"Stagger" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had him by the throat, and he went reeling sideways among his comrades. Then, as by a signal the tumult began, for with a crash of splintered glass the nearest lamp went out, and a rush was made upon us. Something struck me heavily on the head; I saw Johnston stagger under a heavy blow; but I held myself before the girl as we were hustled through the doorway, and when a pistol-barrel glinted one of the railroad men whirled aloft an axe. We were outside now, but the pistol blazed before the blade came down, and a man beside me caught at a veranda pillar with ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... fall!" I exclaimed, catching hold of Ernest's arm, and covering my eyes. "I cannot bear to look at them. There! how dreadfully they stagger." ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... an undertone, as though he did not wish the others to hear him; to tell the truth, he felt as though he could not stagger on much further over that rough trail, and carry the heavy pack in the bargain, as well as the new bag containing ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... clerk from the War Department stake his last dollar, lose, and stagger from the table with a haunted, desperate look. Ned followed him into two saloons and saw the bartenders refuse him credit. He walked through the door of the last saloon, his legs trembling and his white lips twitching, stopped and leaned against the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... Circuit House at 10 a.m., preceded by Autolycus and a crowd of coolies bearing luggage. Each coolie carries one thing, and as they are all paid the same without regard to the weight carried, of course there is great competition for the light packages. It is odd to see one man stagger under a trunk while another trots gaily off with a cushion or a kodak. We are allowed to take hand-luggage into the carriage, and we take such a broad view of the word that it means with us dressing-bags, suit-cases, tennis-rackets, gun-cases, polo-sticks, ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... Alex with the bracelets on and turned sober in one second. He just took a moment to gape, then his mind was made up. Without a trace of a stagger he walked over to the Chief and threw his badge on the ...
— Arm of the Law • Harry Harrison
... culture. "Above all things," writes Chaplin, "I don't want anyone to try to make me out a 'poet'—because I'm not. I don't think much of these esthetic creatures who condescend to stoop to our level that we may have the blessings of culture. We'll manage to make our own—do it in our own way, and stagger through somehow. . . . These are tremendous times, and sooner or later someone will come along big enough to sound the right note, and it will be a rebel note." It is that note which Chaplin has sought to strike, and that ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... him off. In fancy he could see himself swaying, writhing, reeling, battered about by those heavy fists, but always with his hands on the thick neck, squeezing out its life. He could feel, absolutely feel, the last reel and stagger of that great bulk crashing down, dragging him with it, till it lay upturned, still. He covered his eyes with his hands. . . . Thank God! The fellow ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... stagger any man, and would have made me swoon perhaps, but that there was no time, for we were at the end of the under-cliff, and Elzevir set me down for a minute, before he buckled to his task. And 'twas a task that ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... that such a fight Would be a huge reclame for Hundom; That Earth would stagger at the sight Of Gulielmus contra Mundum; That WILLIAM, facing awful odds, Should prove a spectacle for ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... life. A dilapidated open wagon, flaming torches lighting up painted faces; some laugh, some sing. Among them you see what appear to be women; they are in fact what once were women, with human semblance. They are caressed and insulted; no one knows who they are or what their names. They float and stagger under the flaming torches in an intoxication that thinks of nothing, and over which, it is said, a pitying ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... be slipping down the stairway, also. Then Frank saw him lift himself and try to stagger to his feet. Without taking further note of this, Merriwell promptly closed with the other burglar on ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... Squire went on, with serenity. "I'm saying that when he uses that inventive genius of his on his own jumping gear he'll leap ahead and make good. For instance, son, here's an example. Joe invented an anti-stagger shoe—a star-shaped shoe—to be let out at saloons and city clubs like they lend umbrellas for a fee—and then the reformers went and passed that prohibition law. Always a little behind with a grand ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... was, 'Yes, by God's help we will!' The first thing was to give them something like a comfortable bed, and, Sunday though it was, we went to work to run up our sheets into bed-sacks. Every man that had strength enough to stagger was pressed into the service, and by night most of them had something softer than a tarpaulin to sleep on. 'Oh, I am so comfortable now!' some of them said; 'I think I can sleep to-night,' exclaimed one little fellow, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... save her!" was his agonized cry, as he saw at the same moment the little figure stagger and fall. Then, forgetting his weakness and lack of physical strength, he dashed out of the house, and in another instant ...
— Probable Sons • Amy Le Feuvre
... deep breath, his hands falling helplessly at his sides. In a way he appeared suddenly bowed; the great frame of bone and sinew seemed in some strange, indefinable manner to shrink, to stagger under the sudden assumption of an intolerable burden—a burden that was never ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... mare tucked her great thighs under her, and swept on over heath and rabbit burrow, over rush and fen, sound ground and rotten all alike to that enormous stride, to that keen bright eye which foresaw every footfall, to that raking shoulder which picked her up again at every stagger? ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... then I wished that I might die. These were my moments of temptation which I struggled to overcome. Sometimes a song, a strain of music, or a ray of moonlight on the floor would bring the past to me so vividly that I would stagger beneath the burden, feeling that it was greater than I could bear. But God was very merciful and sent me work which took up all my time, leaving little leisure for regrets, and driving me away from my own pain to soothe the pain of others. When Katy came to us last summer ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... Joicey stare at him with blind rage; he watched him stagger and reach out groping hands for a chair, and he saw the huge defiance evaporate, leaving Joicey a trembling mass ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... he took of me when I was a little puppy, just able to stagger about, was to give me a kick that sent me into a corner of the stable. He used to beat and starve my mother. I have seen him use his heavy whip to punish her till her body was covered with blood. When I got older ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... induce hostilities on the part of the Indians. Charity would incline to the belief that the continuance of the war was rightly attributable to these causes—the other reason assigned for it, supposing the existence of a depravity, so deep and damning, as almost to stagger credulity itself. ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... human powers. Perhaps you have chosen the part which, all things considered, may serve your purpose best; though I think more moderation would be more conciliating. The exterior of innocence will, I grant, stagger the persons who may have the direction of your fate, but it will never be able to prevail against plain and incontrovertible facts. But I have done with you. I see in you a new instance of that abuse which is so generally made of talents, the admiration of an undiscerning public. ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... neighbours elicited the fact that the cook of the establishment had caught the beast and cut its throat; that the miserable creature, in its dying struggles, had escaped from his grasp and run in the direction of home, only to stagger by the roadside and ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... hysterical madwomen whom one has to tie down in order to prevent them from breaking their heads against a wall. This return to former vigour, these sudden attacks, gave her a terrible shock. When she came to again, she would stagger about with such a scared, stupefied look, that the gossips of the Faubourg used to say: "She's been drinking, the ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... and weary itself as our helpless English chicken is; it lived to get fat without acquiring any useless knowledge or desire of life; it became a capon in tender years, and then a pipe was introduced into its mouth and it was fed by machinery until it could hardly walk, until it could only stagger to its bed, and there it lay in happy digestion until the hour came for it to be crammed again. So did it grow up without knowledge or sensation or feeling of life, moving gradually, peacefully towards its predestined end—a delicious repast! What better end, what greater glory than to be ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... spans thick was the shield, If all be true they tell us, that Brunhild bore in field. Of steel and gold compacted all gorgeously it glow'd. Four chamberlains, that bore it, stagger'd beneath ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... in the depths below, Now mounted up to heaven again, They reel and stagger to and fro, At their ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... hundreds were killed, others came on in a most determined manner, as if they had resolved to rob us at all cost. At last John proposed that we should blow them up. We called out to Ellen not to be alarmed, and then spread a train of powder across the column, when we set it on fire. This seemed to stagger them, but others still came on. Not till we had performed the operation three times did they seem to discover their danger, when the first coming on turned round and warned those behind, and the whole took their departure. The next morning we traced them to a spot ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... Gaelic; but what with the long suspense of the waiting, and the scurry and strain of our two spirts of fighting, and more than all, the horror I had of some of my own share in it, the thing was no sooner over than I was glad to stagger to a seat. There was that tightness on my chest that I could hardly breathe; the thought of the two men I had shot sat upon me like a nightmare; and all upon a sudden, and before I had a guess of what was coming, I began to sob and cry ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a lateral direction, a part of the wall just above the foundation, sufficient, however, to destroy the equipoise of the building. Then, amid a cloud of smoke, which began gradually to encircle the turret like a shroud, arising slowly from its base to its summit, it was seen to stagger and shake by all who had courage to look steadily at a sight so dreadful. Slowly, at first, the building inclined outwards, then rushed precipitately to its base, and fell to the ground in huge fragments, the strength ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... simple matter. For Jeffreys was brawny and powerful; and the light weight of the slender, wiry boy was nothing to him. But on that slippery mountain-side, after the fatigue and peril of the afternoon, it was as much as he could do to stagger ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... right into me without even seeing me. I got tired of waiting in the beer-house and began to think that they had run you in too. Well, what is the matter? How you stagger." ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... continuing her story, "was my lord departed, than Mrs. Ellison came to me. She behaved in such a manner, when she became acquainted with what had past, that, though I was at first satisfied of her guilt, she began to stagger my opinion, and at length prevailed upon me entirely to acquit her. She raved like a mad woman against my lord, swore he should not stay a moment in her house, and that she would never speak to him more. ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... crowding influence from the boundaries on either side the way, and it was to gain relief from such damaging contraction of area that he left the highway for the wider wintry fields. Going onward in these latter at an irregular pace; sometimes momentarily stunned into a rangy stagger by a sounding blow on the cerebrum or the cerebellum; and, again, irritated almost to a run by contusion of shoulder-blade or funny-bone; he finally became aware that two men were following him through ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 22, August 27, 1870 • Various
... to have written a piece according to regulation. This being so, I doubt not that the gentlemen of the Academy will find themselves much hampered in delivering a judgment on your case, and that, on the one hand, your arguments will stagger them, whilst, on the other, the public approbation will keep them in check. You have the best of it in the closet; he has the advantage on the stage. If the Cid be guilty, it is of a crime which has met ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... cleaving blows of rifles uplifted struck down those whom the bullets had not slain. Only thirty-two of the five hundred Mexicans survived to surrender as prisoners of war. Gen. Houston's wound in the ankle, meanwhile was bleeding profusely. His horse was dying, and with difficulty could stagger over the slain. Still the Commander-in-Chief witnessed every movement of his army, and as it rolled victoriously over the field, saw the tide of battle crowning his brave soldiers with unparalleled success."—See ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... parentheses above. The exigencies of English grammar as also of perspicuity have obliged me to use, even in the portions unenclosed, more words than what occur in the original Sanskrit. All these verses are cruces intended to stagger Ganesa. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... text. They were therefore easily justified either to reason or to the eye of faith, but the results of their application were often startling, and it was facts, not theories, that chiefly caused Susannah to stagger. ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... powerful adversary, drew forth in his right hand a long dagger with a fine barbed blade. Gabriel smiled scornfully, snatched the weapon from him, and even as he stooped to break it across his knee, gave the prince a furious blow with his head that made him stagger and sent him rolling on the floor, three paces away; then, leaning over his poor sister and gazing on her with hungry eyes, by the passing gleam of a flash, "Dead!" he repeated, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - NISIDA—1825 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... had forced themselves to stagger along under this horrible burden of unnecessary production, it became impossible for them to look upon labour and its results from any other point of view than one—to wit, the ceaseless endeavour ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... and fell,—to drop in a drift far below, to crawl painfully back to the waiting dot above, and to guide her, by safer paths, on downward. Hours! The dots grew larger. The glasses no longer were needed. On they came, stumbling, reeling, at last to stagger across the frozen, wind-swept surface of a small lake and toward the bunk cars of the snow crews. The woman wavered and fell; he caught her. Then double-weighted, a pack on his back, a form in his arms, he came on, his blood-red eyes searching almost sightlessly the faces of the ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... the windsail hang dead, the sides of the canvas tube have fallen in like the neck of a skinny old man. Slowly the sun mounts over our heads and the air grows hotter and hotter. From the galley come sounds of quacking, and a few feathers roll slowly past us. Now and then an agonized trimmer will stagger out of a bunker hatch into the open air, his half-naked body black with coal-dust and gleaming with sweat. The Mate, in a big straw hat, paces the bridge slowly. The cook emerges from the galley and hastens aft for provisions—they are preparing ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... a change in your sentiments. Have I not explained everything to you with respect to myself which could bear a doubtful meaning, and which the ill-nature of the world had interpreted to my discredit? What can you now have heard to stagger your esteem for me? Have I ever had a concealment from you? Reginald, you agitate me beyond expression, I cannot suppose that the old story of Mrs. Mainwaring's jealousy can be revived again, or at least be LISTENED to again. Come to me immediately, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the heavens when Weston awakened, ravenous, with an almost intolerable stitch in his side. He rose with a stagger, and then sat down again, while his face went awry, and took out his pipe. He had still a very little tobacco left, and he fancied that it might deaden the pangs of hunger. Then he glanced at Grenfell, who lay fast asleep close by, with his blanket falling away from him. ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... proximity of that band of twelve, armed, desperate, escaped murderers. Their attitude towards the hunters, together with scraps of conversation they had uttered, had bred in Charley's active mind a theory for their actions and object, a theory involving a crime so vile and atrocious as to stagger belief. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and Professor Rhynas declared he would make a master of the foil. Hugh Bascomb, with a pugilist's thick neck and round head, was spending all his spare time boxing, and it was said that he could strike a blow that would stagger an ox. His admirers declared it was a beautiful sight to see him hammer the punching-bag, and they assured him over and over that he was certain to make another Sullivan. Naturally, this gave Bascomb the "swelled ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... unquestioning readiness to shoulder burdens, Prescott would run to relieve her. Liosha has assured me that Jaffery did the same—and indeed I cannot conceive Jaffery allowing a female companion to stagger along under a load which he could swing onto his huge back and carry like a walnut. To go further—she maintains that the two quarrelled dreadfully over the alleviation of her labours, so much so, that often before they had ended their quarrel, ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... about the surprise they would have for the children, and now and again to express her appreciation of some dainty trifle he had selected for her. She watched him closely, noting that his hand was unsteady, and that he was inclined to stagger after stooping for a little while. Finally, when the tree had been trimmed, and the sled for the boy and the doll-carriage for the girl were placed beneath it, she got him to lie down. When she had made him comfortable she kissed him again, knelt by his bed and prayed, or ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... has produced are impossible to replace. High words. Abrupt re-opening of the front door. Struggling humanity projected on to the pavement. Three persons—my scribe in the middle, an emissary on either side—stagger strangely past me. The scribe enters the purple night only under the stony ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... my brother, all the insignificance of man, as compared with the magnitude and duration of the universe, need not stagger our faith that the divinest thing in the universe is a heart that has learnt to love God and aspires after Him, and should but increase our wonder and our gratitude that He has been mindful of man and has visited ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... yes, a dilemma, no doubt, is the thing To stagger Big Bounce, in a fashion Socratic. I fancy I know now to plant a sharp sting, The success of my bayonet-play is emphatic. Remember a picture I once chanced to see, A Pompeian sentinel posed at a portal, And "faithful to death" though fire threatened. That's Me! As my country's defender, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... being safely carried inland. It went sorely against him to take an innocent life; but just as the horse passed him, he fired, aiming a little behind the near shoulder. The horse gave a convulsive stagger and fell dead in the shafts. There was then left one man with a pistol against four, who might or might not be armed. Luckily it happened that the smugglers only carried bludgeons. The coastguard saw that he could not hope to catch any of them, so he said quietly: "I have another shot here, and ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... writes a novel exhibiting the badness of our meat supply. Men become excited. Men take action. Men legislate. The great meat industries stagger under the shock, recover, and go on smiling. Before this meanwhile, and afterwards, the meat went into out kitchens ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... his cousin Jasper Jay heard him half a mile away and came hurrying up to see what was going on. He arrived just in time to see Nimble and Dodger stagger back from another ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... at anchor, and one of the ship's instructors had seen the accident. A mob of boys clambered on the rails, clustered round the davits. 'Collision. Just ahead of us. Mr. Symons saw it.' A push made him stagger against the mizzen-mast, and he caught hold of a rope. The old training-ship chained to her moorings quivered all over, bowing gently head to wind, and with her scanty rigging humming in a deep bass the breathless song of her youth at sea. 'Lower away!' He saw the boat, manned, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... those three weeks of torture, he would fix his eye on a tree ten feet away, up the steep trail. And to himself he would say, "I'll struggle, somehow, as far as that tree, and then die under it." And he would stagger another ten feet, his heart pounding in the unaccustomed altitude, his lungs bursting, his lips parted, his breath coming sobbingly, his eyes starting from his head. Leaping lightly ahead of him, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... men who had taken part in bayonet charges. Lies were spread broadcast by supposedly reputable persons, stating how soldiers had to be maddened with drugs or alcohol before they would go over the top. Much of what was recorded was calculated to stagger the imagination and intimidate the heart. The reason for this was that the supposed eye-witnesses rarely saw what they recorded. They had usually never been within ten miles of the front, for only combatants are allowed in the line. They ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... the liquor-traffic, that they may give a few cents of it into the Treasury, is costin' the people three times that dollar, in the loss that intemperance entails,— loss of labor, by the inability of drunken men to do any thing but wobble and stagger round; loss of wealth, by all the enormous losses of property and of taxation, of almshouses and madhouses, jails, police forces, paupers' coffins, and the digging of the thousands and thousands of graves that are filled yearly by them that reel into 'em." ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... bearing. What am I to do? I do not believe. It is living truth to you; to me, upon my conscience, only folk-lore. I do not believe there is any form of words under heaven by which I can lift the burthen from my shoulders. I must stagger on to the end with the pack of my responsibility; I cannot shift it; do you suppose I would not, if I thought I could? I cannot—cannot—cannot—and let ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Vallombrosa, we two went to see Last June, beloved companion,—where sublime The mountains live in holy families, And the slow pinewoods ever climb and climb Half up their breasts, just stagger as they seize Some grey crag, drop back with it many a time, And straggle blindly down the precipice. The Vallombrosan brooks were strewn as thick That June-day, knee-deep with dead beechen leaves, As Milton saw them ere his heart grew sick And his eyes blind. I think the monks and beeves ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... the small aeroplane, Tom leveled his wonderful electric rifle at the big stretch of canvas. He pressed the lever, a streak of blue flame shot out through an opened port, and, an instant later, the small craft of the smugglers was seen to stagger about, ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... tiny tongues of flame forth from the ruins burst. No water! God! what shall we do to slake their quenchless thirst? The shocks have broken all the mains! "Use wine!" the people cry. The red flames laugh like drunken fiends; they stagger as to die, Then up again in fury spring, on high their crimson draperies fling; From block to block they leap and swing, and smoke clouds hide ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... and bent near, while the man in the cloak opened them and examined their contents in the flickering light. A gust of wind made the torch flare and put the lantern out. The cloaked man muttered an oath, and had partly risen to his feet, when there came a sound that caused him to stagger and hold his hands to his head as if in mortal terror. It was a wailing voice, and it pleaded, "For the sake of the Virgin, of Her Blessed Son, of the Holy Saint Peter, of the Good God, pray for me. Pray for ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... dance it is easy to give a death-blow between the shoulders. Two crowds meet and laugh and shout and mingle almost inextricably, and if a shriek of pain should arise, it is not noticed in the din, and when they part, if one should stagger and fall bleeding to the ground, can any one tell who has given the blow? There is nothing but an unknown stiletto on the ground, the crowd has dispersed, and masks tell no tales anyway. There is murder, but by ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... knew the trick of the cord, and leaned away from the captive, so as to keep the thong tensely stretched between his neck and the peak of the saddle to which it was fastened. Struggling was of no use with a halter round his windpipe, and he very soon began to tremble and stagger,—blind, no doubt, and with a roaring in his ears as of a thousand battle-trumpets,—at any rate, subdued and helpless. That was enough. Dick loosened his lasso, wound it up again, laid it like a pet snake in a coil at his saddle-bow, turned ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... pathetic champion of the Cause—pathetic in the light of what she hoped from it—facing indifference and ridicule with the calm smile of one who has climbed her mountain and looked into the promised land,—between that and the lovely, sensitive, sensuous creature he was staring at, was enough to stagger anybody. He got himself together in a moment, said very simply and gravely how much he admired her and how high a value, he believed, the future would put on her work; then he picked up his sentence where ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... through endless ages and limitless space! Once we grasp this idea of the unity and progressiveness of Life going on ad infinitum, what boundless vistas of possibility open before us. It would be enough to stagger the imagination were it not for our old friends, the Law and the Word. But these will always accompany us, and we may rely upon them in all worlds and under all conditions. This Law of Unity is what in natural science is known as the Law of Continuity, and the Ancient Wisdom has embodied it in the ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... a splendid sight to watch the birds sailing in the high winds of Adelie Land. In winds of fifty to seventy miles per hour, when with good crampons one had to stagger warily along the ice-foot, the snow petrels and Antarctic petrels were in their element. Wheeling, swinging, sinking, planing and soaring, they were radiant with life—the wild spirits of the tempest. Even in moderate drift, when through swirling snow ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... turned to the tea-table to pour out the long- delayed tea. It was too strong to drink; and when Mary appeared in response to the bell, it was a treat to see her stagger back at the sight of the dishevelled figure in the arm-chair, and to watch the smile of benign condescension with which Nan wrinkled up her face and inclined ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... you badly hurt?" questioned Sam, but, even as he spoke, Tom tried to stagger to his feet. Seeing this, Sam began a chase after Baxter, ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... twisted and turned, and tumbled against all the other couples, till they spread consternation around; and at last found themselves the sole performers in the room. As poor Nip went twirling round, much in the way that a child's humming-top does when it begins to stagger preparatory to stopping, he perceived a suppressed laugh on the lips and in the eyes of the surrounding spectators; and suspecting that he might be the cause of it, gave a convulsive gripe at his partner's waist, or at the part where her waist should be, in order to bring himself ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... soon like hell itself, full of dark and evil faces. Now Simon was attacked at back and front, as he stumbled back over the bodies; a great knife was thrust into his back, even as he faced a rogue before his face, and I saw the old faithful soul fall forward, and making a kind of stagger with his arms up, ere he fell, drop into the pool below. So, according to his prayer, he died in the sea, and nobly, as any knight of great ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... happening. And the rock went over, and rushed downward upon the Monster, and with mighty crashings, as it did grind and crush the face of the cliff-side with a quick and constant thundering. And I caught the Maid, as she did stagger upon that dire upward edge because that she had set her strength so utter to the endeavour, and the rock to be gone so sudden, as you do see, and she to be like to follow after. And she clung unto me, and I to hold her very safe as I lookt down upon ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... would stagger doggedly past me, where I sat on the parapet, his poor cheeks shaking and the tail of his bath robe wrapping itself around his legs. Yes, he ran in the bath robe in deference to me. It seems there isn't much to ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... yards to cover, but such a fifty yards! His legs seemed of lead, too, while his head was swimming. No sooner had he commenced to stagger back, than the Germans opened fire on him; a hundred bullets whistled by him, while he heard yells of rage coming from the ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... and radiant health that were manifested in the poise of their bodies, the lightness of their eyes, the freshness of their lips and the bloom upon their cheeks. But Oh! it was so sad to see how soon the manly gait would change to the drunkard's stagger. To see eyes once bright with intelligence growing vacant and confused and giving place to the drunkard's leer. In many cases lassitude supplanted vigor, and sickness overmastered health. But the saddest thing was the fearful ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... to the skin. Their hands were bruised and cut by slipping wrenches and hammers. Their faces were covered with black grease, dirt and oil. But still they labored on. The storm grew worse, and it was all the Abaris could do to stagger ahead, handicapped as ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... burning, the world shall know no more; His temple's column standing against the ancient stars Is gone; Now bright catoptrics flash out electric bars, — Slow swung his stately Argos Unto the Tiber's mouth; But now the Tuscan cargoes Screw-driven, stagger South. ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... protector, but as a constant and faithful companion throughout all the vicissitudes of life. Secondly, from his natural endowments, not consisting in the exquisite delicacy of one individual sense—not merely combining memory with reflection—but possessing qualities of the mind that stagger us in the contemplation of them, and which we can alone account for in the gradation existing in that wonderful system which, by different links of one vast chain, extends from the first to the last of all things, until it forms a perfect whole on the wonderful confines of the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... eager suggestions for her comfort, but the girl was firm in her assertion, that she was now quite well, so that, having no sisters and being ignorant that a healthy young woman does not, any more than a healthy young man, go white and stagger without reason, he yielded, and they walked ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... (No warrior could look upon a Valkyrie save in the hour of his death; therefore no living being had ever seen one.) As sounds of the approaching steps of panting people are heard she retires amongst the rocks; Siegmund and Sieglinda stagger in, the woman fainting. She has sinned and is overwhelmed with terror; he cannot comfort her; she faints, then sleeps—the Valkyrie having thrown a spell on her. Siegmund bends over her; slowly Bruennhilda advances and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... on a bamboo pole and bring them thus to market. One meets these young Atlases moving along the roads, chaplets of frangipani upon their curling hair, or perhaps a single gardenia or tube-rose behind their ears, singing softly and treading steadily, smiling, and all with a burden that would stagger a white athlete. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... which have taxed the utmost powers of their authors. You can read in a few minutes or a few hours a poem or a book with only pleasure and delight, but the days and months of weary plodding over details and dreary drudgery often required to produce it would stagger belief. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the spot where the Colonel lay; they saw him bend over the fallen man, shielding him from the shot with his own body. Then he was seen to stagger suddenly, as if from a blow; but the next moment he had the Colonel in his arms, and was struggling back over the shot-torn ground, through the dying and the dead. Twice he stopped short, as if unable to go farther; ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... about to pass the gate, and again when they enter the yard of the bridegroom's house, an imaginary obstacle blocks the way. The bearers of the burden stagger, utter loud cries, retreat, advance once more, and, as though crushed by a resistless force, they pretend to sink beneath its weight. While this is going on, the bystanders shout loudly, exciting and steadying ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... enthusiasm of courage, as well as panic-terrors, propagate themselves with so much rapidity. The sound of the drum and of military music, the noise of the cannon, of the musquetry, the cries, the disorder, stagger the organs, impart the same movement to men's minds, and raise their imaginations to a similar degree. In this unity of intoxication, an impression once manifested becomes universal; it encourages men to charge, or determines men to ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... disaster and poverty and labor with her hands. Among all the men of that time I do not know of one who was more uncompromising, more obstinate, more determined as President Kruger put it, to make Great Britain "pay a price that would stagger humanity," or according to your own theory, more immoral, than your own ...
— The American Revolution and the Boer War, An Open Letter to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on His Pamphlet "The Confederacy and the Transvaal" • Sydney G. Fisher
... his great round paunch stuffed with straw, represented the disreputable old rake who, after a long course of dissipation, was now about to suffer for his sins. Hoisted on the shoulders of a sturdy fellow, who pretended to stagger under the burden, this popular personification of the Carnival promenaded the streets for the last time in a manner the reverse of triumphal. Preceded by a drummer and accompanied by a jeering rabble, among whom the urchins and all the tag-rag and bobtail of the town mustered in great force, ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... grocer disappeared with his daughter, Nizza Macascree, who had anxiously watched the apprentice, observed him turn deadly pale, and stagger; and instantly springing to his side, she supported him to a neighbouring column, against which he leaned till he had in some degree recovered from the shock. He then accompanied her to Bishop Kempe's beautiful chapel in ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... out into the middle of the artificial cavern I could see them stagger back in terror. Again the blinding flashes of a few ray pistols, and instantaneous borings of the rays into the walls. The red coats nearest the escape tunnels fled down them in panic. Those whose escape I blocked dropped their weapons and shrank back ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... back on the cowpuncher, who was now uncoiling his lariat and preparing it for a cast, Bard edged the piebald into the current. He felt the mustang stagger as the water came knee-deep, and he checked the horse, casting his eye from shore to shore and ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... Job. Where else in the Scriptures is there a more striking picture of the fate that overtakes those who yield to sin? "They meet with darkness in the day-time, and grope in the noon-day as in the night" (Job V, 14). And further on: "They grope in the dark without light, and he maketh them to stagger like a drunken man" (Job XII, 25). I read these beautiful passages over and over ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... use, but the lower classes of both sexes universally carry heavy burdens upon their backs from early youth. Some of the Indian women are seen bearing loads of pottery or jars of water upon their shoulders with seeming ease, under which an ordinary Irish laborer would stagger. Comparatively few wheeled vehicles are in use, and these are of the rudest character, the wheel being composed of three pieces of timber, so secured together as to form a circle, but having no spokes or ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... my eyes at once. All round me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The HISPANIOLA herself, a few yards in whose wake I was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars toss a little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, I made sure she also was wheeling ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the horses' hoofs at Arbela and in the guns at Waterloo. Ideals were here at stake—the dreams of one man as opposed perhaps to the ultimate dreams of a city or state or nation—the grovelings and wallowings of a democracy slowly, blindly trying to stagger to its feet. In this conflict—taking place in an inland cottage-dotted state where men were clowns and churls, dancing fiddlers at country fairs—were opposed, as the governor saw it, the ideals of one man ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... Bartley for his approval, "and I've always thought that, if I ever got run clean ashore, high and dry, I'd make a stagger to write it out and do something with it. Do ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... to hasty death in the grip of pain. The brig was in sore distress, her timbers creaking, snapping, quivering, like one being beaten to death, his bones cracking, his muscles pulping under heavy blows. We were above water-line there in the cockpit; we could feel her flinch and stagger. On her side there came suddenly a crushing blow, as if some great hammer, swung far in the sky, had come down upon her. I could hear the split and break of heavy timbers; I could see splinters flying over me in a rush of smoke, and the legs ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... wonders in the deep. For he commandeth, and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven; they go down again to the depths; their soul is melted because of trouble; they reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven. Oh that ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... his life runs dry, Crept good King Arthur down unto the lake. A roughening wind was bringing in the waves With cold dull plash and plunging to the shore, And a great bank of clouds came sailing up Athwart the aspect of the gibbous moon, Leaving no glimpse save starlight, as he sank, With a short stagger, ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... me—was delighted to find a through-journey companion who would take him on terms of greatness. In the railway carriage, divested of troublesome bags that imparted anxiety to his small face and a stagger to his walk, he ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... could launch it and drift with the stream to Sixty Mile. In their weak condition, without food, the going was slow and difficult. Elijah developed a habit of falling down and being unable to rise. Daylight gave of his own strength to lift him to his feet, whereupon the older man would stagger automatically on until ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... came up; a great volley of flying mist went out before it and whelmed the scene; the wind stormed with a sudden fierceness that carried away the minister's voice and twitched his tails and made him stagger, and turned the congregation for a moment into a mere pother of blowing plaid-ends and prancing horses; and the rain followed and was dashed straight into their faces. Men and women panted aloud in the shock of that violent shower-bath; the teeth were bared along all the line in an involuntary ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was not sure of anything except that he fell over many rotten branches, and entangled himself frequently in labyrinths of matted willows. Night came and he went to sleep without a fire. He contrived to push on next day, walking during most of it half asleep. Indeed, now and then he would stagger along for minutes after consciousness of what he was doing had deserted him, for there are men in that Bush, at least, who know what it is to stop with suddenly opened eyes on the verge of a collapse, and find that they have wandered from the path—only in Nasmyth's ...
— The Greater Power • Harold Bindloss
... Inn,' the goal of the very coach he had just encountered. He had scarce called for a quartern of brandy when the robbed passengers thronged into the kitchen; and the fright gave him enough sobriety to leave his glass untasted, and stagger to his horse. In a wild fury of arrogance and terror, of conflicting vice and virtue, he pressed on to Hockcliffe, where he took refuge from the rain, and presently, fuddled with more brandy, he fell asleep over the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... and, turning in a flash, Barnabas saw a heavy bludgeon in the air above him; saw the Viscount meet it with up-flung arm; heard the thud of the blow, a snarling curse; saw a figure dart away and vanish among the jungle of carts; saw the Viscount stagger against the caravan and lean there, his ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... for the wind was swift to carry all sounds from his lips to O'Shea; but the latter's voice, as it came back to him, seemed to stagger against the force of the wind and almost ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... with fullest strength, SYDNEY BUXTON's proposal. He himself, in powerful speech, had demonstrated that, if Amendment were added to the Bill, the heavens would fall, and the British Empire would stagger to its doom. But that only his play; GORST really obliged to the House for beating them, and Clause would be added to Bill. Done accordingly. Report stage of Factories' Bill run ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various
... that the house fronts might give her some clue to her bearings, caused the girl to stagger from the centre of the square to the sides. Along one of them she picked her way, moaning for help and having not even a stick to guide her. Slowly, painfully she groped around the Place until unwittingly she approached the railing or wall which served as a guard to ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... as Jem saw a fine-looking young Maori, who was defending a rather open portion of the stockade, deliver a thrust, and then draw back, drop his spear, throw up his arms, and then reel and stagger forward, to fall ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... purpose. Tongs is a brute who will drink as long as he can stand, and some time after it. Brooks is rather shy of it, but he will drink enough to stagger him, for he is pretty weak-headed. We have only to manage these fellows, and there's the end of it. ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... David move over to the library table; he heard the rustle of the sheet of paper as it was drawn out of the envelope. Then silence again, and the clamor of the clock. He turned round, in time to see David stagger slightly and drop into a chair; perspiration had burst out on his forehead. He was so white around his lips that Robert Ferguson knew that for a moment his body shared the awful astonishment of his soul. "There's some whiskey over there," ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... attracted attention in almost any assemblage. Cautious, careful of consequences, and watchful of danger, he was at the same time bold, fearless, and ever ready to undertake enterprises which would stagger men of fewer mental resources. So exactly was he fitted to the time and the circumstances in which he was placed, that the conclusion is irresistible that he was a providential man, especially appointed to his work ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... a white man so's he could locate under the law, but this claim's located a'ready." He waved a hand toward the monument, a few rods up the canyon. "And Casey Ryan ain't spreadin' no rich gold vein wide open for every prowlin' desert rat to pack off all he kin stagger under. I'm callin' it the Devil's Lantern. You c'n call a mine any name yuh darn want to. And if it wasn't fer the Devil's Lantern, I wouldn't be here. That name won't mean nothin' to 'em. Let 'em come." His eyes turned toward the ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... it, but he's anything but happy when he's got it! He sees (of course I refer here to public lectures) some "prehistoric gurls," as an Irish boy once termed them to me, taking copious notes, but the long words and learned phrases stagger the budding scientist and befog his as yet undeveloped brain. I am speaking from my experience when I attended the first of a series of lectures by leading ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... defending an encampment of the Northern forces from a skirmishing party led by the rebel officers. Captain Prynne recognised what he had done as the young lieutenant caught his father in his arms and turned to stagger back, and rushing forward had endeavoured to drag them to safety, receiving a shot himself that shattered his arm, wounding him severely. His recovery ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... drunken man is seen reeling towards his home, that he has business on both sides of the road. Observing your Lordship's tortuous path, the spectators will be far from insinuating that you have partaken of Mr. Burke's intoxicating bowl; they will content themselves, shaking their heads as you stagger along, with remarking that you have business on both ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... upon thy shoulder, And carry this wood from street to street, To sell the same, that we both together Our living may get, as is most meet. Hence, nidiot, hence without more delay! What meanest thou thus to stagger ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... say so, Marcus, when you are yourself," said Ormond. "Oh! how dreadful to come to one's senses all at once, as I did—the moment after I had fired that fatal shot—the moment I saw the poor fellow stagger and fall—" ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... at ten o'clock at night. At eleven all the neighbours turn out their dogs to bark, and the dogs waken the cats, which scream like demoniacs. Then the public houses close, and the people who have been inebriated, if not cheered, stagger howling by. Stragglers yell and swear, and use foul language till about four in the morning, without attracting the unfavourable notice of the police. Two or three half drunken men and women bellow and blaspheme opposite the sufferer's house for an hour at a time. And ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... remained standing within about thirty yards of the pole. Suddenly there came a glare of light, and the pole was split into fragments; but although the shock was perceptible, they remained unhurt. Almost immediately a second flash leaped from the cloud, and Owen saw Hokosa stagger and fall to his knees. "The man is struck," he thought to himself, but it was not so, for recovering his balance, the wizard walked back to ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... absurdity in the other, join in contributing to render the truth of the whole suspected, and not only give a handle to the avowed enemies, of depreciating and ridiculing all the sacred mysteries of religion, but also stagger the faith of a great many well-meaning people, and afford but a too plausible pretence for that sceptism which goes by the name of free-thinking, and is of late ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... of the Channel and to the southward of Ushant before it changed, and then it gradually veered round until it came out strong from the north-west, when away we all went for Madeira, the slowest ships carrying every rag of canvas that they could stagger under, while the faster craft were unwillingly compelled to shorten down in order that all might keep together, while as for ourselves and the Astarte, the utmost that we could show, without running ahead of our station, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... man of war, and his wily fighting taught Alpin to be wise and to guard well his bare head, for it was ever at his head that Roderic aimed. Often he smote such strokes as made Alpin stagger and kneel; but in a moment the youth leapt lightly to his feet and rushed at his foe, until Roderic's arms and face ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... Ibrahim raised his Remington, as the creature hobbled past, and sent a bullet through its brain. The wounded man flew forwards out of the high saddle, and fell heavily upon the hard track. His companions in misfortune, looking back, saw him stagger to his feet with a dazed face. At the same instant a Baggara slipped down from his camel with a sword ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... brandy to calm her nerves, went down to Cox's. Mrs. Maroney offered some brandy to the Madam, which she politely declined to take, but this did not in the least abash her, for she gulped down enough to stagger an old toper. Josh. was not at home, and ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... heart he felt the dagger, He reel'd his wonted bottle swagger, But yet he drew the mortal trigger Wi' weel-aim'd heed; "L—d, five!" he cry'd, an' owre did stagger; Tam Samson's dead! ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... name, the fellow, lifting his musket, hit me a blow with the butt-end of it, which sent me lifeless to the ground: when I awoke from my> trance, I found myself bleeding with a large wound in the head, and had barely time to stagger back to the house where I had left the lieutenant, when I again fell fainting at ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a massive tome, of glazed, gilt-edged paper, of print as big for the proclaiming of truth as the Family Bible, of weight to burden a strong man, of contents to stagger a giant brain, unless the giant brain had in it the convolution of a smile. Maximilian and Charlotte had reigned a year, and so far the Ritual was the supreme monument to the glory and usefulness of their Empire. It ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Bow then took the glass, and, giving many directions, and bidding a solemn farewell to his family and friends, resolutely drank its fearful contents. Every eye was fixed upon the brave man, to see what effect the strange liquor would produce. Soon he began to stagger, to whine fearfully, to roll up the whites of his eyes, to loll out his tongue, to shout, and to act a thousand other extravagancies. At last, he fell prostrate on the ground, and a deep sleep came over him. His companions, ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... confirm Martin in his detestable principles, to stagger Candide more than ever, and to puzzle Pangloss, was that one day they saw Paquette and Friar Giroflee land at the farm in extreme misery. They had soon squandered their three thousand piastres, parted, ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... shiver, nearly out of their wits with the excitement of being on board that ship. She thumps and lurches, and they stagger together, feeling sick. Cloete again bursts out laughing at that wretched creature Stafford pretending to have been up to something so desperate. . . Is that how you think you can treat me now? yells the other man all ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... clamber in person about the chest of drawers and fall bodily upon the carpet, before his imagination is satisfied. Lead soldiers, dolls, all toys, in short, are in the same category and answer the same end. Nothing can stagger a child's faith; he accepts the clumsiest substitutes and can swallow the most staring incongruities. The chair he has just been besieging as a castle, or valiantly cutting to the ground as a dragon, is taken away for the accommodation ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the doors of the rich; and the essence of the dishonesty in either case is to pursue one's own advantage and to be indifferent to the losses of one's neighbour. But the particular drawback of the Polynesian system is to depress and stagger industry. To work more is there only to be more pillaged; to save is impossible. The family has then made a good day of it when all are filled and nothing remains over for the crew of free-booters; and the injustice of the system begins to be recognised ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... time, in our earthly existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us; yet we heap up these old shells, out of which human life has long emerged, casting them off forever. I do not see how future ages are to stagger onward under all this dead weight, with the additions that will ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... black face the rock landed. Harry heard the sound and felt ill within himself. Yet the black man did not stagger. With a contemptuous snort he kicked the fragment of rock into the water as it landed ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... and they were caught in a heavy, easterly gale. In a few hours there was a tremendous sea, and the wind rapidly rose to a hurricane. The "Little Sophy" steamed after the helpless craft and got as near to her as possible; but as she lowered her lifeboat, she saw the yacht stagger, stop, and then founder. The tops of her masts seemed to meet, she had broken her back, and the seas flew sheer ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... an adding machine down on Wall Street than a typewriter. But let us join the others." There was a noticeable reluctance about dwelling upon the typewriter subject. Warren hurried into the drawing-room, as Shirley followed with a perceptible stagger. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... pugilists, who had, by dint of sponging, been made somewhat cleaner, rose with mechanical promptitude at the sound, Cashel had hardly advanced two steps when, though his adversary seemed far out of his reach, he struck him on the forehead with such force as to stagger him, and then jumped back laughing. Paradise rushed forward; but Cashel eluded him, and fled round the ring, looking back derisively over his shoulder. Paradise now dropped all pretence of good-humor. With an expression ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... enjoyed the starts and squirmings of the young gentleman. He had the boat perfectly in hand, though by this time she had all the wind she could stagger under. He knew very well that the most exciting part of the sail was yet to come, for he would have the wind free as soon as he came about. If the girls had not been on board, he would have let ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... with most of us it must be only a minor avocation. The very books about the books in this boundless field, the compends of the compends, the reviews of the reviews, form in themselves a library great enough to stagger human weakness. Besides all this—in a sense a part of it, yet a miscellaneous and irrational part—come the newspapers, with their daily distraction. This is after all our world, and we cannot live in it and ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... leakage in the American Church. They are not able to answer the most ordinary objections, and they have not moral strength to withstand the shafts of ridicule. In the fierce cross-currents of unbelief, he is poorly able to keep his foothold. Many stagger; some ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... had at last come through their defences. For five miles I rode south, striking a tinder from time to time to look at my pocket compass. And then in an instant—I feel the pang once more as my memory brings back the moment—my horse, without a sob or stagger, fell stone ...
— The Great Shadow and Other Napoleonic Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the corner of the inn, and up the lane. The colonel, with Silas and Sheppard, followed in more leisurely fashion. At a shout from some one they turned to see a dusty, bloody figure, with ragged clothes, stagger ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... benevolent women in the world. Nobody else believed it. She had to endure more trials, bear more crosses, undergo more hardships, than any other housekeeper in town. She had to work harder, to think of more things, stagger under more burdens, than all her female neighbors put together. If she ever confessed that she was sometimes just a little cross, she wanted to know who could wonder at it, when she had so much to do, and so many things to think of. Job could be patient, for ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... gone en tuck mo' dram dan w'at 'uz good fer he wholesome. Yit he head aint swim so bad dat he dunner w'at he doin', en time he lay eyes on Brer Fox, he know he done got in close quarters. Soon ez he see dis, Brer Rabbit make like he bin down in de cup mo' deeper dan w'at he is, en he stagger 'roun' like town gal stannin' in a batteau, en he seem lak he des ez limber ez a wet rag. He stagger up ter Brer Fox, he did, en he roll he eyeballs 'roun', en slap 'im on he back en ax 'im how he ma. Den w'en he see de yuther creeturs," ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... the more and more I think, the more I am convinc'd that Thais means me ill: So plain I see her arts to draw me in. Ev'n when she first invited me, (and when Had any ask'd, What business have you there? The question would have stagger'd me,) she fram'd Sev'ral excuses to detain me there. Said she had made a sacrifice, and had Affairs of consequence to settle with me. —Oho! thought I immediately, I smell A trick upon me!—down she sat, behav'd Familiarly, and tried to beat about For conversation. Being ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... courageously up the rough ascent, only to slip, after a few paces, and to stagger. For as soon as she attempted to move, she felt herself not only weak, but oddly faint and giddy. She lurched forward, and to avoid falling instinctively clutched at her companion's outstretched hand. Exactly what passed between the young ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... however, did not last long—the latent consciousness of responsibility effectually prevented that; and he was soon able to rise and stagger to the pilot-house. Once there, he forthwith made his way below and availed himself of the stimulus afforded by a glass of neat brandy, after which he felt equal to the task which yet lay before him. Having swallowed the brandy, he at once ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... the result of it, and saw the man with the silver face drop his rifle, stagger to the side of the ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... gloomy world! In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, Doth womanish and fearful mankind live! Let worthy minds ne'er stagger in distrust To suffer death or ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... cavern with the sky-light, hard at work at the armour. With every additional piece he could manage to stand upright in, he had an additional glass of rum; and at last, after many partial suffocations, he contrived to get on the whole suit, and to stagger up and down the room in it, like an ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the door flew open I knew in a moment that my worst apprehensions had been fulfilled. Barrington Cowles was leaning against the railings outside with his face sunk upon his breast, and his whole attitude expressive of the most intense despondency. As he passed in he gave a stagger, and would have fallen had I not thrown my left arm around him. Supporting him with this, and holding the lamp in my other hand, I led him slowly upstairs into our sitting-room. He sank down upon the sofa without a word. ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... abrupt. For a minute I can't make out what has happened; but when I sees the mast stagger and go lurchin' overboard, sail and all, I thought it was a case ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... was always a good lad. This news of yours will stagger him, for he is betrothed to Mistress Fitzwalter, daughter of him who hath ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... her hand, but his touch roused her from her lethargy; and springing at him, like a wild-cat, she gave him a blow in the face that made him stagger,—so powerful was it, in the vehemence of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... women, who lean upon the supporting barrier, and rapt children who hold by their skirts and hands. There is not the eager New England neatness about these homes; now and then they have rather a sloven air, which does not discord with their air of comfort; and very, very rarely they stagger drunkenly in a ruinous neglect. Except where a log cabin has hardily survived the pioneer period, the houses are nearly all of one pattern; their facades front the river, and low chimneys point either gable, where a half-story forms the attic of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... state. In our differences with Rome he is strangely unfixed, and a new man every new day, as his last discourse-book's meditations transport him. He could like the gray hairs of popery, did not some dotages there stagger him: he would come to us sooner, but our new name affrights him. He is taken with their miracles, but doubts an imposture; he conceives of our doctrine better, but it seems too empty and naked. He cannot drive into his fancy the circumscription ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... in the afternoon when the latter met with an accident. Johnny, who had taken a spell at the rear, heard him cry out, saw him stagger, struggle to hold his footing, then sink into the snow. The dogs paused instantly, lay down, and began to strip the ice ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... words stagger me. But there is another old objection which they have reawakened in my mind. You will say I am shifting my ground sadly. But you ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... necessary insist upon others following the philosophic example. On this account they are 'ugly customers' to Priests, who, with exceptions, much dislike being called upon to explain their idealess language. Ask one to define the word God and you stagger him. If he do not fly into a passion deem yourself fortunate, but as to an intelligible definition, look for nothing of the sort. He can't furnish such definition however disposed to do so. The incomprehensible is not to be defined. It is difficult to give an intelligible account of ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... their Trumpets, 'tis too late to stagger, Give me the head, and be you confident: Hail Conquerour, and head of all the world, ...
— The False One • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... was created with us. It is a pleasure to live. What then should be the pleasure to think there is a place for us—a duty beneficently made that gives us rights with our fellow-creatures? What though the duty may try your soul and stagger your capabilities? "Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests." Bear up with patient courage—"the bird that flutters least is longest on the wing." "Duty is the stern daughter ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... and the unhappy wretches dragged themselves to their feet and under their burdens of luggage began to stagger across the lighter and aboard the steamer. It was the funeral procession. At once the wailing started from those behind the rope. It was blood-curdling; it was heart-rending. I never heard such woe, and I hope never to again. Kersdale and McVeigh were still at the other ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... "Be amazed and wonder, people of Israel; stagger and stumble, and be drunken, but not with wine; stagger, but not with strong drink. For the Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep. He will close your eyes; He will cover your princes and your prophets that have visions." (Daniel xii: "The wicked shall ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... a trembling effort to stagger across the passage, and to pluck at Marie's gown. When he spoke, ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... the most famous persons in the world, so that, wherever civilized man was to be found, there his name was known as "Monk, who invented that marvellous machine, the aerophone." Lastly, there was no more need for him, as for most of us, to stagger down his road beneath a never lessening burden of daily labour. His work was done; a great conception completed after half a score of years of toil and experiment had crowned it with unquestionable success. Now he could sit at ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... never silent. Crowds of young men, in various stages of intoxication, rush into the lighted parlors, leer at the hostess in the vain effort to offer their respects, call for liquor, drink it, and stagger out, to repeat the scene at some other house. Frequently, they are unable to recognize the residences of their friends, and stagger into the wrong house. Some fall early in the day, and are put to ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe |
