"Verge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... family, which the doctor's presence would inevitably recall. Once before, Mrs. Carteret's life had been endangered by encountering, at a time of great nervous strain, this ill-born sister and her child. She was even now upon the verge of collapse at the prospect of her child's suffering, and should be protected from the intrusion of any idea which ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... whatever it was, ought now to be within the range of our vision, and Murdock intently scrutinised the darkening sea ahead for some sign of it, but in vain. Then he turned his glances shoreward and saw Cunningham standing on the verge of the bluff, vigorously waving us to ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... Worse, with the pious Sara Torvested, and the attempts of his mother-in-law to convert him, are described, not with the merely superficial drollery to which the subject invites, but with a sweet and delicate humor, which trembles on the verge ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... worked, and her clothing was mended to the verge of impending ruin, and her boots leaked, and she had grown thin, but life still held out hope of a sort, a vague promise of better things, some day, at some dim period that would be reached later, ever so much later, perhaps. ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... subjects,—one and all are of vital, human interest, and are extremely attractive on account of their importance in the civilization of today. Mighty, sublime, wonderful, as have been the achievements of past science, as yet we are but on the verge of the continents of discovery. Where is the wizard who can tell what lies in the womb of time? Just as our conceptions of many things have been revolutionized in the past, those which we hold to-day of the cosmic processes may have ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... light stole down the slopes, and we saw that we were at the bottom, or rather, nearly at the bottom, of the vast pit in front of the entrance to the cave. Now we could make out the dim forms of the three Colossi who sat upon its verge. Doubtless those awful passages, along which we had wandered the livelong night, had been originally in some way connected with the great diamond mine. As for the subterranean river in the bowels of the mountain, Heaven only knows what it is, or ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... Hermann," she said, "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, I don't care. But I don't want a family quarrel, a runaway match, all that horrid newspaper talk." Here she was evidently a little excited and on the verge ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... eventually wash the city walls of Florence. A few steps farther, travelling south, we pass into the valley of the Tiber, and, after traversing a barren upland region for a couple of hours, reach the verge of the descent upon Caprese. Here the landscape assumes a softer character. Far away stretch blue Apennines, ridge melting into ridge above Perugia in the distance. Gigantic oaks begin to clothe the stony hillsides, and little by little a fertile mountain ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... with his own sword. Doth Satan tell thee thou prayest but faintly and with cold devotions? Answer him, I am glad you told me, I will trust the more to Christ's prayers, and groan, sigh, and cry more earnestly at the Throne of Grace." To such readers as have been driven to the verge of despair by a fear of having committed the unpardonable sin, here is strong consolation, and a very explicit scriptural definition of that awful crime. Want of space prevents me adding more than my earnest desire that the reading of this treatise may be productive of solid ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... drawn to this, for it is a correction one will find one's self compelled often to make in his thinking. It is so difficult to keep out of mind the idea of substance in connection with the Natural Laws, the idea that they are the movers, the essences, the energies, that one is constantly on the verge of falling into false conclusions. Thus a hasty glance at the present argument on the part of any one ill-furnished enough to confound Law with substance or with cause would probably lead to its immediate rejection. For, to continue the same line of illustration, ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... no one better, of all the obstacles that have been placed in the way, so cunningly that no man could put a finger on the motive. It has been his persistent resolve to let everything run down, to bring the business to the very verge of bankruptcy. He did not count on Floyd Grandon being so ready to part with his money to save it, or of ever having any personal interest in it, and he did count on his being disgusted with his brother's selfishness, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... men, for they are terribly cruel, and when they get a victim he is tortured with all the horrible rites of the true savage. They know that the moment they are caught that is the end for them, so that they are reckless to the verge of insanity. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... The tide was rising. In a few minutes she was afloat and under way again, safely passing through the barrier of broken stakes and spars. But her brave commander was no more. A shot from one of the batteries had struck and killed him, when on the very verge of gaining the highest honor that man could attain,—that of saving his native town from the horrors of starvation ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Ducrot to seek the protection of the wood of la Garenne, and were pushing up the right bank, likewise in full march upon the plateau of Illy. Their task was almost done; one effort more, and up there at the north, among those barren fields, on the very verge of the dark forests of the Ardennes, the Crown Prince of Prussia would join hands with the Crown Prince of Saxony. To the south of Sedan the village of Bazeilles was lost to sight in the dense smoke of its burning houses, in the clouds of dun vapor that rose above ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the paper slightly, as if to prolong the scene before him. If my uncle had been on the verge of ruin, he could not have ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... this abrupt manner of proceeding, Louis followed Casson to the verge of the lane, and waited ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... its countenance or ill favor, as such banks severally observed or disregarded the ordinary rules of financial prudence. The immediate effect of the refusal of Congress to recharter the Bank of the United States was to bring the Treasury to the verge of bankruptcy. The interference of Parish, Girard, and Astor alone saved the credit of the government, and this interference was no doubt prompted by self-interest. That Mr. Astor was hostile to the bank is certain. Gallatin wrote ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... on the old sofa," he said. "There is much to say to you. We are now on the verge of a ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... of fugitives increased, and now they saw swarms of men who stood here and there, not running, but huddled and irresolute. Never did Fortune, who brought this, her favorite, from the depths, bring him again in her play so near to the verge of destruction. When he came upon the field, the battle seemed wholly lost, and the whole world would have cried that he ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... from Portland: this inlet opens at about two miles west, and grows very broad, and makes a kind of lake within the land of a mile and a half broad, and near three miles in length, the breadth unequal. At the farthest end west of this water is a large duck-coy, and the verge of the water well grown with wood, and proper groves of trees for cover for the fowl: in the open lake, or broad part, is a continual assembly of swans: here they live, feed, and breed, and the number of them is such that, I believe, I did not see so few ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... testified that he was once on the verge of doing what would have brought him undying disgrace when, as if she had been drawn out of the air, his mother stood before him, looking reproachfully at him. Thus the fascination of temptation was broken by what he always believed to have ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... the left of our road. Here the mountains receded, so that above us rose a mighty, dazzling slope of snow and below us lay that same pitiless, unclimbable gulf. As the light began to fade we perceived, half a mile or more in front a bare-topped hillock of rock, which stood on the verge of the precipice, and hurried to it, thinking that from its crest we might be able to discover a way ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... cavern after all, otherwise that poor ape would not have dashed out of it so precipitately, and in such a ghastly state of terror. But what could it be? It must be something even more formidable than a jaguar or a puma, to have terrified that unhappy monkey to the verge of madness; yet, so far as Phil knew, the jaguar was the most dreaded beast to be found in the South American forest. There was but one way of determining the point satisfactorily. So, completely forgetful now ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Especially on an evening when at the highest moment of her justifiable wrath Mr. Freddie would appear and nonchalantly suggest a "few eats for some chaps who'd dropped in" as casually as though Janet were not already on the verge of explosion. Of course she would prepare the lunch, stabbing the bread-saw viciously into the defenseless loaf and muttering dark things as she assembled something she called "old doves" on a big Sheffield platter. Janet couldn't cook at all but she could arrange things as beautifully as ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... tribe of Timurees. Of course, the Governor sends his salaams, and invites me to come round to the government konak and favor him with an exhibition. Since our refusal to entertain any more of the "Shah's relations," we find that the worthy and long-suffering Abbas Khan has been worried almost to the verge of despair by requests from all over the city begging the ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... Blue Pike pain and mental suffering had driven her to the verge of despair. But the day which began so sorrowfully was followed by an evening of delight—she owed to it her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... twitching, his whole frame a-quake. His eyes were snapping wildly. He was like a man who could hardly speak or stand, and fairly on the verge of a fit. ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... And visibly grindeth with its heel in mire The lictors' glorious rods and axes dire, Having them in derision! Again, when earth From end to end is rocking under foot, And shaken cities ruin down, or threaten Upon the verge, what wonder is it then That mortal generations abase themselves, And unto gods in all affairs of earth Assign as last resort almighty powers And wondrous ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... succession. First of all his father bought him a season ticket at the public baths in the North River and made him join a class of small boys for instruction in the manly art of swimming. The world was opening up, Keith felt, and his father was lured to the verge of openly expressed satisfaction at finding that the boy's timidity did not extend ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... he finds himself placed on a pinnacle from which he is called upon to take a perspective survey of the range of science, and to tell us what he can see from his vantage ground; if at such a moment after straining his gaze to the very verge of the horizon, and after describing the most distant of well-defined objects, he should give utterance also to some of the subjective impressions which he is conscious of receiving from regions beyond; if he should depict possibilities which seem opening to his view; if he should ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... horses; scarcely any cattle left in the fields; commerce paralysed by the stoppage of railway and other communications; industry at a complete standstill, with 500,000 men thrown out of work and nearly half of the population which remained in Belgium (3,500,000) on the verge of starvation and entirely dependent for their subsistance on the work ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... whole quiver on me, I have a soul that, like an ample shield, Can take in all, and verge ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... had spoken of. Having given up his previous intention of crossing the stream, there seemed nothing better for him to do than to follow the truant's advice and take the road back to Green Springs. Yet he was loath to leave the wood, halting on its verge, and turning to look back into its charmed recesses. Once or twice—perhaps because he recalled the words of the poem—that yellowish sea of ferns had seemed instinct with hidden life, and he had even fancied, here and ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... said. When we returned to the Guardian-Mother I told Captain Ringgold all about it, in the presence of Flix. The commander immediately directed us to say not a word about it to any person. Even Captain Scott was kept in the dark till he and I were on the verge of ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... notice one or two facts connected with glass, which show that the ancients were on the verge of making one or two very important discoveries in physical science. They were acquainted with the power of transparent spherical bodies to produce heat by the transmission of light, though not with the manner in which that heat was generated by the concentration ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... and, did not even see her, Marjorie's state of mind (not unmingled with emotion!) became dangerous. In fact, a trained nurse, chancing to observe her at this juncture, would probably have advised that she be taken home and put to bed. Marjorie was on the verge of hysterics. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... be her last opportunity. So Mary told herself as she got out of the carriage at Mr Hall's front door. It was made manifest to her by such a speech that he did not expect that she should do so, but looked upon her doing so as within the verge of possibility. She could still do it, and yet not encounter his disgust or his horror. How terrible was the importance to herself, and, as she believed, to the other man also. Was she not justified in so thinking? Mr Gordon had come home, travelling ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... its revelation of the biographer as for its portrayal of the subject. Burton's wife was the loving-est slave that ever wedded with an idol. The story of the courtship is ridiculous almost to the verge of tragic. As a girl, a gypsy woman named Burton, told Isabel Arundell that she would marry one of the palmist's name, would travel ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... done upon a stronger and more systematic principle of contrast than any other of Shakspeare's plays. It moves upon the verge of an abyss, and is a constant struggle between life and death. The action is desperate and the reaction is dreadful. It is a huddling together of fierce extremes, a war of opposite natures which of them shall destroy the other. There is nothing but what has a violent end or violent beginnings. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... his life he always revolved in a distinguished circle, frequenting the English Clubs[B] of both capitals, and being generally considered a man of ability and a pleasant companion, though not a person to be confidently depended upon. In spite of all his ability, he was almost always just on the verge of ruin, and he ultimately left but a small and embarrassed property to his only son. About that son's education, however, he had, after his own ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... or its neighborhood; the number, I think, is limited to twelve. When they muster in force, the sleeping accommodation must necessarily be limited, as Mr. Russell describes it; but there is room and verge enough in the quaint old homestead of the proprietor for any ordinary party. The burly host himself is quite in keeping with the place, and bears his part right jovially in the rough-and-ready revels that contrast ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... our great cities, as did Dickens and Victor Hugo. He confines himself more rigorously than any other novelist of equal power to the ways and manners and entanglements of people who are "in society," or who could be in society if they wanted to, or are on the verge and edge of society. ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... and politicians at one and the same time, in a high social position and in the flower of their age, could not reconcile themselves to the Constable de Montmorency's system, defensive solely and prudential to the verge of inertness; they thought that, in order to repair the reverses of France and for the sake of their own fame, there was something else to be done, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... peaks, which happens to extend entirely across this point of the Upper Alps, thus forming a passage several thousand feet lower than would otherwise be obtained. The convent stands within a few yards of the northern verge of the precipice, and precisely at the spot where the lowest cavity is formed, the rocks beginning to rise, in its front and in its rear, at very short distances from the buildings. A little south of it, the mountains recede sufficiently ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... At the southern verge of the mighty forest called the Andredsweald, or Anderida Sylva, Gilbert d'Aquila, last of that name, founded the Priory of Michelham for the good of ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... would come floating in over the combings of the cabin bulkhead, tumbling him over and washing him aft amidst the debris, almost drowning the man before he could fish himself up again and set to his task anew. His toil, like that of Sisyphus, was ever being renewed when on the verge of completion. ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... public contempt, and in the month of August he was deprived of the best supporter of his administration, by the death of Lord Egremont. The loss of this nobleman brought his cabinet, indeed, to the verge of dissolution, and a coalition of parties was hence deemed desirable. To this end Bute waited, at his majesty's commands, on his stern rival, Pitt, to whom he stated the king's wish of employing political talent and integrity without respect of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Auburn marks the western verge of the mineral zone, but in the fifties there were, rich placer diggings in the immediate vicinity. There are some remarkably solid buildings of that period, in the old portion of the town, which, as customary, is situated in the bottom of the winding valley or ravine. ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... those extreme sectaries whose religion runs perilously near to madness. The hums and groans which rose from the crowd proved, however, that his fiery words were well suited to his hearers, so we halted on the verge of the multitude and hearkened to his address. A red-bearded, fierce-faced man he was, with tangled shaggy hair tumbling over his gleaming eyes, and a hoarse voice which ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... changed; let them see what it is to have God in covenant with them to be the God of their seed; and, withal, let us correct, or modify, the intense anti-papal jealousy of the Christian rites, which makes us all, unconsciously, verge to the opposite extreme, thus missing the divinely-appointed intention and use which there is in our two simple ordinances; and then, with the revival of such spiritual views and feelings, and, as a consequence, with greater ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... awake at night and fret and fume, to think Of bank officials on a spree with what he's toiled to get. He is not driven by his woe quite to the verge of drink By wondering if his balance in the bank ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... at Wrayton, she was on the verge of tears. And again that unreasonable conscience of mine smote me. I longed to—Well, to prove myself the ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... grew redder and more perturbed; just as Beatrice meant that it should; she seemed to derive a keen pleasure from goading this big, good-looking Englishman to the verge of apoplexy. ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... stood on the verge of the great upheaval and knew it not. We were thinking of holidays; of cricket and golf and bathing, and then were suddenly plunged in the deep waters of the greatest of all Wars. It has been a month of rude awakening, of revelation, of discovery—of many moods varying from confidence to deep ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... short, on the very verge of saying that she was sure that those frowns cleared from her husband's face before the sweets, for he would never take afternoon tea, in order to have a better appetite for dinner, and consequently was wont to begin that meal in a tetchy humour. ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... authorities were always promising to send him more help, but it never arrived. One of the assistants, a Monsieur Dubos, a little man with a remarkably big beard, was a chemist, who, at the outbreak of the war, had been on the verge, as he made sure, of an important discovery in connection with colour photography. Almost the first question he asked Joan was could she speak German. Finding that she could, he had hurried her across the yard into a small hut where patients who had borne their operation ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... of 65, called Dr. Druid, an antiquary, wholly ignorant of his real duties as a guide of youth. The young man runs wantonly wild, squanders his money, and gives loose to his passions almost to the verge of ruin, but he is arrested and reclaimed by his honest Scotch bailiff or financier, and the vigilance of his father's executor, Mr. Mortimer. This "fashionable lover" promises marriage to a vulgar, malicious city minx named Lucinda Bridgemore, but is saved from this pitfall also.—Cumberland, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... who had been inclined to blame the President for allowing a discussion that could serve no scientific purpose now forgave him from the bottom of my heart. Unfortunately the Bishop, hurried along on the current of his own eloquence, so far forgot himself as to push his attempted advantage to the verge of personality in a telling passage in which he turned round and addressed Huxley: I forgot the precise words, and quote from Lyell. 'The Bishop asked whether Huxley was related by his grandfather's or grandmother's side to an ape.' (Lyell's ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... mill (for such things were in New England) in the orchard was the remotest verge in one direction; to sit near it, and watch the horse go slowly round and round, and chat with Chauncey, the youngest son of the house, who was superintending it, was a great pleasure; but most of ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... the very verge of humanity, for the man who sleeps is something more than a mere social being: the law protects, ...
— The Physiology of Taste • Brillat Savarin
... stationary inaction,' says one of our greatest living writers, 'is one of the great secrets which science has yet to penetrate.' I am sure I do not pretend that I can completely penetrate it; but it undoubtedly seems to me that the problem is on the verge of solution, and that scientific successes in kindred fields by analogy suggest some principles—which wholly remove many of its difficulties, and indicate the sort of way in which those which remain ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... in love with her, and narrowly escaped the loss of reason as well as of his heart. Since that day the figure of Britannia has appeared on millions of coins and medals to perpetuate through the centuries the faultless form of the woman who drove artist as well as King to the verge of despair by her beauty and ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... yards ahead lay a deep and narrow gully, hid by bushes that grew rankly along its verge. Straight toward this the Princess Emma von der Tann rode. Behind her came her pursuers—two quite close and the others trailing farther in the rear. The girl reined in a trifle, letting the troopers that were closest to her gain until they were ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... officers call 'compass meant us,' which I understand to signify that she means always to go in the right direction, but sometimes does not know how. 'Compass'for the p'int, and 'meant us' for the intention. No, poor Hetty is what I call on the verge of ignorance, and sometimes she stumbles on one side of the line, and sometimes ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... absorbing spell of the pursuit, as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the sight of human faces, in the remote and solitary region whither they had ascended. A vast extent of wilderness lay between them and the nearest settlement, while scant a mile above their heads was that black verge where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle of forest trees, and either robe themselves in clouds or tower naked into the sky. The roar of the Amonoosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a solitary man had listened, while the mountain stream ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... mist veiled the world before me, In opening buds a marvel woke, As I the thousand blossoms broke, Which every valley richly bore me! I nothing had, and yet enough for youth— Joy in Illusion, ardent thirst for Truth. Give, unrestrained, the old emotion, The bliss that touched the verge of pain, The strength of Hate, Love's deep devotion,— O, give me ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... after the sale; and while they were doing their writings, the Christian portion of the slaves asked permission to kneel in prayer on the ground before they separated, which was granted. And while bathing each other with tears of sorrow on the verge of their final separation, their eloquent appeals in prayer to the Most High seemed to cause an unpleasant sensation upon the ears of their tyrants, who ordered them to rise and make ready their limbs ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... not all. If hundreds collapsed, thousands approached the verge of collapse. They survived and were discharged from the armies as normal. They reappear in civil life as cases of "nerves." Ordinarily that would mean that they would be classed as failures. But such ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... I, of course, knew nothing of the edict at the time—for bushmen do not advertise their chivalry—and wandered round the straggling Settlement vaguely surprised at its sobriety, and turning up in such unexpected places that the little bushman was constantly on the verge of apoplexy. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... Swart-bearded king, with iron crown'd, In iron mailed, his chariot bound About with iron, holding back Amain two steeds of glistering black And eyeballs white-rimmed fearfully, And nostrils red, and crests flying free; Who held them pawing at the verge, Tossing their spume up, as the surge Flung high against some seaward bluff. Nothing he spake, or smooth or gruff, But drave his errand, gazing down Upon the Maid, whose blown back gown Revealed her maiden. Still ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... room, and verge enough, The characters of hell to trace; How through each circling year, on many a night, Have Severn's waves re-echoed with affright The shrieks of (maids) through ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... swollen and inflamed that every step was torture. Ulcers, which opened and left gaping wounds, next made their appearance. It was said that in earlier years he had taken the place of an unfortunate man who had been condemned to the galleys and who was in consequence on the verge of despair, and that the malady from which he suffered had been caused by the heavy fetters with which his legs had been chained to the rowers' bench. It was several months, ran the tale, before his heroic action had been discovered and he was ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... toilet, went on with it calmly, when everyone else spoke of flight, rivalling Mazarin himself in courage and coolness. On finding themselves once more together under the roof of royalty after so many long and sorrowful separations, after seeing each other so often on the very verge of ruin, they might well be proud of their mutual constancy, which had deserved and brought about the halo of prosperity surrounding that auspicious day, and together look forward for the rest of their lives with the solid hope ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... neither Prince Michael nor his wife was in tune for a family conclave. Monseigneur was ruffled, distinctly so, and Madame was on the verge of tears. ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... pushed on. As soon as they reached Anadyrsk they were sent to the Myan, and by the middle of March the two parties together had cut and distributed along the banks of that river about 3000 poles. In April, however, their provisions began again to run short, they were gradually reduced to the verge of starvation, and Bush started a second time for Gizhiga with a few miserable half-starved and exhausted dog-teams, to get more provisions. During his absence the unfortunate parties on the Myan were left to take care of themselves, and ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... wily Dutch, who, like fallen angels, fear'd This new Messiah's coming, there did wait, And round the verge their braving vessels steer'd, To tempt his courage with ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... usually approach near enough to shoot his prey with a rifle, or strike it with a seal spear or oo-nar. Often, however, just as he is about to shoot or spear his game, it slips suddenly into the sea through its hole, upon the very verge of which it rests, seldom venturing further than a foot or two from its safe retreat. If they could only rest contented with a fair shot, the Inuits would probably secure more game than they now do, for the ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... not only troubled, he was seriously embarrassed. The hint thrown out by his little brother about the Koshare had struck him; for it led to the inference that the child had knowledge of secret arts and occult practices of which even he, Okoya, although on the verge of manhood, had never received any intimation. Far more yet than this knowledge, which Shyuote might have obtained through mere accident, the hint at unpleasant relations between Okoya and ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... something else that was not wholly itself—a tower, perhaps, of which the very shape was wicked. So these figures seemed to stand up, violent and unaccountable, against an ultimate horizon, visions from the verge. The ends of the earth were ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... What do you mean?" Pentfield demanded, a sudden fear at his heart, for he felt himself on the verge of a ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... the distance and was crouching beside a protruding rock to get her breath. "It's rather foolish to tear up a perfectly good pair of riding boots just at the psychological moment when leather is villainously high and I'm on the verge of marrying a poor man. I guess I'll ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... new company took an honest view of its obligations—but only for a time. Within a year or so, Quebec was again on the verge of starvation; and in the spring of 1629 the famished inhabitants were eagerly awaiting the Company's ships from France. By July their patience was almost worn out, when at last the watchers at Cap Tourmente brought the news that a fleet of six vessels had reached Tadousac. ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... the verge of war with another race, the Jarmuthians, descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel, when Nelson is transported to Heliopolis, the Atlantean Capital, for trial. All strangers must prove their value to the State or be condemned ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... various Courts of Europe, but always without success. Things were becoming awkward. The firm had borrowed heavily to pay for the stones, and anxiety seems to have driven Bohmer to the verge of desperation. Again he offered the necklace to the King, announcing himself ready to make terms, and to accept payment in instalments; but again ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... sensibility was at the mercy of such trivial accidents. ... Yes; that, and the cold and fatigue, the absence of hope and the haunting sense of starved aptitudes, all these had brought him to the perilous verge over which, once or twice before, his ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... which contrasted strikingly enough with the stern dry aspect and manners of her husband, a right descendant of the moss-troopers of Harden, who never seemed at his ease but on horseback, and continued to be the boldest fox-hunter of the district, even to the verge of eighty. The poet's aunt spoke her native language pure and undiluted, but without the slightest tincture of that vulgarity which now seems almost unavoidable in the oral use of a dialect so long banished from courts, and which has not been avoided by any modern writer who ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... rest of us by a small table; but he barely tasted it, and after a bit he lay down in his corner, with his arm for a pillow, and almost instantly was asleep, breathing heavily, like a man on the verge of exhaustion. A few minutes later we heard, from Sergeant Rosenthal, that the prisoner's brother-in-law had been killed the day before, and that he—the little officer—had seen ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... he, that avoiding all such remote excursions, keeps close within the verge of his own affairs, minds his shop or warehouse, and confining himself to what belongs to him there, goes on in the road of his business without launching into unknown oceans; and content with the gain of his own trade, is neither led by ambition or avarice, ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... Southwest. They were so placed that with common management they could be more effective than with rivalry. The owners of the Great Northern and the Burlington, James J. Hill and J. Pierpont Morgan, were on the verge of a general consolidation when Harriman tried to buy a control of the Northern Pacific. They struggled to retain it and succeeded, but their competition raised its stock to one thousand per share, causing a stock exchange panic ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... the Canal towards the Northern verge of the Regent's Park; and nearly opposite to it is a road leading to Primrose Hill, as celebrated in the annals of Cockayne as was the Palatino among the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... and glittering gems; to fly with the shepherd lad to the deep cool forests of the far east and dream her life away in some black tent or vine-embowered cot—to take his hand in hers and wander on to the world's extreme verge, listening to the music of his voice. The great house, once her pride, has become a grewsome prison, the jailer a grizzly gorgon who conjured her with the baleful gleam of gold to cast her beauty on Mammon's brutish ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... years, my Lord, have now passed since I waited in your outward rooms and was repulsed from your door; during which time I have been pushing on my work through difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. Such treatment I did not expect, for I ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the verge of saying that he had tried Ed Brevoort's Luger once. He realized in a flash how close the sheriff had come to trapping him. "I never took to them ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... case like this; and besides, as before remarked, Steelman knew his men. The only way to escape from him was to move—but then, as likely as not, he'd help pack up and come along with his portmanteau right on top of the last load of furniture, and drive you and your wife to the verge of madness by the calm style in which he proceeded to superintend ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... contest, involving several issues, in which a Secretary of War was finally removed from office with the consent of his own personal and political friends, a President was impeached and escaped removal from office by only one vote, and the country was brought to the verge of another civil war. As I had helped Evarts, Seward, and some others whose names I never knew, to "pour oil on the troubled waters" in the time of Grant and Stanton, and to get everybody into the humor to respond heartily to that great aspiration, "Let us have peace," I thought perhaps I might ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... have never REALLY known any one who did not show some spot in the sunlight, I mean some side where the artist verged on the Philistine. Perhaps you have not that spot; you ought to paint yourself. As for me I have it. I love classifications, I verge on the pedagogue. I love to sew and to care for children, I verge on the servant. I am easily distracted and verge on the idiot. And then I should not like perfection; I feel it but I shouldn't know how to ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... brief historical summaries prefixed to many of Mr. Brown's papers are models of judicial conscientiousness. And Mr. Darwin's evident delight at discovering that some one else has "said his good things before him," or has been on the verge of uttering them, seemingly equals that of making the discovery himself. It reminds one of Goethe's insisting that his views in morphology must have been held before him and must be somewhere on record, so obvious did they appear ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... snow. Concerning this part of the journey Fremont says: "We had reached and run over the position where, according to the best maps in my possession, we should have found Mary's lake or river. We were evidently on the verge of the desert, and the country was so forbidding that we were afraid ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... the duke were overthrown by simple statements of fact. Thus, his instance of the Eskimo as pushed to the verge of habitable America, and therefore living in the lowest depths of savagery, which, even if it were true, by no means proved a general rule, was deprived of its force by the simple fact that the Eskimos are by no means the lowest race on ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... West of the Red River Colony, told me of a narrow escape he once had, with his servant boy, in meeting a grizzly bear. They were riding slowly along, near the close of the day, when they espied the animal coming from the verge of a wood in the direction towards them. They immediately quickened the pace of their horses, but being jaded with the day's journey, the bear was soon seen to gain upon them. In this emergency, he hit upon an expedient, which was probably the means of saving their lives. ...
— The Substance of a Journal During a Residence at the Red River Colony, British North America • John West
... indulged in acrimonious controversies, especially when the time came for walking the boundaries. The dispute between broad and narrow gauges is indeed merely a modern form of a long-standing quarrel. A market-town and a seaport would naturally desire to have ample verge and room enough on their highways for the transport of grain, hides, and timber from the interior, and for carriage of cloth and manufactured or imported goods to the inland. On the other hand isolated parishes would contend that driftways were all-sufficient for their demands, and that ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... easy enough, but higher up became very steep, and somewhat appalling, being cut out of the side of the hill which shelves precipitously down towards the valley of the Dee. Near the top of the mountain were three lofty beech-trees growing on the very verge of the precipice. Here the road for about twenty yards is fenced on its dangerous side by a wall, parts of which are built between the stems of the trees. Just beyond the wall a truly noble prospect presented itself to our ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... time of Osorkon II., the Sheshonk dynasty rapidly declined in power. A system of constituting appanages for the princes of the reigning house grew up, and in a short time conducted the country to the verge of dissolution. "For the purpose of avoiding usurpations analogous to that of the High-Priests of Ammon," says M. Maspero, "Sheshonk and his descendants made a rule to entrust all positions of importance, whether civil ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... Greaves. It is undoubtedly evidence of the greatness of Don Quixote that there should have been so many direct imitations of it by persons of genius and talent: but this particular instance is unfortunate to the verge of the preposterous, if not over it. The eighteenth century was indeed almost the capital time of English eccentricity: and it was also a time of licence which sometimes looked very like lawlessness. But its eccentricities were not at this special ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... she called back; and came running down-stairs. "Oh, Blair dear," she said, "I want to see you so much!" By that time she was on the verge of tears, and the flush of worry in her cheeks made her so pretty that her brother looked at ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... now—splendid, dry, hard stuff, made of oat meal and water, baked on a gridiron—it would leave too long a fast afterwards. Denis Donohoe had been brought up to practise caution in these matters, to subject his stomach to a rigorous discipline, for life on the verge of a bog is an exacting business. Instead of obeying the impulse to eat Denis Donohoe blew warm breaths into his purple hands, beat his arms about his body to deaden the bitter cold, whistled, took some steps of an odd dance along the road, and went on ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... French people, it was received with more derision than alarm by the men who were cognisant of the affairs of Europe. All the politicians of the National Assembly knew that Prussia and Austria had lately been on the verge of war with one another upon the Eastern question; they even underrated the effect of the French revolution in appeasing the existing enmities of the great Powers. No important party in France regarded the Declaration ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... boyhood into the bloom of youth, having reached that season in which the young man, now standing upon the verge of independence, shows plainly whether he will enter upon the path of virtue or of vice, he went forth into a quiet place, and sat debating with himself which of those two paths he should pursue; and as he there ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... narrowest verge of the craggy path! A very young knight with dark hair and a proud carriage and gray eyes with ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... my dearest and loveliest!" said the Earl, scarce tearing himself from her embrace, yet again returning to fold her again and again in his arms, and again bidding farewell, and again returning to kiss and bid adieu once more. "The sun is on the verge of the blue horizon—I dare not stay. Ere this I should have been ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... cottage lay dark and silent, but there were lights in Hynds House although the night was upon the verge of morning. A gray light, upon which was stealing a primrose tinge, was already in the sky. It was, in fact, four o'clock. I was so mortally tired that for a moment I sat ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... the sweet little creature, but the red-haired boy saw that she was on the verge of tears, and he caught her hand and sobbed out loud in sympathy. ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... know—but I got no satisfaction at all. He hadn't been there for several days. That was all they knew. Yes, there had been talk of giving the case to a detective agency, but they weren't sure it had been done. And here is his poor mother up in New Rochelle, almost on the verge of nervous prostration. There is his fiancee, too; little Betty Parsons, who is crying her eyes out. Nice girl, Betty. And it's a shame that something isn't being done. Anyway, I shall ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... Divide, the view was glorious. In one direction, an ocean of dark pines rolled westward in enormous billows. The silver surfaces of several lakes gleamed here and there like whitecaps on the rolling waves. Far off upon the verge of the horizon, fifty miles away, three snow-capped, sharply pointed mountains looked like a group of icebergs drifting from the Polar Sea. They did not move, however, nor will they move while this old earth shall last. They antedate ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... tone is in accordance with the multitude of articles upon the same subject which occurred about the same time, and, like them all, or most of them, is rather farfetched. It is too broad. Its denunciations cover too much ground. They verge upon untruth. ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... and neared the post, its blare and hubbub burst on him, and its torch-light and many twinkling candles. He proceeded beside the triple row of Indian lodges which occupied the entire water-front. At intervals, on the very verge, evening fires were built, throwing streamers of crimson flicker on the lake. Naked pappooses gathered around these at play. But on an open flat betwixt encampment and village rose a lighted tabernacle of blankets stretched ...
— The Cobbler In The Devil's Kitchen - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... from exposure To the slight of the detractor or aspersion of the defamer: And we ask thy forgiveness Should our frailties betray us into ambiguities, As we ask thy forgiveness Should our steps advance to the verge of improprieties: And we beg thee freely to bestow Propitious succor to lead us aright, And a heart turning in unison with truth, And a language adorned with veracity, And style supported by conclusiveness, And ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... books of travel, may well, even if only from the allurement of its title, have shared the general enthusiasm for the traveler's narrative. Most important, however, is the direct appeal of the book itself, irresistible to the German mind and heart. Germany had been for a decade hesitating on the verge of tears, and grasped with eagerness a book which seemed to give her British sanction for indulgence in ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... perfumed with old romance. In New York he would certainly have been in danger of a Barnum's museum, beside Washington's nurse and the woolly horse. It is a triumph of art that a being whose nature trembles on the very verge of the grotesque should walk through Hawthorne's pages with such undeviating grace. In the Roman dreamland he is in little danger of such prying curiosity, though even there he can only be kept out of harm's way by the admirable skill of his creator. Perhaps it may be thought by ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... in June, Beatrix's baby was born, and for days afterward, the mother's life, so long in danger, now hung by a thread. Then the good old fibre of the Danes reasserted itself, and Beatrix came slowly upward from the verge of the River of Death. Bobby's face cleared itself of its shadows, Thayer signed his contracts and, the next week, he and ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... we sent eighty pieces to Chicago, to one house, yesterday, and fifty patterns to Omaha this morning; one hundred and ten we last week shipped to the South; the whole lot will perhaps be sold by to-morrow," etc.—that poor Mary felt like a speculator on the verge of a great chance. So she decided on a light-green brocade, and could not gainsay the smooth-tongued clerk as he assured her, while tying the bundle, that she had secured a very handsome and elegant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... now evident that the assault must fail unless some accident intervened, for the tide was rising, the reserves all engaged, and no greater effort could be expected from men whose courage had been already pushed to the verge of madness. In this crisis, fortune interfered. A number of powder-barrels, live shells, and combustible materials which the French had accumulated behind the traverses for their defence, caught fire, a bright, consuming flame wrapped the whole of the high curtain, ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... very wet child," said Nan, laughing, yet on the verge of tears herself. "You might have been drowned, you WOULD have been had it not been ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... open fires in the hall, waiting for dinner. Before this hour came, however, and while the rest of the young folks were getting acquainted with the possibilities of Snow Camp, Ruth had a serious talk with Mr. Cameron regarding the mysterious boy who had disappeared on the verge of the Snow ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... of damask revisiting cheek. Resolved to mention name of D. C. Introduced same, cautiously, in course of airing. D. immediately overcome. "Oh, dear, dear Julia! Oh, I have been a naughty and undutiful child!" Soothed and caressed. Drew ideal picture of D. C. on verge of tomb. D. again overcome. "Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do? Oh, take me somewhere!" Much alarmed. Fainting of D. and glass of water from public-house. (Poetical affinity. Chequered sign on door-post; chequered human ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... side of him that he lets you see," replied the man. "His gaiety is all forced. If you could see him after you leave you would realize that he is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Your father is not an old man in years, but he has placed a constant surtax on his nervous system for the last twenty-five years without a let-up, and it doesn't make any difference how good a machine may be it is going ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... tent was in an uproar, for the chevalier's wife had come hurrying in, the chevalier's daughter was on the verge of hysterics, and the chevalier's prospective son-in-law, was alternately hugging the great beast-tamer and then shaking his hand and generally deporting himself like a respectable young man ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... verge of the graveyard. Its fine old ruin stood there as usual, but not altogether without the symptoms of change. Some persons had, for the purposes of building, thrown down one of its most picturesque walls. Still its ruins clothed ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... eventually found their way into the Black Sea. Stress of weather compelled them to put into the little port of Yalta, on the north coast, where they went on shore. The Colonel, on the Lucretian principle of "Suave mari magno," &c., proceeded the next morning to the verge of the precipice to observe the magnificent prospect of a sea running mountains high. As it was raining at the time, he put up a huge gingham Umbrella he happened to find in the hotel. Suddenly, however, a furious blast of wind drove ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... fact, he "hated the very name of slaveholder." The limit of the box not admitting of straightening himself out he was taken with the cramp on the road, suffered indescribable misery, and had his faith taxed to the utmost,—indeed was brought to the very verge of "screaming aloud" ere relief came. However, he controlled himself, though only for a short season, for before a great while an excessive faintness came over him. Here nature became quite exhausted. He thought he must "die;" but his time had not yet come. After a severe struggle he revived, but ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... of my old California friend," Browning said to himself. "Can he have heard of the money intrusted to me? I don't think it possible, for I left Walton on the verge of death. That money has made my fortune. I invested it in land which has more than quadrupled in value. Old women say that honesty pays," he added, with a sneer; "but it is nonsense. In this case dishonesty has paid me richly. If the boy has heard anything, ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... man. And you have so much faith yourself, and mean to fling yourself into it so earnestly, that I shouldn't be wholly surprised if you were somehow to pull it through. If you do, Lady Hilda—if you manage to save these two poor young people from the verge of starvation—you'll have done a very great good work in your day, and you'll have made me personally ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... by no means subsided, and presently he found himself on the verge of tears—a pitiable, despicable object. The Vicomte—soothing and benevolent—went on to explain more fully the position of his own affairs. He told us that on information received from a sure source he had months earlier concluded that the Emperor's illness was of a more serious ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... pale, flaxen haired, blue eyed, round shouldered, and given to stammering when nervous. Perhaps because of his very weakness Rebecca's decision of character had a fascination for him, and although she snubbed him to the verge of madness, he could never keep his eyes away from her. The force with which she tied her shoe when the lacing came undone, the flirt over shoulder she gave her black braid when she was excited or warm, her manner of studying,—book on desk, arms folded, eyes fixed on the ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... we said just now, these phenomena formerly had the power of terrifying ignorant mortals, either when the orb of light and life seemed on the verge of extinction, or when the beautiful Phoebus was covered with a veil of crape and woe, or took ...
— Astronomy for Amateurs • Camille Flammarion
... unable to replace your sick and wounded men." But, if he knows I can't take the offensive, why trouble to cable me that the Dardanelles Committee expect me to adopt "only a purely defensive attitude"? I realize where we stand; K., Braithwaite and I,—on the verge. We are getting on for two months now since the August fighting—all that time we have been allowed to do nothing—literally, allowed to do nothing, seeing we have been given no shell. What a fiasco! The Dardanelles is not ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... black circle, bound 740 His glaring disk around, Proclaims Earth's last of summer days hath shone! The clouds return into the hues of night, Save where their brazen-coloured edges streak The verge where brighter ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... I murmured, "no enchantments for me but thine! Thine are the spells by which creation is beautified, and, in that beauty, hallowed. What though we can see not into the measureless future from the verge of the moment; what though sorrow may smite us while we are dreaming of bliss, let the future not rob me of thee, and a balm will be found for each wound! Love me ever as now, oh, my Lilian; troth to troth, side ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... face of special difficulties, to put the equipment of any exclusively male profession to shame. If the work of the average man required half the mental agility and readiness of resource of the work of the average prostitute, the average man would be constantly on the verge ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... hard life is that of the poor Icelanders! When our ship arrived, they were on the verge of starvation, their supplies being all exhausted. Glad indeed they must have been to welcome the Camoens, and know that flour and other staple articles of food were once again within their reach. Outside every house we noticed rows of dried fish hung up, and ready for the winter's consumption. ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... a way young birds have," Mr. Bronson remarked, turning to Joe with a serious smile; "and I dare say you are on the verge of a somewhat similar predicament, my boy," he went on. "I am afraid things have reached a crisis, Joe. I have watched it coming on for a year now—your poor scholarship, your carelessness and inattention, your constant desire to be out of the house and away in search ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... part of the host, after the guest has refused a second helping, is overdoing the bounds of hospitality, and perilously borders on the verge of incivility. ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... and transient misfortune arising out of the advantage given to the magician by the unpardonable stupidity of Aladdin in regard to the lamp. But, whilst my sister and I agreed in despising Aladdin so much as almost to be on the verge of despising the queen of all the bluestockings for so ill-directed a preference, one solitary section there was of that tale which was fixed and fascinated my gaze, in a degree that I never afterwards forgot, and did not at that time ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of an innocent girl's way of making out for herself only the sweetness of the world, the majesty of the heavens . . . and just when all seemed on the verge of growing clear, and out of the "soft fifty changes" of the moon, "no unfamiliar face" could look, the sweet ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... by inch, they fought their way along the edge of the foaming rocks, until Kit feared he had made a mistake. And then, when on the verge of himself turning back, they came abreast of a narrow opening, not twenty feet wide, which led into a land-locked enclosure where the fiercest gusts scarcely flawed the surface. It was the haven gained by the boats of previous days. They landed on a shelving beach, and ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... love. And I have also finished at last with that terrible correspondence for the Union. Seventy-six pages of minute writing have I sent to Berlin yesterday and to-day, and I breathe again. In my yesterday's letter I broke Helene to you. It is extraordinarily fortunate that on the verge of forty I should be able to find a wife so beautiful, so sympathetic, who loves me so much, and who, as you and I agreed was indispensable, is entirely absorbed in my personality. In your last letter you throw cold water on my proposed journey to Hamburg; and perhaps you are right in thinking the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... It is more amazing to see how close to the brute a man may remain than it is to see how far he may leave the brute behind. How it began I cannot recall; but this youth, a lad of seventeen, whether moved by dislike or the mere fascination of injury, was in the habit of teasing me beyond the verge of endurance as often as he had the chance. I did not like to complain to my father, though that would have been better than to hate him as I did. I was ashamed of my own impotence for self-defence; but therein I was little ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... for a grand naval engagement which shall eclipse anything ever seen before. There are many who would like the engagement to occur, who do not much relish the prospect of its occurring very near the city. They think deeper water and scope and verge enough for such an encounter may be found farther up the river. All, however, are rejoiced to learn that Memphis will not fall till conclusions are first tried on water, ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... anything there worth printing. His book showed me that the humblest spot in nature becomes extraordinary the moment extraordinary observation is applied to it. I must mimic Gilbert White directly. I pestered my poor parents to spend a month or two in the depths of the country, on the verge of a forest. They yielded, with groans; I kissed them, and we rusticated. I pried into every living thing, not forgetting my old friends, the insect tribe. Here I found ants with grander ideas than they have to home, ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... you will weigh carefully every word I utter." Bennington took his father's letter from his pocket and unfolded it. "You are about to take a step such as you all will live to regret. My father never threatened; he acted. I shall follow his example. You are on the verge of striking. I shall recognize the strike only at the moment you decide to leave the shops. You will strike without cause, without justice, simply because you are commanded to do ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... plunging down like a maddened bull, when suddenly, within 12 ft. of the rock, there was a thrilling cry from Kenneth Moore, and up we shot, almost clearing the projecting summit. Almost—not quite—sufficiently to escape death; but the car, tripping against the very verge, hurled Phillip and myself, clasped in each other's arms, far ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... impulsive and often irresistible longings for food delicacies which are apt to overcome children, and in girls often persist or revive through adolescence and even beyond. Such sudden fits of greediness belong to those kind of normal psychic manifestations which are on the verge of the abnormal into which they occasionally pass. They may occur, however, in healthy, well-bred, and well-behaved children who, under the stress of the sudden craving, will, without compunction and apparently without reflection, steal the food they ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... foreigners hold to be made by the whipping of the wind. As the souls gathered at their goal, nature's sounds were hushed. The roar of the waterfall, the sea's dashing, the sigh of the wind in the trees, all were silenced. At the Spirits' Leap on the verge of a tall cliff grew a lonely tree, with brown, spreading branches, dark leaves and red flowers. The name of the tree was Spray-Sprinkled.[1] One of its roots hung down over the cliff's face to the mouth of a cavern fringed by much sea-weed, floating or dripping on the ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... unheard-of purpose, for which human powers and motives by themselves are insufficient. In the murder of Clytemnestra, and her heart-rending appeals, the poet, without disguising her guilt, has gone to the very verge of what was allowable in awakening our sympathy with her sufferings. The crime which is to be punished is kept in view from the very first by the grave, and, at the conclusion, it is brought still nearer to our minds by the unfolding ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... party's wonder grew. Most of them dragged themselves forward with stumbling footsteps. Their faces were haggard, their hands moving restlessly and their features twitching. They looked like men who had been for days undergoing severe mental and physical strain and were on the verge of collapse. ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... the back of the head, we see ourselves on the verge of the outlook. Only he who has accomplished the notable feat of turning about knows himself the central figure in ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... mesters." To have been weak of will, or vacillating of purpose, would have been death to every vestige of the authority vested in him; but he was as strong mentally as physically—strong-willed to the verge of stubbornness. But if they could not frighten or subdue him, they could still oppose and irritate him, and the contention was obstinate. This feeling even influenced the girls and women at the "mouth." They, too, organized in ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... given in their college hall. And how many polkas these young ladies danced, and how many waltzes they waltzed, and how many ices they consumed, and how many too susceptible partners they drove to the verge of desperation, it would be improper, if ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... real revelation. I will confess to you that this is the rock upon which my powers and my mission seem sometimes most likely to split. But I console myself by thinking that all of us, great as well as small, must be on the verge of it sometimes. Let me draw you a parallel. Perhaps you know something of the old alchemists. They had laid hold on the edge of chemistry. But because that truth came confused, because they all had things by the wrong handle, a thousand of them confused truth with error until, in ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... state, on the verge of exhaustion, for his vigil had been long and faithful; it was a nightmare period of suspense for him. Occasionally he dozed, but only to start into wakefulness and to experience apprehensions keener than before. The man was beside himself, and his anxiety had its effect upon Tom and Jerry. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach |
