"Lapsing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gazed at him mournfully. "Eh, eh, hinny, I ken all about it," she whispered, lapsing into broader Scotch in her agitation. "Ye can't hide things from your Auntie Elspie. Ye're wearyin' to be away to the war, I ken as well as if ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... hardened his heart against the senator who was introducing this set and narrow attitude into the deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped forward and interrupted him. He himself did not yet know what he would say, but he began to speak eagerly, occasionally lapsing into French or expressing ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... other tombs are worth attention, each lapsing further into the bad taste of later ages; yet there is one still deserving admiration, placed close to the head of that of the two Barons. It is the effigy of a lady, aged and serene, with a delicately-carved face beneath her stiff head-gear. Surely this monument was erected somewhat later, for ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Do you figger what salvage on a seven-hundred-tonner would come to? Well, just lemmee drop it into your think tank, an' lay to what I say. It's all the ways from fifty to seventy thousand dollars, whatever her cargo is; call it sixty thousand—thirty thou' apiece. Oh, I don't know!" he exclaimed, lapsing to landman's slang. "Wha'd I say about a million to one on ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... by men with money in other parts of this country as well as across the frontier, and there's usually only one end to the battle when the man without the dollars kicks against the man with plenty. Stay right where you are with mortgages held open, timber rights that are lapsing because you've done nothing, and undeveloped mineral claims, and the man who sits scheming while you're resting will squeeze you out ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... Like her father, she disliked him; and if, like her father, she would openly let him see and hear it—but doesn't she? What had he to offer her? How could he overcome her father's dislike? He felt in his soul what would come to him finally, but then, in the lapsing time? And she ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... which grow here so prolifically. The person announced that they were dogs, and that an idiosyncrasy of Chinese dogs was to fight. Several wags joined in, and all appeared, through the traveling nincompoop, to know all about my past and present, lapsing into a desultory harangue upon all men and things foreign. The street reminded me of Clovelly—rugged and ragged—and the people were wrinkled and wretched; and, indeed, being a Devonian myself by ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... tries to imagine himself strutting along Broadway in a battered tin helmet and a pair of yellow tights. Our vices are certainly different; it takes those of the innocent sort to be so ridiculous. A self- consciousness lapsing so easily, in fine, strikes me as so near a relation to amenity, urbanity and general gracefulness that, for myself, I should be sorry to lay a tax on it, lest these other commodities should also cease to ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... English parishes, and, although each nationality spoke the same mother tongue, still the spread of schools and churches fostered the different languages of the fatherland, and perpetuated the distinction of race which otherwise would have disappeared by lapsing into savagery. In an earlier chapter I have traced the events immediately pre ceding the breaking out of the insurrectionary movement among the French half-breeds, and in the foregoing pages I have tried to sketch the early life and history of the country into which ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... service of very sensible personal danger to which he was thus called. General Lovell having to devote his attention solely to his military duties, the city which had so long been under martial law was escaping out of the hands of the civil authorities and fast lapsing into anarchy. Between one and two in the afternoon Bailey landed, accompanied by Perkins, the first lieutenant of the Cayuga; who, having shared his former perils, was permitted to accompany him in this one also. "We took just a boat and a boat's ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... the veteran. "That's why, is it? Well, my dear, the reason why you part your hair in the middle is the reason why I sleep outside the admiral's door. I know how to deal with 'em!" chuckled old Mazey, lapsing into soliloquy, and stirring up his ale in high triumph. "Tall and short, native and foreign, sweethearts and wives—I know how ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... The prevalence of such ideas as these produced in the Greek and Roman imagination a profound sense of invisible beings, a sense which was further intensified by the popular personifications of all natural forces, as in fountains and trees, full of lapsing naiads and rustling dryads. An illustrative fact is furnished by an effect of the tradition that Thetis, snatching the body of Achilles from the funeral pile, conveyed him to Leuke, an island in ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... heart," she replied, lapsing into the Indian rhetoric of deep emotion. "He has looked into my heart, and in the doorway he blots out the world. At the first I wanted to die when he would not look on me with favour. Then I wanted to die when I thought I should never possess him. Now it is enough that ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... regard women as possible whippers, and this became stronger at 22, the images of the two sexes then mingling in his thoughts of flagellation. Latterly the mental accompaniments of masturbation have been less personal, lapsing into the mental picture of being whipped by an unknown and vague somebody. When definite it has always been a man, and preferably of the type of a schoolmaster. His desire has been for punishment by whips, canes, or birches, especially upon the buttocks. He has always shrunk from ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... when Mrs. B., after an interview with the whisky bottle, forgets her part and, lapsing into the mere widow of the undertaker, gives it to the intriguing Lady Tonbridge in the neck with a wealth of imagery, a command of slightly slurred invective and a range of facial expression beyond adequate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... was against his chest and I could not see, but I heard Maud turn and run swiftly away along the deck. Everything was happening quickly. I had not yet had a glimmering of unconsciousness, and it seemed that an interminable period of time was lapsing before I heard her feet flying back. And just then I felt the whole man sink under me. The breath was leaving his lungs and his chest was collapsing under my weight. Whether it was merely the expelled breath, or his consciousness of his growing impotence, I know ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... even where they might not have been feared. Daily instruction and inspection of the cottages and their inmates was required. The knowledge that they were under control and supervision was a support to the frightened people and prevented their lapsing into careless habits. Also, there began to develop among them a secret dependence upon, and desire to please "his lordship," as the existing circumstances drew him nearer to them, and unconsciously they were attracted and dominated by his strength. The strong man carries ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... curtains of the tent, and causing its cords to vibrate, that we remembered that we lay on the bank of the Merrimack, and not in our chamber at home. With our heads so low in the grass, we heard the river whirling and sucking, and lapsing downward, kissing the shore as it went, sometimes rippling louder than usual, and again its mighty current making only a slight limpid, trickling sound, as if our water-pail had sprung a leak, and the water were flowing into the grass by our side. The wind, rustling the oaks and hazels, impressed ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... weather, Lapsing soon into June; On a golden, golden day Of the green and golden May, When our hearts were beating tune To the coming feet of June, Walked we ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... horribly shocked when George Eliot published Scenes of Clerical Life and Adam Bede in 1858 and 1859. Outwardly it was eminently respectable, and its respectability was its particular method of lapsing into paganism. It was afraid of ideals, and for those who cherish this fear the worship of respectability comes to be a very dangerous kind of worship, and its idol is perhaps the most formidable of ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... slack this past year. Seems like it never got over the war. And prices are high, too. Can't get a nigger to do a day's work for you for less than three dollars now," he added fiercely. And then lapsing into his former vein again, ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... has given us his Word and his Spirit to aid us in purging out the remaining old leaven, and in holding to our newly-begun purity instead of lapsing from it. We must retain the faith, the Spirit and Christ; and this, as before said, we cannot do if we give place to the old carnal disposition ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... summer-house by the saint's name, and annually on his festival (which falls on the 15th of July) caused wine and dessert to be carried out thither, where the three drank to their common pastime and discoursed of it in the cool of the evening within earshot of the lapsing water. On many other evenings they met to smoke their pipes here, my father and Mr. Grylls playing at chequers sometimes, while my uncle wrapped and bent, till the light failed him, new trout flies for the next day's sport; but to keep St. Swithun's feast they never omitted, which my father ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... mingled joy and pain, And memories old and sadly sweet; While, timing to its minor strain, The waves in lapsing cadence beat. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... usual walk around the enclosure. It was that season of the year when weary summer is lapsing into the arms of fallow autumn.—The day had been warm, and the light gales bore revigorating coolness on their wings as they tremulously agitated the foliage of the western forest, or fluttered among the branches of the trees surrounding ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... himself. The servant (the same man who drugged my wine to-night) returned to his regiment with the information that I was living a Paris with the other officer, who, returning to England, on his furlough lapsing, was called out by my husband, who was worsted in the duel. My lover was waited on by the man he had wronged (I mean his brother officer, not my husband), who implored him to own up. My lover said it would ruin him; he had nothing but his sword; ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... cried, lapsing into her Highland speech, "it iss ashamed of myself I am, but no one has done that to me for ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... said, "Indeed," and then, lapsing into silence, gave little occasional side-glances at Mr. Wilks, as though in search of any hidden charms about him which might hitherto ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... and to pledge himself to complete secrecy as to their contents ever after. From this Greek, whose perfect confidence Atlee was to obtain, he was to learn whether Kulbash Pasha, Lord Danesbury's sworn friend and ally, was not lapsing from his English alliance and inclining towards Russian connections. To Kulbash himself Atlee had letters accrediting him as the trusted and confidential agent of Lord Danesbury, and with the Pasha, Joe was instructed to treat with an air and bearing of unlimited ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... spite of their faults, but because of them: are they not my own?—have been dancing the Haul-back for many generations, and now, under my own eye and quite perceptibly in the rural parts of Virginia, the dance is coming to an end. Slowly but surely we are lapsing into Bullo-doodledom, with a momentary preponderance of Bull. Tempora—do, I entreat you, allow me the use of my solitary dear delightful old bit of Latin—mutantur; ay! and we mutate with them. The world moves, and no amount of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... no sound from the silent, vast assembly. The President's large figure stood before them, at first inspired, glorified with the thrill and swing of his words, lapsing slowly in the stillness into lax, ungraceful lines. He stared at them a moment with sad eyes full of gentleness, of resignation, and in the deep quiet they stared at him. Not a hand was lifted in applause. Slowly the big, awkward man slouched back ...
— The Perfect Tribute • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... gurgle of water whose flow Ofttimes has come to him, borne on the breeze, Memory listens to, lapsing so low, Under the shade of ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... talking, as an old pensioner will talk, of byegone times, of my experiences in a long railway career, and my companion, himself a rising railway man, seemed greatly interested. As we sauntered along, the conversation now and again lapsing into a companionable silence, he suddenly said: "Why don't you write your reminiscences? They would be very interesting, not only to us younger railway men, but to men of your own time too." Until that moment ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... recognition of those whom fear and terrible forebodings had buried under the blackened remains of once happy homes. But mingled with exclamations of joy were sobs and wails of anguish, as some now realized in the lapsing hours that absent members of ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... granted that Rachel must know who Alick was, but she was far from doing so, though she remembered that the —th had been her uncle's regiment, and had been under Sir Stephen Temple's command in India at the time of the mutiny. The thought of Fanny's lapsing into military society was shocking to her. The boys were vociferating about boats, ponies, and all that had been deferred till the Major's arrival, and he was answering them kindly, but hushing the extra ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... love was lapsing from him thus, and from her own true self yet more, the gallant young sailor, whose last prize had been that useful one misfortune, was dwelling continually upon her image, because he had very little else to do. English prisoners in France were treated ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Harrigan, lapsing suddenly from Spanish into his Irish brogue. "Thrue for ye, man! John Bull will take the Kaiser by the throat. In time of peace, why, to hell with England, say I, like all good Irishmen; but in time av war-r, it's shoulder ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... stimulus of the few wants that sent him hunting or fishing kept up his physical health. Never a lover of rude freedom or outdoor life his sedentary predilections and nice tastes kept him from lapsing into barbarian excess; never a sportsman he followed the chase with no feverish exaltation. Even dumb creatures found out his secret, and at times, stalking moodily over the upland, the brown deer and ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... in bed, and a supply of French novels, she appeared the most harmless and engaging of mortals. Her youth had been cruel, disorderly, and vicious. It had lasted long; but now, when middle age stood at last confessed, she was lapsing, it seemed, into amiability and good behavior. She was, indeed, fast forgetting her own history, and soon the recital of it would surprise no one ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the result of the law by which he sought to effect his object was a yearly loss to the treasury, so that after his time, and until his law was repealed by Sulla, the people were really being fed largely at the expense of the State, and thus lapsing into a state of semipauperism, with ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... supported by slender shafts, of the whitest alabaster, between which were open arcades, light and graceful as the arched vineyards of Italy, and wrought in that delicate filagree-work common to the Arabian architecture: through these arcades was seen at intervals the lapsing fall of waters, lighted by alabaster lamps; and their tinkling music sounded with a fresh and regular murmur upon the ear. The whole of one side of this apartment was open to a broad and extensive balcony, which overhung the banks of the winding ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that the God of the Jews appeared and talked face to face with Moses, that he exhibited portions of his body to him, and that he thundered his law to this people from Mt. Sinai, still they were constantly lapsing into the worship of Baal and Ashtaroth, which fact shows how deeply rooted was the belief in a dual or triune God. It is plain that this "Lord," the fierce anger of whom was kindled because of their digressions, was none other than the jealous ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... the common family delusion,—reasons which seemed to make it impossible that she should attract a suitor. Who would dare to marry Elsie? No, let her have the pleasure, if it was one, at any rate the wholesome excitement, of companionship; it might save her from lapsing into melancholy or a worse form of madness. Dudley Venner had a kind of superstition, too, that, if Elsie could only outlive three septenaries, twenty-one years, so that, according to the prevalent idea, her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... take M'Corkindale's hint, and accordingly betook myself to Glenmutchkin, along with the Captain of M'Alcohol, and we quartered ourselves upon the Factor for Glentumblers. We found Watty Solder very shaky, and his assistant also lapsing into habits of painful inebriety. We saw little of them except of an evening, for we shot and fished the whole day, and made ourselves remarkably comfortable. By singular good luck, the plans and sections were lodged in time, and the Board ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... shillings, so that they could continue their journey in safety and comfort. You know, he thought it such a pity for two such worthy brothers to be in sore need of food and drink!" The children were unconsciously lapsing into the language of the Robin Hood stories, as they rattled ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... upon the subject always reverted to the brass button, although he found few to listen to or encourage him in his idea. His medical patrons were a constant source of suffering to him, but he bore with them patiently; sometimes reviving from his prostration as if inspired, then lapsing as suddenly into his old state of semi-pain and total feebleness. As a last hope, he was removed from his fourth floor in the Place Valois, to become an inmate of the Bicetre, and a domiciled subject of contention and ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... Loveday; please come in,' said the widow, seeing his case. The miller said something about coming in presently; but Anne pressed him to stay, with a tender motion of her lip as it played on the verge of a solicitous smile without quite lapsing into ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... have been by his sonnets. But Dante's direct acquaintance with Plato may be reckoned at zero, and we consider it as having strongly influenced his artistic development for the better, that transcendentalist as he was by nature, so much so as to be in danger of lapsing into an Oriental mysticism, his habits of thought should have been made precise and his genius disciplined by a mind so severely logical as that of Aristotle. This does not conflict with what we believe to be equally ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... be endured was this sad reverse! She can be tranquil, but never more will she be happy. To promote her forgetfulness of him, I persuaded her to leave her country, which contained a thousand memorials of past calamity, and which was lapsing fast into civil broils. Clarice has accompanied us, and time may effect the happiness of others by her means, though she can never remove ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... the Peter of the family, and a great source of trouble. He may justly be accused at times of lapsing into disloyalty. He was guilty both on the island and after his arrival in England of committing the same fault, but in this latter instance he may have had a purpose, as he was asking favours from men who were ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... bet your life they do!" answered one of the younger men, lapsing into the frontiersman's language, from the force ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... femmes!" he sighed, as he straightened his erect torso, that had withstood so many Parisian years, against the back of his chair. "Ah! Les femmes! But in zee fields zey cannot follow us? Hein?" He laughed, lapsing into his broken English. "Zey cannot follow us through zee hedges, ovaire zee rough grounds, in zee rains, in zee muds. Nevaire take a woman hunting," he counselled me sotto voce beneath his vibrant hand, for Alice de Breville was present. "One can ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... by a lie in joke or for the sake of compliment, though to no one there accrues loss or gain in consequence, nevertheless is altogether unworthy: for thus the Apostle admonishes, 'Putting aside lying, speak ye truth.' For therein is great danger of lapsing into frequent and more serious lying, and from lies in joke men gain the habit of lying, whence they gain the character of not being truthful. And thence again, in order to gain credit to their words, they find it necessary to make ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... to paths which had become familiar. Acquaintance with 'Harmonies' or Diatessarons caused copyists insensibly to assimilate one Gospel to another. And doctrinal predilections, as in the case of those who belonged to the Origenistic school, were the source of lapsing into expressions which were not the verba ipsissima of Holy Writ. In such cases, when the inadvertency was genuine and was unmingled with any overt design, it is much to be noted that the error seldom propagated ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... retained sufficient power to trample on the liberties of the people, while they were not strong enough to form a barrier against the encroachments of the absolute monarchs who succeeded, or to prevent the power eventually lapsing into the hands of the Church. "Consequently, theocracy gained the ascendency, formidably aided and strengthened by the odious tribunal whose installation shadowed even the glorious epoch of Isabel and Fernando, absorbing ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... really did begin to fear Fred's memory was lapsing; but somehow, poor fellow, smiles have been more in his way than ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... as rather a weak argument for a man to offer for himself?" returned his companion, lapsing into her Southern drawl which, of late, had not been so prominent; "to ask a girl to bind herself irrevocably to him for life and holding out as an inducement the privilege of reforming him?" and there was a note of scorn in the lazy tones that stung ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... this miscellaneous collection accompanies us with an unfailing flow of amusing gossip: at one moment pouring forth a torrent of out-of-the-way learning; at another, making a really passable scientific remark; and then lapsing into an elaborate discussion of some inconceivable absurdity; affecting the air of a grave inquirer, and to all appearance fully believing in his own pretensions, and yet somehow indulging himself in a half-suppressed smile, which indicates that the ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... evil is self-destructive, and ends with the annihilation of its servant, he does not so decisively reject. At least, in a passage of wonderful poetic and philosophic power, which he puts into the mouth of Caponsacchi, he describes Guido as gradually lapsing towards the chaos, which is lower then created existence. ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... impersonal, as if he were looking almost at her, for the truth of her. Steady and intent and eternal they were, as if they would never change. They seemed to fix and to resolve her. She quivered, feeling herself created, will-less, lapsing into him, into a common will ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... tackle Orlay, you'll find you've bitten off a bigger bit than you can chew," replied Joseph, who had a singular habit of lapsing into the vulgarest slang when Julia mounted her high horse in the presence of himself only. When others were present Mr. Mangles seemed to take a sort of pride in this great woman. Let those explain the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally, whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat (jnai, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; jiais, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words); externally a dry thin leaf, even as the f and v are a pressed and dried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b (single lobed, or B, double lobed), ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... . . You know Ri-Ri is seething with Old World sentiment and she may be such a little nut as to think—but she doesn't act as if she really cared about it. It isn't just a pose. . . . Do you imagine," said Ruth, suddenly lapsing into a little Old World sentiment herself, "that she's gone on some one in Italy and they sent her over to forget him? That ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... "held" and administered by the owner, he was immediately in connection with it and responsible for it. He could leave it only precariously to a steward and manager, and to convey the revenue of it to him at a distance was a difficult and costly proceeding. To prevent a constant social disturbance by lapsing and dividing property, and in the absence of any organized agency to receive lapsed property, inheritance and preferably primogeniture were of such manifest advantage that the old social organization always tended in the direction of these ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... eventually forgetting her presence, plunged into an earnest, sympathetic, and intelligent account of the condition in which he found the invalid at St. Moritz. The old man at first listened with an almost perfunctory courtesy and a hesitating reserve; but as Bradley was lapsing into equal reserve and they drove up to the gates of the quadrangle, he unexpectedly warmed with a word or two of serious welcome. Looking up with a half-unconscious smile, Bradley met Lady ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... hour to play her kind patroness to sleep with all the dreamiest and most pensive melodies in her extensive repertoire, the girl suddenly faltered in her playing, wandered from one air into another, and with a touch so uncertain that Aunt Betsy, who was fast lapsing into dreamland, became broad awake again all at once, and wanted to ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... own, befools himself in the attempt. The very bread he has swallowed cannot so in any real sense be his. There does not exist such a power of possessing as he would arrogate. There is not such a sense of having as that of which he has conceived the shadow in his degenerate and lapsing imagination. The real owner of his demesne is that pedlar passing his gate, into a divine soul receiving the sweetnesses which not all the greed of the so-counted possessor can keep within his walls: they overflow the cup-lip of the coping, to give themselves ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... ever since the incident of the bill, seemed to consider himself entitled to play a patronising part towards his schoolfellow, continued to keep him from lapsing into obscurity. ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... bearing was now infused into the flattened lace at the neck, and a pin (removed at some sacrifice from her own toilette) was darned in at the back to prevent any cowardly lapsing. The short white cotton gloves that called attention to the tanned wrists and arms were stripped off and put in her own pocket. Then the wreath of pine-cones was adjusted at a heretofore unimagined angle, the hair was pulled softly into a fluffy frame, and finally, as she met ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... killed at any moment; and, finally, the fortunes of the Simeuse and the Cinq-Cygne families had been seized and wasted by the Republic without being of any benefit to the nation. Her grave demeanor, now lapsing into apparent stolidity, can be ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... forgotten all about the dark stranger, as in his illness he had forgotten all that this episode had reminded him of. I don't like this lapsing into forgetfulness. It may make or continue some injury to the brain. I must not ask him, for fear I shall do more harm than good, but I must somehow learn the facts of his journey abroad. The time is come, I fear, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... the old Republics—Gentile and Jew, Roman and Greek—such evermore the record; Mix'd glory and shame, still lapsing into greed, From conquest and from triumph, into fall! The glory that we see exchanged for guilt Might yet be glory. There were pride enough, And emulous ambition to achieve,— Both generous powers, when coupled with endowment, To do the work of States—and there were courage And sense of public ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... weed was a sort of ocean-hasheesh, or wholesome aliment, I never knew, but certain it is that, from the moment its juices passed my lips, a strange and delightful quietude stole over my weary senses, fast lapsing, as these had seemed, into, unconsciousness when I left my place ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... interval of utter insensibility; it was brief; for, upon again lapsing into life there had been no perceptible descent in the pendulum. But it might have been long; for I knew there were demons who took note of my swoon, and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure. Upon my recovery, too, I felt very—oh, inexpressibly ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... he'd say, lapsing in his earnestness into the broad Scotch accent of his youth, "you canna' mean plunder, and destruction, and riot! You canna! Not in ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... was lofty enough to serve as an observatory, not for starry investigations, but for those sublunary matters in which lay a lore as infinite as that of the planets. Through one loophole I saw the river lapsing calmly onward, while in the meadow, near its brink, a few of the brethren were digging peat for our winter's fuel. On the interior cart-road of our farm I discerned Hollingsworth, with a yoke of oxen ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reign in a balance of power in England which, on the one hand, prevented any great feudatory becoming a rival of the king, as happened in several instances in France, and on the other hand prevented the king lapsing into a ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... myself—not about the election," said Hull, lapsing into sullen silence. And certainly he had no reason to worry about the election. He had the Citizen's Alliance and the Democratic nominations. And, as a further aid to him, Dick Kelly had given the Republican nomination to Alfred Sawyer, about the most ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... it was coming slowly forward, yet there were often times when Tallisker hoped that it was but a temptation, and would be finally conquered. Men do not lose the noble savor of humanity in a moment. Even on the downward road good angels wait anxiously, and whisper in every better moment to the lapsing soul, "Return!" ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... le Baron wants a passport?" he said, lapsing into the useful third person, which makes the French language so much more fitted to social and diplomatic purposes than is our rough ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... murmured, lapsing into the Western idiom which a whole week spent in the society of her bosom friend was bound to call up. "But why Lord Chilminster?" She ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... miseries, was an unknown quantity likewise. Upon the eve of the stiffest competitive examination those, now outlived, years of tutelage had imposed on him, he could still tumble into bed secure of lapsing into unconsciousness as soon as his head fairly touched the pillow. Dreams might, and usually did, visit him; but as so much incidental music merely to the large content of slumber—tittering up and down, too airily light-footed and evanescent to leave any ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... was too late. The men were already at the barrel-spring, as an indistinct murmur of voices testified. The girl had another trembling fit when she heard them, and Tom's wonder was fast lapsing into contempt ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... a stream as thou, Lapsing along it heeds not how; In one thing only unlike thee,— Losing itself, it ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... all—when the loved seem gradually withdrawing from human contact and human desires, their cares parting slowly farther and farther from the cares of those they leave—a gulf ever widening between, already impassable as lapsing ages can make it. But when final departure had left the mind free to work for the heart, Cosmo said to himself—"What if the dying who seem thus divided from us, are but looking over the tops of insignificant earthly things? What if the heart within them is lying content ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... in the state of Maine, the story goes, A woman, to secure a lapsing pension, Married a soldier—though the good Lord knows That very common act scarce calls for mention. What makes it worthy to be writ and read— The man she married had been ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... gradual slant across the flats toward the edge of low water. The tide was nearing the last of the ebb; and now, the slope of the shore being very gradual, and the difference between high and low water in these turbulent channels something between forty and fifty feet, the lapsing fringes of the ebb, yellow-tawny with silt, were a good three-quarters of a mile away from the foot of the cliffs. The vast spaces between were smooth, oily, copper-red mud, shining and treacherous in the sun with the narrow black ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... you!" flashed Roland, lapsing into his loud, excited manner. "I can tell you what, Arthur: if he doesn't expect you, he shan't expect me. Mr. Channing, did you ever know anything so shamefully overbearing and ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... spread of frontage shining sheer, The glistering signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires— 'Tis El Dorado—El Dorado plain, The Golden City! And when a girl goes by, Look! as she turns her glancing head, A call of gold is floated from her ear! Golden, all golden! In a golden glory, Long lapsing down a golden coasted sky, The day not dies but seems Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed Upon a past of golden song and story And memories of gold and ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... you turn around and break his face?" he demanded angrily, lapsing into graphic vernacular. The suggestion was obviously too absurd to need reply. "I 'd like to get my hands on the young whelp," he went on, squaring his shoulders. "I would n't leave a whole bone in ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... accepted any suggestions at variance with the reigning whim; for, since she became an inmate of Miss Jane's hospitable home, existence had been a mere dreamy, aimless succession of golden dawns and scarlet-curtained sunsets—a slow, quiet lapsing of weeks into months,—an almost stagnant stream curled by no eddies, freighted with few aspirations, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... standing: her hands would fold in front of her and the schoolgirl attitude annoyed and restrained her. Also, the man appeared to be in earnest in what he said. His words at the least and the intention which drove them seemed honorable. She could not give rein to her feelings without lapsing to a barbarity which she might not justify to herself even in anger and might, indeed, blush to remember. Perhaps his chief disqualification consisted in a relationship to Mrs. O'Connor for which he could not justly be held to blame, and for which she ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... batti" and numerous others. He had travelled so widely, so keen was his power of assimilation that his melodic style embodied and enhanced the best qualities of contemporary Italian, French and German practice. And yet his innate genius was of sufficient strength to achieve this result without lapsing into formal eclecticism. Whatever suggestions he took he made wholly his own; and his music is nothing if not individual in its inimitable charm and freshness. Whereas Haydn's music often smacks too prominently of the soil, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... have to confess that all this time, whilst Ethel Newcome has been growing in grace with my wife, poor Clive has been lapsing sadly out of favour. She has no patience with Clive. She drubs her little foot when his name is mentioned and turns the subject. Whither are all the tears and pities fled now? Mrs. Laura has transferred all her regard to Ethel, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... these excesses; they become irritable, liable to cold, to rheumatic affections, and nervous depression. They find themselves weary when they rise in the morning. Unfitted for close application to business, they become dilatory and careless, often lapsing into entire lack of energy, and not seldom into the love of intoxicating stimulants. Numbers of husbands and wives entering upon these experiences lose the charm of health, the cheerfulness of life and converse. Home ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... through the gathering night to turn him into the smoothest way, lapsing into jerky, habitual ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... leaning against the balustrade. She dared not glance towards him, to see whether he were pale and agitated, or calm as ice. Only, she knew that the moments were fleetly lapsing away, and that his heart must call her soon, or the voice would never reach her. She turned quite away from him and spoke ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to detail every step of the lapsing of these monsters,—to tell how, day by day, the human semblance left them; how they gave up bandagings and wrappings, abandoned at last every stitch of clothing; how the hair began to spread over the exposed limbs; how their foreheads fell away and their faces ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... the farmer was thinly settling,—the new America growing up before my eyes! and him only by me to make me not a stranger there, with talk of absent friends and old times, though scarce the long age of a college course had gone by,—talk lapsing as of old on such rides into serious strains, problems such as the young talk of together and keep their secret, learning life,—the troubles of the heart of youth. And if now I recur to some of the themes we touched on, and set down ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... guns had destroyed over 4,000 men in the German trenches about Middlekirche I remarked that we were "doing well." It is only on the whole that we who want to end war hate and condemn war; we are constantly lapsing into fierceness, and if we forget this lurking bellicosity and admiration for hard blows in our own nature then we shall set about the task of making an end to it under hopelessly disabling misconceptions. We shall underrate and misunderstand ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... at his friends who sat astonished by this flow of eager, impassioned words. Then he turned again to Lylda's intent, pleading face, regarding her tenderly. "You are very fine, little mother of my son," he said gently, lapsing for a moment into her own style of speech. "It could do no harm," he added ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... it be long, then—long? For the people watch and wait, Till the strength of the onion makes them strong, At only the normal rate. And their eyes are dim with tears, And ache with the need of sleep. And watch till the lapse of the lapsing years Shall make the onions cheap. Cheap, my love, cheap! Sleep, my love, sleep! Onions are dear, love, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... been half lying on the sofa in Mrs. Willoughby's arms—'I know they are trifles; I know that. But make every day full of them, every day repeat them! Oh, it's awful! I wonder I don't break down!' She turned again to Mrs. Willoughby, lapsing from vehemence to melancholy as the notion occurred to her. 'Connie, I believe I shall—break down altogether. You know I'm not very strong.' She put her arms about Mrs. Willoughby, and clung to her in the intensity of her self-compassion. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... phrase is essential. Where a line that develops the plot can be altered so that it will still serve its purpose, and also score a laugh on its own account, it must be so changed. Where lines cannot be changed, bits of comedy business may perhaps be inserted to keep the audience from lapsing into listlessness. For it is a deplorable fact that a vaudeville audience that is not laughing outright at a comedy becomes listless. Vaudeville managers never book a playlet that makes an audience smile—for while ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... appear to be answering one another. He also has another call, not so loud and piercing, but more melodious: a double note, repeated two or three times, with something liquid and gurgling in the sound, suggesting the musical sound of lapsing water. These various notes and calls are heard incessantly until the young are hatched, when the birds at ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... through the unplastered wall, Felt the lightsifted snow-flakes fall; But sleep stole on, as sleep will do When hearts are light and life is new; Faint and more faint the murmurs grew, Till in the summer-land of dreams They softened to the sound of streams, Low stir of leaves, and dip of oars, And lapsing waves on ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... sir, but I've done nowt to deserve it," cried the lad, lapsing for the moment into ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... state that the greatest of the native sovereigns more than once reduced the extramural Tartars to subjection. Between the two races there existed an almost unceasing conflict, which had the effect of civilizing the one and of preventing the other from lapsing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... to a neighboring old house in Kent, he wrote, "What a comfort it is, after staying with people who are too clever, to find oneself with people who are all refreshingly stupid!" If it were not for the danger of lapsing into indiscretions like these—indiscretions of which Hare seemed altogether unconscious—interesting anecdotes might be here ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... it was a river. Now, under the white concave of wintry moonlight, it broke over its stony bed with a fierce persistency of advance. Jerome looked down at the rapid, shifting water-hillocks and listened to their lapsing murmur, incessantly overborne by the gathering rush of onset, then nodded his head conclusively, as if in response to some mental question, ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... tears, Allan launched himself into the full violence of his recital, stumbling recklessly over his figures of speech, lapsing into idioms that it taxed his hearer to follow. Had she been less acquainted with the Caribbean dialects she would have missed much of the story, but, as it was, she followed him closely, urging him on with sharp expressions of amazement and nods of ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... said slowly, for the moment lapsing into the name by which he had called his friend in their childhood; "since you came back from Johannesburg, you've not been the same man. What has ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... Bertram, lapsing into his native speech. Heath flashed a glance of recognition at the ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... we trust will soon cease to darken and distort the beneficent character of God. Indeed it might have been evident to him before that in looking upon herself as a castaway, Jane's sensitive spirit was gradually lapsing into the gloomy horrors of predestination. But this blindness of the father to such a tendency was very natural in a man to whose eye familiarity with the doctrine had removed its deformity. The old man looked ...
— Jane Sinclair; Or, The Fawn Of Springvale - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... really finds it safer to suppose that references to ancestor-worship in the Bible were obliterated by late monotheistic editors, who, none the less, are so full and minute in their descriptions of the various heresies into which Israel was eternally lapsing, and must not be allowed to lapse again. Had ancestor-worship been a peche mignon of Israel, the Prophets would have let Israel hear their ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... exclaimed, lapsing into French. She put up her hand to her veil, and pulled it tightly under her prominent chin ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... water-pails, slowly donned their Sunday clothes. This ceremony was common to all; but here divergence set in. The gray Auld Licht, to whom love was not even a name, sat in his high-backed arm-chair by the hearth, Bible or "Pilgrim's Progress" in hand, occasionally lapsing into slumber. But—though, when they got the chance, they went willingly three times to the kirk—there were young men in the community so flighty that, instead of dozing at home on Saturday night, they dandered casually ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... at what might be that result of her hasty remark, Miss Dasomma faltered, reddened, and betrayed considerable embarrassment. A prudent person, lapsing into a dilemma, is specially discomfitted. She had committed no offence against love, had been guilty of no selfishness or meanness, yet was in miserable predicament. Amy saw, and was the more convinced and determined. She persisted, and Miss Dasomma knew that she would persist. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... consequence. We come and go. We cannot alter the course of nations or the fate of mankind; but the people, the great mass of humanity, are moving up or down. They are marching on, keeping step with civilization and human progress; or they are lapsing back toward barbarism and darkness. The people today make peace and make war—not a sovereign, not the whim of an individual, not the ambition of a single man; but the sentiment, the friendship, the affection, ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... I feel that Messrs. Boardman and Warner can oversee your local Medical Board and keep the institution from lapsing into the dry rot of a purely ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage |
