"Tottering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... princely Ambras, nor the noble old Tratzberg, with its crowded treasures of solemn and splendid mediaevalism; but little Matzen, where eager hospitality forms the new life of a never-dead chivalry, and Kropfsberg, ruined, tottering, blasted by fire and smitten with grievous years,—a dead thing, and haunted,—full of strange legends, and eloquent of mystery ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... and their gossips come With crutch in hand our sports to see, And both go tottering, tattling home, Topful of wine ...
— Victorian Songs - Lyrics of the Affections and Nature • Various
... days in dungeon black and foul; a thing whose shrunken nakedness showed a multitude of small wounds, slow-bleeding, that spoke of teeth little yet vicious, bold with hunger in the dark; a miserable, tottering thing, haggard and pinched, that shivered and shook and stared upon all things with ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... was the deadly glare with which hers were turned on me. I saw that not only was she as certain of my identity as though she had guided me from my first tottering steps, but that in a flash she had grasped my motives, aims and purposes, and meant once for all to face, out-general and defeat ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... advanced period of life have I attained! Even this wand betrays the lapse of years; In youthful days 'twas but a useless badge And symbol of my office; now it serves As a support to prop my tottering steps. ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... the watery hills, And plunge in deeps again; Each like a tottering drunkard reels, And finds his ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... He came tottering down to breakfast the next morning, as white as an old ghost, with no voice left, his legs trembling under him, but he kept the whole family an hour and a half at the table, telling them in a loud whisper all about the fair, until father said really he would have to take us to the one next ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... that great town below us, In a poor and narrow street, Dwelt a little sickly orphan; Gentle aid, or pity sweet, Never in life's rugged pathway Guided his poor tottering feet. ...
— Legends and Lyrics: First Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... his men that sleep was death. This was their second sleepless night, and the men were feverish with fatigue. Some babbled in strange tongues, and talked with sisters and sweethearts and people who were not there—reason was tottering. ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... tact and dexterity. It is consoling to hear that all manage to accomplish it, by dint of severe training through the week preceding the event; though some are so frightened when the awful moment arrives that their ghastly visages and tottering frames evince how narrowly they escape swooning. The fact that it is over in a moment serves materially ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... cape jutted out over the abyss. Some were very sharp and bare, others covered with cedar; some tottering crags with a crumbling bridge leading to their rims; and some ran down like giant steps. From one of these I watched below. The slope here under the wall was like the side of a rugged mountain. Somewhere down among the dark patches ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... Dieu!" exclaimed the doctor with a slight impatience. "These afflicted ones, these peculiar ones—they are still capable of something. Many times have I seen it; the old, old tottering grandmere, the crazy aunt, the bad-tempered husband, even the inebriate, can find, when they are guided, work which suits and maintains them. Even when the mind is shaken, if it is only a little, just a little, to care for others, a bird or a cat, or a sick person, this will keep the wits ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... he did; I had not muscle enough in my arms, but I threw my legs round the tottering ladder, and slid down, turned it back to its old place, went up quickly, and again ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... champagne," he growled as he was lifted to his tottering legs. "We had a glorious time this afternoon before I left Paris. Hurrah! You're to be my son-in-law. And, my boy, I don't envy you—that's the truth. With such a little demon for a wife—I pity you, ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... ago, passing through the shabby, familiar square, I brushed against a withered old man tottering down the street under a load of yarn. It was piled on a wheelbarrow, which his feeble hands could not have raised but for the rope of yarn that supported it from his shoulders; and though Auld Licht was written ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... with John Collins, the blacksmith, and, as Maria knew privily, Miss Flanagan and Mr. Collins were going next day to Golden Gate Park. Vain was Maria's attempt to rescue the garment. Martin guided her tottering footsteps to a chair, from where she watched him with bulging eyes. In a quarter of the time it would have taken her she saw the shirt-waist safely ironed, and ironed as well as she could have done it, as Martin ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... and is probably of a more ancient date. Degeneracy, however, soon crept in; crimes were everywhere committed; and there was no energetic man capable of directing the individual excitement to purer objects, even had an effectual resistance to the tottering Church been at that early period seasonable, and had it been possible to restrain the fanaticism. The Flagellants sometimes undertook to make trial of their power of working miracles; as in Strasburg, where they attempted, in their own circle, to resuscitate a ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... this honestly; keep it to yourself; many likelihoods informed me of this before, which hung so tottering in the balance that I could neither believe nor misdoubt. Pray you leave me: stall this in your bosom; and I thank you for your honest care: I will speak with ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... reposed in him, that it was not long after his first appearance as a leader in the war-path, that the Americans were made sensible, by repeated defeat, of the formidable character of the chief who had thrown himself into the breach of his nation's tottering fortunes, resolved rather to perish on the spot on which he stood, than to retire one foot from the home of their forefathers. What self-ennobling actions the warrior performed, and what talent he displayed during that warfare, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... Deacon Israel's tottering ladder still stood in its accustomed place, propped against the haymow, and the heavenly stairway leading to eternal glory scarcely looked fairer to Jacob of old than this to Rebecca. By means of its dusty ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... That an Assembly representing the entire German people, elected in unbounded enthusiasm and comprising within it nearly every man of political or intellectual eminence who sympathised with the national cause, should be able to impose its will upon the tottering Governments of the individual German States, was not an unnatural belief in the circumstances of the moment. No second Chamber represented the interests of the ruling Houses, nor had they within the Assembly itself the organs for the expression of their own real or unreal claims. ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... promise, for its wings are draped with the hue of mourning and desolation. There now lies the great skeleton of dead Johnstown. The great ribs of rocky sand stretch across the chest scarred and covered with abrasions. Acres of mud, acres of wreckage, acres of unsteady, tottering buildings, acres of unknown dead, of ghastly objects which have been eagerly sought for since Friday; acres of smoky, streaming ruin, of sorrow for somebody, lie out ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... axe and lever 210 Have manfully been plied; And now the bridge hangs tottering Above the boiling tide. "Come back, come back, Horatius!" Loud cried the Fathers all. 215 "Back Lartius! back Herminius! Back, ere ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... pride, rank pride, And if thou hadst not done it, thou hadst died. Malice (who, disappointed of her end, Whether to work the bane of foe or friend, Preys on herself, and, driven to the stake, Gives Virtue that revenge she scorns to take) Had kill'd thee, tottering on life's utmost verge, Had Wilkes and Liberty escaped thy scourge. 400 When that Great Charter, which our fathers bought With their best blood, was into question brought; When, big with ruin, o'er each English head Vile Slavery hung suspended by a thread; When Liberty, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... His hair was rumpled, his eyes bloodshot, his unshaven face looked very dark. He gazed wildly about, saw his cap on a table, snatched it up, and made for the stairs quietly, but with a strange, tottering gait, like the ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... prison, with its tottering weather beaten projections, apparently ready to fall from their resting places, presented an appearance still more gloomy and forbidding. Dampness, and mould of a hundred years growth had obliterated all traces of the fresco paintings ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... me, you big mut! [She pushes him away with all her might. BURKE, weak and tottering, is caught off his guard. He is thrown down backward and, in falling, hits his head a hard thump against the bulwark. He lies there still, knocked out for the moment. ANNA stands for a second, looking down at him frightenedly. Then she kneels down beside him and ...
— Anna Christie • Eugene O'Neill
... certain of the fugitive's hiding-place. Virgie watched him, trembling, growing hot in the pit of her little stomach; yet, when he faced her, she looked him squarely in the eye, fighting one last battle for her daddy—as hopeless as the tottering cause of the ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... stairs, as Laura was making a tottering effort to climb them with Helbeck's arm round her, Mrs. Denton came out of the dining-room straight upon them. She carried a pan and brush, and had evidently just ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Fraserville to write the sketch of Bassett for the "Courier" lived in his memory. Something had been said there about Madison College; and his connection with Fitch's office had been mentioned, and on the fears thus roused in Morton Bassett, he, Daniel Harwood, had reared a tottering superstructure of aims, hopes, ambitions, that threatened to overwhelm him! But now, as the first shock passed, he saw all things clearly. He would save Sylvia even though Bassett must be saved first. If Thatcher could be silenced in no other way, he might ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... are to shelter ourselves, and from which as it seems all authority proceeds, lies like a molehill or a tottering wall, on which there is not one gun-carriage or one piece of cannon in a suitable frame or on a good platform. >From the first it has been declared that it should be repaired, laid in five angles, and put in royal condition. The commonalty's men have been addressed for ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... came tottering up the garden as speedily as she could, and meeting the schoolmaster at the door, said he was to go to Dame West's directly, and had best run on before her. He and the child were on the point of going out together for a walk, and without relinquishing her hand, the schoolmaster hurried ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the wretched father, tottering back to the seat he had quitted,—"dead!" and the sound of his voice was so full of anguish, that the dog at his feet, which Morton had not hitherto perceived, echoed it with a dismal cry, that recalled to Philip the awful day in which he had ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... carried out the mass of floating bodies to which the child had pointed at noon, but numbers of others still remained in all directions. Tottering and staggering among the dead, Mrs. Carleton continued her search, until she had looked into every ghastly ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... there was no room for him in New Mexico. Probably the fear of the Rutherfords had been a restraint upon him up to this time. But now that he had broken with them and was leaving the country, the man was free to follow the advice of Tighe. He was a bully whose prestige was tottering. It was almost sure that he would attempt some savage act of reprisal before he left. Beaudry had no doubt that he would be the ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... is in the cafe. A woman leads up to him a tottering being whom she introduces to him. "He's ill, Monsieur Fontan, because he ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... wilderness was left to tell of England's attempt to colonize America; only a great gash in the forest, there in the quiet and the sunlight, at the edge of the river. Within it were the shapeless ruins of those queer things the pale-faces had made—broken palisades, yawning houses, the tottering thing they called a church; and, all about, the hideous, ghastly traces of living and of dying. The sun went down; and, in the gloom of the summer night, from the forest and the marsh wild things came creeping ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... marriage cakes but in brilliant colours, gold, emerald, pink, and vermilion; these they placed on the pavement in front of them. There were dark-robed people, men and women from somewhere towards China, some of them old and tottering, and Chinese, Burmese, Shans, Kachins, Karens, and people of Asia that I could not place, all kneeling, sitting, and bowing in the warm glow of light that comes from the great golden Buddha behind the gates. Amongst them were ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... with heart-felt rejoicings the news that we were to be delivered from the French alliance. But York gazed on us with grave, gloomy eyes, and said, with a faint smile; 'It is all very well for you, young men, to talk in this way. But the head of your old commander is tottering on his shoulders.' [Footnote: This whole scene is historical.—Vide Droysen, vol. i., p. 487.] In the morning he summoned all the officers of his corps to his headquarters, and informed them in an affecting speech of the decision he had ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... alleviate my little friend's misery,—that subtile and mysterious agency, which, in our blindness and need, we term Chance, interposed its offices, rolled away the cloud from the mystery, and, like a good angel, rescued Clarian, even as he was tottering upon the very brink of the dismal precipice to whose ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... there was interposed the stupid, sullen wall of prejudices and suspicions with which weakness naturally imagines to shelter and protect itself from force. But this wall is cracking, tottering, and beginning to crumble to ruins under the action of the soil and the atmosphere—under the influx of the sentiments awakened by this great movement of friendship on the part of the United States ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... in either party. It has been said of Erasmus, that he would have purified and repaired the venerable fabric of the church, with a light and cautious touch, fearful lest learning, virtue, and religion should be buried in its fall, while Luther struck at the tottering ruin with a bold and reckless hand, confident that a new and more beautiful temple ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... self-consciousness had reaped in anticipation the rebel's reward. And now, though he was nearer detestation than before, there was still no Party of revolt for him to lead. But he worked on undaunted, Titanic, spending his money to subsidize tottering democratic papers, using his summer journeyings to try to attach not abilities in the countries he passed through, and his stay at the waters to draw up a great speech, with which he toured on his return. And now a new cry! The cowardly venal Press must be swept ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... not with the "Saviour of Society," who maintains for temporary reasons a tottering edifice. He naturally applauds the man who builds on sure foundations, or the man who in order to reach those foundations boldly removes the accumulated lumber of the past. But there are times when perhaps the choice lies only between conservation ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... freemen or die. Their next measures were in accordance with this oath. At this time, the emigrants, who had greatly increased since the king had failed in his attempt at flight, had begun to arm foreign courts in their own favour and for the support of the tottering throne of France. Austria, Russia, and Prussia had definitely promised their aid; the King of Sweden, Gustavus III., had offered to be the commander of the allies; and other European courts, though they had not yet resolved ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... and now the brightest of crystal streams invited us to stoop and drink. We were starved so that we had looked at each other with maniac thoughts, and now we placed in our mouth the very fat of the land. We had seen our cattle almost perishing; seen them grow gaunt and tottering; seen them slowly plod along with hanging heads and only the supremacy of human will over animal instinct had kept them from lying down never to rise again. Now they were in pastures of sweet grass, chewing the cud of content and satisfaction. Life which had been a burden grew sweet ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... stared around the wrecked room whose tottering walls seemed about to fall upon him. Where was Thalma? In a frenzy he stared into the darkness, felt over the ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... of that independence of which it had been deprived ever since the time of Henry VII. They were encouraged by the visibly increasing weakness of Lord North's administration. Throughout the year 1781 it was evidently tottering to its fall. And on the 22d of February, 1782, Grattan brought forward in the Irish House of Commons a resolution, intended, if carried, to lay the foundation of a bill, "that a claim of any body of men other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to bind ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... Brigham felt a creep as of some live horror over her very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold, before an inflection of his voice. She rose, tottering on weak knees. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Had he studied only his own interests, he would have maintained an exact neutrality between those great monarchies; nor would he have hazarded his ill-acquired and unsettled power by provoking foreign enemies who might lend assistance to domestic faction, and overturn his tottering throne. But his magnanimity undervalued danger; his active disposition and avidity of extensive glory made him incapable of repose: and as the policy of men is continually warped by their temper, no sooner was peace made with Holland, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... further, this brave man set about a task that seemed to me at that moment not only superhuman but impossible. Gathering himself up, he prepared to make a spring, and in another instant would have launched himself toward that rocking beam, if Cecile, driven to extremity by the slow tottering of the floor upon which ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... love divine To make these mystic temples thine! When wasting age and wearying strife Have sapped the leaning walls of life, When darkness gathers over all, And the last tottering pillars-fall, Take the poor dust thy mercy warms, And mould it into ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... long, who came close to the mother, just then engaged in cleaning her offspring. She ran off, bleating for her lamb to follow. The little chap, however, came to the conclusion that the steer was calling it, and went tottering up to the huge animal, that towered above him like the side of a canyon, apparently much to the latter's embarrassment. The steer eyed it carefully, and lifted his legs out of the way as the lamb ran against them, even backing a little, as if as surprised as I had been when ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... and resulted in his killing himself and the greater portion of his family. The newspapers of San Francisco permitted this water company to go on borrowing money and cooking dividends, under cover of which the cunning financiers crept out of the tottering concern, leaving the crash to come upon poor and unsuspecting stockholders, without offering to expose the villainy at work. We hope the fearful massacre detailed above may prove the saddest result of ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... or the mortar, the wood-work or the nails, the walls or the chimneys, that would make them weak and tottering, instead of ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... with the oak door opened and a big man with a white bandage round his throat stood there with tottering limbs and an ugly smile on his loose mouth. Littimer ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... Professor Lachsyrma groped for it. Such objects are generally found beneath the head. There was a seal at each end, both of which he broke. A roll of papyrus was inside. He trembled, and with forced deliberation made for the table, his knees tottering from exhaustion. Excitement at this unexpected discovery made him forget Carrel. The ghastly events of the evening were for the moment blotted from his memory. After all, he was a palaeographer—an archaeologist first, a murderer afterwards. Eagerly, painfully, he began to read, ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... mind you, did he ever get for taking care of you? What did he ever get for starting that colony of sick people up on the mountain back of his hunting lodge, with a doctor right there, and a nurse or two paid by father? Do you suppose it made him feel good to see them tottering all over the preserve where he could no longer shoot, for fear of hitting some ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... have said, was an Italian, was called Il Signor Giacomo Busoni. Workmen were immediately called in, and that same night the passengers at the end of the faubourg saw with surprise that carpenters and masons were occupied in repairing the lower part of the tottering house. ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... receive and accredit him. When he reached Vera Cruz, on the 30th of November, 1845, he found that the aspect of affairs had undergone an unhappy change. The Government of General Herrera, who was at that time President of the Republic, was tottering to its fall. General Paredes, a military leader, had manifested his determination to overthrow the Government of Herrera by a military revolution, and one of the principal means which he employed to effect his purpose and render the Government of Herrera ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk
... having slightly tasted of the mighty stream, they think that they have drunk it dry, though their throats are hardly moistened. And because they are not grounded in the first rudiments at the fitting time, they build a tottering edifice on an unstable foundation, and now that they have grown up, they are ashamed to learn what they ought to have learned while young, and thus they are compelled to suffer for ever for too hastily jumping at dignities they have not deserved. For these and ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... "Thou wast tottering with age—hovering on the brink of the tomb—suspended to a thread which the finger of a child might have snapped," continued the demon; "and in one short hour thou wast restored to ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... of his own age aspire to ensnare him, but also women of all ages back to adolescence. Hence his average or typical opponent tends to be progressively younger and younger than he is, and in the end the mere advantage of her youth may be sufficient to tip over his tottering defences. This, I take it, is why oldish men are so often intrigued by girls in their teens. It is not that age calls maudlinly to youth, as the poets would have it; it is that age is no match for youth, especially when age is male and youth is female. The case of the late Henrik Ibsen was typical. ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... starving wretch, over head and ears in debt, and with one foot in the workhouse. When Clare set out as a pedlar, therefore, they all declared that his ambition was carrying him too high. 'Pride comes before the fall,' said the old ones, tottering to, the door, and stretching their necks to get a sight of neighbour John. He took no heed of all the signs of curiosity, but walked briskly up the road towards the north. The sun shone bright when he started; but before long it began to rain heavily, so that he was ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... thunder. And on all sides round, the mountains by the mouths of caves emitted those sounds in echo, like a cow lowing. And as it was being shaken by the reports produced by the lashing of the tail, the mountain with its summits tottering, began to crumble all around. And overcoming that roaring of mad elephants, the sounds of his tail spread over the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... like frightened rabbits, each to his own burrow. An old man who was sitting in the warm afternoon sun on the little bamboo platform before his hut was aroused from his lethargic repose by the scampering away of the children. He arose, trembling upon his tottering limbs, all drawn and twisted, and hobbled ...
— An Epoch in History • P. H. Eley
... their enraptured vision on his return from Malta. Where was that gaiety now that made all eyes sparkle, that vivacious spirit that kindled energy in every bosom? How miserable to see him crawling about with a wretched stick, with his thin, pale face, and tottering limbs, and scarcely any other pursuit than to creep about the pleasaunce, where, when the day was fair, his servant would place a camp-stool opposite the cedar tree where he had first beheld Henrietta ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... the doctor's aid, for she could scarcely stand; tottering, she stepped forward between him and the executioner, who took charge of her immediately after the sentence was read, and was not allowed to leave her before it was completely carried out. They all three entered the chapel and went into the choir, where the doctor and the marquise knelt in ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... if he figures as an Englishman, and rail at him if he figures as an Irishman. So the Union has never even applied English laws to Ireland, but only coercions and concessions both specially designed for Ireland. From Pitt's time to our own this tottering alternation has continued; from the time when the great O'Connell, with his monster meetings, forced our government to listen to Catholic Emancipation to the time when the great Parnell, with his obstruction, forced ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... in breathless silence, for her approach. And now she comes—she is here! She is caught in the eager grasp of the brave youth; and, the next instant, by the giant effort of the strong man above them, they are together drawn up within a few feet of the bending and tottering bridge. But with all his desperate exertions, he can raise them no higher, and there they hang suspended over the dark abyss of whirling waters that had opened in the disrupturing mass beneath, at the instant, as if to receive them; while a mountain billow of ice, that must overwhelm them with certain ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... fulness and earnestness of Faith, Homer, and Shakspeare; and from these we may go down step by step among the mighty men of every age, securely and certainly observant of diminished lustre in every appearance of restlessness and effort, until the last trace of true inspiration vanishes in the tottering affectations or the tortured insanities of modern times. There is no art, no pursuit, whatsoever, but its results may be classed by this test alone; everything of evil is betrayed and winnowed away by it, glitter and confusion and glare of color, inconsistency or absence ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... imaginations, Nina!' said Kate. 'Is not that boundless sweep before us as fine as your boasted Campagna? Does not the night wind career over it as joyfully, and is not the moonlight as picturesque in its breaks by turf-clamp and hillock as by ruined wall and tottering temple? In a word, are not we as well here, to drink in all this delicious silence, as if we were ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... earthquake shock came without warning, its motion apparently being from east to west. At first the upheaval of the earth was gradual, but in a few seconds it increased in intensity. Chimneys began to fall and buildings to crack, tottering ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... previous spring, and never since. It was impossible to see her tricked out in this fashion, and doubt her knowledge of the damning fact. He held it for proved that she was dressed to leave him; and the sight of her, refreshed and rejuvenated, gave the last thrust to his tottering sense. He demanded with such savageness the meaning of her adornment, that the indignant amazement with which she turned on him was ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... different houses, swelled in no small degree. These odious matters being left to putrefy in the close and heavy air, emitted an insupportable stench, to which every court and passage poured forth a contribution of its own. Many parts, even of the main streets, with their projecting stories tottering overhead and nearly shutting out the sky, were more like huge chimneys than open ways. At the corners of some of these, great bonfires were burning to prevent infection from the plague, of which it was rumoured that some citizens ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... years back when Ruth's mother was but a tottering child. They would not suffer me to dwell in peace among them, but drove me out because I testified ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... man had come into the social scheme at a moment when the conception of existence as a present life corrected by a life to come, was tottering; and the conception of the world as an upper-class ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... at a glance. She beheld Cayrol livid, tottering, and excited. She felt Jeanne trembling on her breast; she saw something serious had occurred. She calmed herself and put on a cold manner to enable her the better to suppress any resistance that ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Master said, A man of simple faith, who loves learning, who guards and betters his way unto death, will not enter a tottering kingdom, nor stay in a lawless land. When all below heaven follows the Way, he is seen; when it loses the Way, he is unseen. While his land keeps the Way, he is ashamed to be poor and lowly; but when his land has lost the Way, wealth ...
— The Sayings Of Confucius • Confucius
... Friedrich! One of the last pillars struck away from his tottering affairs. "Inevitable, then? We are over with it, then?" One may fancy Friedrich's reflections. But he showed nothing of them to anybody; in a few hours, had his mind composed, and new plans on the anvil. On the morrow of that Austrian Joy-Firing,—morrow, or some day ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... direction. He prefers bye-ways to highways. When the full tide of human life pours along to some festive show, to some pageant of a day, Elia would stand on one side to look over an old book-stall, or stroll down some deserted pathway in search of a pensive description over a tottering door-way, or some quaint device in architecture, illustrative of embryo art and ancient manners. Mr. Lamb has the very soul of an antiquarian, as this implies a reflecting humanity; the film of the past hovers for ever before him. He is shy, sensitive, the reverse ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... guardhouse, they make a halt, for the forester's wife is the daughter of their good host at Barbizon. And so there they are hospitably received by the comely woman, with one child in her arms and another prattling and tottering at her gown, and drink some syrup of quince in the back parlour, with a map of the forest on the wall, and some prints of love-affairs and the great Napoleon hunting. As they draw near the Quadrilateral, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Metternich extending his hand over Bologna, France treating Austria sharply at Ancona, at the North no one knew what sinister sound of the hammer nailing up Poland in her coffin, irritated glances watching France narrowly all over Europe, England, a suspected ally, ready to give a push to that which was tottering and to hurl herself on that which should fall, the peerage sheltering itself behind Beccaria to refuse four heads to the law, the fleurs-de-lys erased from the King's carriage, the cross torn from Notre Dame, Lafayette lessened, Laffitte ruined, Benjamin Constant ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... old man, rising to his full height (he was exactly five-foot five) in his indignation. "I say you must use the data only! You mustn't even assume which it is that comes of age!" He clutched the bag as he spoke, and with tottering steps (it was about as much as he could do to carry ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... broader in the national costume, which also conceals the defects of their figures. So lean, so yellow, so ugly, yet so pleasant-looking, so wanting in colour and effectiveness; the women so very small and tottering in their walk; the children so formal- looking and such dignified burlesques on the adults, I feel as if I had seen them all before, so like are they to their pictures on trays, fans, and tea-pots. The hair of the women is all drawn away from their faces, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... at the tent-door. He was coming out, very feeble and tottering, with that dazed look which (according to me) has always been characteristic of him. He had a bundle of papers in his hand. He had been setting in order his report of what had happened to him, to be submitted to the Maire. 'Monsieur,' he said, ...
— A Beleaguered City • Mrs. Oliphant
... merely first cousins, as Mr. Whistler once remarked. Their history to a great degree is contemporaneous. They have seen dynasties arise, grow old, and die; and schools of art, once the pride of the people, sink into blank forgetfulness: for schools, like dynasties and men, live their day and go tottering to their rest. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... like a dream. He was dimly conscious of rushing down those steps shortly after, with a precious burden in his arms. How he struggled through the smoke and fire, or how he kept his feet on that tottering staircase, no one knows. It's enough to say he struggled forward down the stairs and across the hall as far as the outer door, where some one snatched his unharmed burden from his arms and carried her to a place of safety, where already her father, tended ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... have taken possession of the city at once. And it is even quite probable that this contingency was considered a foregone conclusion, since British agents were now actively at work in Washington's own camp, undermining the feeble authority which everybody believed was tottering to its fall. Be that as it may, the fact remains that active operations were for the present wholly suspended. At the officers' messes or in the barracks all the talk was of going home. Besides, if Howe had really wanted to take Philadelphia there was nothing to prevent ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... alleged infallibility, become objects of research. To us this signifies that she no longer has faith in herself. The Catholic Church, which proclaims herself the channel of life, to-day chains and stifles all that lives youthfully within her, to-day seeks to prop all that is tottering and aged within her, To us these things mean death, distant, but inevitable death. The Catholic Church, claiming to wish to renew all things through Christ, is hostile to us, who strive to wrest the direction ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... it does the last remnant of hostile feelings and the recollections of bitter wrongs; while the snuff-box of the diplomat contains the precious dust that has soothed the fierce hatred of rival houses and cemented the divided factions of a tottering throne. ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... this matter only that maritime affairs in the East took a turn contrary to Nelson's wishes. Since he had persuaded himself that to bolster up the corrupt and tottering throne of Naples was the most important of his functions, he had become desirous that the isolation and blockade of the French army in Egypt,—a factor so decisive by its numbers, its brilliant efficiency, and the singular genius and renown of its general and his lieutenants,—should ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... attitude of conciliation toward the white South; they accept the "Atlanta Compromise" in its broadest interpretation; they recognize, with him, many signs of promise, many men of high purpose and fair judgment, in this section; they know that no easy task has been laid upon a region already tottering under heavy burdens. But, nevertheless, they insist that the way to truth and right lies in straightforward honesty, not in indiscriminate flattery; in praising those of the South who do well and criticising uncompromisingly those who ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... He paused, tottering, and presently sank upon the ground, his hands drooped before him, his head bent down. Old Fatima touched ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... "Well, I'm a tottering imbecile. What's the matter with my legs?—my prophetic soul, it hurts! Oh, I see; that's where the old warrior's hoof caught me sideways. Now, I'll tell you what, I'm going to have another moose to take back ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... as a panther, he sprang to one side, placing himself on the defensive, and his hand upon his pistol ready for any emergency. His startled gaze met a pitiful sight. Ragged and tattered, his hands, trembling and face blanched with the first touch of delirium tremens, stood Oscar Cook. Tottering up to Cummings, he ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... Bourbon hurled at last, From France's tottering throne, A proud Napoleon reigning there, France, ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... contrary to my opinion? It is not fit for me, a girl of twenty, to go disputing and dragooning as you would have me; but a little savoir faire, a grain of common sense, thrown in among the babble, always works. Don't you remember how Mrs. Ward's sister told us that a whole crowd of tottering Chinese ladies would lean on her, because they felt her firm support, though ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... the white-painted iron of the roof into a twisted and blackened mass. It fell in presently with a deafening roar, bringing one chimney with it; and soon all that Wally had to look at was a smouldering heap of coals, in the midst of which one chimney stood, tottering and solitary, with the kitchen stove a glowing mass of red-hot iron, and strangely contorted masses of metal that once were beds. The boy uttered ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... set a crock of water, while to the communal feast each person brings from his own hut a piece of meat, raw preferred. This meat is eaten in the solemn silence of a communion, each person thinking of Sidne, the Good Spirit, and wishing for good. The oldest member of the tribe, a white-haired man or tottering dame, takes up a sealskin cup, kept for this annual ceremony, dips up some of the water and drinks it, all the time thinking of Sidne, the Good Spirit, while the others close their eyes in ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... wedge Of underbush has cleft its course in twain, Till where beyond it staggers up again; The long, grey rails stretch in a broken line Their ragged length of rough, split forest pine, And in their zigzag tottering have reeled In drunken efforts to enclose the field, Which carries on its breast, September born, A patch of rustling, yellow, Indian corn. Beyond its shrivelled tassels, perched upon The topmost rail, sits Joe, the settler's son, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... usually equal to an exciting occasion without any such reinforcements; and his desire for the brandy-and-water implied that the too sudden joy had fallen with a dangerous shock on a frame depressed by four years of gloom and unaccustomed hard fare. But that first doubtful tottering moment passed, he seemed to gather strength with his gathering excitement; and the next day, when he was seated at table with his creditors, his eye kindling and his cheek flushed with the consciousness that he was about to make an honorable ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... the animal his head, and he leaped cleanly and accurately to the ledge, striking with feet close together on the narrow space. On the instant he struck, Lute lightly touched his neck with the rein, impelling him to the left; and in that instant, tottering on the insecure footing, with front feet slipping over into the pool beyond, he lifted on his hind legs, with a half turn, sprang to the left, and dropped squarely down to the tiny gravel bed. An easy jump brought him across the stream, and Lute angled ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... tottering steps, for the King had grown a feeble old man, he led the way from the great hall. Behind him came the doctor and the Hermit. John followed, with the animals in his arms and close ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... bleeding, dead, gave, as it were, an after throb of pain as it thought of you. In life you never denied me a request. I have one to make from my grave, knowing that you will not deny me. Love Bernard as your son; draw him to you, so that, when in your old age you go tottering to your tomb in quest of me, you may have a son to bear you up. Take my lifeless body on your knee and kiss me as you did of old. It will help me to ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... to rise and set. And as he watched, his eyes were fixed ever on the north, looking for the signal of fire which should bring good tidings to the Queen and to all Argos. For now the great city of Troy was tottering to its fall, and the ten years' toil was coming to ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... would be in effect the most enormous vote of credit that was ever given in the world? Gentlemen insinuate, that the taking the Hanoverian forces into British pay, is a criminal complaisance, calculated only to confirm an infant and a tottering administration. But how much greater means for such a purpose, would an alternative like this afford? Suppose a minister, unfirm in his new-acquired power, to ingratiate himself with his prince, should propose a scheme to replenish ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... impetuosity, rather than cruelty or brutality. He was, however, essentially egotistical and insincere; he was republican, not from conviction, but from prudential motives; he adhered to the throne a while, and deserted it only when he saw that it was tottering; for a time he belonged to the moderate party in the Republic, and voted with the Girondists; he gradually joined the Jacobins, as he saw that they were triumphing over their rivals, and afterwards was one of those who handed over the leaders of the Reign of Terror to the guillotine, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... with an unmoved face at Enderby soaking some biscuit in the tin for his wife. Then, with the ragged sail fluttering to the wind, Langton headed the boat through the passage into the glassy waters of the lagoon, and the two tottering men, leading the woman between them, sought the shelter of a thicket scrub, impenetrable to the rays of the sun, and slept. And then for a week Enderby went and scoured the reefs for ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... permanent in history; but the force of the ten thousand Athenians who fought at Marathon and of the other thousands at Salamis, saved democracy for Europe and made possible the civilization of the Occident. The force employed by King Louis of France to support a tottering throne and continue the exploitation of the people by an idle and selfish aristocratic caste, accomplished nothing permanent in history; but the force of those Frenchmen who marched upon Paris, singing the Marseillaise, made possible the freedom and ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs
... with an assurance, a certainty, that was at once baffling and unbaffled. In the presence of her sister's unbroken and unshaken will and resolute assertion of her smallest rights, Cleopatra shrank as before the force of an elemental upheaval. Her tottering self-confidence swayed ominously in the neighbourhood of the younger girl, and it was with alarm and helplessness in her eyes, that she sought a refuge where she ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... might have come Lydia did not know for an old squaw came tottering into the fire glow. She was gray ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Ripton's signalization of his devotion to the bridal pair, Mrs. Berry's maid entered the room to say that a gentleman was inquiring below after the young gentleman who had departed, and found her mistress with a tottering wineglass in her hand, exhibiting every symptom of unconsoled hysterics. Her mouth gaped, as if the fell creditor had her by the swallow. She ejaculated with horrible exultation that she had been and done ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... comes hobbling at his call; Lifts up her withered hand in dull surprise, And, tottering, leads him through the pillared hall; "What! come at last to bless my lady's eyes! Dear heart, sweet heart, she's grown a likesome maid— Go, seek her where she sitteth in ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... child's loss than his own, awakening within him an almost angry sorrow. That the life and progress on which he built such hopes, should be endangered in the outset by so mean a want; that Dombey and Son should be tottering for a nurse, was a sore humiliation. And yet in his pride and jealousy, he viewed with so much bitterness the thought of being dependent for the very first step towards the accomplishment of his soul's desire, on a hired serving-woman who would be to the child, for ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... she smiled, tottering. "Get a cab." It suddenly occurred to her that she might quite as easily have given him the money in English notes; he could have changed them. But she had not thought. Her brain would not operate. She was dreaming ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... protruding, became visible, as if suspended between the two hands that grasped a doorpost on each side of the face. The tassel of his blue woollen nightcap, cocked forward, danced gaily over his left eyelid. He stepped out in a tottering stride. He looked powerful as ever, but showed a strange and affected unsteadiness in his gait; his face was perhaps a trifle thinner, and his eyes appeared rather startlingly prominent. He seemed to hasten the retreat of departing light by his ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... story?—"Don't hurry yourself, my cousin!" O admirable king and Christian! what a pitch of condescension is here, that the greatest king of all the world should go for to say anything so kind, and really tell a tottering old gentleman, worn out with gout, age, and wounds, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... old and young as the earth itself is; he is a March day, with winter and spring in its sunset and sunrise. Who ever saw a blue heron with his jewel eye dimmed or his natural force abated? Who ever caught one sleeping, or saw him tottering weakly on his long legs, as one so often sees our common wild birds clinging feebly to a branch with their last grip? A Cape Cod sailor once told me that, far out from land, his schooner had passed a blue heron lying dead on the sea ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... will appear in the sequel. Even the name he bore ought to have opened our eyes as to his influence with the Great Mogul: as Mocrub signifies as much as his own bowels, Khan meaning great lord. Yet I was deluded to believe that his favour with the king was tottering, and that he might easily be brought into disgrace, by complaint of any thing done contrary to the will or humour of the king; so that we were too bold, and injured our business when we found him opposing us, as we ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... because so many people looked at Duncan's pale heavy face and tottering steps that the gentleman, after a a few minutes, took him up and carried him. They went some little distance, till they came to a small shop, the window of which was full of all kinds of papers and pictures. The gentleman ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... on the white moor-roads; and, as I swung along one autumn afternoon up the path which leads from the Glen of Callowa to the Gled, I saw a figure before me which I knew for my friend. When I overtook him, his appearance puzzled and troubled me. Age seemed to have come on him at a bound, and in the tottering figure and the stoop of weakness I had difficulty in recognising the hardy frame of the man as I had known him. Something, too, had come over his face. His brow was clouded, and the tan of weather stood out hard and cruel on a blanched cheek. His eye ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... her the fit tool for the self-seeking ring of courtiers. John of Gaunt sought her support as the best means of withdrawing the old king from the influence of the Prince of Wales, and the lay ministers were glad to maintain themselves in their tottering power by means of such powerful allies. Prominent among their party were courtier nobles—such as the chamberlain, Lord Latimer, and the steward of the household, Lord Neville of Raby,—and rich London financiers, chief among whom was Richard Lyons, men who made exorbitant profits out of the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... questions,—questions neither propounded nor solved in any of the two hundred constitutions which Aristotle studied in order to prepare himself for the composition of his "Politics." The world had not yet seen a powerful nation tottering on the brink of anarchy, with all the elements of prosperity in her bosom,—nor a bankrupt state sustaining a war that demanded annual millions, and growing daily in wealth and power,—nor the economical phenomena which followed the reopening of Continental commerce in 1814,—nor the still more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Tottering with weakness, she came forward, and delivered her basket. It was of full weight, as Legree well perceived; but, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the last words disclosed the precarious hold he had over himself. He was like a man defying his own dizziness in high places and tottering suddenly on the very edge of the precipice. Miss Haldin pressed her hand to her breast. The dropped black veil lay on the floor between them. Her movement steadied him. He looked intently on that hand till it descended slowly, and then raised again his eyes to her face. ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... beguil'd, The sports of children satisfy the child; Each nobler aim, repress'd by long control, 155 Now sinks at last, or feebly mans the soul; While low delights, succeeding fast behind, In happier meanness occupy the mind: As in those domes, where Caesars once bore sway, Defac'd by time and tottering in decay, 160 There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed, And, wond'ring man could want the larger pile, Exults, and owns ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... was musing upon the scene, and calling up all that train of ideas before my imagination, which possessed your own upon beholding it, an ancient figure, with a beard that would have suited a sea-god, stepped out of a boat, and tottering up the steps of the quay, presented himself before me with a basket in his hand. He stayed dripping a few moments before he pronounced a syllable, and when he began his discourse, I was in doubt whether I should ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... may go down step by step among the mighty men of every age, securely and certainly observant of diminished lustre in every appearance of restlessness and effort, until the last trace of inspiration vanishes in the tottering affectation or tortured insanities of modern times." ("Modern Painters," vol. ii., p. 253.) This was surely plain speaking enough, and from that day to this my effort has been not less continually to make the heart of Greek ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... loud lamentations and muttered curses; but when the girl had vanished in the darkness, she turned back, saying fiercely through her set teeth: "Rush on to ruin, you headstrong creature! If I see aright, the magnificence here is already tottering. Go and get wet! I've made my profit, and the two unfinished gowns can be added to the account. The Lord is my witness that I meant well. But will she ever do what sensible people advise? Always ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... harmony, the plaything of foolish louts! No! In our day it was not so, and it was not this for which we strove. No, no, not this at all. I don't recognise it.... Our day will come again and will turn all the tottering fabric of to-day into a true path. If not, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... case you are not adequately intrigued by either of these romances, I can also tell you that Sir William (big and burly) and Trixie Harrison, though married, gave considerable cause for anxiety before with "outstretched hands she went tottering towards him." Even the most jaded novel-readers will suffer thrills and surprises from The Music Makers, and occasionally, perhaps, they will wonder whether coincidence's long arm has not been stretched to the point ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various
... sprang up from a table, his face ghastly pale and distorted as though with terror. His eyes were wild and staring. He chattered incoherently as he hastened away with tottering steps. Then his hands gripped his hair, as though about to tear it ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... interrupted by the appearance of Rosabella, who, with tottering steps and pale cheeks, advanced slowly into the apartment. She saw Flodoardo, and a faint blush overspread her countenance. Flodoardo rose from his seat, and welcomed her with an air ...
— The Bravo of Venice - A Romance • M. G. Lewis
... furious; the hangings flung upon the sleepers, then fastened with the interlacing crooks, and wrapped tightly round them as they slumbered; the brand set to the mansion, the burning of the guests, the royal palace consumed with fire and tottering down; the visit to the sleeping-room of Feng, the theft of his sword, the useless one set in its place; and the king slain with his own sword's point by his stepson's hand. All this was there, painted upon Amleth's battle-shield ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the tensioned muscles of Durnief relaxed. His arms fell from their clasp around me. I pushed him aside as though he were dead, and for a moment believed that he was; then springing upright, to my feet, I was just in time to catch the tottering form of my princess, who, though not unconscious, had spent her last remaining strength in that third blow. Her left hand held Durnief's sword. In her right was the mujik's whip, and I saw that she had used the stock of it to ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman
... exciting times, when our country is enduring the throes of political convulsion, and every time-honored institution, every well-regulated law of society seems tottering from the broad foundation of the past, how few are there who ask themselves the question, What is to be our future? For the past two years we have lived in a state of extraordinary and unnatural excitement, beside which the jog-trot existence of the former ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... to distance each other, and held together by the gall of the harness. The broken boughs snapped, the earth flew up beneath their hoofs; their feet struck scarlet sparks of fire from the stones, the carriage was whirled, rocking and tottering, through the maze of tree-trunks, towering like pillars of black stone up against the steel-blue clearness of the sky. The strain was intense; the danger deadly. Suddenly, straight ahead, beyond the darkness of the foliage, ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... stock, then came the period of Roman control, to say nothing of the temporary Carthaginian occupancy, and now, finally, on the ruins of this Roman province, there rose a Gothic kingdom of power and might. The foundations of Roman social life were already tottering, for it had been established from the beginning upon the notion of family headship, and the individual had no natural rights which the government was bound to respect, and, all in all, it was little calculated ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... very grave and solemn, and to acknowledge the audience with a slight inclination of the upper part of her body. Her head-dress was a most remarkable head-dress. In front was fastened a nosegay of Italian flowers of porcelain, which kept up a strange trembling and tottering as she sang. At the end, after the audience had greeted her with no stinted measure of applause, she proudly handed the music-roll to my uncle, and permitted him to dip his thumb and finger into a little porcelain snuff-box, fashioned in the shape of a pug dog, out of which ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... He felt quite incompetent to convert Marcolina to his own way of thinking; all the more as he increasingly realized that her counterstrokes were threatening to demolish the tottering intellectual edifice which, of late years, he had been accustomed to mistake for faith. He took refuge in the trite assertion that such views as Marcolina's were a menace, not only to the ecclesiastical ordering of society, but to the very foundations of social life. ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... of philosophy, out of abstract speculation, had come a way of looking at nature for which the physicians were mainly responsible, and which has changed forever men's views on disease. Medicine broke its leading strings to religion and philosophy—a tottering, though lusty, child whose fortunes we are to follow in these lectures. I have a feeling that, could we know more of the medical history of the older races of which I spoke in the first lecture, we might find that this was not the first-born of Asklepios, that there had been ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... decided corroborative than all the rest. Courtiers of either sex are skilful judges of the shiftings of the wind of court favour, and I deemed it high time to summon my brother-in-law to my assistance, as well as to urge him to exert his utmost energies to support my tottering power. My communication tormented comte Jean as much as it did me; he proposed several means of combating this rising inclination on the part of Louis XV. I assented to whatever he suggested, and we set ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... Padua, of Salerno and Pisa, had fallen from the days when at Bologna alone there were twenty thousand students; but they were still thronged with pupils, and taught by renowned professors. When the young Sidney came to Venice, Titian was just tottering into the grave, nearly a hundred years old, but still holding the pencil which Charles V. had picked up and handed to him in his studio. Galileo was a youth of twenty, studying mathematics at Pisa. The melancholy Tasso was completing ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... blue sky, all the more intense from its contrast; or at a long whirl of white surf and gray spray; or, turning the eyes inland toward the lagoon, at dark masses of mangrove, above which rise, black and awful, the dying balatas, stag-headed, blasted, tottering to their fall; and all as through an atmosphere of Rhine wine, or from the inside of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... barrico of water, and took it in; he then hastened to Ready, who was on his knees. Mr. Seagrave, hearing the musket fired, had run out, and finding the stockade door open, followed William, and seeing him endeavouring to support Ready, caught hold of his other arm, and they led him tottering into the stockade; the door was then immediately secured, and ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... in oft' changing scene, A tottering form appears in the dream, Furrowed his face from indulgence in sins, Eternity lost, to gold fondly clings. He'd bartered his soul a few years to live, And sinking the grave has nothing to give, Unloved and embittered ...
— Poems - A Message of Hope • Mary Alice Walton
... ingratitude of the masses, vacillated between his own generous impulses and the despotic demands of the court party. By the King's weakness, more than by all else, were loosened the foundations of that throne of France, already tottering under its long-accumulated weight of injustice, of mad extravagance, ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... sad sight to see them do it. The younger women ran actively, carrying the infants and leading the smaller children by the hands, and soon disappeared; but it was otherwise with the old people. These, men and women, bowed with age, and tottering as much from terror as decrepitude, hobbled along, panting as they went, and stumbling over every trifling obstruction in their path, being sometimes obliged to stop and rest, though death might be the consequence; and among these there were a few stray little creatures ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... time Parson Polsue, with his sermon tucked under his arm, was tottering up the pulpit stairs, and Churchwarden Hancock standing underneath, as usual, to watch him arrive safe or to break his fall if he tumbled. And just as he reached the top and caught hold of the desk cushion to stay himself, Lord William dropped out of view in the face of the ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the country, a general feeling of jealousy was roused: and even in England it was thought that the point at issue here was not the possession of a small principality, but the confirmation of the House of Austria and the Papacy in their already tottering dominion over these provinces of the Lower Rhine, which might exercise such an important influence on the State of Europe.[346] When Henry IV joined the German Union and the Dutch for the protection of the two ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... to thrust thyself audaciously into the presence of God, and made thee there, even before his holy eyes, which are so pure, that they cannot look on iniquity (Hab 1:13), to vaunt, boast, and brag of thyself, and of thy tottering, ragged, stinking uncleanness; for all our righteousnesses are as menstruous rags, because they flow from a thing, a heart, a ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... together in the hall now. The Bishop had known Morrison well and greatly liked him, and he could think of nothing but the man himself. The question of the succession could not come near him that day, and as he stood, a little white-haired figure, tottering on his stick in the flagged hall, he seemed already to be far from the others, to be caught already half-way along the road that Morrison ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... and while struggling to master himself from uttering the disrespectful retort risen to his lips, his brother again accidentally entered the room, and by giving Robert the moment to pause, happily rescued his tottering duty from that ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter |
