"Eleventh hour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appropriate sentence, by having thy head struck from thy body. Here, therefore, at the last altar of refuge, I meet thee, according to the vow of the immortal Constantine, for the purpose of demanding whether thou hast any thing to allege why this doom should not be executed? Even at this eleventh hour, thy tongue is unloosed to speak with freedom what may concern thy life. All is prepared in this world and in the next. Look forward beyond yon archway—the block is fixed. Look behind thee, thou seest the axe already sharpened—thy place for good or evil in the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... wronged My cause by this," said Raleigh. "Well they know it Who left this way for me. I have flung myself Like a blind moth into this deadly light Of freedom. Now, at the eleventh hour, Is it too late? I might return and—" "No! Not now!" Ben interrupted. "I'd have said Laugh at the headsman sixteen years ago, When England was awake. She will awake Again. But now, while our most gracious ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... overwhelming. If Lord Dreever's statement was correct and Jimmy had really succeeded in winning Molly's affection, this would indeed be a rescue at the eleventh hour. It was with a Nunc-Dimittis air that he felt for his cigar-case, and extended it toward the detective. A cigar from his own private case was with him a mark of supreme favor and good-will, a sort of accolade which he bestowed only ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... between life and death. I could not but think of the lasting gratitude of Christian Logan and her children, which had led them to remember this man daily in their prayers; who could tell how great a part those prayers had had in securing for him the grace to make his peace with God at the eleventh hour? ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... Nek was invested by Hector Macdonald, Bruce Hamilton closed in upon Golden Gate, and the great net was almost perfect in its meshes. The enemy did not realise their danger until it was too late for the great bulk of their force to escape. Commandant De Wet saw the impending peril at the eleventh hour, and tried hard to get his countrymen to follow him in a dash through Slabbert's Nek; but very few of the burghers would believe that the sword of fate was hanging by so slim a thread over their heads. In vain ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... prefer to end with Scott. Rahel, I fancy, cost you no night and no morning, but was writ in that gentle after-dinner hour so friendly to good digestion. Stearns Wheeler dreams that it is possible to draw at this eleventh hour some possible manuscript out of the unedited treasures of Teufelsdrockh's cabinets. If the manuscripts were ready, all fairly copied out by foreseeing scribes in your sanctuary at Chelsea, the good goblin of steam would—with the least ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... advantage of the opportunity, delaying their return to Skaguay to the last moment. And then it was too late. Arrangements had been made to accompany the several dozen local Indians on their fall trading trip down the coast. The Siwashes had waited on the white people until the eleventh hour, and then departed. There was no course left the party but to wait for chance transportation. In the meantime the claim was cleaned up and ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... take of obeying the directions which I had received. But I was resolved to see for myself what new mystification was going on before I trusted Rosanna's boot in the Sergeant's hands. My old notion of screening the girl, if I could, seemed to have come back on me again, at the eleventh hour. This state of feeling (to say nothing of the detective-fever) hurried me off, as soon as I had got the boot, at the nearest approach to a run which a man turned seventy ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Day dawned. Their vast military machine moved with precision and unity. But there was a surprise awaiting them. The Belgians were to offer a serious resistance to passage through their territory—a firm refusal had been delivered at the eleventh hour. The vanguard was thrown forward from Von Kluck's army at Aix, to break through the defenses of Liege and seize the western railways. This force of three divisions was commanded by General von Emmich, one of them ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... obvious that Emmett was competing in a kind of despair. Mark remembered how a few minutes ago his rival had offered him this year's Whitaker, keeping for himself last year's almanack. Looked at from the point of view of Emmett who really believed that something might be gained at this eleventh hour from a study of the more recent volume, it had been a fine piece of self-denial. It showed that Emmett had Christian talents which surely ought not to be wasted because he was ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... beautiful face. "Help, help!" After praying and weeping for a long time, weeping so bitterly and so copiously that her face and hands and even her bosom were quite wet with tears, she rose. She had made up her mind. Mikolai was coming to-morrow, therefore quick, at the eleventh hour. ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... who had said that she always mixed Madras and Bombay, and who had studied her text-book up to the last available moment. Apparently her eleventh hour industry had not sufficed to tide ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... the working classes,—meant blood. The more moderate now began to fear that a collision would take place between the people and the military, and that they would all be put down or massacred. They were not prepared for an issue which would be the logical effect of the procession, and at the eleventh hour concluded to abandon it. The government, thinking that the crisis was passed, settled into an unaccountable repose. There were only twenty thousand regular troops in the city. There ought to have been eighty thousand; but Guizot was not ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... German people themselves, any more than their master-spirits and spokesmen, spared the shame of their duplicity in those early days of August 1914. A large group of them, including commercial and professional men, drew up a long address to the neutral countries, in which they said that down to the eleventh hour they had "never dreamt of war," never thought of depriving other nations of light and air or of thrusting anybody from his place. And yet the ink of their protest was not yet dry when they gave themselves the lie by showing that down to the last detail of preparation they had everything ready ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... spinning-room was here Came Three Damsels, clothed in white, With their spindles every night; One and Two and three fair Maidens, Spinning to a pulsing cadence, Singing songs of Elfin-Mere; Till the eleventh hour was toll'd, Then departed through the wold. Years ago, and years ago; And the tall reeds sigh as the ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... neither class. In addition to looking like one of those things that come out of hollow trees, he is universally admitted to be a dumb brick of the first water. No soul. No conversation. In short, any girl who, having been rash enough to get engaged to him, has managed at the eleventh hour to slide out is justly entitled ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... confident, "when she recovers from a natural and childlike infatuation for you she'll marry somebody... Possibly even such a man as Graylock might make her happy. You can't ever tell about such men at the eleventh hour." ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... genuine, yet, as Mr. Jay remarks, genuine repentance is never too late. God can pardon the sins of a century as easily as those of a day. Our friend was the means, in the hand of God, of leading many, when worn by sickness and at the eleventh hour of life, to the Lamb of God. His carefully kept diary records many such instances. We give one. He says, 'I remember one Sunday coming from Hessle with the Rev. C. Jones. Our "hearts burned within us as we talked by the ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... waited a long time; they were beginning 'to fear that old Morin's nerve had weakened at the eleventh hour, when they beheld a skiff approaching the shore. It glided closer, entered the shade of the bathhouse, then a ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... car, was driven back to New York. On the way he invented a story to explain why, at the eleventh hour, he had jilted Aline Proctor; but when his thoughts reverted to the young man he had seen working with his sleeves rolled up he decided it would be safer to let Miss Proctor tell of the broken engagement in ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... Arab, had finished speaking, Jill Carden, the English girl, understood that with her only rested the decision, that even now, at the eleventh hour, she was still absolutely free ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... and Theseus, the latter felt he had won and pressed his advantage, offering to let her free and adding warnings to the blind, "Without great sacrifices on both sides, the possibility of our union is an empty dream." At the eleventh hour, when, in her own words, she was "married past redemption," he wrote, "If you judge fit, I will take you to my heart this very week. If you judge fit, I will this very week forswear you for ever;" and replied to her request that her widowed ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... starting from his head, and his breath came in great gusts that shook him. Privy Seal sat down in a large chair by the fire and considered for a moment. Then he slowly drew out the crumpled ball of paper. Here at last he held the Lady Mary utterly in his power; here at last, at the eleventh hour, he had a new opportunity to show to the King his vigilance, his power, and how necessary he was to the safety of the realm. He had been beginning to despair; Winchester was to confess the King that ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... after talking kindly to many of the women, she read to them aloud the parable of the Lord of the vineyard, in the 20th chapter of Matthew, making a few simple comments about Christ coming, and being ready to save sinners even at the eleventh hour, so wonderful was His pity and mercy. A few of the listeners asked who Jesus Christ was, so ignorant they were; others feared that their time ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... alarmingly ill, and he was not likely to remain so much longer, if left to himself; for it was already the eleventh hour with him. He was living in a filthy hole—lying on a bed of straw, without the commonest necessaries of life. The man had become diseased through want and confinement—that cause and origin of half the complaints to which the human frame is subject; lack of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... thee; conclude not therefore thou art a reprobate, or doubt of thine election, because the elect themselves are without them, before their conversion. Thou mayst in the Lord's good time be converted; some are called at the eleventh hour. Use, I say, the means of thy conversion, expect the Lord's leisure, if not yet called, pray thou mayst be, or at least wish and ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... that brief colloquy, one phrase in particular stuck in his mind. "He was reckoned too risky after that." Was that, he wondered, what the Prime Minister was thinking about him now; had he, indeed, proved himself too risky for future use? If so there would be no yielding at the eleventh hour; and perhaps it was as well that to-morrow would see him harnessed to the royal coach for the ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... possibly disappoint her. I can speak feelingly as to the annoyance (for I have known it by my own experience) when after inviting a number of my friends to meet some strangers, the strangers have sent an excuse almost at the eleventh hour. I think no inducements, however strong, could tempt ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... hoped for the sake of maiden modesty it came from Montagu. What drove them to this step may well have been the fear that Lord Dorchester might, to all intents and purposes, imprison his daughter on one of his estates. Even at the eleventh hour, Lady Mary was determined that there should be no misunderstanding between her and her fiance. She wrote to him saying that if she came to him in this way, she would come to him without a portion. To this part of her letter he vouchsafed ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... brilliant physician. He had worked for the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and had spent several years in India studying snake poisons. His purchase of this humdrum suburban practice had been dictated by a desire to make a home for a girl who at the eleventh hour had declined to share it. Two years had elapsed since then, but the shadow still lay upon Stuart's life, its influence being revealed in a certain apathy, almost indifference, which characterised ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... face white and tense. Had his plans failed at the eleventh hour, could anyone have played him false? If the game was up, they should never take him alive. Leaving Helen, he drew a revolver, and, going quickly into the inner hall, he waited in grim silence for the visitors to force ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... station.[Q] "Had regular naval officers," said Kennon bitterly, "instead of being kept in the mud forts on the creeks in Virginia, and in the woods of Carolina cutting timbers to build ironclads, been sent to command these vessels, even at the eleventh hour, they would have ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... his narrow house, and, though God had graciously given her an inch of time, and strength to use it, it was as nothing compared with those wasted years, and she could never know, at least never until the call came for her, whether or not at the eleventh hour this "poor man cried, and the Lord heard him," ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... might deem best. After the Four-Power Treaty was accepted by the American delegates, they feared that it would look too much as if the United States had merely been drawn into the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. It was decided, therefore, at the eleventh hour to give the agreement a more general character by inviting France to adhere to it. France agreed to sign, although she resented not having been consulted during the negotiation of ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... A sorrow nobly borne confers a kind of moral rank. Her neighbors, with respect and pity, stood aside silently. She appeared to be quite unconscious of them. At Phyllis and Elizabeth she looked with great sad eyes, and shook her head mournfully. To the preacher she said, "It's t' eleventh hour, sir, and no ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... utterance on the money question. They say that either silver or gold will do as a position; but they must know which it is to be in order to select timber for the delegations. It won't do to name silver delegates if you mean in the eleventh hour to declare for gold." ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... throttling mountain. The failure of the Italians to achieve what here upon the ground appears so simple delivered Italy hand-bound to strangers. Had they but succeeded in arresting Charles and destroying his forces at Fornovo, it is just possible that then—even then, at the eleventh hour—Italy might have gained the sense of national coherence, or at least have proved herself capable of holding by her leagues the foreigner at bay. As it was, the battle of Fornovo, in spite of Venetian bonfires and Mantuan Madonnas of Victory, made her conscious of incompetence ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... is," said Paul, "what do you wish me to do? Shall I resign, now at the eleventh hour? If I do, it will be a sign of weakness. It will be a confession that every word in this circular is true. It will proclaim the fact that I am afraid ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... for me to fall into the hands of man than to disobey the command of my Lord." The saint had interpreted the will of God, and the archbishop, sanctioning a sudden rumour that the deceased had received absolution at the eleventh hour, yielded. But the bishop's yielding by no means countenanced the belief that God might, for once, tolerate the body of an excommunicate in sacred ground, far from it—the vision of the abbess Hildegarde had merely ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... only at the advisability of separating the too youthful couple, and of giving the Prince military employment until his young wife attained a more mature age; but suggested that some way should be found, even at the eleventh hour, of allying Alfonso to a ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... her hair from her forehead; but he told himself that the pain of this must be less than to be engulfed in bankruptcy, or exposure, which would submerge them all. Moreover, he promised himself that if future events bore too heavily against Wade, he should be saved at the eleventh hour. The thought of this made ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... responsibility to us. Finally he rode up to us and said in a whisper, "We will camp here." The whole expression of the old man's face was that of ghastly terror. I was much annoyed, for I thought that, at the eleventh hour, his fear had overcome his desire to gratify us. Just then a Mexican lad on horseback approached; we were all mounted. I asked the lad, "Is there a lake near by?" He replied, "Yes, a half a mile off." The old Indian said, speaking ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson
... does?" retorted Bela, with a sudden return to his savage mood. "She will have to put up with it: that's all. She has already learned to-day that I do as I choose to do, and that she must do as I tell her. But a further confirmation of this excellent lesson will not come amiss—at the eleventh hour, my dear friend." ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... resolved to increase, and his dispositions were of the highest military excellence; but it is asserted that he would have been beaten, because of the superiority of the enemy in men, but for the coming up, at the eleventh hour, of the Duke of Norfolk, who was the Joseph Johnston of 1461, doing for Edward what the Secessionist Johnston did for Beauregard in 1861. The Lancastrians then gave way, and retreated, at first in orderly fashion, but finally falling into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... disturbed the splendidly even and sane and healthy tenor of this tempestuous and incessantly active life, was the night before the introduction of the Home Rule Bill. There are points to be finally settled—clauses to be ultimately fixed—phrases to be polished or pared at the eleventh hour in all human affairs. Measures finally settled and fixed for weeks before the last hour exist—like all perfection—only in the brains and ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... admission will be a day of reckoning that German Imperialism will postpone until the last hope of some breach among the Allies, some saving miracle in the old Eastern Empire, some dramatically-snatched victory at the eleventh hour, ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... failed, had not his future brother-in-law, Gramont, taken him seriously to task and warned him of the grave danger of flirting with the lady on whom the King had set eyes of love, and persuaded him at the eleventh hour ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... have a bridal favour. We will confer with each. When the golden sand runs out at the eleventh hour, the dial will be alone and in shadow; for if it please thee, we must be wed secretly and in haste. I noticed but awhile ago how beautiful the dial was. So the sands shall give us the hour, the dial the altar, and the nightingale ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... Green related that when some of Johnson's friends desired that Dr. Warren should be called in, he said they might call in whom they pleased; and when Warren was called, at his going away Johnson said, 'You have come in at the eleventh hour, but you shall be paid the same with your fellow-labourers. Francis, put into Dr. Warren's coach a copy of the English Poets.' CROKER. Dr. Warren ten years later attended Boswell in his last illness. Letters of Boswell, p. 355. He was ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... breakfast, at which meal the Earl and Countess both did the honors to the assembled party. It developed then that Inspector Barnabas Letstrayed, in spite of his nap on the billiard-table the day before, had also bestirred himself in an eleventh hour attempt to find some of the cuff-buttons before Holmes dug them all up, and he told us how he had been all through the servants' rooms on the fifth floor, rummaging in their dressers and clothes-closets, and peeking under the beds, in a vain ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry
... occupying till their Lord come, different dispensations of trial and of trust, of sorrow and support, both in their own inward, variable hearts, and in their positions of exposure or of peace, of the gourd shadow and the smiting sun, of calling at heat of day or eleventh hour, of the house unroofed by faith, and the clouds opened by revelation: differences in warning, in mercies, in sicknesses, in signs, in time of calling to account; like only they all are by that which is not of them, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... to talk of politics, but to give you a short description of an event which has greatly excited us, and redeemed from monotony (though at the eleventh hour) the year Eighteen ninety-two. I refer to the great fire on Freethy's Quay, where Mr. Wm. Freethy has of late been improving his timber-store with a number of the newest mechanical inventions; among others, with a steam engine which operates on a circular ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hands. She would immediately inform his father, who would make short work of Mr. Bagley. But, thought Jefferson, why should he spoil a good thing? He could afford to wait a day or two. There was no hurry. He could allow Bagley to think all was going swimmingly and then uncover the plot at the eleventh hour. He would even let this letter go to Kate, there was no difficulty in procuring another envelope and imitating the handwriting—and when Bagley was just preparing to go to the rendezvous he would spring ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... more conspicuous; the Regent's Canal Bill had also doomed it to demolition; and when an opening presented itself for securing one in all essentials more suitable, he was glad to seize it, though at the eleventh hour. He had mentally fixed on the new locality in those earlier days in which he still thought his son might eventually settle in London; and it possessed at the same time many advantages for himself. It was warmer and more sheltered than any which he could have found ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... persistently labor to develop, instruct and discipline a body of men until he and they are working in absolute accord, all the intricate parts of the human machine nicely adjusted and moving without the faintest friction, and then to find himself at the eleventh hour set to one side, a stranger to his men and a rival to himself set in his stead, and be bidden to move on as a sort of martial second fiddle, while the credit and reward go to the new first violin. Nor was Harris the last by any manner ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... was, had nailed her colours to the mast. She refused surrender to anyone, or before any argument. He was innocent, and his innocence would be proved, for she had an intuitive feeling that he would be saved at the eleventh hour. How, she knew not; but she was certain that it would be so. She would have gone to see Brian in prison, but that her father absolutely forbade her doing so. Therefore she was dependent upon Calton for all the news respecting him, and any message ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... mediators. He announced to him the glad tidings, and assured him there was pardon for all. He warned him against the figment of baptismal regeneration; and then, proceeding to apply the word, he urged him, though in the eleventh hour, to receive the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. The Pope listened with marked attention, and displayed considerable emotion. When it was ended, he answered Mr. O'Niggins that it was his fervent hope that they two would not die without finding themselves ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... statement was thus of sensational interest, because it represented the last effort at the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour to avert ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... about the pressing of a smuggler that was wanting in other cases. The sailor taken out of a merchant ship, or the fisherman out of a smack, might at the eleventh hour spring upon you a protection good for his discharge. Not so the smuggler. There was in his case no room for the unexpected. No form of protection could save him from the consequences of his trade. Once ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Cook-Peary controversy of 1909, this canon was made manifest. Here, one man had spent a lifetime in trying to accomplish something; and at the eleventh hour succeeded. Then, coming out in the rich triumph long deferred, he finds another man, of character well known to him, impudently and falsely claiming that he had done it first. Mr. Peary expressed himself, quite restrainedly and correctly, in regard to the effrontery and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... exaggeration. One acquaintance we have made lately, whom we like so much, that we have been vociferously abusing the system of faire part in this city, since, owing to the mistake of a servant, we have until now been deprived of the pleasure of knowing her. The mistake is rectified at the eleventh hour. The lady is the Senora de G—-z P—-a, one of the most accomplished and well-informed women in Mexico; and though our friendship has been short, I trust it ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... hat as he spoke. He was, in fact, trying to get the responsibility of his suspicions lightened by sharing them with Trenholme at this eleventh hour, but his hearer was not ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... "At the eleventh hour, when I had begun to despair of his recovery, the doctor reported the patient restored to his senses. I then told him, Doctor Benoit, that the very moment Evan Lamotte was able to listen, and to talk rationally, I must see him. That the case was one ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... note from the actor, which caused her to clench her hands in rage, then shrug her thin shoulders with a gesture that did not spell defeat. Somehow, in some way, she would accomplish her purpose. Even at the eleventh hour she would not acknowledge herself beaten. Yet as the day wore on toward evening she could think of nothing to do that would bring her ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... guides of nations. In those fateful years between 1908 and 1914, during which we now see so plainly the preparation for this world-tragedy, they might have done much. They did nothing. They might have seen, at least at the eleventh hour, the iniquity of sustaining the military system, and have cast the whole of their massive influence on the side of the promoters of arbitration. I do not mean that any man should advocate disarmament, or less effective armament, ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... 'Take me back, dear Guardian; I will be good,' or do I prostrate myself at your feet and knock my head on your boots, and whine, in the language of the country, 'Hearing is obeying'? Don't be ridiculous, Aubrey. You can't expect me to change my mind at the eleventh hour. It's perfectly safe. Mustafa Ali will take care that everything goes smoothly. He has his reputation in Biskra to think of. You know the character the authorities gave him. He is not likely to throw that away. In any case I can ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... yet done. His mind was clear about the man who came in at the eleventh hour, but it was not clear with regard to these true-hearted old friends who had been with him from the first. He recalled the time when Dan's big arm had helped him to a chair, and Biddy had put the steaming soup before him—food worth ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... obeisance the murderous tool departed. Exactly as planned, it all fell out. Captain Toltbon was put in irons, and Riel declared that for the sake of peace and order he must be shot. Many people came and implored him to spare the condemned man's life; but he was inexorable. "At the eleventh hour," however, as the newspapers put it, yielding to solicitation, ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... putting it as badly for them as possible. "Are you thinking of their being there alone—of their having consented to be?" And then as she had waited without result for her companion to say: "But isn't it true that—after you had this time again, at the eleventh hour, said YOU wouldn't—they would really ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... distribution of the eagles. We have done our possible and impossible to get tickets, because I had taken strongly into my head to want to go, and because Robert, who didn't care for it himself, cared for it for me; but here's the eleventh hour and our prospects remain gloomy. We did not apply sufficiently soon, I am afraid, and the name of the applicants has been legion. It will be a grand sight, and full of significances. Nevertheless, the empire won't come so; you will have to wait a little for ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... idea that the outcast of the streets might, by the barest conceivable possibility, be identified with the lost daughter—would, in one way or another, be almost infallibly suggested to Amelius; and, at the eleventh hour, the conspiracy would be foiled. If, on the other hand, the American's fatal advice was followed, the next morning's post might bring a letter from Jervy to Mrs. Farnaby—with this disastrous result. At the first words spoken by Amelius, she would put an end to all further interest in the subject ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... friendly attitude of the banks; they were now politely reluctant, as one of the agents expressed it, which really meant that opposition to the loan had appeared from some unexpected source, as a sort of eleventh hour obstacle. The heads of the two banks had as much as said that negotiations were at an end, that was the long and short of it; it really didn't matter what was back of their sudden change of front, the fact still remained that the transaction was as "dead as a door nail" unless it could ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... of Maerchen. Such tables might be compiled from the learned notes and introductions of Prof. Child to his English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1898). A common plot is the story of the faithful leman, whose lord brings home "a braw new bride," and who recovers his affection at the eleventh hour. In Scotland this is the ballad of Lord Thomas and Fair Annie; in Danish it is Skiaen Anna. It occurs twice in M. Fauriel's collection of Romaic songs. Again, there is the familiar ballad about a girl who pretends to be dead, that she may be borne on a bier ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... fellow had been killed and buried, many another wounded and not especially mentioned, and all of them had done months of hard work where Billings had put in only so many days, but here he came in at the eleventh hour, and they, who had borne the heat and burden of the campaign and received every man his penny, couldn't help a few good-natured slings at the fact that Billings's penny was just as big and round as theirs. ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... deputed by the different States to select from the candidates already in the field, how do they get out of the difficulty at the eleventh hour? They take upon themselves to nominate a candidate for the Presidential chair, who was not fettered by any particular followers, and from whom all parties hoped they would receive some share of the loaves and fishes as a ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... at Lady Coxon's own house, I understood well enough the springs one was moved by. Gravener had spoken of me there as an old friend, and I received a gracious invitation to dine. The Knight's widow was again indisposed—she had succumbed at the eleventh hour; so that I found Miss Anvoy bravely playing hostess without even Gravener's help, since, to make matters worse, he had just sent up word that the House, the insatiable House, with which he supposed he had contracted for easier terms, positively declined to release him. ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... with Prinsloo on the question of a surrender, had it destroyed whilst Prinsloo's was forwarded. This settled the whole affair. The positions were evacuated, and in part occupied by the enemy. Still, at the eleventh hour, there was a possibility of escape. The long trail of waggons would have been captured, but most, if not all, the burghers could have found their way out. But no, they were to be duped by a set of unscrupulous officers. They were told they could get all they desired, ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... see the man, woman or child in this town, or any other, that can bear more than I can. I always was independent, thank the Lord. After living without the help of man this long, I hope I can get along without it at the eleventh hour. As to its being a money concern, I don't believe a word of it, and I wouldn't walk across the room, if it just concerned myself alone; but when I see the name of my poor, dead brother, I feel a command on me, just ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... listened I was sensible of a yearning for a love—a love that was soon forgotten, and I knew it to be mine. In the wonders of this new world I had forgotten the love that, while on Earth, I had been ready to risk my life for, and now it was the eleventh hour, and who could say whether I should ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... should begin, and took the winner home with her then and there; she too, though the day was far spent, was to have her ten shillings. "What, have you forgotten your New Testaments?" Priscilla cried, when more murmurs greeted this announcement. "Don't you remember the people who came at the eleventh hour to labour in the vineyard and got just the same as the others? Why should I try to improve on parables?" And there was something about Priscilla, an air, an authority, that twisted the women of Symford into any shape of agreement ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... rather, is the questionable taste of the editorial commentary, with which it is strange that Hawthorne should have allowed his article to be encumbered. He had not been an Abolitionist before the War, and that he should not pretend to be one at the eleventh hour, was, for instance, surely a piece of consistency that might have been allowed to pass. "I shall not pretend to be an admirer of old John Brown," he says, in a page worth quoting, "any further than sympathy ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... I expect," said Erica to her father. "Ask him upstairs, please. I only hope he doesn't want me to write another article at the eleventh hour. If it's the little Irish sub-editor, you must be very polite to him, father, for he has ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... came to him at the eleventh hour. This man was idle all the day long. He had a whole gospel day to come in, and he played it all away save only the last hour thereof. But at last, at the eleventh hour, he came, and goes into the vineyard to work with the rest ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to point out to her all the horrors to which she is hastening; rashly, it may be, and without due reflection. To entreat her, at least, to pause. She can have had no counsellor for her good. Perhaps even I may move her so far yet, though it is the eleventh hour, and she upon the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... man who had pretended to agree with his wife when she raved against Micky for the cavalier way in which he had treated his daughter, but who in his heart had indulged in a quiet chuckle, thinking that Micky had been rather clever to escape from the toils at the eleventh hour. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... I can only bid your ladyship farewell," said the offended Major, with a ceremonious bow. Then turning to me: "Good-bye, my dear Miss Janet, for the present. Even at this, the eleventh hour, I must intercede with Lady Chillington to grant you permission to come and spend part of next week with ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... that great hardihood is required even to suggest that there may be other and better ways of traversing the empirical common. So it is that the fear of being proclaimed a Brazenhead has restrained me until this eleventh hour from telling of my discoveries concerning the fourth-dimensional reaches of our Exposition. That I have the courage now is due to my desire to help in its preservation; not to the end of enclosing it in a brass wall, but to lift it out of the realm of ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams
... number of horses.[205] Braddock, grateful to his benefactor, and enraged at everybody else, pronounced him "Almost the only instance of ability and honesty I have known in these provinces."[206] More wagons and more horses gradually arrived, and at the eleventh hour ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... Now, at the eleventh hour, Breyman was marching on the field to the sound of the firing. He had taken thirty-two hours to get over twenty-four miles. Supposing the day won, Stark's men were scattered about in disorder. Not even Stark himself seems to have thought of a rescuing force. ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake
... till the work be fully accomplished." The whole of the 51st Psalm, she said, seemed to suit her case, and with solemnity repeated, "'Create in me a clean heart, oh God! and renew a right spirit within me.' If I am saved, it will indeed be at the eleventh hour, I have ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... German Government sent a note under date of February 16, 1915, setting forth that the war zone proclamation was in reprisal for the "blockade" of Great Britain and that if "at the eleventh hour" the United States should prevail upon Germany's enemies to abandon their methods of maritime warfare, Germany would modify its order. It charged misuse of neutral flags and the arming of merchant ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... board and a half-dozen pedagogues from neighboring districts. She had trained the children until they were letter perfect. She had drilled them in their physical exercises until they moved like machines, and now at the eleventh hour they were fluttering away from her like a flock of unruly birds, and she recognized at once that Judy had championed Anne's cause, and that in her she had ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... could make flowers, ducks, &c., out of turnips and carrots in a very creditable manner, would go to "the Square," as it was called, and assist in the preparations incident to a great dinner, without even so much as thinking of sitting down to the banquet. If any guest failed at the eleventh hour, Todd was asked to dine. Mrs. Todd and Maria came across in the evening, slipped in with a muffled knock, and were in the drawing-room by the time Miss Osborne and the ladies under her convoy reached that ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... houses were darkened, and, save for the summer murmurs, the faint creak of upper branches, and the infinitesimal voices of insects in the grass, there was silence: the pleasant and somnolent hush, swathed in which that part of Canaan crosses to the far side of the eleventh hour. ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... replies from that official, but not a letter or telegram passing between Berchtold and von Bethmann-Hollweg or between the German and Austrian Kaisers. The Austrian Red Book gives additional evidence that at the eleventh hour, and shortly before Germany issued its ultimatum to Russia, Austria did finally agree to discuss the Servian question with Russia; but the information, which Germany presumably gave to its ally of its intention to send the ultimatum to Russia, ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... referendum, upon petition of at least 10,000 legal voters filed within a specified time. The effort to secure these names lagged and without doubt would have been given up had it not been for Frank E. Mace, former State Forest Commissioner, who organized committees all over the State at the eleventh hour and petitions bearing 12,000 signatures were filed July 3, within 90 days after the Legislature adjourned, as required. As there was doubt about the constitutionality of this referendum, the State Supreme Court, on July 9, 1919, was requested by Governor Milliken ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... the man for whom we have been labouring!' she cried. 'We tell him of change; he will devise the means, he says; and his device is abdication? Sir, have you no shame to come here at the eleventh hour among those who have borne the heat and burthen of the day? Do you not wonder at yourself? I, sir, was here in my place, striving to uphold your dignity alone. I took counsel with the wisest I could find, while you were eating and ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... anticipate the proceedings of the Infinite Wisdom. Let us leave the high prerogative of judgment to the Almighty Power, by whom only it is exercised, and in our opinions of even the worst of our fellow-creatures, let us exercise a comprehensive charity, mingled with a prayer that even at the eleventh hour, they may have turned from the evil of their ways, and embraced the prospect of salvation, which the mercy of their Creator has held ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... be bought and sold like a pedigree filly or heifer. I think that was rather heroic, considering her traditions and the pressure which had been brought to bear to keep her silent. I can only honour and reverence her for coming to tell me frankly, though at the eleventh hour, that she preferred a man of no particular position or fortune, but with the ordinary complement of limbs, to Brockhurst, and the house in London, and my forty to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... I've an idea from the 'moderation' of your father's remarks that there'll be some fun between the White House and the Senate Chamber during the next four years. For my part I share his scorn for such eleventh hour repentance. It's too late. The mischief has been done. Secession is a fact and we've got to ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... appeared himself to be also in high spirits. The pork and peas pudding soon were on the table. We dined heartily, and were sitting over the latter part of the first bottle in conversation, it being near upon the eleventh hour, when we heard a noise at the gate—observed some figures of men, who stayed a short time and then disappeared. The door opened, and Moonshine went out. In a few seconds he returned, bringing in his arms an anker of spirits, which he laid on the floor, grinning so wide that his head appeared ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... in my memory ever since. Thank Heaven! the eleventh hour must have struck long ago, and Hortense and her friend must be fast asleep and well out of the cold by now—they need walk those evil ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... much more tricky. I had to get plain proof that my man was a spy in the dockyard, to keep him playing on my line to the very last minute, but to make dead certain of stopping him at the fifty-fifth second of the eleventh hour." ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... Sydney. I diplomatically, and Dawn ostentatiously, failed to notice him as we drove past to where was displayed the legend—S. Messre, Chemist and Dentist, late C. C. Rock-Snake, and where Dawn halted, saying, at the eleventh hour, "You ought to go to Sydney, Charlie Rock-Snake was all right, but I don't care for the ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Ritschl—the Aristarchus of our own days, now dead—thought very highly of them and gave them to me, some years ago, with several variations which had been added by an anonymous hand, then still in the land of the living. I have added to the first verse two of these, which, as I learned at the eleventh hour, were composed by Herr H. L. von Held, who is now dead, and of whom further particulars may be learned from Varnhagen's 'Biographisclaen Denkmalen'. Vol. VII. I think the reader will thank me for directing his attention to these charming lines ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... falling upon the dying heart; the convictions which a long life had never brought home—that men were false and their words a lie—were stealing over the man upon the brink of the grave; and he who had loved his neighbor like a brother was to be taught, at the eleventh hour, that the beings he trusted ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... of thrills—of hopes and fears. Groups of excited people met to discuss again all phases of the contest; the freshness of the dogs, the stamina of the men, the possibility of accidents; for a broken harness, a refractory leader, an error in judgment, may mean overwhelming defeat at the eleventh hour. ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... defection of the Methodists, whose leader, Egerton Ryerson, had quarreled with Mackenzie, resulted in the overwhelming defeat of the Reformers. The sting of defeat, the failure of the Family Compact to carry out their eleventh hour promises of reform, and the passing of Lord John Russell's reactionary resolutions convinced a section of the Reform party, in Upper Canada as well as in Lower Canada, that an appeal to force was the ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... favour a state of Purgatory. From John, Paul, and the philosophy of the doctrine, I should gather a different faith, and find a sanction for this too in one of the parables, namely, that of the labourer at the eleventh hour. Heaven, bliss, union with God through Christ, do not seem to me comparative terms, or conceptions susceptible of degree. But it is a difficult question. The first Fathers of the Reformation, and the early Fathers ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... while 1 snored in my bunk; absently diverging into dreams, I knew, of a rose-brown face under dewy hair and a grey tam-o'-shanter; though not a word of her came into the document. I smiled to see his undying faith in the 'channel theory' reconciled at the eleventh hour, with new data touching the ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... "the danger is great. I do not try to conceal it from you. It was my intention this morning to see you and Julie safe on the Lyons train, but John and I have beheld signs, not military, perhaps, but of the soul, and we are firm in the belief that at the eleventh hour we shall be saved. The German host will not ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I thought savagely. "We could have spared him perfectly. What business has he turning up at the eleventh hour? He didn't cross the ocean with her. He didn't suspect her unforgivably. He didn't help her, and disguise himself as a chauffeur for her, and wing Schwartzmann, and bruise up the other chaps and send them rolling in a heap. This is my adventure. He must have ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... a trick is this, standing up here at the eleventh hour and putting the knife into your ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... master! Walkyn, methinks, is not a jovial soul, lord, and when he smileth it behoveth others to frown and—beware. So prithee eat hearty, lord, for, in a while the sun will stand above yon whin-bush, and then 'twill be the eleventh hour, and at the eleventh hour must I wash thy hurt and be-plaster it with ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... Gammon, and then at his juniors, to whom, before the arrival of their clients and Mr. Mortmain, he had been mentioning the essential link which, a month before, he had pointed out as missing, and the marvellous good fortune by which they had been able to supply it at the eleventh hour. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... market that we had enjoyed that summer it was decided to withdraw from further contracting with the government. Our profits for the year were dazzling, and the actual growth of our beeves in the Outlet was in itself a snug fortune, while the five herds bought at the eleventh hour cleared over one hundred thousand dollars, mere pin-money. I hurried home to find that fortune favored me personally, as the Texas and Pacific Railway had built west from Fort Worth during the summer as far as Weatherford, while the survey on westward was within ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams |
