"Verge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feel so ill!" faintly exclaimed Miss Tag-rag, turning deadly pale. Titmouse was on the verge of dropping on his knees and confessing the trick, greatly agitated at the effect unexpectedly produced on Miss Tag-rag; when Tag-rag's heavy hand was suddenly placed on his shoulder, and he whispered in a fierce undertone—"You're an impostor, sir!" which ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... astonished the Doctor very much. He was not a man, however, to show all he felt. He saw that Nurse was on the verge of hysterics, and he knew that if he did not take this startling and unpleasant piece of information in the most matter-of-fact way, he would get ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... I climb'd my vessel's lofty side; My train obey'd me, and the ship untied. In order seated on their banks, they sweep Neptune's smooth face, and cleave the yielding deep. When to the nearest verge of land we drew, Fast by the sea a lonely cave we view, High, and with darkening laurels covered o'er; Were sheep and goats lay slumbering round the shore Near this, a fence of marble from the rock, Brown with o'eraching pine and spreading oak. A giant shepherd here ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... steps of a church—San Pietro was its name, a very old church. For a while we were silent; Virginia, it was to be seen, was now timid—timid to the verge of defiance; I was ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... precious quarter of an hour, when the veil that has divided two faithful friends is suddenly dashed aside, and they rush one to the other, calling themselves every imaginable bad name in the dictionary, insisting to the verge of quarrelling that it was all their fault, and no fault at all of the other, far too rapturous to talk ordinary common sense, and far too forgetful of everything to remember that they are saying the same thing over and over again ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... now for the countries of Europe; we have watched Jonathan Edwards in his solitary ecstasies in the Northampton and the Stockbridge woods; we have seen Franklin preaching his gospel of personal thrift and of getting on in the world. Down to the very verge of the Revolution the American pioneer spirit was forever urging the individual to fight for his own hand. Each boy on the old farms had his own chores to do; each head of a family had to plan for himself. The most tragic failure of the individual ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... Canada, at the same time, matters had come to the verge of rebellion. Sir John Colborne had, just before retiring as Lieutenant Governor in 1836, added fuel to the flames by creating and endowing some forty-four rectories, thus strengthening the grip of the Anglican Church on the province. His ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... efforts now to take care not only of Violet Winslow but Warrington himself, who was on the verge of collapse after his heroic ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... minutes spent in this way they got under cover of a little clump near the water's edge, and near enough to the gigantic game. Upon their hands and knees they now approached the verge of the underwood; and having parted the leaves, looked through. The mighty quadruped was right under their eyes, ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... government is that which governs least, and allows the utmost scope to untrammelled individual enterprise. But if there is a tendency on the part of some to return to the individualistic principle, the 'paternal' idea as espoused by others is being carried to the verge of socialism. The function of the State is stretched almost to breaking point when it is conceived as the 'guardian angel' who accompanies and guards with perpetual oversight the whole life of the individual from the cradle to the grave. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... impart some outline or foreshadow of this Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence are once more invited to favour us with their most concentrated attention: let these, after intense consideration, and not till then, pronounce, Whether on the utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as of Land; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvas to sail thither?—As exordium to the whole, stand here the following ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... sad exile's weary search was at last rewarded; the long parted lovers were reunited, though but for a moment on the verge of the grave; ...
— Over the Border: Acadia • Eliza Chase
... exercise is to write verse without rhyme or very much reason, whose only virtue shall be lines of exact length with meter regular to the verge of singsongness. As an exercise, too, it is helpful to take a dozen lines or more of good verse and break them up into feet. The greatest poets are not necessarily the best for this purpose, owing to the irregularity of much of their work. It is better ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... like the poplar and willow, fringing the shore. "It is the sign which Circe gave me," whispered Odysseus to his awestruck comrades; "we are at the very gates of Hades." Landing in silence, they carried the victims for sacrifice to the verge of the grove, and Odysseus with his sword dug a trench, a cubit in length and breadth, and poured about it a libation of mead and water and wine. Then the sheep were slaughtered, and the trench was filled to the brim with their blood. When the ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... advantages of this situation, rendered it a place of consequence, and its possession had already been severely contested. As a military post, on the verge of the English colonies, its retention was important to the French interest in Acadia; and the extensive commerce it opened with the natives in the interior, through the navigable streams, which emptied into the bay, was a source of private emolument, that D'Aulney was anxious ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... the waste, and began to make our toilsome and devious travel towards the eastern verge. There were the tops of mountains all round (you are to remember) from whence we might be spied at any moment; so it behoved us to keep in the hollow parts of the moor, and when these turned aside from our direction to move upon its naked face with infinite care. ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my noble cousin, must have been written in a most desponding mood, as all the great reforms of the day seem to you on the verge of failure. What are the experiences of days and months and years in the lifetime of a mighty nation? Can one man in his brief hour hope to see the beginning and end of any reform? When you compare the public sentiment and social customs of our day with what ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... five Hendricks came in, to report. He was a young man, stockily built, with eyes that were always on the verge of laughter and lips that sloped inward as if biting down on the threatened mirth. The shape of his lips was symbolical of his habit of discourse; he was ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... of the Prophet Moses. Moses and manna—the connection is obvious and the secret was soon in his possession. He manufactured the stuff in his own laboratory and lived on it himself—at least to the verge of physical extinction. Then he went gunning for subjects, and you know the rest. The rubbish fills you up without nourishing you, and what you lived on was really ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... It seemed only reasonable to expect that he would proceed to make that fact clear to her now that he had found the mine, but she was a little puzzled about his smile. It indicated rather too much self-possession for a man on the verge of a proposal, and she did not know that since he entered the house he had been endeavoring to impose ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... has been declared, the skies haven't fallen and oysters taste just the same. I never would have dreamed that so big a step would be accepted with so much equanimity. It is due to two causes, I think. First, because we have trembled on the verge so long and sort of dabbled our toes in the water, that our minds have grown gradually accustomed to what under other circumstances would be a violent shock. Second, because the individual units of the Navy are so well prepared that there is little to do. We made a few minor changes in the routine ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... on the very verge of a revelation of the truth. He was on the point of telling Hermione that he was sure that the padrone had been murdered, and that he meant to avenge the murder. Hermione believed that for the moment he was mad, and ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Gildas, who flourished in the latter part of the sixth century. British antiquaries of the present day will doubtless forgive me, if I leave in their original obscurity the prophecies of Merlin, and the exploits of King Arthur, with all the Knights of the Round Table, as scarcely coming within the verge of history. Notwithstanding, also, the authority of Bale, and of the writers whom he follows, I cannot persuade myself to rank Joseph of Arimathea, Arviragus, and Bonduca, or even the Emperor Constantine himself, among the illustrious writers of Great ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... disposition, which thou hast so often censured as the inheritance of a tender-hearted Mother. To mould me into thine own likeness thou hast sent me hither. Thou dost compel me to behold this man on the verge of the yawning grave, in the grasp of an arbitrary doom, that I may experience the profoundest anguish; that thus, rendered callous to every fate, I may henceforth meet every event with a ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... it a rule for yourself always to go to an older friend, when you want to talk about anything that might be not quite nice, or that might verge on silliness. If conscience or prudence give any pricks in the matter, go to an elder. You do not know how much such a rule would save you from, and if you say, "but that is impossible, she would not understand!" ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... I have felt for some time that when France was on the verge of a precipice it was not the time for her nobles to be marrying. Noblesse oblige. If we were two peasants we might marry and be happy. As it is we must wait, even though we know that waiting may never come to an end. I have a conviction, Victor, that ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... of wind and large pattering drops. It was a dreary moment. The dogs were fast drawing on their victim, and nothing but despair and death stared him in the face. The ground now began to get irregular and varied, and a hope arose in his heart that he was getting on the verge of the moors. Still he was entirely ignorant as to the direction. The clouds then burst with a violence which their threatening aspect had long foretold, and in an instant Smyth was drenched to the skin; the ground became slippery, and the footing ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... before all the wheels of government move smoothly, and Mgr. de Laval, obliged to face ever renewed conflicts of authority, had necessarily either to abandon what he considered it his duty to support, or create malcontents. If sometimes he carried persistence to the verge of obstinacy, he must be judged in relation to the period in which he lived: governors like Frontenac were only too anxious to imitate their absolute master, whose guiding maxim was, "I am the state!" Moreover, where are the men of true worth who have not found upon their path the ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... who spoke last night at the Hotel Astor, at a dinner of the Economic Club, which was held for the purpose of hearing his story of conditions in Europe, whence he has recently returned, said that England was on the verge of a revolution, which was narrowly averted in February, when he was there, and the conditions on the Continent of Europe are appalling beyond anything dreamed of in ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... was generosity, carried to the verge of rashness. Even in his last years, when living on a very limited income, he was only too ready to empty his pockets at the call of any charity, whether public or private. Impulse, however, prompted him to give most heartily when he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... the street, is used as the excuse for a human interest story. Sometimes the purpose is pathos and sometimes it is humor, but, whatever it may be, if it is clever and interesting it gets its place in the paper, a place entirely out of proportion to its true news value. The results sometimes verge very close upon nature faking, but after all they are only the result of the "up-lift" idea of looking at all life in a more sympathetic way. Several of the beginnings quoted earlier in this chapter belong to animal stories and the following is a ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... replied Wibisma in a calmer tone. "You will push those tottering on the verge of the abyss completely over the precipice, and go to destruction ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that was still full of water, although the river itself had gone dry. Here I stood looking at the spoor and consulting with Saduko as to whether the beast could have swum the pool, for the tracks that went to its very verge had become confused and uncertain. Suddenly our doubts were ended, since out of a patch of dense bush which we had passed—for it had played the common trick of doubling back on its own spoor—appeared the buffalo, a huge bull, that halted on three legs, my bullet having broken ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... in a man who up till then had exhibited such fortitude, demanded the reason of his conduct. "Son of Cyrus," he replied, "the misfortunes of my house are too unparalleled to weep over, but not the affliction of my friend. When a man, on the verge of old age, falls from luxury and abundance into extreme poverty, one may well lament his fate." When the speech was reported to Cambyses, he fully recognised the truth of it. Croesus, who was also present, shed tears, and the Persians round him were moved with ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... on the banks among the trees, or towering on the heights, owned by the wealthy and titled people that own the land round the lakes. A cottage built for Her Majesty was pointed out to us, and we heard of a royal deer hunt held here. We heard rapturous accounts of stags hunted to the verge of death, and saved alive to repeat the ennobling sport. And we censure without measure the Spanish bull fight where the animals are killed once! How many deaths do these timid deer suffer? I am afraid we are not as noble and merciful a people as we ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... their lives each a series of great successes and great disasters, mighty acquisitions and tremendous losses of power, sudden overthrows, followed by unexpected recoveries, but they died, also, Demetrius in actual captivity to his enemies, and Antony on the verge of it. ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... which is always on the verge of being broken, which depends largely on uninterrupted hours, on confidential, velvet-shod servants, on a brooding dove in a cedar, on the absence of the inharmonious or jarring elements ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... exercise in benefiting the nervous system is well known, and the effect of a gentle walk in making the ideas flow through the brain is a matter of common observation. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that exercise, when carried to the verge of fatigue, compels inactivity of the brain for a time, since Nature must have repose. But when carried out in moderation with a view of improving the condition of the body, it conduces to the salubrity of the brain as well, for the latter organ shares ...
— The Art of Living in Australia • Philip E. Muskett (?-1909)
... their head. But their journey was destined to come to an abrupt and unexpected close. A couple of hours' gallop brought them to the edge of one of those open plains which sometimes break up the woodland near the verge of the great prairies. It stretched out like a green lake towards the horizon, on which, just as the band of horsemen reached it, the sun was descending in a ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... projecting cape And perilous reef along the ocean's verge, Starts into life a dim, gigantic shape, Holding its lantern o'er ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... under-world, the clouds were drawing forward on their course; and as their last fringe trailed slowly by and the moon was revealed once more, the spell was broken in an instant by human voices calling us to re-embark. Again we glided to the verge of tumultuous falls, again we were flung through foaming narrows and labyrinthine passages of torn rocks, until, the last promontory turned with arrowy swiftness, we shot through a postern of the granite ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... pursuit was being followed up in brave style, when some of the rebels suddenly faced around and took steady aim at those who were charging them. Roberts was of the party and had gone to the rescue of a man who was on the verge of being run through by a bayonet, when he saw two sepoys running off with the Union Jack. He spurred his horse in pursuit, and, leaning over, wrenched the standard out of the hands of one of the men, at the same time sabering ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... seize upon the imagination, and inspire it with new worship of Nature, we have great lack. In private grounds we cannot of course command the opportunity which the long tenure under British privilege gives; but the conservators of public parks have scope and verge; let them look to it, that their resources be not wasted in the niceties of mere gardening, or in elaborate architectural devices. Banks of blossoming shrubs and tangled wild vines and labyrinthine walks will count for nothing in park-effect, when, fifty years hence, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... the holidays; he also suggested that their affair—"their" affair!—be kept quiet for the present. Yet he had all too facile a vision of beatific meditations that were like enough to give the situation away to all the household; and he was nervously aware of Amy Leffingwell as continually on the verge of bubbling confidences. ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... hundred yards I went, and then wheeled to the right past the post office, and so on for a quarter of a mile, till I reached the descent from the higher ground, on which the town was built, to the river. There, on my left, on the verge of the slope, stood the Sheriff's house in a lot by itself, with the long, low jail attached to it. Down the hill I went, and across the bridge and out into the open country. I drove rapidly for about five miles—more than halfway to Osawotamie—and then I pulled up, in order ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... minuteness a strange headache which had attacked Mrs. Cox, together with a long list of the remedies prescribed and the effects of each, and wound up in an out-of-the-way corner, in a vein of cheery optimism which reduced both readers to the verge of madness. ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... may be disease in the presence of a question as well as in the lack of an answer. We do not wonder so strangely at an ingenious and well-set-up effect, for we feel such in ourselves; but a cause, reaching out beyond the verge [of fact] and dangling its legs in nonentity, with the hope of a rational foothold, should realize a strenuous life. Pluralism believes in truth and reason, but only as mystically realized, as lived in experience. Up from the breast of a man, up to his tongue and brain, comes ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... apparent cause; not necessarily from a charitable desire to give him another chance. Also, the pleasing Indian characteristic of regard for family relationship, which is so strong, leads to an anxiety to belittle the wrongdoings of anyone who can claim kinship, and this may be carried even to the verge of distortion, or suppression of the truth. Anyhow, the conclusions of the Christian Panchayat are, not unfrequently, singularly at variance with what would appear to ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... the same absolute surrender to an awful Master she gave so easily herself, was enough to chill the wayward Rose, and fill her with a kind of restless despair. And at home, as the vicar said, the two sisters were always on the verge of conflict. Rose had enough of her father in her to suffer in resisting, but resist she must by the law of ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his second year when the family moved to a respectable house and farm on the verge of the pretty little village of Lissoy, in West Meath. Here the schoolmistress who first put a book into Oliver Goldsmith's hands confessed, "Never was so dull a boy; he ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... Sinclair protested, "while that sort of philanthropy is very delightful when one can afford the luxury, it is scarcely practical when one is teetering on the verge of financial ruin. After all, Bryce, self-preservation is the first law of human nature, and the sale of those farms would go a long way toward helping the Cardigan Redwood Lumber Company out of the hole it is in ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... opportunities to do so. Louis XVI, in his weakness, called the States-General for counsel and advice. It was the first time the people had been called in council for more than 200 years; monarchy had said it could run the government without the people, and now, on the verge of destruction, called upon the people to save it from the {405} wreck. The well-intended king invoked a storm; his predecessors had sown the wind, he reaped ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... repeated, but their very accumulation heightens the impression of a great 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 the fatal garment: ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... 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 ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... 1873-74," says McNeill, was one of extreme suffering. Midwinter found tens of thousands of people on the verge of starvation, suffering for food, for the need of proper clothing, and for medical attendance. Meetings of the unemployed were held in many places, and public attention called to the needs of the poor. The men ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... season in the year for Europeans. Want of rain in Fezzan and Sockna is compensated for by the abundance of springs. These rains in The Mountains will establish the rule of the Turks. It is only a question of provisions. The want of rain for several years has brought Tripoli to the verge of ruin, and the Sultan is tired of supporting this Regency. If a few good harvests come, Tripoli will support itself. Wrote to Mr. Gagliuffi by this caravan, to tell him where I was on the 30th of March! He expects me ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... also, referring to his Little Father, the Czar; the Teuton would have poured forth oceans of turgid sentiment about the Fatherland; the dignified Spaniard would have recognised himself as a warrior upon the verge of a Homeric struggle, and said so candidly; the hysterical American would have sung "Hail, Columbia!" and waved pocket-handkerchief-sized replicas of the Star-Spangled Banner until too exhausted to agitate or vocalise. But to these men indulgence in sentiment ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... condemnation or justification, would be thought of the old Murray Davenport. It wouldn't matter to the new man. During that last talk with you, Davenport had such an impulse of communicativeness—such a desire for a moment's relief from his long-maintained secrecy—that he was on the verge of confiding his project to you, under bond of silence. But he mastered the impulse; and you had no sooner gone than ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... was seldom seen by Frenchmen in the eighteenth century. This confusion of thought was a cause of many of the troubles of the French Revolution. We shall see that Rousseau, who had been carried by the love of liberty beyond the verge of the ridiculous in his Discourses, was brought back, in his "Social Compact," by his love of equality, so far as to become the advocate of an intolerable tyranny, yet was quite unaware that he was inconsistent. He composed, in fact, a description of liberty ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... men of his years, in daylight, at dawn, or silvered with moonlight. He thought he had exhausted the possibilities for terror. But he found himself grudgingly admitting that he was at the least a little nervous—at the most, on the verge of alarm. But he put his whistle in his mouth, drew his revolver again and ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... forced a war that could end only in disaster. When one of his councillors advised against the folly, he caned him and sent him into exile. Yet out of the fiery trial this king came a hero; his queen, whose pride and wasteful vanity[1] had done its full share in bringing the country to the verge of ruin, became the idol of the nation. In the hour of its peril she grew to the stature of a great woman who shared danger and hardship with her people and by her example put hope and courage into ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... established at Dojima, in Osaka, for the purpose of imparting some measure of stability to the price of the cereal. Just at this time (1732), the central and western provinces were visited by a famine which caused seventeen thousand deaths and reduced multitudes to the verge of starvation. The Bakufu rendered aid on a munificent scale, but the price of rice naturally appreciated, and although this brought relief to the military class, it was misconstrued by the lower orders as a result of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... almost to the ground; but, having taken careful note of his prices, I felt secure in commending him, even to the verge of extravagance; and, besides, does not the artistic nature demand the stimulus of praise to enable it to put forth ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... we have reached the verge of the romance of the life of William Phips. He had before him a difficult task, but he possessed the qualities which enable men to meet and overcome difficulty. The silver-ship was said to have been sunk somewhere near the Bahamas; the exact spot it was not easy to learn, for half ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... reached the top of the hill overlooking the glen, she noticed fresh furrows in the field on her left. Clambering through the fence, she waited until the heads of a pair of horses made their appearance, rising over the verge of the hill. As she conjectured, Gilbert Potter was behind them, guiding the plough-handle. He was heartily glad to see her, and halted his team at ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... the European kind, but they had not arrived as yet. The first class, although by far the dullest and most bovine, was still the most powerful because they were the richest, money as yet providing the highest standard. The functions which these people provided were stupid to the verge of distraction; really they were only the week-day receptions and Sunday-afternoon calls of Squeedunk and Hohokus raised to the Nth power. The purpose of the whole matter was to see and be seen. Novelty in either thought or action was decidedly ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... paced the floor with nervous, uneven strides. He plunged his hand into his coat pocket and drew out the letter again. He re-read it, with hot eyes and straining thought. Every word seemed to sear itself upon his poor brain, and drive him to the verge of distraction. Why? Why? And he raised his bloodshot eyes to the roof of his hut, and crushed the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... wider stared her eyes, but no sound escaped her lips. She gazed and gazed, but the specter would not vanish. Poor Miss Arthur was terror-stricken almost to the verge of catalepsy. ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... wild pear; the second, all dead, bleached and impenetrable, of what had once been hawthorn, but now one jagged, fixed mass of awkward arms and cruel thorns; the third, a beautiful, spacious pine-wood, climbing over cliffs to the far verge of the cape where the lighthouse flashes. These were like woods in a fairy tale, and may well have had each their own particular elves and spirits. Each had a separate character: the first as of the earth, homely, full of gentle russet colours from the ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... 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
... necessaries of life. The distinction between the citizen class on the one hand and the productive class on the other was thus as clearly and sharply drawn as possible. It was even exaggerated; for the citizens were a band of conquerors, the productive class a subject race, perpetually on the verge of insurrection and only kept in restraint by such measures as secret assassination. The result was to draw together the small band of Spartiatae into a discipline so rigorous and close that under it everything ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... Nucingen, love-sick for Esther Gobseck; and Mme. de Serizy ill on account of the suicide of Lucien de Rubempre. [Scenes from a Courtesan's Life.] He and his assistant, Bianchon, waited on Mme. de Bauvan, who was on the verge of death at the close of 1830 and beginning of 1831. [Honorine.] Desplein had an only daughter whose marriage in 1829 was arranged with the Prince ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... sir, the error was not mine," was the instant rejoinder, so quick, sharp and positive as to carry it at a bound to the verge of disrespect, and the keen, blue eyes of the young soldier gazed, frank and fearless, into the heavily ambushed grays of the veteran in the chair. It made the latter wince and ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... the brink of a precipice, be calm? Can a man be calm on the verge of the grave? I love you, Agatha, with a true and holy love; but still with a love fierce and untameable. You reviled me when I said I worshipped you, but I adore the ground you tread on, and the air you breathe. I would shed my last drop of blood to bring you ease; but ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... courageous of the party followed Tom, and, the way being thus made, the whole party began pushing up the rock,—the hindermost pushing the front ones faster than they would have gone of themselves. On they came, and in a moment the burly form of Tom appeared in sight, almost at the verge ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... arose, and traced certain mystical characters upon the greensward. Straightway the glade in which they sat was filled with knights, ladies, maidens, and esquires, who danced and disported themselves right joyously. A stately castle rose on the verge of the forest, and in the garden the spirits whom Merlin the enchanter had raised up in the semblance of knights and ladies held carnival. Vivien, delighted, asked of Merlin in what manner he had achieved this feat of faery, and he told her that he would in time instruct her as to the ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... first; he didn't mind that much, he was so sure of his uncle's inheritance repairing his lost fortunes, but suddenly this difficulty of identification springs up, and he is literally on the verge of ruin." ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... in a very different way! he heard me attentively, and I left him perfectly satisfied of the truth of my system." I have had much reason to think that many discoverers, of all classes, believe they have convinced every one who is not peremptory to the verge of incivility. ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... the verge of tears and her pleading glance sought out Andy, then Bettijean, then her co-workers. Finally, resigned, she said, "I ... I wrote a ...
— The Plague • Teddy Keller
... insistence. Between these two hills runs a rapid stream from the Downs to the southward, that below the town opens out suddenly into a small estuary or creek. Where the Watling Street forded the Darent there grew up the town of Dartford, on the verge of the marshes within reach of the tide, but also within reach of an inexhaustible river of fresh water. The ford was presently replaced by a ferry, and later still, in the latter years of Henry VI., by a great bridge, as we see, but the ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... upwards. Night lay like a sack around and below us: but right aloft, at the zenith, day was trembling. Slowly established, it spread and descended upon us until it touched a distant verge of hills, and there, cut by the rim of the rising sun, flowed suddenly with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not the case with free men. You cannot oppress and murder freemen as you would slaves: you cannot so insult them with the question, "What are you going to do about it?" When you ask free men that question you appeal to men who, though sunk to the verge of despair, yet are capable of uprising and ripping hip and thigh those who deemed them incapable of so rising above their condition. The history of mankind is fruitful of such uprisings of races and classes reduced to a condition of absolute ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... Let my old eyes fix on thee till thou goest Beneath the farthest verge. Good Megacles, And you brave gentlemen, be faithful all To me and to ...
— Gycia - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Lewis Morris
... ample reason why he should take this tone with me if he felt like it. I looked like a derelict and was acting like one. Moreover, I was tormented to the verge of madness by the fear that the conductor might come along on a ticket-punching tour, and that by this means Barton would learn my ultimate destination—which would be equivalent, I fancied, to publishing it in the Glendale ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... one; the latter is enlivening; the former lovely. Thirdly, with regard to the union of the eye with the neighbouring parts, it is to hold the same rule that is given of other beautiful ones; it is not to make a strong deviation from the line of the neighbouring parts; nor to verge into any exact geometrical figure. Besides all this, the eye affects, as it is expressive of some qualities of the mind, and its principal power generally arises from this; so that what we have just said of the ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... A.M., we are passing Grand Bassam, seven or eight miles from land. Our track just touches the outer edge of the semicircular line of dirty foam, indicating the distance to which the influence of the river extends. Within the verge, the water is discolored by recent contact with the earth; beyond it, ripples the uncontaminated, pure, blue ocean. One is the emblem of human life, muddied with base influences; the other, of eternity, which is only not transparent ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... additions may be made to their diet in the shape of paunches, carefully cleaned and cooked, and Spratt's Puppy Rodnim. A plentiful supply of fresh milk is still essential. Gradually the number of their meals may be decreased, first to four a day, and later on to three, until at six months old they verge on adolescence; and may be placed upon the rations of the adult dog, two meals ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... The midnight Witches breathe the songs of hell; Delighted Ariel wings his fiery way To whirl the storm, the wheeling Orbs to stay; Then bathes in honey-dews, and sleeps in flowers; Meanwhile, young Oberon, girt with shadowy powers, Pursues o'er Ocean's verge the pale cold Moon, Or hymns her, riding in ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... eternally over the wooded valley; till, roaming across them all, the eye rested at last on the rearing scarp of Chanctonbury Ring, faintly pencilled on the furthest skyline. Shadowy phantoms of dim heights framed the verge to east and west. Alan Merrick drank it in with profound satisfaction. After those sharp and clear-cut Italian outlines, hard as lapis lazuli, the mysterious vagueness, the pregnant suggestiveness, of our English scenery strikes the imagination; ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... and Indians concealed by the prairie grass and timber, and from this situation, in almost perfect security, they fired down upon Braddock's men. The only exposure of the French and Indians, resulted from the circumstance of their having to raise their heads to peep over the verge of the cliff, in order to shoot with more deadly precision. In consequence, all of them who were killed in the early part of the action, were ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... gifts withheld by Fate From morrow unto morrow, till her great Dread eyes 'gan tell of other gifts than those, And her advancing wings gloomed like a pall; Her speech foretelling joy became a dirge As piteous as pitiless; and all My company had passed beyond the verge And lost me ere Fate raised her blinding wings.... Hark! through the dusk a bird ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... seemed on the verge of being anticipated. The experiment, which in Kirchhoff's hands proved decisive, of passing sunlight through glowing vapours and examining the superposed spectra, was performed by Professor W. A. Miller of King's College in 1845.[395] Nay, more, it was ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... on the hills, melancholy on the verge of pools, exalted when the sun is crowned in an ocean of blood-red shadows, and when it casts on the rivers its red reflection. And at night, under the moon, as it passes across the vault of heaven, you think of things, singular things, which would never have occurred ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... evidence of a painful episode in Mrs. Carteret's 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 might ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... sky, Haltingly, the lines go by. Ah, would steps were blithe and gay, As when first they marched away, Smile on lip and curl on brow,— Only white-faced gray-beards now, Standing on life's outer verge, E'en the ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... that not a motion of the arm, not an inch of the foot, pass the verge of the ring; and if the fluid be thus unhappily stinted, reserve all that is left for the protecting circle and the twelve outer lamps! See how the Grand Work advances, how the hues in the caldron are glowing blood-red through the film ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... considerable notice. In later days his brilliancy had been less conspicuously displayed. During a debate in the House of Lords on affairs in Morocco, at a moment when that country, for the fifth time in seven years, had brought half Europe to the verge of war, he had interpolated the remark "a little Moor and how much it is," but in spite of the encouraging reception accorded to this one political utterance he was never tempted to a further display in that direction. It began to be generally understood that he did ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... expedition acted the part of peacemaker among the Indians. The officers patched up peace agreements between the tribes that were on the verge of warfare, and made treaties with the Yankton branch of the Sioux and the Ricaras. All these natives were familiar with white men, having known both French traders and the employees of the British Fur Company. The Indians showed a friendly disposition toward the ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... favorite with us, and with all the officers of the regiment. He talked less than any man I ever knew, but there was nothing sinister or sullen in his reticence. It was sunshine,—warmth and brightness, but no voice. Unassuming and modest to the verge of shyness, he impressed every one as a man of singular pluck ...
— Quite So • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... pitchforks and spades, while the women remained outside the church with the cure, they sought a suitable ambuscade. Approaching a mill on a rising ground adjacent to the verge of the forest, they saw the light of the burning farm flaming against the stars. There they waited under enormous oaks, before a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... I think the putting off these material points, when so many accidents every day happen, and life is so precarious, is one of the most inexcusable things in the world. And there are many important points to be thought of, when life is drawing to its utmost verge; and the mind may be so agitated and unfit, that it is a most sad thing to put off, to that time, any of those concerns, which more especially require a considerate and composed frame of temper, and perfect health ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... awaking, surrounded by a revengeful and infuriated people—they at length reached the shore to find no junk or vessel of sufficient size to convey them across the narrow sea to their own country. Driven to face their enemies on the very verge of the ocean, they eventually succeeded in retreating to some small boats—in which, wounded and bleeding, but all alive, they confided themselves to the sea, as being more merciful than their relentless and cruel foe. All ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... riverward alleys the young fellow came upon his ambuscade, and was struck motionless with amazement at the form it took. Silhouetted against the shining water beyond was a young girl. She knelt at the very verge of the low, crumbling cliff above the water; her left hand, outspread, was on the ground, her right rested against the rough trunk of a palm-tree, and counter-balanced the weight of her body, which leaned far forward over the brink. Her face was turned ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... I knew what is the matter with me. I feel always just on the verge of becoming an absurd old hypochondriac, and as if it only wanted a touch ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... 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 or military, to the princes of the blood royal. A son of the reigning Pharaoh, ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... collision with the great soldier—that tried and trusty friend of my heart. The army had saluted him on a hundred fields. His name had become the synonym of unfaltering courage. He was here, on the verge of surrender now, looking as calm and resolute as on ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... day by day strengthening its cords, enlarging its borders, and with firm tread advancing steadily to recognized place among the nations. They would have beheld the savage foe—giving way before the inexorable advance of the hated 'pale face'—sadly retreating toward the ever-receding western verge of civilization. It would have been theirs to witness the symbols of French and Spanish authority disappear forever from mainland and island of the New World. Following the sun a thousand miles toward his ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... blue-eyed waif. In its blue-checked apron, the remains of fish and ham around its mouth, its large blue eyes wandering from face to face in search of the pale mother who had for a time left her, Letty stood for a moment motionless and on the verge of tears. ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... Lloyd's yet," he answered, easily. "My uncle is far from his dotage. Then, too, you know that I was never intended for a business man, but a lawyer, like my father, if there had not been so little for my father's second wife and the children—" He stopped himself abruptly on the verge of a confidence. "I think I saw you on your way to the photographer to-day," he said, and Ellen blushed, remembering her aunt Eva's violent nudge, and wondering if he had noticed. She gave ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... acknowledging the irregular marriage. This he deposited with Mr. Aitken of Ayr, who, as Burns heard, deleted the names, thus rendering the marriage null and void. This was the circumstance, what he regarded as Jean's desertion, which brought Burns, as he has said, to the verge of insanity. ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... been often asked concerning supposed cases, in which I was said to have been placed on the verge of discovery; but, as I maintained my point with the composure of a lawyer of thirty years' standing, I never recollect being in pain or confusion on the subject. In Captain Medwyn's Conversations of Lord Byron the reporter states himself to have asked my noble and highly gifted ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the lighthouse in a hurry, intending to call on a shipping agent, naturally he wouldn't stay in port long," said Blake. "Besides——" He stopped suddenly, being on the verge of saying something that would give Joe a hint of ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... why Otho's banish'd? Know, the cause Comes not within the verge of vulgar laws. Against all rules of fashionable life, The rogue had dared to sleep with his ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... the girl Varina Pemberton was telling him. "It has plates of metal that may be turned to use. Perhaps—" She seemed to be on the verge of saying ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... Requisition which swept the bulk of French workmen into the army. The old pressman was the only hand left in the printing-house; and when the master (otherwise the "gaffer") died, leaving a widow, but no children, the business seemed to be on the verge of extinction; for the solitary "bear" was quite incapable of the feat of transformation into a "monkey," and in his quality of pressman had never learned to read or write. Just then, however, a Representative ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... the pump and the currant bushes, then down the path to the chicken-houses, and so on, by way of the woodpile, to the south gate. After that, you went west toward the clover meadows, past the house where the Crazy Lady lived—here, if you were alone, you ran—and then, reaching the verge of the woods, you took your choice of climbing a seven-rail fence or of walking a quarter of a mile till you came to the bars. The latter was much better for the lace ...
— Painted Windows • Elia W. Peattie
... door jambs, Carpy effectually barred the exit. Knowing his stubborn patient well, he humored him, to the verge of letting him have his own way, but with much raillery denied him the drug store trip. A compromise was effected. Laramie consented to go to Belle's to get something to eat. In this way, refusing help, the obdurate patient was got ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... it come like this— A vivid glory burning at the gate Over the sudden verge of golden waves? The tall white columns stand like seraphim With high arms locked for song. The city lies Pearled like the courts of heaven, waiting the tread Of souls made wise with joy. Why should we fear? ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... even unintelligible; yet it is logically and intently thought out from its emotional premises. It can take permanent possession of a deep mind here and there, and under certain conditions it can become epidemic. Imagine, for instance, a small nation with an intense vitality, but on the verge of ruin, ecstatic and distressful, having a strict and minute code of laws, that paints life in sharp and violent chiaroscuro, all pure righteousness and black abominations, and exaggerating the consequences of both perhaps to infinity. Such a people were the Jews after the exile, and again ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... sensitiveness. She would go to the root of this matter, if she had intelligence enough. Crippled, ruined in health, wrecked and broken by an inexplicable war, soul-blighted by the heartless, callous neglect of government and public, on the verge of madness at the insupportable facts, he had yet been wonderful enough, true enough to himself and God, to fight for life with the instinct of a man, to fight for his mind with a noble and unquenchable faith. Alone indeed he had been alone! And by some miracle beyond ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... the girl, who seemed on the verge of fainting, in his left arm, and approached his mouth to hers. But, just as their lips were about to touch, an owl's cry was heard, so close to the window that Amelie started and Charles raised his head. The cry was repeated a second ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... urged the teaching of the elements of religion common to all of the Christian sects. He took a firm stand against the idea of a purely secular education, and on one occasion said he was in favor of religious instruction 'to the extremest verge to which it can be carried without invading those rights of conscience which are established by the laws of God, and guaranteed to us by the Constitution of the State.' At another time he said that he regarded hostility to religion in the schools as the greatest crime he could commit. Lest his ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... equilibrium after that change. Though actual rebellion was nipped in the bud wherever it appeared, as in the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536 and in the Rising of the North of 1569, yet between those years, and long after the second rising, religious passions were embittered to the very verge of outbreak. In the early period of the Reformation changes were rapid and violent, and during more than a century and a half after Protestantism was established hostile legislation imposed heavy burdens upon all those who differed from the dominant ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... and never succeeds in compassing the (intended) ends of his measures. That king of infirm soul, who, yielding to the influence of wrath and malice, does not love and honour those amongst his kinsmen that are possessed of good qualities, is said to live on the very verge of destruction. That king, who attaches to himself accomplished persons by doing good to them even though he may not like them at heart, succeeds in enjoying fame for ever. Thou shouldst never impose taxes unseasonably. Thou shouldst not be grieved at the occurrence of anything ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... unfit to allot its proper place to the most insignificant fact; all her heart stunned by a cataclysm she had no wits to give a name to. She had come with a rare courage and endurance to be at close quarters with this mystery, whatever it was, at once. On the very verge of full knowledge of it, this terror had come upon her, and she stood trembling, sick with dread undefined, glad she need not speak or call out. It would pass, and then she would call to Ruth, whose voice ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... with a swift crimson and she set her lips together. She was on the verge of extreme anger just then, but after a little the flush died down again and the dark fire went out of her eyes. She made an odd gesture with her two hands. It seemed to express fatigue as ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... recover my beloved child. After having been many years deprived of both bodily and mental vigour by his paralysis, my husband died. I was free; but wherefore should I live!... I had lost my faith in everything which makes life dear, and I stood alone, on the verge of old age, surrounded by darkness and bitter memories. Thus did I still feel but a few days ago, when I received a writing from the present Commandant of K——. Within lay an unsealed letter, which he said had been found in a drawer into which my husband ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... we thought we saw. At first she slightly drew back, with brows knitted, on the verge of an exclamation; then her brows unbent, and the pleasure of finding herself admired, confusion at being taken unawares, the desire of appearing at ease, all appeared at once on her rosy cheeks and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... an appearance of calmness, there was something in his voice that made Dick catch his breath. It was not that the younger lad was exactly afraid, but he was on the verge of ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... was within an ace of driving his fist into the face of his boorish visitor, but held himself awkwardly in check. Everybody rose. Lake lost his head and caught himself on the verge of saying, 'Must you go?' Then began the farrago of leave-taking. 'So nice of you—' 'I am awfully sorry' 'By Jove! how things ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... circumstances fall within the latitude of the command: so in religious covenants, not only those things which are of the substance and integrals of religion, but even the collaterals and subserviences that tend either to the establishing or advancing of religion, may justly be admitted within the verge and pale of the covenant. The cities of refuge had their suburbs appointed by God, as well as their habitations, and even they also were counted holy. The rights and privileges of the parliaments, and the liberties of the kingdom, mentioned in the third article; they are ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... the point 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 on poles and uprights; and within this the adult ...
— The Cobbler In The Devil's Kitchen - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood |
