of sight. I could see through the solid green plain, as if it were green glass, and the smooth surface of the earth were round as a globe, and within it I saw crowds of goblins, who were pursuing their pastime and making themselves merry with silver and gold. They were tumbling and rolling about, heads up and heads down; they pelted one another in sport with the precious metals, and with irritating malice blew gold-dust in one another's eyes. My odious companion ordered the others to reach him up a ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... street-scenes and shop-window displays were obliterated altogether. Nothing at all was said about the "great round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen lolling at the doors and tumbling into the streets in their apoplectic opulence." Nothing about the ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and "winking from their ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... his approval of the music; then, at the end of Thayer's first solo, he laid his score on the gallery rail and led off a volley of applause which, echoing back from the chorus, roused Bobby to such a pitch of enthusiasm that he knocked the score off the rail and sent it tumbling down among the ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... become so shallow that there was not above half a fathom water on the bar. Though his vessels were small, it was impossible to draw them over the sands, which choked the mouth of the river, for there was a swell rolling and tumbling upon them, enough to dash his worm-eaten barks to pieces. He was obliged, therefore, to wait with patience, and pray for the return of those rains which he ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... to Kamar al-Zaman's house, with a trap-door under the earth. So, before the youth was ware, she came in to him with two bags of money and he said to her, "Whence comest thou?" She showed him the tunnel and said to him, "Take these two bags of his money." Then she sat with him, the twain toying and tumbling together till the morning, when she said, "Wait for me, till I go to him and wake him, so he may go to his shop, and I return to thee." He sat expecting her, whilst she went away and awoke her husband, who made the Wuzu ablution and prayed and went to his ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... inventions of the brain or of a contagious overexcitement of the nervous system, all these illusions of gullible men, are basically unhealthy, and, in general, anti-social. Nevertheless, since they are part of human nature, let us accept them like so many streams tumbling down a slope, but on condition that they remain in their own beds and that they have many but no new ones and never one ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... dove found no rest." Though all the enemies of God lay tumbling in the sea, this could not satisfy a gracious soul: divide her from the ark, and she finds no rest, she is not at ease till she be with Noah. "And she returned unto him into the ark;—and he put forth his hand, and took her, and pulled her in unto ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... precipice projected the waterfall was split in two, and rushed down in twin streams, bubbling, tumbling, hissing, plunging into the lake, which whirled furiously around the spit of land on which the castle stood, clear of ice for a distance of a hundred feet from the shore, a foaming maelstrom in which no boat that was ever built could have endured an instant, ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... glance at the creature in rags who had flung himself in his path, Samuel J. Deering lunged at him fiercely with his right arm. Billy, ducking opportunely, saved his indignant parent from tumbling upon the floor by catching him in his arms. Feeling that he had been attacked by a ruffian, Mr. Deering yelled that he ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... are crowded with them! Big and little, brown, black, and gray, they are tumbling over each ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... shaggy world, and yet studded with gardens; where the salt and tumbling sea receives clear rivers running from among reeds and lilies; fruitful and austere; a rustic world; sunshiny, lewd, and cruel. What is it the birds sing among the trees in pairing time? What means the sound of the rain falling far ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said, "He goes a-tumbling through the hollow And trackless empyrean like a clown, Head pointed to the earth where weaklings wallow, Feet up toward the stars; not such renown Even our lord himself, the bright Apollo, Gets in his gilded car. For one bob down You shall behold the thing." "Right-o," I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... said grimly. "'Richard is himself again!' You mustn't blame him, Joan," he added. "He was always like that. He can't help it. I mean, dear, tumbling in and out of love. I always knew the symptoms. Falling in, he'd whistle softly and his eyes would shine. He'd be up in the clouds and altogether gay and charming, his work would begin to pall and he'd put it aside until he began to run down. I always knew when ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... grass that grows plentifully in Texas. It is very amusing to see one of the foragers after he has found a seed to his liking. No matter how far he has strayed from the road, he always knows his way straight back. But he has a hard struggle with his grass seed, clambering over clods, tumbling over sticks, and travelling around pebbles. There is no give up in him, however. He is bent on bringing in his share of the crop, and lets nothing hinder him. After he reaches the road, it is all plain sailing. He gets a good hold on his grain, and trots off home like an express messenger, sometimes ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... sprawling, And driving and riving and striving, And sprinkling and crinkling and twinkling, 30 And sounding and bounding and rounding, And bubbling and troubling and doubling; Dividing and gliding and sliding, Grumbling and rumbling and tumbling, Clattering and battering and shattering, And gleaming and streaming and skimming and beaming And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing, 5 And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping, And curling ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... to cover, pouring in their fire. At the first volley the pilot had deserted his wheel, as well he might, and the boat, drifting in to the bank under the boughs of a tree, was helpless. Her jackstaff and yawl were carried away, her guards broken in, and her deck-load of cotton was tumbling into the stream a dozen bales at once. The captain was nowhere to be seen, the engineer had evidently abandoned his post and the special agent had gone to hunt up the soldiers. I happened to be on the hurricane deck, armed with a revolver, which I fired as rapidly as I could, listening all the time ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... cart was drawn into a shed, and Samuel sat gazing through the door, hardly able to eat or drink for happiness. What a peaceful picture it was! Betty was bustling in and out of the room, radiant with delight, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying, tumbling over the children, misplacing the tea-things, putting the kettle on the fire without any water in it, and declaring that, "she'd lost her head, and were good for nothing," all which delighted her husband amazingly, who picked up the children by turns, and corrected his wife's ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... groups tidily, and circles and baskets of flowers, and a view, perhaps, of a village away off, or a piece of the harbor, or a peep at the hills. But you are right down amongst such niceness! There's the river, close by; you can hear it all night, tumbling along behind the mills and the houses; there are the woods just down the lane beside the bakehouse; and here is the door-stone and the shady trellis, and the yard crowded full of flowers, as if they had all ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... mount some of the corner houses, while others extemporized a barricade in the street. To mount the houses was easy enough, though the door of one had to be broken in, and presently we heard glass tumbling down as muzzles of rifles were poked through the upper panes, and soon sharp cracks and thick puffs of smoke leaping out showed that the men had settled down to their work. The barricade was a more difficult matter, ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... dusky towns and cities twinkling with the feet of men; Listening to a sound of mellow music fleeting down the gusty glen; Sitting by a rapid torrent, with the broken sunset in my face; By a rapid, roaring torrent, tumbling through a dark and lonely place! And I hear the bells beyond the forest, and the voice of distant streams; And a flood of swelling singing, wafting round a world ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... smoke at pipe, we drink of tea and watch at view. It is most wondrous. Trees of a growth extraordinary. Rocks of mightiness each bearing an inscription from the Classics. Down side of mountain, tumbling into waterfalls over boulders of bigness flows a stream of the clearness of glass. Below, the "Happy Valley" stretches myriads of miles away, of green in shadow and gold in sunshine, all ...
— Seven Maids of Far Cathay • Bing Ding, Ed.
... Davie, tumbling over backward on the grass. "O dear me, it's a snake, Polly!" and he huddled up his feet ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney
... place that was not crowded to the limit of its capacity, painting meant that milk bottles, improvised ice chests, and woodpiles must be put somewhere else; and where that somewhere could be was an enigma. Furthermore, to add to this difficulty there were the children—dozens of them tumbling over one another and surging in and out the doors, a fact that rendered painting a precarious undertaking. Youthful investigators examined the moist pigment; chubby fingers drew hieroglyphics in it; while the less curious forgot it altogether ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... caravan around me. During the evening I went out to dine with some officer friends. As I had over a mile to walk to their pitch, the poor glare of the camp fires made the darkness more inky, and I had sundry narrow escapes from tumbling into ditches and water holes. Our bivouac was an ill-omened beginning to the route march of the column under Colonel Martin. One of the periodical summer gales came on, raising whirlwinds of dust and sand. To complete our discomfiture a thunderstorm ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... them in an instant—FLAMES—and I was right, too, though these were the very first flames that had ever been in the world. They climbed the trees, then flashed splendidly in and out of the vast and increasing volume of tumbling smoke, and I had to clap my hands and laugh and dance in my rapture, it was so new and strange and so ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... half the night he would wander along the ramparts of the castle, at the imminent risk of tumbling off, gazing seaward and muttering strangely to himself, and evolving frightful spectres out of the shadows cast by the turrets. Sometimes he lapsed into a gentle melancholy; but not seldom his mood was ferocious, ...
— A Midnight Fantasy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... tongue can give an adequate description of their devastations in one of those sudden floods winch resemble, in almost none of their phenomena, the action of ordinary river-water. They are now no longer overflowing brooks, but real seas, tumbling down in cataracts, and rolling before them blocks of stone, which are hurled forwards by the shock of the waves like balls shot out by the explosion of gunpowder. Sometimes ridges of pebbles are driven down when the transporting torrent does not rise high enough to show itself, and then ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... the top of a steep field. At the bottom a bubbling, noisy little brook went tumbling and bustling merrily over the stones, filling the sweet, warm air with a cheery song of its own. A plank served as a bridge across the stream; and as Susie walked steadily over it she noticed a fat, motherly old duck nestling down amongst ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... concerns himself for their pains and danger, but lies wallowing the while in sloth and pleasure: this other slavering, blear-eyed, slovenly fellow, that thou seest come out of his study after midnight, dost thou think he has been tumbling over books to learn how to become a better man, wiser, and more content? No such matter; he will there end his days, but he will teach posterity the measure of Plautus' verses and the true orthography of a Latin ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... intolerable smart; at this moment, too, the great fellow swung a cat's carcass by the tail, but, or ever he could hurl this stinking missile, a hand clouted him heavily over the ear from behind, tumbling his hat off, whereupon he turned, bellowing with rage, and smote his nearest neighbour with the foul thing meant for me. In an instant all was uproar around these two as the crowd, forgetting me, surged about them. Thus for ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... the friendly sight of Swallowtail Light was more than eight hundred and fifty miles of wallowing, tumbling ocean. Treacherous shoals underran it, biting rocks pierced up in saw-toothed reefs, the bitterest gales of all the seas swept ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... bed rock sluice again, and then into another sluice box and so on for a mile, passing through several sluice boxes on the way. Quicksilver was placed in the upper sluice boxes, and when the particles of gold were polished up by tumbling about in the gravel, they combined with ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... them with anything but a shudder), would be multiplied indefinitely by so slow a method of proceeding. Certainly this question of money was a serious one, and it was this that Madelon was revolving, as she sat gazing at the golden sunset sky, when she was startled by a sudden rumbling and tumbling in the corridor; in another moment the door was burst open, and Soeur Lucie and another sister appeared, dragging between them a corded trunk, of the most secular appearance, which had apparently seen many places, for it was pasted all over ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... intention of sending 60,000 men to Poland, to take possession of that country for himself; and that Talleyrand would not hear of such a thing. The villages that we passed to-day have a greater appearance of desolation than any we have yet seen. Scarce a house which does not seem to be tumbling to pieces, and those which we were unlucky enough to enter, were as dirty and uncomfortable inside as they appeared without. On entering the town, or rather at a little distance from the town of Orange, we saw a beautiful triumphal arch, said to have been raised ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... is flanching outwards, as at the bows of American ships, to throw off the bow-seas; it is in opposition to tumbling home ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... trail, and, once more upon the flat, she called to the horse and made him run. His spirit seemed to race with hers. The wind of his speed blew her hair from its fastenings. When he thundered to a halt at the porch steps Madeline, breathless and disheveled, alighted with the mass of her hair tumbling around her. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... goody Liu, "am I so delicate? What day ever goes by without my tumbling down a couple of times? And if I had to be patted every ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... mighty hot. I was of the same opinion, and halted a few feet in advance of him and fired a few shots in a kneeling posture. While thus engaged, I heard the sound of a blow behind me, and looking around, I saw Ginter tumbling on the ground, his heels in the air. He quickly gathered himself up to a sitting posture with a very rueful countenance, giving vent to his feelings in sundry expletives, as soon as he could get breath enough to deliver them ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... telling about how magicians do their weird tricks, how the circus acrobats pull off their various stunts, how the "fishman" remains under water so long, how the mid-air performers loop the loop and how the slackwire fellow keeps from tumbling. He has been through it all and he writes freely for the boys from his vast experience. They are real stories bound ...
— Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns - Sinking the German U-Boats • Halsey Davidson
... and each deserted, for the by-laws of the Frinton Urban District Council judiciously forbade that the huts should be used as sleeping-chambers. The tide was very low. They walked over the wide flat sands, and came at length to the sea's roar, the white tumbling of foamy breakers, and the full force of the south-east wind. Across the invisible expanse of water could be discerned the beam of a lightship. And Audrey was aware of mysterious sensations such as she had not had since she inhabited Flank Hall and used to ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... A tumbling, shaking, dumping sensation, more like a soft railway accident than anything else, awakened our travellers, and they found that the camel was ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... words tumbling one over the other in his eagerness—"Mother, I expect it's the same deer that grandpapa was talking about when Lord Shotover came over to tea last Friday, and wanted to know if Honoria wasn't back at Newlands again. And then he and grandpapa yarned, don't you know. Because, Cousin Richard—it ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... Briancon, but when we got to St. Christophe we were told the pass would not be open till August, so returned and slept a second night at Bourg d'Oisans. The valley, however, was all that could be desired, mingled sun and shadow, tumbling river, rich wood, and mountain pastures, precipices all around, and snow-clad summits continually unfolding themselves; Murray is right in calling the valley above Venosc a scene of savage sterility. At Venosc, in the poorest ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... his fiancee had gone into the house, the Scotchman left. Gordon sat down in a porch chair and stared straight in front of him. The suddenness of the news had brought his world tumbling about his ears. He felt that such a marriage would be an outrage against Sheba's innocence. But he was not yet far enough away from the blow to ask himself how much the ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... undoubtedly mine. It is what I have always believed . . . it has been so ever since I was at college. I do not mean to say I was not loved there as warmly by noble friends as ever man could be, but the world tumbled on me, and has ever since then been tumbling on me rubbish, huge wagon-loads of rubbish, thinking to smother me, and was surprised it did not smother me—turned round with amazement and said, 'What, you alive yet?' . . . While I was writing my Frederick my best friends, out of delicacy, did not call. Those ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... Ghost almost on her beam-ends and the masts parallel with the water, I looked, not down, but at almost right angles from the perpendicular, to the deck of the Ghost. But I saw, not the deck, but where the deck should have been, for it was buried beneath a wild tumbling of water. Out of this water I could see the two masts rising, and that was all. The Ghost, for the moment, was buried beneath the sea. As she squared off more and more, escaping from the side pressure, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... apparently placing their eggs in the holes they had made. As the morning drew on, they began to waddle away towards the river. The margin of the upper bank was rather steep, and it was amusing to see them tumbling head foremost down the declivity, and then going on again till the leaders reached the water. We now all rushed forward, and were in time to catch several, turning them over on their backs, where ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... as an arrow from the bow; Headlong the torrent leaps, Then tumbling round, in dazzling snow And dizzy whirls it sweeps; Then, shooting through the narrow aisle Of this sublime cathedral pile, Amidst its vastness, dark and grim, It peals ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... meet Loge, who hung sword to sword with Wilton Barnstable, saw Giuseppe Jones, deserted by his nurses, tumbling feebly over the bow of the Jasper B. in the rear of Loge's line. Barelegged, a red blanket fastened about his throat with a big brass safety pin, a thermometer in one hand and a medicine bottle in the other, he tottered, crazily ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... a great chair Of russet leather, poked a flare Of tumbling flame, with the old long sword, Up the chimney; but said no word. Slowly he walked to a distant shelf, And brought back a crock of finest delf. He rested a moment a blue-veined hand Upon the cover, then ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... Constellation visited, to issue a challenge. He pledged himself to present a "Purse of Gold"—it contained a ten-franc piece— to any eight men who vanquished him in a tug-of-war. The spectacle was always an immense success—the eight yokels straining, and tumbling over one another, while Hercule, wearing a masterful smile, kept his ten francs intact. A tug-of-war had been arranged for the night following, and by every law of prudence, Hercule should have abstained from the bottle during ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... of all was when night came while we were still on the march," said Plaza. "We always walked then, and more than one fellow went tumbling down some frightful precipice. We lost our way two or three times, though there were plenty of trumpeters stationed at intervals. But Cordova will tell you about that," and there was a ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... his head bent against the wind, he all but stumbled over a stone seat, where they would sit by the door of a summer evening. As he recovered himself, the light of his lantern fell upon a figure huddled crouching upon the seat, but in the very act of tumbling forward from off it. He caught it with one arm, set down the light, raised its head, and in the wild, worn, death-pale features and wandering eyes, knew the face of his son. He uttered one wailing groan, which seemed ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... at Fordham. Not exactly at Fordham, for you must walk due east from the station for half a mile, climb a fence, and strike through the woods before you hear its voice and catch the gleam of its tumbling current. ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... me tumbling through snow and ice to accommodate a certain lyceum in one of our Northwestern cities. Cold winds from over the Lakes made me wish that the Modern Athens had kept its lecture-system at home; for it has always seemed to me, that, wherever this has ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Whereupon the malicious rogue, watching his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook it directly over my head; by which a dozen apples, each of them near as large as a Bristol barrel, came tumbling about my ears; one of them hit me on the back as I chanced to stoop, and knocked me down flat on my face; but I received no other hurt; and the dwarf was pardoned at my desire, because I ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... said the young man, savagely. "Why the d—-l don't you keep your boards where they belong, instead of tumbling them down on people's heads?—I hope you are not hurt, miss?" (in ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... of your starry eyes, Your lips that seem on roses fed, Your breasts, where Cupid tumbling lies, Nor sleeps for kissing ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... in days gone by, among their little cabins in the quarter. A deep melancholy had taken possession of the features of all. Gloom was in every glance. Even the children, usually reckless of the unknown future, seemed impressed with the same sentiment. They rolled not about, tumbling over each other. They played not at all. They sat without stirring, and silent. Even they, poor infant helots, knew enough to fear for their dark future,—to shudder at ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... easy life aboard that little ketch; for every morning they fished for their suppers, and at no time was any work done unless the ship was actually in peril of wreck. While they were lazying slowly eastward, "tumbling like an Egg-shell in the Sea," her captain ran her on the Alcranes, a collection of sandy little islands, where they stayed for some days before they found a passage out to sea. They spent the days in fishing, or flinging pebbles at the rats, or killing boobies, and ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... I have no more chairs, gentlemen," said the tenant banteringly. "Sit on the table, and three of you can make a sofa of the bed. Never mind tumbling it! You'll do nothing compared to Mr Superintendent Norton when he begins. I say, though, you should have given me notice of all this, and then I'd have had a carpenter here to skin the walls and ceiling so as to have made everything ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... you'd be too proud to look on your grandmother's grave; but you're not, I see. Well, that's good—that's good. We had a funeral last week, and the vault of the old earl was broken in. The stupid sexton stuck his pick in amongst the old bricks, and so the great man's skull came tumbling out, and rolled beside the skull of Job Martin, the old cobbler; and the sexton laid them both on the edge of the grave, the earl's skull and the cobbler's skull, until he should fetch a mason to mend the vault, ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... 'these things could not be helped'. Fowler came in at ten, but fled in a fright at one in the morning. By five, Mrs. Golding summoned Mrs. Pain, who had gone to bed, 'all the tables, chairs, drawers, etc., were tumbling about'. ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Uncle Eugen, it was frightening, as though he were giving me a view of Hell. Gott im Himmel, the things that man talked of! Armies swarming over Europe; sack and massacre, and cities burning; blockades, and starvation; kings deposed, and thrones tumbling like tenpins; battles in which the soldiers of every nation fought, and in which tens of thousands were mowed down like ripe grain; and, over all, the Satanic figure of a little man in a gray coat, who dictated peace to the Austrian Emperor in Schoenbrunn, ...
— He Walked Around the Horses • Henry Beam Piper
... into the house and stood at the window, staring at the mountains. In the clear, newly washed air, they looked like the soft, tumbling waves ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... bury themselves hurriedly deep in the wet sand. All at once she gave a short shriek of surprise and rapture which was evidently wrung from her by some startling discovery. Susan hastened to join her, tumbling over the slippery rocks, and leaving all her possessions behind. It was indeed a very strange and a very beautiful thing that Sophia had found sticking on to the ledge of a rock. Something like a jelly, something ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... for the box and Betty for the door, but both came tumbling down faster than they went up, when, from the gloom of the interior came a shrill bark, and a low voice saying ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... at each other. Before either could speak a tremendous racket broke out on the floor below, a sound of something—or somebody—tumbling about, a roar in a human voice and a feline screech. ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Very gay, you sounded in your letter. I had not time to read it in London; so I put it in my pocket, and read it in the coach coming home. But, my dear child, you do look so old-fashioned with your gown made all tight, and your hair all tumbling about in curls. Curls are quite gone out.' We must do your hair differently,' she continued, trying to smooth Molly's ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... night, I tried to walk out to her, but the weeds and rocks and dark clean beat me. I didn't get back till full day, and then I found all those silly niggers out on the beach praying their sea-god to return to them. I was that vexed and tired, messing and tumbling about, and coming up and going down again, I could have punched their silly heads all round when they started rejoicing. I'm hanged if I ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... little, and the conversation turned on brighter topics. For mile after mile the boys tramped steadily down the Mallowgash. The air was bitterly cold, but not sufficient to freeze the dashing current and tumbling waves. ...
— The Camp in the Snow - Besiedged by Danger • William Murray Graydon
... river itself. But when at last in the dead of night the storm-crest of the Salagua burst forth, raging from its long jostling against chasm walls, a boom like a thunder of cannon echoed from all the high cliffs by Hidden Water; and the warring waters, bellowing and tumbling in their titanic fury, joined together in a long, mad ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... have him know that in running up the national flag at the very moment our daily labors commence, we do not go through an idle form. On whatever distant service he may be sent—whether urging his way amid tumbling icebergs toward the pole, or fainting in the unwholesome heat of Florida—I would enable him as he looks up to that flag to gather hope and strength. It should impart to him a proud feeling of confidence and security. He should know that the same emblem of majesty and justice floats ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... Bagarag dismounted, and followed her up the hills and the rocks, through ravines and gorges of the rocks, and by tumbling torrents, among hanging woods, over perilous precipices, where no sun hath pierced, and the bones of travellers whiten in loneliness; and they continued mounting upward by winding paths, now closed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... rattling fire with their rifles, and the howls and the shots brought the others of their party tumbling and shouting from ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders Among the Kentucky Mountaineers • Jessie Graham Flower
... please you, of your grace! I lie not under hazel or hawthorn-tree Down in this dungeon ditch, mine exile's place By leave of God and fortune's foul disgrace. Girls, lovers, glad young folk and newly wed, Jumpers and jugglers, tumbling heel o'er head, Swift as a dart, and sharp as needle-ware, Throats clear as bells that ring the kine to shed, Your poor old friend, what, will you ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... down at the head of the table, and immediately there was a tumbling rush for places. Most of the children sat, chattering, while two of the larger girls moved around the table, taking bowls to the cauldron, filling them with a brownish stew and ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... "such small deer" scamper uncannily the live-long night along the worn waxcloths and unspeakable carpets. As he undresses by the light of a three-inch candle, he has his soul horrified by early Victorian prints, of Paul tumbling from his horse on the way to Damascus, of the gory relief of Lucknow, or of some towsy-headed clansman smiling out of perspective. He is by no means a tourist on pleasure bent. He must face gust and surge, for he cannot choose his time and weather. His ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... time before Mrs. Duncan could reach the beach, and John occupied the interim in various antics, such as running up the shrouds of the Fawn, hoisting and lowering the jib, lying down on the bobstay, and finally in tumbling overboard while attempting to perch himself on the end of the bowsprit. This accident did not in the least disturb his equanimity, and he had just shaken himself, like a Newfoundland dog, when his mother ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... morning, just as Bradley was tumbling his dishes into a pan of hot water ("their weekly bath," Milton called it), there came a sharp knock on the door, and a girl's voice called ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... the secrecy with which the Ronins made ready for the fight. To have bought armour would have attracted attention, so they made it with their own hands. Old moth-eaten surcoats, bits of helmets, three flutes, a writing-box that must have been any age at the time of the tragedy, and is now tumbling to pieces; tattered trousers of what once was rich silk brocade, now all unravelled and befringed; scraps of leather, part of an old gauntlet, crests and badges, bits of sword handles, spear-heads and dirks, the latter all red with rust, ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... is only for summer use the pipes are not buried from the frost, but wander along the surface, through the ferns and brambles of the tough little sea-side knolls on which the cottages are perched, and climb the old tumbling stone walls of the original pastures before diving into ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... going farther. On the third night, June 7th, he arrived at Pisek; marched again before daybreak, leaving a garrison of 1,200,—who surrendered to Prince Karl next day, without shot fired. Broglio tumbling on ahead, double-quick, with the tagraggery of Croats continually worrying at his heels, baggage-wagons sticking fast, country people massacring all stragglers, panted home to Prag on the 13th; with 'the Gross of the Army saved, don't you observe!' ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... straight for the box and Betty for the door; but both came tumbling down faster than they went up, when from the gloom of the interior came a shrill bark, and a low voice saying quickly, "Down, ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... foam (though its lace was the best of his wearing apparel): We stared at him—Bacchus! The sea reeled round like a wine-vat splashing with purple dreams, And the sunset-skies were dashed with blood of the grape as the sun like a new-staved barrel Flooded the tumbling West with wine and spattered the ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... pocket lay the key of the street door, and the curtain-cord, long rotted and useless, dangled at her cheek. With a quick wrench she brought its length tumbling beside her on the sill, then knotted it to the key and let it down ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold |
