"Totter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Empire fell, was to authorise his abandoning his people in the hour of peril, careless who suffered in defenceless Rome, while he was secure in fortified Ravenna. Such was the man under whom the mightiest of the world's structures was doomed to totter to its fall! Such was the figure destined to close a scene which Time and Glory had united to hallow and adorn! Raised and supported by a superhuman daring, that invested the nauseous horrors of incessant bloodshed with a rude and appalling magnificence, ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... My wistful eyes on two fair images, Both crown'd with stars and high among the stars, - The Virgin Mother standing with her child High up on one of those dark minster-fronts - Till she began to totter, and the child Clung to the mother, and sent out a cry Which mixt with little Margaret's, and I woke, And my dream awed ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... There also her little great-grandson Peter first learned to walk, and as she slowly passed from one alcove to the other, resting in each when she reached it, he would take hold of her high staff and totter beside her, always bestowing on her as much as he could of his company, and early showing a preference for her over his aunt ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... an axe and struck at the foot of the tree. Others followed his wicked example and it soon began to totter. They next tied a rope about the trunk of the tree. The plotters were sixteen in number—I counted them. They stood in ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... ovver moor, heath, or mire, Till yor legs seem to totter, an th' stummack feels faint; But yor thowts still will dwell o' that breet cottage fire, Till yo feel quite refreshed bi th' fancies yo paint. An when yo draw nearer, an ovver th' old palins Yo see smilin faces 'at welcome yo back, ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... springing at its head, and dashing with inaudible fury along the bottom, seemed to gleam placidly amongst the rounded forms of inky bushes and pale boulders below our path. Enormous eddies of wind from above made us stop short and totter ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... and Capt. Akers sailed away in high hope from Port Colborne, they probably built the fairy air castles which were doomed to totter and fall before night. It did not seem to occur to them that Col. Peacocke's sanction to, and co-operation in, their change of plan would be necessary to ensure success. Therefore their disappointment must have been great when they found that Lieut.-Col. Booker failed to arrive at Fort ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... heavily on their parasols, sinking, but still obstinate. Every eye was turned anxiously and supplicatingly towards the settees laden with people. And all that those thousands of sight-seers were now conscious of, was that last fatigue of theirs, which made their legs totter, drew their features together, and tortured them with headache—that headache peculiar to fine-art shows, which is caused by the constant straining of one's neck and the blinding dance ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... could not resist. He dared not throw the weight of his armies against them, for he must hold the south. And through the south the flame would spread despite. The people would rise. The defenses of city after city would crumple up. State after state would totter down. And at last, from every side, the victorious armies of the Revolution would close in on the City of ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... plaint of the Unconceived! O crystal incuriousness of the monad! The faint swarming toward the light and the rending of the sphere of hope, frustrate, inutile. I am the seed called Life; I am he, I am she. We walk, swim, totter, and blend. Through the ages I lay in the vast basin of Time; I am called by Fate into the Now. On pulsing terraces, under a moon blood-red, I dreamed of the mighty confluence. About me were my ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... century doubt and religious skepticism. The so-called scientific spirit, buried for ages beneath the debris of human conjecture, was painfully emerging and preening its wings for flight. The "higher criticism" was nascent, and ancient traditions were already beginning to totter on the foundations which the Fathers had set. But Spain, close wrapped in mediaeval dreams, had suffered no taint of "modernism." The portals of her mind were well guarded against the entrance of radical thought, and her dreamers were yet lulled into lethargic ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... would not join in singing these lines was always looked upon as a "stupid donkey," and the consequence was that upon all occasions, when excitement was needed as a whip, they were "struck up;" especially would it be the case when the limbs of the little brick and clay carrier began to totter and were "fagging up." When the task-master perceived the "gang" had begun to "slinker" he would shout out at the top of his voice, "Now, lads and ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... nothing in particular followed upon its exhibition, unless the discharge of another gun from the pursuing ship might be taken as a reply. And this time the shot went home to its mark; for as the observers turned their glasses upon the chase, her mainmast was seen to totter and fall by the board, cut short off by the deck. Luckily the spar did not go over the side, but lay, fore-and-aft, inboard; otherwise the rigging might have fouled the propeller and brought the ship to a standstill. As it was, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... that it should be burning away for nothing. "He does look very wet," said little Gluck; "I'll just let him in for a quarter of an hour." Round he went to the door, and opened it; and as the little gentleman walked in, there came a gust of wind through the house, that made the old chimneys totter. ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... He understood it. He faced it and understood it as he had no other truth in all his life. No merciful, mitigating force caused his mind to totter. With fairly cosmic regularity, cosmic inevitability, comprehension ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... could quite clearly imagine what Aunt Margaret, Stannard's mother, would say to that question. She had never especially cared for Aunt Margaret. As Elliott looked at Bruce Fearing, one of the pillars of her familiar world began to totter. Actually, she could think of no particularly good reason why, when she had heard his story, she should proceed to shun him. His history simply didn't seem to matter, except to make her sorry for him; and yet she couldn't ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... however, only an untrained Yorkshire rustic who had been brought up in a moorland cottage with a swarm of little brothers and sisters who had never dreamed of doing anything but waiting on themselves and on the younger ones who were either babies in arms or just learning to totter about ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... a great shock, and the cabin seemed to totter on the brink of the chasm. Then the door fell, and the ruffians ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... never thought I should live to say it," said Berry, "but, after what I've gone through this morning, if Planchet were to totter in this afternoon, laden with at once cheap and pretentious goods, I should fall upon ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... gently compelled by a terror-stricken young woman with a wounded neck to lay his trembling old head on her shoulder as they sat on a little straw in the bottom of a native cart. He had reached that venerable period of life when men can barely totter to their doors to enjoy the sunshine, and when beholders regard them with irresistible feelings of tenderness and reverence. War had taught the old man how to stand erect once more—though it was but a spasmodic effort—and his ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... delivered a brilliant panegyric of the dead statesman, and his speech was eloquent and displayed great taste. He was so ill, however, from weakness of heart that he was barely able to totter to his place and to ask the indulgence of the speaker while he rested, before offering his oration. He was too sick for the sad duty imposed upon him, but he preferred to pay this last tribute to his friend. The circumstances were painful, but added a dramatic touch to ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... lighted, and from this solitary chamber the free thought on the lightning's pinion flies to Vienna, St. Petersburg, Rome, Madrid, Berlin, London, over mountain and plain—over sea and land—through the forest wilderness and the thronged city; taken up by the press, it makes thrones totter and tyrants tremble—tremble at an influence which emanates they know not whence and contemplates a purpose they know not what—an influence whose mystery they are impotent to penetrate, and whose shadowy but awful right they are powerless ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... impending—Philip negotiates for the erection of a territory into a sovereignty for Madame des Ursins—The sudden death of Queen Marie Louise causes a serious conjunction for the Princess—Her power begins to totter 264 ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... when young, the Calabrian Bacchus has a wild-eyed beaute du diable which appeals to one's expansive moods, he already begins to totter, at seven years of age, in sour, decrepit eld. To pounce upon him at the psychological moment, to discover in whose cool and cobwebby cellar he is dreaming out his golden summer of manhood—that is what a foreigner can ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... gentle as it is, June often comes to the fjord-valleys of Norway with the voice and the strength of a giant. The glaciers totter and groan, as if in anger at their own weakness, and send huge avalanches of stones and ice down into the valleys. The rivers swell and rush with vociferous brawl out over the mountainsides, and a thousand tiny brooks join in the general clamor, and dance ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... rush," he said. "At first it looked like dust. That must have been the spray. I could see houses going down before it like a child's play blocks set on edge in a row. As it came nearer I could see houses totter for a moment, then rise and the next moment be crushed like ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... police; and the wagons to see to, and the horses to feed at night: and all, old and young, and sickly, labor to the last extent of their powers. The peasants toil so, that on every occasion, the mowers, before the end of the third stint, whether weak, young, or old, can hardly walk as they totter past the last rows, and only with difficulty are they able to rise after the breathing-spell; and the women, often pregnant, or nursing infants, work in the same way. The toil is intense and incessant. All work ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... scantly covered with coarse grass, bristles with sharp palmettoes and aloes; all the vegetation is stiff, shining, semi-tropical, with nothing soft or delicate in its texture. Numerous plantation-buildings totter around, all slovenly and unattractive, while the interspaces are filled with all manner of wreck and refuse, pigs, fowls, dogs, and omnipresent Ethiopian infancy. All this is the universal Southern panorama; but five minutes' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... and he—how could he have done it?—obeyed her. Her health was broken, she was over sixty, and, save for her vile servants, absolutely alone. She lived for nearly a year after he left her—we know no more. She had vowed never again to pass through the gate of her house; but did she sometimes totter to her garden—that beautiful garden which she had created, with its roses and its fountains, its alleys and its bowers—and look westward at the sea? The end came in June 1839. Her servants immediately ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... comes with flickering flame; shines from his sword the Val-gods' sun. The stony hills are dashed together, the giantesses totter; men tread the path of ...
— The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson; and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson • Saemund Sigfusson and Snorre Sturleson
... I totter to my feet: I bend my feeble steps thither, and sink down beneath the welcome shade. I hear a sweet voice calling to me: I see an angel form stretching out a goblet of crystal water to my parching lips; and, as I ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to moan, and groan, and roll his eyes, and reel and totter about; and when the stranger was close at hand, down he sprawled before him, with a shriek, and began to writhe and wallow in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... had been brought along, and Dale used one while Peleg Snuggers wielded the other. Soon the cedar commenced to totter. ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... American tourists taking on flesh at the sight of all those sparklers and figuring up the grand total of their valuation in dollars, on the basis of so many hundreds of carats at so many hundred dollars a carat, until reason tottered on her throne—and did not have so very far to totter, either. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... John, We clamb the hill thegither; And mony a canty day, John, We've had wi' ane anither: Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we'll go; And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... either poor, or cowards be. Prefer them poor. It is the custom still. Desert and fortune never yet were friends; The strife between them never ends. Unhappy they, who in these evil days Are born when all things totter to their fall! But that we must to heaven leave. Be this, above all things, thy care, Thy children still to rear, As those who court not Fortune's smiles, Nor playthings are of idle hope, or fear: And so the future age will call them blessed; ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither; And mony a canty day, John, [jolly] We've had wi' ane anither: Now we maun totter down, John, [must] And hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, [together] John Anderson, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... comes With flickering flame; Shines from his sword The Val-god's sun. The stony hills are dashed together, The giantesses totter; Men tread the path of ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... sowed the sun and moon for seeds. As melts the iceberg in the seas, As clouds give rain to the eastern breeze, As snow-banks thaw in April's beam, The solid kingdoms like a dream Resist in vain his motive strain, They totter now and float amain. For the Muse gave special charge His learning should be deep and large, And his training should not scant The deepest lore of wealth or want: His flesh should feel, his eyes should read Every maxim of dreadful Need; In its fulness he should taste Life's ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... mind. You see there my constant and daily society," she continued, looking towards the dining-room. "They have now reached the topmost point of their enjoyment—the General asleep with a cigar in his mouth, and the Captain absorbing his quantum of cognac. Afterwards he will fill his German pipe, totter off to the billiard-room, and smoke and sleep till tea-time. Come, now, as we have a full hour before us, confess yourself. Why have you not studied for a barrister?" And she fixed her large eyes on me as if she suspected that I ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... you I would. I ought to live, that I may strive to rehabilitate his memory, and restore to him his reputation as a man of probity, of honour, to which he is entitled. But directly I begin to think about the horrible mystery in which I am involved, my very reason seems to totter—you can understand that, can you not? I don't understand, I don't know, ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... was thought to be a place of great security, and all the merchant vessels in the port were filled with people, who passed the night between the 4th and 5th on board, expecting every instant to see St. Paul's totter, and the towers of Westminster Abbey rock in the wind and fall amid a cloud of dust. The greater part of the fugitives returned on the following day, convinced that the prophet was a false one; but many judged it more prudent to allow a week to elapse before they trusted ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... to groups, it has always broadly been divided politically into two camps, but a few men of strong independent judgment are invaluable in a popular assembly. There need be no fear lest governments totter and fall at the presence of men who dare to take a line of their own, and to speak out boldly on occasion. The bulk of members of Parliament will always cleave to their party, as the bulk of electors do, and the dread of being thought singular is a potent influence on the average man, in or ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... Goody! For shame of yourself! Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. What? Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety times? For four-score and ten years has it been thy lot to totter on this earth, hungry and obscure? Peace and good-will to thee, let us say at this Christmas season. Come, drink, eat, rest awhile at our hearth, thou poor old pilgrim! And of the bread which God's bounty gives us, I pray, brother reader, we may not forget to set aside a part for those noble and ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... evidently time that Count Claudieuse should end his evidence. He begins to totter; his eyes close; his head rolls from side to side; and two ushers have to come to his assistance to enable him, with the help of his own servant, to ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... pull. "One, two, three—pull! Once more—pull! Now the third time—pull! And out she comes!" The bolt suddenly gives and the drawer drops violently to the floor, scattering its contents in every direction, while the two men totter backward and cling to each other to keep their balance. At the same moment the voices of Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Campbell make themselves heard without in vague cries of astonishment, question, and apprehension, mounting ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... totter, empires crumble, All their glories cease to be; While she, Christ-like, crowns the humble, And from ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... misery; and all of them would find that God would not be mocked, nor such conversation be excused, but would be brought into a sad account in the end; and that there was no foundation in any such people, or in their opinions, but what was sandy and would fail, and all building thereupon would totter and fall down and become rubbish; that the only solid comfort and true wisdom lay in the sincere worship and service of God, which was not only agreeable to the doctrine of truth, but to reason itself. To this, and ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... ships go down Swirled in the crazy stound, and mariners' prayers Go up in noisome bubbles—such to them;— Or when they tramp about the central fires, Bending the strata with aeonian tread Till steeples totter, and all ways are lost,— Deem they of wife or child, or home or friend, Doing these things as the long years lead on Only to other years that mean no more, That cure no ill, nor make for use or proof— Destroying ever, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... last leaves ourselves, capable in the green possibly of a pleasant murmur, but in the dry with no voice but a rattle prophetic of winter. I hope Dr. Holmes lived to repent his grin. At any rate he lived to refute the notion that youthful fire and white hairs exclude each other. If we must totter, what ground we have to totter over, with two generations and more behind us! The ground is ours. We only have looked into the faces of the great actors, and have taken part in the epoch-making events. As I unroll my panorama I may totter, but I ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Reginald, sitting up. "When I have finished the bow we shall have plenty. In the mean time, we must get a supply of those eggs we found the other day." He tried, as he spoke, to rise. With some exertion he got on his feet, but felt scarcely able to walk. Taking his stick, however, he managed to totter out of the cave. The fresh air of the early morning somewhat revived him, and, followed by Neptune, he made his way towards the curious mound in which he had found the eggs. He felt very giddy, and could scarcely drag his legs along. The necessity of obtaining food, however, compelled ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... Travis pitch forward off his horse and slide limply to the ground. He saw him totter and waver and then sit down in a helpless, pitiful way,—then lie down as if ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... (Prov 6:16-19). 6. This is the way to bring them out of the world into fellowship that now stand off from our gospel privileges, for the sake of our vain janglings. 7. This is the way to make antichrist shake, totter, and tremble (Isa 11:13,14). 8. This is the way to leave Babylon as an habitation for devils only; and to make it a hold for foul spirits, and a cage only for every unclean and hateful bird. 9. This is the way to hasten ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... closely. The hill that loses itself among the rocks on the sea-shore is capped and patched with just such refuse as this, but how happily the rust-colour of dying things is broken by the grey of the loose stone walls—"hedges," they call them in Cornwall—that seem to totter up the hill like old men! The mist of rain that leaves each individual plant bedraggled seems to make the red and green and grey pattern of the patched hill only more beautiful and mysterious. The truth is, winter speaks with two voices ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... these walls. Still shall you hear a step in dead of night; In stillness the long rustle of my robe. So long as stand these walls I cannot leave them. Yet will I go: behold you, that stand by, A mother by her own son thrust away, Cast out—ha, ha!—in my old age, infirm, To totter and mumble in oblivion! ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... Audley was resolved that little Theodore should be shown to some London physician. The child was five years old, but looked no more than three. He could totter in an uncertain run, and understood a few simple sentences, but came no nearer to language than the appropriation of a musical sound to every one whom he knew. There was nothing unpleasant about him, except ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the manual of arms for about 20 minutes. Large beads of perspiration rolled down his face—he began to totter on his feet—and I gave the command "rest". He had not taken his eyes from ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... one of those trees he beheld Hermosa. Meanwhile the magician took a spade, and loosened the earth of the roots of the three trees so that they might fall all together. Directly the parrot observed them totter he spread his wings and flew right under the middle one, which was the most beautiful of the three. There was a crash, then Lino and Hermosa stood facing each other, ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... leaves defied alike the torrid summer heat and the black frosts of winter months; but underneath them lay the shrivelled carcasses and whitening bones of hundreds of cattle which had perished of starvation—too weak even to totter down to die, bogged in the banks of the creek. As I sat and smoked a strong feeling of depression took possession of me; I already began to hate the place, and regretted I could not withdraw from ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... words? Truth sits upon the lips of dying men, And falsehood, while I lived, was far from mine. I tell thee, prick'd upon this arm I bear That seal which Rustum to my mother gave, That she might prick it on the babe she bore." He spoke; and all the blood left Rustum's cheeks, And his knees totter'd, and he smote his hand Against his breast, his heavy mailed hand, That the hard iron corslet clank'd aloud; And to his heart he press'd the other hand, And in a hollow voice he spake, and said:— "Sohrab, that ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... not had power to bow that palsied head to the grave. Morning by morning she rises without a hope, night by night she lies down vacant or apathetic; and the utmost use she can make of the day is to totter three or four times across the floor by the assistance of her staff. Yet, though we wonder that she is still permitted to cumber the ground, joyless and weary, "the tomb of her dead self," we look at this dry leaf, and ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... was placed at a quadrangular Table, diametrically opposite to the Mace-bearer. The Visage of that venerable Herald was, according to Custom, most gloriously illuminated on this joyful occasion. The Mayor and Aldermen, those Pillars of our Constitution, began to totter; and if any one at the Board could have so far articulated, as to have demanded intelligibly a Reinforcement of Liquor, the whole Assembly had been by this time extended under ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... morning, the hero came in for another sitting, looking extremely worn, his skin drawn tight over his face, his eyes watery and aged, his head slightly nodding. 'How altered from the fresh old man after Saturday's hunting,' says Haydon. 'It affected me. He looked like an aged eagle beginning to totter from its perch.' A second sitting in the afternoon concluded the business, and early next morning Haydon left for town. 'It is curious,' he comments, 'to have known thus the two great heads of the two great parties, the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... started running, such a pace as made the rush back to the Rappahannock seem an easy saunter. Shalah would avoid short-cuts for no reason that I could see, and make long circuits in places where I had to go on hands and feet. I was weary before we set out, and soon I began to totter like a drunken man. The Indian's arm pulled me up countless times, and his face, usually so calm, was now sharp with care. "You cannot fail here, brother," he would say, "On our speed hang the lives of all." That put me on my mettle, for it was Elspeth's safety I now strove for, and the thought ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... arm, a big form leaned over behind her, far across the back of her horse. She heard the hiss of something cutting the air, the crash as of splitting wood, a scream, of agony and the Indian's ruthless grasp was loosened. Her horse stumbled and seemed to totter beneath her, but again that arm from aloft exerted itself and it seemed as if she were being lifted to the tree tops. Almost before she could realise it she was upon another horse, clasped in the arm of its rider, and they were off ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... carried it; then, when the regiment had taken flight, he saw him returning with his conquest in his arms. On reaching the marshal he threw the colors at his feet; opening his mouth to speak, instead of words, it was blood that came to his lips. The marshal saw him totter in his saddle, and advanced to support him, but before he had time to do so Albert had fallen; a ball had pierced his breast. The marshal sprung from his horse, but the brave young man lay dead on the standard he had ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... a piece of telegraph wire to one side of the ladder, passed it loosely around the tree, and fastened it to the other side. Then, as the ladder was gradually raised, the wire slipped along up the tree, and when the ladder was in position it could not fall, although it might shake and totter a little. However, strong arms at the bottom held it pretty steady, and Harry was enabled to nail on his insulators with comparative ease, and ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... graduated measure; a small quantity of a colourless fluid was transferred to the glass, and the Hakim rose and walked with dignified pace to where the two chiefs stood, the younger scowling fiercely now as he saw that his companion was beginning to totter upon his legs and swaying slightly as if ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... be ancient if he has to totter along on two sticks," Jerry said. "Besides, he has a stately, professorish sort of style. Do you suppose he really does want us to write ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... many a tribute. To them do we owe our present connection with the Mother Country. When this country from north to south was rent by the rebellion, when the rivers ran blood, and when the prestige of English arms in Northern America seemed to totter, it was the Yorkshire immigrants who remained firm, and although compelled to suffer untold hardships and privations, yet they remained loyal to that old flag, whose folds he was pleased to see floating in the breeze to-day. The speaker gave fully in detail various particulars ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... become the only necessary language of thought; but one could play with the toys of childhood, including Ming porcelain, salons of painting, operas and theatres, beaux-arts and Gothic architecture, theology and anarchy, in any jumble of time; or totter about with Joe Stickney, talking Greek philosophy or recent poetry, or studying "Louise" at the Opera Comique, or discussing the charm of youth and the Seine with Bay Lodge and his exquisite young wife. Paris remained Parisian in spite of change, mistress of herself though ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... generally no sympathy for the gushing sprightliness, the eager questioning, the rose-hued dreams and aspirations of young people; and youth shrinks chilled and constrained from the austere companionship of those who, with snowy locks gilded by the fading rays of a setting sun, totter down the hill of life, journeying to the dark and silent valley of the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.' Then should I be struck into a very great trembling, insomuch that at sometimes I could, for whole days together, feel my very body, as well as my mind, to shake and totter under the sense of this dreadful ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... the "Popular Will," incited several attempts at murder; Russia then witnessed dynamite outrages against imperial trains and palaces, and finally, the assassination of the Emperor Alexander II. For a moment the autocratic regime seemed to totter under these sudden and fierce blows, but it soon recovered. The white terror proved to be stronger than the red. Many executions and banishments helped to crush the partisans of the "Popular Will;" then, when the movement had been checked, the authorities ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... grown younger again. The latter may be seen just beginning, perhaps, to sit up stiff on a woman's arm, or starting for a trial crawl over mother earth; and of them we remark that there is another little Ryan or Quigley; while the former stay sunning themselves so inertly, or totter about so shakily, that we notice at once how much old Sheridan, or the Widow Joyce, has failed since last year. These babies and grandparents often associate a good deal with one another at the stage when the old body is still capable of "keepin' an eye on the child," ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... he scorned to show it, was too agitated even to suggest an event to fit the disconsolate date, and poor Coote had to totter up the stairs, hopelessly convinced that he had nothing at his fingers' ends ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... arm-chair near the altar. The prelate intended to have given them to his assistants, the priests of the King's chapel; but the monks of Saint Denis ran to him with great eagerness, exclaiming that the taper and the gold belonged to them. They threw themselves upon the Bishop, whose chair began to totter, and made his mitre fall from his head. If I had stayed there a moment longer the Bishop, with all the monks, would have fallen upon me. I descended the four steps of the altar in great haste, for I was ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... a moat, but which was now in some parts dry, and in others contained a little muddy and stagnated water. Within the enclosure of this moat, I could only discover a pile of ruins, and several walls, the upper part of which seemed to overhang their foundations, and to totter to their ruin. After having entered however with my conductor through an archway, and passed along a winding passage that was perfectly dark, we came to ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... more severe than that with which he had filled her! He now saw all his long cherished hopes in danger of final destruction, and suddenly cast upon the brink of a precipice, where, while he struggled to protect them from falling, his eyes were dazzled by beholding them totter. ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... have chosen a more unfortunate time. The House had already been threatened by the conduct of the father; it was now to totter under blows dealt by the son. The first crisis had been severe, this would be infinitely more so. He hated himself for the first time in his life, and, in doing so, began for the first time to ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... very early in the morning; totter down-stairs in a state of somnambulism; take the simulacrum of a meal by the glimmer of one lamp in the deserted coffee-room; and find yourself by seven o'clock outside in a belated moonlight and a freezing chill. The mail sleigh takes you up and carries you on, and you reach ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of muscular Christianity, one must say that it was not her weight, but the tumult in his own inner man, which made her bearer totter. Nevertheless, if one is wholly unused to the exercise, the carrying of a healthy young English girl weighing a good eight stone, is as much as most men ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... vanquished. But as there were to be two heats to the race, she fell to planning how to be revenged for this affront; and going home, she put a charm into a ring of such power that if any one had it upon his finger his legs would totter so that he would not be able to walk, much less run; then she sent it as a present to Lightning, begging him to wear it on his ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... 25 When the king of the thane-troop thither did turn him: The wise-mooded son of Wonred was powerless To give a return-blow to the age-hoary man, But his head-shielding helmet first hewed he to pieces, That flecked with gore perforce he did totter, 30 Fell to the earth; not fey was he yet then, But up did he spring though an ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... his feet are bare on the clods; and he has no hat—but the brim of a hat only, and his long, unkempt gray hair comes through. But all the air is full of warmth and of peace; and, beyond his village church, there is, at last, light indeed. His horses lag in the furrow, and his own limbs totter and fail: but one comes to help him. 'It is a long field,' says Death; 'but we'll get to the end of it ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... indifference, should pass for something approaching to encouragement in the royal gallant's apprehension, and that any resolutions he had formed against being tempted to violate the hospitality of Woodstock, should begin to totter, as opportunities for doing so became ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... that the divine arm will be outstretched. God will establish Zion; or, as the word might be translated, God will hold it erect, as if with a strong hand grasping some pole or banner-staff that else would totter and fall—He will keep it up, standing there ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... consist of many parts; and that senates, popular assemblies, courts of justice, magistrates of different orders, must combine to balance each other, while they exercise, sustain, or check the executive power. If any part is struck out, the fabric must totter, or fall; if any member is remiss, the others must encroach. In assemblies constituted by men of different talents, habits, and apprehensions, it were something more than human that could make them ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... struggling world—may return to himself, and become all that he has ever been. But this seldom happens. He usually keeps his ground just long enough for his own ruin, and is then thrust out, with sinews all unstrung, to totter along the difficult footpath of life as he best may. Conscious of his own infirmity,—that his tempered steel and elasticity are lost,—he forever afterwards looks wistfully about him in quest of support external to himself. His ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her feet with grave deliberation. For an instant, with the recollection of the delicate internal organization of the Saltellos on my mind, I was in agony lest she should totter and fall, even then, yielding up her gentle spirit on the spot. But when I looked again, she had a hairpin between her white teeth and was carefully adjusting her toreador hat. And beside us was Enriquez—cheerful, alert, ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... world may threaten, Though thrones may totter down, And in many an Old World palace, Uneasy sits the crown: Not for the present only Is the war we wage to-day, But the sound shall echo ever When ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... throne of the degenerate descendants of Ghengis Khan began to totter to its fall, missions and merchants alike disappeared from the field. Islam, with all its jealousies and exclusiveness, had recovered its grasp over Central Asia. Night again descended upon the farther East, covering Cathay, ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... at last, and, as if overcome by fate, began to totter silently back toward her stuffy little inferno of a cottage. It had no lofty portal, no terrific inscription of forfeited hopes—she did not ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... caressed, Haply some wretch has eyed, and called thee blessed; When with her infants, from some shady seat By the lake's edge, she rose—to face the noontide heat; Or taught their limbs along the dusty road 255 A few short steps to totter with their ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... so young to perpetual prisonage, was indeed hard, too hard—enough to make reason totter on its throne and paralyze the powers ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... shivering seized his limbs, his coat stood on end, his lofty frame began to totter, and at the seventeenth discharge from the deadly grooved bore, like a falling minaret bowing his graceful head from the skies, his proud form was prostrate in the dust. Never shall I forget the intoxicating excitement of that moment! At last, then, the summit ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... character. He lent a willing ear to the application of the Spanish government, and made no hesitation in granting what cost him nothing, while it recognized the assumption of powers, which had already begun to totter in the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... "'t were sure a pity so fair a maid to slay;" So he revers'd the jav'lin, and turn'd the point away. Yet, with the butt end foremost, so forceful was the throw, That the sore-smitten damsel totter'd to and fro. ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... they of Nilus' mouth, if there live any. 20 Rome, if thou take delight in impious war, First conquer all the earth, then turn thy force Against thyself: as yet thou wants not foes. That now the walls of houses half-reared totter, That, rampires fallen down, huge heaps of stone Lie in our towns, that houses are abandon'd, And few live that behold their ancient seats; Italy many years hath lien untill'd And chok'd with thorns; that greedy earth wants hinds;— Fierce Pyrrhus, neither thou nor Hannibal ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... at the crossings. It's pathetic to see the foot-passengers saving themselves, especially the poor, pretty, high-heeled women, looking this way and that in their fright, and then tottering over as fast as they can totter." ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... here. The faithful instrument, whose responsive sympathy had failed him, jarringly snapped a string! A sting of anguish pricked through Manetho's every nerve. His fictitious buoyancy evaporated like steam,—he barely made shift to totter to a chair. Laying the violin with tremling hands on the table, his head dropped on his arms beside it; and there was a long, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... passed before, by stamping his feet and rubbing his legs he restored circulation sufficiently to totter across the room. Then he seized a brand and thrust it into the thatch of the house, having first put on his helmet and placed his sword and pistols in his belt. His hands were too crippled and powerless ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... in tearing up stubble and rending straws?—Stretch forth your hand, and grasp the oak—Labours worthy of your Herculean mind await and invite you. Away to the temple of Error; shake its pillars, and make its foundations totter!—Be yourself—Shall the soaring eagle swoop at reptiles, the prey of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... raised them up, and one by one the harbor had flowed in and dragged them down. But now in my full manhood (for remember I was twenty-five!) I had found and taken to myself a god that I felt sure of. No harbor could make it totter and fall. For it was armed with Science, its feet stood firm on mechanical laws and in its head were all the brains of all the strong men ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... intently to the story of the Dyak who saw the dead man totter and fall. He gave some quick order. Followed by a score or more of his men he walked rapidly to the foot of the cliff where they ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... go?" said Maria Vittoria, rebelliously. "Say what you have said to me to her! Speak to her of the ignominy which will befall the King! Tell her how his cause will totter! Why talk of this to me? If she loves the King, your words will persuade her. For on my life they ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... different spots, leaped across the foot of the cliff; gray smoke rolled up, and there was a roar that rolled in confused echoes across the woods. The front of the rock seemed to totter behind the smoke, great stones splashed in the water, and flying pieces rattled among the trunks. When the vapor began to clear and she wanted to run forward Thirlwell put his ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... came through the faltering dusk; And her mother spoke and said: "You are weeping; your footstep is heavy with care— What makes you totter and cling to the stair, And why do you hang your head?" "Oh mother—oh mother—you never can ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... the quick release of glorious wounds, Than the eternal taunts of galling tongues; Better the spear-head quivering in the heart, Than daily struggle against fortune's curse; Better, in manhood's muscle and high blood, To leap the gulf, than totter to its edge In poverty, dull pain, and base decay. Once ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... to totter on his feet. A cruel struggle was taking place within him. Several times he tried to speak, but could not. At last in a heavy whisper, ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... only one way, dear. By constant striving against our failing, and by constant prayer. We cannot succeed by ourselves, we should only meet with certain failure. But if we place our hand in God's hand we know that though we may stumble and totter many times, ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... Dutch. It was almost a matter of life or death with her to keep her hold upon the New World. At home she was bankrupt and, upon the earthquake of the Reformation, her power was already beginning to totter and to crumble to pieces. America was her treasure house, and from it alone could she hope to keep her leaking purse full of gold and silver. So it was that she strove strenuously, desperately, to keep out the world from her American possessions—a bootless task, for the old ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... even if "not fit to stop a gully with," and the Sudra's sons "ordained" to be servants, no matter what their qualities of mind and soul. But the caste system is rotting down in other places and some time or other this "ordained" theory will also give way and the whole vast fabric will totter to the ruin it ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... bias whatsoever, the most honest and impartial consideration of which I am capable. The public has a full right to it; and this great city, a main pillar in the commercial interest of Great Britain, must totter on its base by the slightest mistake with regard ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... probable that his sudden weight jolted the plank out of its position. For hardly was he safe on the turf again when he heard a sharp cry. Throwing a look behind, he saw his pursuer totter, clutch at the slipping timber, and, still clutching at it, turn a ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... could bear no more—her knees began to totter, the lustre vanished from her eyes, and she fainted in the arms of her attendant. Sir Launcelot, aroused by this circumstance, assisted Dolly in seating her mistress on a couch, where she soon recovered, and saw ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... tempest is overwhelming you. It is a proof of great virtue to struggle with happiness, so that it shall not seduce, corrupt, subvert. Learn to trample on this world; remember to trust in Christ. And if your foot be moved,—if you totter,—if there be some temptations that you cannot overcome,—if you begin to sink, cry out to Jesus, Lord, save me. In Peter, therefore, the common condition of all of us is to be considered; so that, if the wind of temptation endeavor to upset us in any matter, or its billows to swallow ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... and it would have answered the purpose better had I been allowed to continue in the narrow way of obscure poverty!" Now that the enervating influence of a more prosperous atmosphere had weakened his courage, and cooled the ardor of his piety, his faith began to totter like an old wall. His religious beliefs seemed to have been wrecked by the same storm which had destroyed his passionate hopes of love, and left him stranded and forlorn without either haven or pilot, blown hither and thither solely by the violence ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... remaining miners call a madness, is still unbroken. Yet it is not in human nature to endure all this agony of suspense, all this hope deferred from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year, and still be human. The man has, in some sense, become a brute. He now is seen to reel and totter to his cabin, late at night oftentimes. He has at last fallen into the habit of the camp. He can drink, gamble, carouse, ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... I proudly scorn The wealth of Amalthea's horn; Nor should I ask to call the throne Of the Tartessian prince my own;[1] To totter through his train of years, The victim of declining fears. One little hour of joy to me ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... to the students who were going home for their Christmas vacations. Interest in study declined rapidly. Those girls who usually made brilliant recitations distinguished themselves by just scraping through, while those who were inclined to totter on the ragged edge unhesitatingly confessed themselves to be unprepared. One had, of course, to decide just what to pack, whether to take the morning or evening train and whether it would be worth while to take one's ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... fortnight before Charlie, still very weak and feeble, was able to totter from his room to that in which Hossein was lying. He himself knew nothing of what had passed after he fell. The conflict had, to him, been little more than a dream. Awakened from sleep by the sound of his ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... resurrection, that they might be not only ready to blossom in the warmth of the spring-tides to come, but able to send out some leaves and promissory buds even in the wintry time of the soul, when the fogs of pain steam up from the frozen clay soil of the body, and make the monarch-will totter dizzily upon his throne, to comfort the eyes of the bewildered king, reminding him that the King of kings hath conquered Death and the Grave. There is no perfect faith that cannot laugh at winters and graveyards, and all the whole array of defiant appearances. The ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... put forth all his strength, By lengthy struggle wearing out his foe, Till chilly drops stood on Antaeas' limbs, And toppled to its fall the stately throat, And smitten by the hero's blows, the legs Began to totter. Breast to breast they strive To gain the vantage, till the victor's arms Gird in the giant's yielding back and sides, And squeeze his middle part: next 'twixt the thighs He puts his feet, and forcing them apart, Lays low the mighty monster ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... man with the gall of an Army mule. His conscience, if he had ever had one, had become atrophied through long disuse. He had given this sensitive girl the worst fright she had had since a mouse had got into her bedroom at school. He had caused Jno. Peters to totter off to the Rupert Street range making low, bleating noises. And did he care? No! All he cared about was the fact that he had erased for ever from Billie's mind that undignified picture of himself as he had appeared on the boat, and substituted another which showed him brave, resourceful, ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... of its daring leaps, which were more those of a mountain sheep or goat than of a horse, Ali Baba alighted at the very edge of the perpendicular portion of the valley side, and those above saw him totter for a moment, and then ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... totter, he advanced toward the threshold of the pavilion. Diana, on her side, perceiving Francois stagger, sat herself down beside ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... We clamb the hill thegither, And monie a cantie day, John, We've had wi' ane anither; Now we maun totter down, John, And hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... Mars is in the brave man's hand: let each one's home and wife Be in his heart! Call ye to mind those mighty histories, 281 The praises of our father-folk! Come, meet them in the seas, Amid their tangle, while their feet yet totter on the earth: For Fortune helpeth them ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... to suspect that I was fast going mad; and I believe I was. If he has followed my story with a human heart, he may excuse me of any extreme weakness, if I did at moments totter on the verge ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... may go; A few more days, and the trouble all will end, In the field where the sugar-canes grow. A few more days for to tote the weary load,— No matter, 'twill never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road:— Then my old ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... made an heroic resistance, and the besiegers had suffered incredibly from their desperate sallies, as well as from the diseases that decimated them. But the fidelity of the citizens was beginning to totter beneath the protracted warfare, and many sighed for a period to their calamities. Henry failed not to profit by these dispositions, and poured in thirty thousand golden florins ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... is growing greater, and the race is beginning to fret and chafe, and moan. It knows not what it wants, but it knows that it feels pain and wants something to relieve that pain. The old things are beginning to totter and fall, and ideas rendered sacred by years of observance are being brushed aside with a startling display of irreverence. Under the surface of our civilization we may hear the straining and groaning of the ideas and principles that are striving to force their ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... to rise. It did not totter; it simply rose in its entirety, leaving the gaping hole into which, decades ago, it had been built. It rose straight into the sky, apparently of its own volition. No rays of light, no supernatural agencies could be seen or fancied. The utterly impossible ...
— Lords of the Stratosphere • Arthur J. Burks
... Fritz did his best to save the unfortunate one, but 'e could not swim. You can imagine my sensations? I was in a summer-'ouse, trembling with fright. Thunder, lightning, rain, storm, all round! Suddenly I see Fritz, pale as death, wet through, totter up the path from the lake. 'Where is Sasha?' I shriek out to 'im. And 'e shake 'is 'ead despairingly—Sasha was ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... his mother were Queery and Drolly, contemptuously so called, and they answered to these names. I remember Cree best as a battered old weaver, who bent forward as he walked, with his arms hanging limp as if ready to grasp the shafts of the barrow behind which it was his life to totter uphill and downhill, a rope of yarn suspended round his shaking neck, and fastened to the shafts, assisting him to bear the yoke and slowly strangling him. By and by there came a time when the barrow and the weaver seemed both palsy-stricken, and Cree, gasping ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... a vast proposal, but this is a gigantic business altogether, and we can do nothing with it unless we are prepared to deal with large ideas. If St. Paul's begins to totter it is no good propping it up with half a dozen walking-sticks, and small palliatives have no legitimate place at all in this discussion. Our generation has to take up this tremendous necessity of a social reconstruction in a great way; its broad lines have to be thought out by thousands of minds, ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... weeping audibly, and he felt a pang of sorrow shoot through him at sight of her heavy body and uncouth gait. As he watched her go, the Nietzschean edifice seemed to shake and totter. The slave-class in the abstract was all very well, but it was not wholly satisfactory when it was brought home to his own family. And yet, if there was ever a slave trampled by the strong, that slave was his sister Gertrude. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... told Jaqui all that she said, but she must have used very severe language. She declared he had used her shamefully and wickedly in keeping her asleep for so long, and then wakening her to be the wife of a miserable old man just ready to totter into the grave. But she would not be his wife. She vowed she would have nothing to do with him. He had deserted her; he had treated her cruelly; and the holy father, the Pope, would look upon it in that light, and would separate her from ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... Fighting a moose or a buffalo is all right; but when you pitch into a man, no matter how great a scamp he is, you've got to look out. I shall kill someone some day; that's all I'm afraid of. I do hate a sneak!' And Dan brought his fist down on the table with a blow that made the lamp totter and the books skip. ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... a calm that was well-nigh as terrible, when she entered sobbing into the cave to tell him the pitiable little lie that all her visible distress was for a pony to whom she had said farewell. He saw her presently totter forward to put more fuel on the fire and begin to prepare their evening meal. With eyes from which the smoke of passion had now lifted, he saw what he had only vaguely seen before: that she was thin and haggard; ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... Jane. "I can just totter around and that's about all." She arose quickly, shook out her plumage, took his arm, and in less than a minute was waltzing again. "Lucky it is a waltz," she thought; "I don't want to be ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... of irritation is much exhausted, or its production much diminished; the sensorial power of sensation appears for a time to be increased; as in intoxication there exists a kind of delirium and quick flow of ideas, and yet the person becomes so weak as to totter as he walks; but this delirium is owing to the defect of voluntary power to correct the streams of ideas by intuitive analogy, as in dreams: see Zoonomia: and thus also those who are enfeebled by habits of much vinous potation, or even by age alone, are liable to weep at shaking ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... I verily believe, one of the most wretched quarters I have ever seen,—houses that must have been sordid and hideous enough when new, that had gathered foulness with every year, and now seemed to lean and totter to their fall. 'I live up there,' said Black, pointing to the tiles, 'not in the front,—in the back. I am very quiet there. I won't ask you to come in now, but perhaps some ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... Fraud, welcome to the butts: Now I'll have my ten shillings in spite of your guts. The French canker consume ye, you were an old Frenchman! De gol' button, gol' ringa, bugla lace! you cosen'd me then. My lords, I beseech ye, that at Tyburn he may totter, For instead of gold ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... the life of him see how to manage it. The beanstalk began to totter; he felt himself falling, and leapt for the tower. . . . And awoke in his bed shuddering, and, for the first time in his life, afraid of the dark. He would have called for his mother, but just then down by the turret clock in Fore Street ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... and reason, and makes every detail of life appear irrational and incomprehensible. Carried away from himself, he seems to be suspended in a mysterious fiery element; he ceases to understand himself, the standard of everything has fallen from his hands; everything stereotyped and fixed begins to totter; every object seems to acquire a strange colour and to tell us its tale by means of new symbols;—one would need to be a Plato in order to discover, amid this confusion of delight and fear, how he accomplishes the feat, and ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... feel that mind to being comes Along with body, with body grows and ages. For just as children totter round about With frames infirm and tender, so there follows A weakling wisdom in their minds; and then, Where years have ripened into robust powers, Counsel is also greater, more increased The power of mind; thereafter, where already The body's shattered by master-powers of ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... triumphant in the result of my labors, while I was admiring the princely air with which little Armand helped baby to totter along the path you know, I saw a carriage coming, and tried to get them out of the way. The children tumbled into a dirty puddle, and lo! my works of art are ruined! We had to take them back and change their things. I took the little one in my arms, never ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... had at first a human air In coats and flannel underwear. They rose and walked upon their feet And filled their bellies full of meat, Then wiped their lips when they had done— But they were ogres every one. Each issuing from his secret bower I marked them in the morning hour. By limp and totter, list and droop, I singled each one from the group. Detected ogres, from my sight Depart to your congenial night From these fair vales: from this fair day Fleet, spectres, on your downward way, Like changing figures in a dream To Muttonhole and Pittenweem! ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flowers of life and come to the berries,—which are not always sad-colored, but sometimes golden-hued as the crocus of April, or rosy-cheeked as the damask of June; a man who staggered against books as a baby, and will totter against them, if he lives to decrepitude; with a brain full of tingling thoughts, such as they are, as a limb which we call "asleep," because it is so particularly awake, is of pricking points; presenting a key-board of nerve-pulps, not as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... The stars are faded from the sky. The leaves writhe on the greensward. The breezes wail a dirge. The summer rain is pallid like winter snow. And—O bitterest cup of all!—the golden memories of the past have vanished from your heart. I totter down to the grave, while you go on from strength to strength. The Junes that gave you life brought death to me, and you sorrow not. O child of my tender care, look not so coldly on my pain! Breathe one sigh of regret, drop one tear of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and Ise grin a poke, and we to War will leanes, Ise lay thee flat upon thy Back and then lay to the steanes; Ise make hopper titter totter, haud the Mouth as still, When twa sit, and eane stand, merrily grind the Mill: With a ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... Syria Mission," or "Bible Work in Bible Lands," will see that the work of the Syria Mission from 1820 to 1872 has been one of conflict with principalities and powers, and with spiritual wickedness in high and low places, but that at length the hoary fortresses are beginning to totter and fall, and there is a call for a general advance in every department of the work, and in every part ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... warred with his new boots. Footsore, he limped about the streets of a spectral city, where at every corner some one seemed to lie in ambush for him, and each time the lurking enemy proved to be no other than Mrs. Weare, who gazed at him with scornful eyes and let him totter by. The creaking of the boots was an articulate voice, which ever and anon screamed at him a terrible name. He shrank and shivered and groaned; but on he went, for in his hand he held a crossed cheque, which he ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... that one must bleed Because another needs will bite! All round we find cold Nature slight The feelings of the totter-knee'd. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... monument of a thousand ages crumbles to dust; at whose embrace empires totter to ruin, and at whose breath cities rise and sink like bursting bubbles in a pool, rolled on his car ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... eventful one to the nation. South Carolina, driven on by a few infatuated men, has made a bold effort to shake off the bonds of Union and Federal Law, and, to the minds of some in whom you and I repose the utmost confidence, a happy government seems to totter on the brink of dissolution. It is a long story, and the papers will tell you all. God grant that the impending evil may be averted, and that the moral and religious improvement of this government may not be retarded by civil war." It is thought ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... most bloody struggle. It was the last lap of the contest. Twelve hours now, I kept telling myself, and the French will be here and we'll have done our task. Alas! how many of us would go back to rest? ... Hardly able to totter, our counter-attacking companies went in again. They had gone far beyond the limits of mortal endurance, but the human spirit can defy all natural laws. The balance trembled, hung, and then dropped the right ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... after breakfast, with an over-acted carelessness, "Anybody who likes," he said, "can feed my rabbits," and he disappeared, with a jauntiness that deceived nobody, in the direction of the orchard. Now, kingdoms might totter and reel, and convulsions change the map of Europe; but the iron unwritten law prevailed, that each boy severely fed his own rabbits. There was good ground, then, for suspicion and alarm; and while the lettuce-leaves ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... very squalid tragedy,—that of the dying brutes and the scavenger birds. Death by starvation is slow. The heavy-headed, rack-boned cattle totter in the fruitless trails; they stand for long, patient intervals; they lie down and do not rise. There is fear in their eyes when they are first stricken, but afterward only intolerable weariness. I suppose the dumb creatures know nearly as much of death as do their betters, who have only the more ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... last word was in my ears, the whole group vanished, and there was nothing between me and the Chinese printed folding-screen that stood before the door. I was cold and trembling; I could only totter forward and throw myself on the sofa. This strange new power had manifested itself again . . . But was it a power? Might it not rather be a disease—a sort of intermittent delirium, concentrating my energy of brain into moments of unhealthy activity, ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot
... only a bungler. He has killed his mother, and what does it mean? His father remains alive! So, come to his aid—you cannot ask him to do everything alone. You must make an end of me! The old trunk still looks rugged, doesn't it? But it has begun to totter already—it will not cost you much trouble to fell it! You need not reach for the ax. You have a pretty face—I have never praised you, but today I will tell you, so that you may acquire courage and confidence. Your eyes, nose, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... delicious air that breathes from the mountains. The old cardinals descend from their gilded carriages, and, accompanied by one of their household and followed by their ever-present lackeys in harlequin liveries, totter along on foot with swollen ankles, lifting their broad red hats to the passers-by who salute them, and pausing constantly in their discourse to enforce a phrase or take a pinch of snuff. Files of scholars from the Propaganda stream along, now and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... large branch, and the bear got about half-way to him. As soon as the bear got out to that part where the limb of the tree was weaker, "Ha!" says he to us, "now you see me teachee the bear dance:" so he began jumping and shaking the bough, at which the bear began to totter, but stood still, and began to look behind him, to see how he should get back; then, indeed, we did laugh heartily. But Friday had not done with him by a great deal; when seeing him stand still, he ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe |
