"Collapse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... different. His voice dies away, inarticulate. I see his lips whiten and draw back upon his teeth. His hands clutch me as a convulsive spasm wrenches his muscles. There is a tense, rigid silence, and then one deep-drawn groan. Nerve, limb, muscle, and flesh collapse as the Life is set loose. The damp body sinks back, leaving its death sweat on my arms, its gasp in my ears. Tomkins is dead. But the impulse is not done with me yet. I cannot get out of that hospital ward ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... the wind itself tore our canvas out of the gaskets, jerked out our topmasts, and made a raffle of our running gear, but still we would have come through nicely had we not been square in front of the advancing storm center. That was what fixed us. I was in a state of stunned, numbed, paralyzed collapse from enduring the impact of the wind, and I think I was just about ready to give up and die when the center smote us. The blow we received was an absolute lull. There was not a breath of air. The effect on ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... marching costume; but her hair had been smoothed, her face washed. The colour had come back to her lips, the light to her expression. Only a faint dark encircling of the eyes, and a certain graceful languor of attitude recalled the collapse ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... poor mare. At any moment now her sudden collapse after a stumble might be expected. On the other hand, the farm-house, winning-post of the race, loomed up clearly, and, luckily, the road improved a little by becoming harder and descending gradually. On one side rose a willow coppice, in the trailing branches ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... struggling during the last few hours, crept once more through the whole being of the man who listened. He was face to face once more with that terrible issue. Had he perjured himself in vain? Was the whole structure of his dreams about to collapse, to ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... but I had to try. R.C. was still fresh when I had to rest. Perhaps no one except myself realized the weakness of my back, but the truth was a couple of dozen pulls on that saw almost made me collapse. Wherefore I grew furious with myself and swore I would do it or die. I sawed till I fell over—then I rested and went back at it. Half an hour of this kind of exercise gave me a stab in my left side infinitely sharper than the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... moments Dorothy felt as if she must collapse. The strain of her escape from the old house, then her fright from the bird, and her fear that Mrs. Hobbs would overtake her. And now to be actually riding back to camp! What would her friends say to her? Oh, how good it would be to relieve ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose
... coal being taken out as from a series of rooms, the portion corresponding to the walls of the rooms being left to uphold the roof. These walls are the "pillars"; and when the end of the vein is reached, the miner begins to work backwards, "pulling the pillars," and letting the roof collapse behind him. This is a dangerous task; as he works, the man has to listen to the drumming sounds of the rock above his head, and has to judge just when to make his escape. Sometimes he is too anxious ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... military supplies and railroads did undoubtedly render impossible any great prolongation of the war, if that would otherwise have been possible; but it did not materially hasten the actual collapse of the rebellion, which was due to Grant's capture of Lee's army. Besides, if Grant had not captured Lee, Sherman would. Lee could not possibly have escaped them both. Hence Sherman's destruction of property in Georgia, South Carolina, and ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... spoke, and Don Carlos was on his feet in an instant, and had thrown his arm around her lest she should collapse. ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... man of straw with a broomstick under his arm. They will turn upon and attack the young dog, and chase him away with his tail between his legs. He will also work too furiously for his strength and then collapse, with the result that he will make a cowardly sheep-dog, or, ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... of collapse following an accident, treat the accident; then treat as for fainting. Apply hot plates, stones or bottles of hot water, or an electric light wrapped in towels over the stomach. Wrap up warmly. Keep the patient quiet, in the dark, ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... know whether to feel pleasure or disappointment. He was glad to have the mystery cleared up; glad, too, to find that Elsie had had so sweet a mother, and was likely to have such kind and liberal friends. Yet he could not but feel sorry for the collapse that was awaiting Jim's castle in the air. It would be a bitter trial for him, and he knew not how Jim would bear it. Mr. Smith was somewhat puzzled, moreover, what to do himself. He had promised to write to the expectant Jim; but now he could not bring himself to do so. His own holiday would ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... tempestuous vein is less apparent in 'Richard II' than in 'Richard III.' But if 'Richard II' be in style and treatment less deeply indebted to Marlowe than its predecessor, it was clearly suggested by Marlowe's 'Edward II.' Throughout its exposition of the leading theme—the development and collapse of the weak king's character—Shakespeare's historical tragedy closely imitates Marlowe's. Shakespeare drew the facts from Holinshed, but his embellishments are numerous, and include the magnificently ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... really suffering for lack of meat the efforts of the Meat Board of Chicago should be regarded as a noble philanthropic effort to correct a national fault and to avert the dire consequences of the physical collapse which must necessarily result from a deficiency diet. But if it is not true that the average American eats less beefsteaks, chops, sausage, etc., than he needs, but as a matter of fact is actually suffering notable injury because of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... favor; up to the present we have had no considerable paper currency, and this is the great free market for the gold of the world. The quantity imported every year of, what shall I call it, raw gold, comes to something like L50,000,000, and here I am excluding what comes here by exchanges. The collapse of the rebellion in South Africa assures us of a large and steady supply from that country, and, therefore, there is no real need ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to go down, apparently with his machine out of control, after a fusillade of Boche bullets. This much Du Boise had said before his collapse. As to what the fallen aviator's real fate was, time ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... back in her chair with an air of nervous collapse, and did not say anything. Westover saw her watching the young couples who passed in and out of the room where the dancing was, or found corners on sofas, or window-seats, or sheltered spaces beside the doors and the chimney- piece, the girls panting and the men leaning ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... commerce in those distant regions, which had always been shrouded in a mysterious halo of fancied wealth and grandeur. Several times the Company had all but perished; it had revived under the vigorous impulse communicated by Law, and had not succumbed at the collapse of his system. It gave no money to its shareholders, who derived their benefits only from a partial concession of the tobacco. revenues, granted by the king to the Company, but its directors lived a life of magnificence in the East, where they were authorized to trade on their own account. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... these Messianic descriptions is the expulsion of the Assyrians; but most emphasis is laid on the restoration of the inner bases of the state, the rottenness of which has brought about and rendered inevitable the present crisis. The collapse of the government, the paralysis fallen on the law, the spoliation of the weak by the strong, these are the evils that call for redress. "How is the honourable city become a harlot; it was full of judgment, righteousness lodged in it—but now murderers! Thy princes are rascals and companions ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... fibres are hot enough and very wet, they are not strong enough to withstand the resulting force of the atmospheric pressure and the tensile force exerted by the departing free water, and the result is that the cells actually collapse. ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... need, which at some time is certain to arrive, against Russia; and Japan for many reasons needs the strength of English backing, without which her financial and political situation soon would become most dangerous, if not collapse. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... flood, cataclysm steep, precipitous wonder, astonishment speed, velocity sparkle, scintillate stir, commotion stir, agitate strike, collide learned, erudite small, diminutive scare, terrify burn, combustion fire, conflagration fall, collapse uproot, eradicate skin, excoriate hate, abominate work, labor bright, brilliant hungry, famished eat, devour twisted, contorted thin, emaciated sad, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... into the parlor, and, closing the door, told his story. When he reached the point where he had discovered the color of the honorable Mr. Brown, Miss Clayton caught her breath, and was on the verge of collapse. ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... Mr. Kruger to Johannesburg was the famous one of 1890, when the collapse of the share market and the apparent failure of many of the mines left a thriftless and gambling community wholly ruined and half starving, unable to bear the burden which the State imposed, almost wholly unappreciative of the ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... harmless drug. The post-mortem examination reveals the presence in the body of a considerable quantity of cyanide of potassium, and the police theory is that this was self-administered before the collapse. In the man's pocket was discovered a number of ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... with the rich and perfectly arranged museum, an unsurpassed exhibition of monumental treasure from Etruscan tombs, funereal urns mainly, reliquaries of an infinite power to move and charm us still, contributing to this same so designed, but somehow at the same time so inspired, collapse of the historic imagination under too heavy a pressure, or abeyance of "private judgment" ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Russian collapse and the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, the Germans withdrew their divisions from the eastern front and staked everything on the great western drive of March, 1918. When this movement was finally checked and the Allied advance began, ...
— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane
... of the prison camp buildings to collapse, and a number of Russians were killed. The barbed and charged wires about the camp were torn loose and then it was that Jimmy saw his chance—a chance taken by many ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... almost physical collapse; neither he nor Henry Houghton had reckoned on maternal love. Mr. Houghton had implied that Lily's kind did not have maternal love. "She'll leave it on a convenient doorstep—unless she's a white blackbird," Henry ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... ate vigorously. Drinking he conscientiously performed as an accompanying duty, and was flushed after dinner, burning for tobacco and a couch for his length. Then he talked of the littleness of Europe and the greatness of Germany; logical postulates fell in collapse before him. America to America, North and South; India to Europe. India was for the land with the largest sea-board. Mistress of the Baltic, of the North Sea and the East, as eventually she must be, Germany would claim to take India as a matter of course, and find an outlet for the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mustard-seed which, planted in a congenial soil, would grow into a tree in whose branches all the birds of the air might dwell. It was the initial misfortune of the Brook-Farmers to establish themselves on a picturesque but gravelly and uncongenial soil, whose poverty went very far toward compassing the collapse ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... low sound of laughter, looked up and nearly fell backwards, that is, metaphorically, for the chair prevented such a physical collapse. ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... little Francis, your grandchild, I ask you to extend the financial help which I, as your heir-in-law, might demand. You may consider that I have wronged you, but, as you should know and must know, the wrong was unintentional and due solely to the sudden collapse of the worthless American investments which the scoundrelly Yankee ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... sick," Steele exclaimed, putting an arm about the other. And, in truth, the elder man seemed fainting, ready to collapse. "Come, let me help you in so you can lie down. I must ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... assistance in these trying days. We could do this all the less as our own interests were menaced through the continued Serb agitation. If the Serbs continued with the aid of Russia and France to menace the existence of Austria-Hungary, the gradual collapse of Austria and the subjection of all the Slavs under one Russian sceptre would be the consequence, thus making untenable the position of the Teutonic race in Central Europe. A morally weakened Austria under the pressure of Russian pan-slavism would be no longer an ally on whom we could ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... who would commend that view of the cosmos have not only to reckon with philosophical and religious idealism, but also with all the bright band of poets and artists and seers. Such an issue once resolutely forced would therewith collapse, for it would pit the qualitative standards against the quantitative, the imagination against literalism, the creative spirit in man against the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... says Hughes, who has written an interesting but not exhaustive life of Alfred, "to account for the sudden and complete collapse of the West Saxon power in January, 878, since in the campaign of the preceding year Alfred had been successful both by sea and land." Yet such seems to have been the fact, whatever may be its explanation. No such panic had ever overcome the Britons, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... Intense burning pain of mouth, throat and stomach; vomiting blood which is highly acid, violent purging, collapse, stupor, death. ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... merely a question as to whether or not the master had so gaged his strength that the bay would not collapse before even the summit of the range had been reached. As the miles went by the horse loosened and extended finely to his work; sweat darkened and polished his flanks; flecks of foam whirled back and spattered his chest and the ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... The collapse of Gasbag can have surprised no careful reader of these columns. His public performances have been uniformly wretched, save and except on the one occasion when he defeated Ranunculus in the Decennial ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... competitive taint. But an excellent game is open to him in "patience," while there is no pastime more indicative of the true Communistic spirit than "ring-a-ring o' roses," so long as proper care be taken that at the last "tishu" all the players collapse simultaneously. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 19, 1920 • Various
... hunger as he was, and weary to the verge of collapse,—he had a little ceremony to perform, and he performed it—in answer to a sentimental fancy. With the point of his sword he found an earth-bank free of rock, and dug a trench there. In it he placed his sword in its scabbard and with its belt and sword-knot attached. ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... explain," she answered in a small voice, like a child's. She felt suddenly weak and sick, as if she might collapse in the man's arms. It was as if some terrible weapon wrapped round and half hidden in folds of velvet were lifted above her head ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... there was no noise, smoke nor flame, the steel plate seemed to crumple up, and collapse as if it had been melted in the fire. There was a jagged hole through the center, but some frail boards back of it were ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... up late at night writing personal reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln. I was writing against time. The presidential election was drawing nearer every day and the market for reminiscences of Lincoln was extremely brisk, but, of course, might collapse any moment. Writers of my class have to consider this sort of thing. For instance, in the middle of Lent, I find that I can do fairly well with "Recent Lights on the Scriptures." Then, of course, when the hot weather comes, ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... the crash comes to reimburse any outsiders who may have taken shares in the concern, telling them that the thing has been a failure, and that we are ruined; while Mascarin will take care to obtain from all his clients a discharge in full, so the Company will quietly collapse." ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... seems to be more or less in a state of collapse! The bal masque is over, the guests have departed, and all that is left to us now are the recollections of a delightful party that gave full return for our efforts to have it ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... company of John Marsh. In Belfast they were to separate: Marsh was to return to Dublin and Henry was to cross by the night boat to Liverpool, and proceed from there to London, and then on from Waterloo to Boveyhayne. Marsh, a little sad because the Ballymartin classes must now collapse, but greatly glad to return to the middle of Irish activities in Dublin, had turned over in his mind what Mr. Quinn had said about Henry's future, and he was wondering exactly what he should say to Henry. They had several hours to spend in Belfast, and Marsh proposed that they should visit ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... expressions of the men beneath, and chuckled grimly as they sought to escape the wrath of his hot guns. He flung bursts of spouting, acid-filled lead at the defenseless planes, and saw two of them collapse in shrouds of acrid white smoke. And ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... say that lack of fortitude is a mark of the man of letters. To measure Pattison's astounding collapse, we have a right to recall Johnson, Scott, Carlyle, and a host of smaller men, whom no vexations, chagrins, and perversities of fate could daunt from fighting the battle out. Pattison was thirty-eight when he missed the headship of his college. Diderot was ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 5: On Pattison's Memoirs • John Morley
... no longer looking for a New York gunman, I suppose you have plenty of plainclothesmen at your disposal?" Dundee asked, and was instantly sorry he had reminded his former chief of the collapse of his cherished and ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... dulled and blunted. The capacity of human nature for suffering is, after all not unlimited. God says to physical pain and mental anguish, "Thus far and no farther;" and this limitation saved Ida from utter collapse. ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... yard in which business he had gone "bust" for more money than the world appeared to contain. But he had fought his way back and paid a hundred cents on the dollar, including some hundred and forty thousand dollars he had owed the Ricks mills at the time of his collapse. Because he was young and fine and good-natured and brave and brilliant, Cappy had always admired J. Augustus Redell, but after the latter had so splendidly re-established his credit and formed a partnership ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... from Salpetriere, eh? Was she the same sweet, pure Henriette she knew? Yes, the little Girard—la petite Girard—looked to be the same hard-working, respectable seamstress person of yore, only that she seemed very weak and about to collapse! ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... The collapse of the Government of Balmaceda brought about a condition which is unfortunately too familiar in the history of the Central and South American States. With the overthrow of the Balmaceda Government he and many of his councilors and officers became at once fugitives ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... Verdun heights remained impregnable. The whole line turned and fought where it stood. The enemy, worn out by his exertions, stretched his line of communications to breaking-point, and it was said that his supplies of food and munitions had come temporarily very near to collapse. The Allies checked him. He could not even hold his own. In two days he was ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... On land General Alvear took charge of the investing patriot forces. Montevideo could now look for no assistance from the sea, and on June 20, 1814, after having suffered many hardships, the garrison capitulated, and with the collapse of its gallant defence ended the power of Spain in ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... others are peculiar to peace. The poor soldier perils for us not merely his body, but his soul. He leads a life of harassing and exhausting toil and privation, of violent strain on the nervous energies, alternating with sudden collapse, creating a craving for stimulants, and endangering the formation of fatal habits. What furies and harpies are those that follow the army, and that seek out the soldier in his tent, far from home, mother, wife, and sister, tired, disheartened, and tempt him to forget his troubles in a momentary exhilaration, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... creature has being by participation, so that its essence is not its existence. Therefore, as Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. iv, 12): "If the ruling power of God were withdrawn from His creatures, their nature would at once cease, and all nature would collapse." In the same work (Gen. ad lit. viii, 12) he says: "As the air becomes light by the presence of the sun, so is man enlightened by the presence of God, and in His absence returns at ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... struck a chill through Lady Sellingworth. Suddenly she felt the autumn in her. She had been in America: she had known the glory of its Indian summer; she had also known that Indian summer's startling sudden collapse. Winter comes swiftly after those almost unnaturally golden days. And what is there left in winter for a woman who has lived for her beauty since she was sixteen years old? The freedom of a second widowhood would be only chill loneliness in winter. She ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... question which springs out of the fact we will ask presently. "She has rapturous consolations and terrific temptations." Did the consolations come first, and were the temptations a revulsion from "spiritual" exaltation into "spiritual" collapse and melancholy? or did the temptations come first, and the consolations come after, to save her from madness and despair? Either may be the case; perhaps both were: but somewhat more of care should have been taken in expressing so important a spiritual sequence ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... been tottering on the verge of collapse for some time here broke down completely. She clung to him hysterically and entreated ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Byron's deadly sin in the eyes of the Georgian-English people was his Cosmopolitanism. He was the poetical representative of the Sturm und Drang period of the xixth century. He reflected, in his life and works, the wrath of noble minds at the collapse of the cause of freedom and the reactionary tendency of the century. Even in the distant regions of Monte Video Byron's hundredth birthday was not forgotten, and Don Luis Desteffanio's lecture ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... revolutions not to be able to forfeit their consistency without any loss of self-respect; and the rapidity with which the Southern Rebellion was forced up to its present formidable proportions, mainly by party management, is not unlikely to find its parallel in suddenness of collapse. But whether this prove to be the fact or not, nay, even if the reestablishment of the Union had been hopeless from the first, a government which should have abandoned its capital, which should have flinched from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... there was an explosion that threw them all flat from the force of the concussion, and a terrific noise deafened them. They seemed to be at the ending of the career of this part of the old earth as they saw the whole front wall of the red mill collapse, falling as though sliced off ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... into British control, that Pen's battalion was relieved and sent far to the rear for a long rest. Even unwounded men cannot stand the strain of continuous battle for many weeks at a stretch. The nervous system, delicate and complicated, must have relief, or the physical organization will collapse, or the mind ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... with hatred and revenge and went on: "I know what I know—there are legible and infallible signs, and it is given to me to interpret them, and I tell you: It is true, unerringly true, as every Alexandrian child has learnt from its nurse: When Serapis falls the earth will collapse like a dry puff-ball under a horse's hoof. A hundred oracles have announced it, it is written in the prophecies of the heavenly bodies, and in the scroll of Fate. Let them be! Let it come! The end is sweet to those ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a system of social relations based upon land. It grew out of the chaos which came upon Europe in the centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire. The fall of Roman power flattened the whole political structure of Western Europe, and nothing arose to take its place. Every lord or princeling was left to depend for defence upon the strength of his own arm; so he gathered ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... from November, 1825, shows dear forebodings of the collapse of the houses of Constable and Ballantyne. In a time of universal confidence and prosperity, the banks had supported them to an extent quite unwarranted by their assets or their trade, and as soon as the banks began to doubt and to enquire, their fall was a foregone conclusion. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... d'etat of Brumaire generally confuse the issue at stake by ignoring the difference between the overthrow of the Directory and that of the Legislature. The collapse of the Directory was certain to take place; but few expected that the Legislature of France would likewise vanish. For vanish it did: not for nearly half a century had France another free and truly democratic representative assembly. This result of Brumaire was unexpected by several ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... and when the bubble was strained to the bursting point, and some one of supposed financial soundness was compelled to succumb to the pressure, the veil was lifted, which opened the eyes of the community and produced a rush for safety, which induced, and was necessarily followed, by a general collapse. In 1888 and 1889 banks suspended, money disappeared, and in 1893, in the expressive language of the West, everybody who was in debt, and all stockholders and depositors in defunct banks "went broke." Had the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis been captured by an enemy and a ransom of ten ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... waiting. The driver noticed nothing strange in his fare's appearance. He noticed nothing strange when the Atkins residence was reached and its tenant mounted the stone steps and opened the door with his latchkey. But, if he had seen the dignified form collapse in a library chair and moan and rock back and forth until the morning hours, he would ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... spot for him. After much trouble a Chinaman with a team was secured, who agreed to drive the entire family to Tautira, the largest village, sixteen miles away over a road crossed by no less than twenty-one streams. On this uncertain venture they started, with the head of the family in a state of collapse, knowing nothing of the village they were going to or the living ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... doing the work practically of two men, was undergoing torture which shortly would have one of two effects. Either he would collapse or his spirit would carry him beyond the claims of overtaxed physique. One stroke, two strokes, three strokes—a groan escaped his lips. Then so far as personality, personal emotions, personal feelings were concerned, Jim Deacon ceased to function. He became merely part ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... boarding-house would be gloomy now after Mrs. Lazarus' death, recalling, above all, to himself every slightest incident of his meeting with Miss Rossiter, Peter, crossing Oxford Street, flung his broad body against a fat and soft one. There was nearly a collapse. ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... combined and concentrated into the Nile Valley through an effective imperial apparatus that enabled the Egyptians to exploit the resources and peoples of adjacent Africa, Asia and Europe for the enrichment and empowerment of the rulers of Egypt and its dependencies. The disintegration and collapse of Egyptian civilization occupied only a small fraction of the time devoted to ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... the most incredible thing in the play. Indeed the author was reduced to showing us the results of the bad man's change of heart and leaving us to imagine the processes, these being worked out in the interval between two Acts by means of a fortnight's physical collapse, from which he emerges ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... languishing state, miserable beyond description. We county people had simply viewed ourselves as the injured parties by this importation, bemoaned the ugliness of the erections, were furious at the interruptions to our country walks, prophesied the total collapse of the Company, and never suspected that we had any duties towards the potters. The works were lingering on, only just not perishing; the wages that the men did get, such as they were, went in drink; the town in that quarter was really unsafe in the evening; ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... convulsive worker breaks down and has bad moods so often that you never know where he may be when you most need his help,—he may be having one of his 'bad days.' We say that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse, and have to be sent abroad to rest their nerves, because they work so hard. I suspect that this is an im- mense mistake. I suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity of our breakdowns, but that their cause lies rather in those ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... quite refused to accept the unhappy Selina's theory that her revelation had in any way induced Clark's sudden collapse. Both he and the coroner afterwards, who found the immediate cause to be heart-failure, held that such a supposition was unwarranted by facts. They asserted that a long day's journey, a hurried drive, and then an exhausting ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... the secret aisles of the forest across the brook there did indeed seem to be a movement. The Maimed Man half arose to his feet. 'I will shame them, the lazy-bones,' he said, and then he sat down again, with an odd, soft collapse. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... son go to this hopeless conflict like a garlanded victim to the altar. She had nothing to aid him save her prayers and the execution of the heavy sacrifice which she had resolved to make. The collapse of her belief, wishes, and expectations produced a transformation of her whole nature. A world of ideas had crumbled into fragments before and within her, and from their ruins a new one suddenly sprang up in her strong soul. Where yesterday her ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... pass a G.I. bill for America's workers. We propose to collapse nearly 70 Federal programs and not give the money to the states but give the money directly to the American people, offer vouchers to them so that they—if they're laid off or if they're working for a very low wage—can get a voucher worth $ 2,600 a year for up to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... while padding to seaward his attention had been attracted by the appearance of something floating about a mile away. Paddling in that direction, in the hope that what he saw might be worth picking up, he had at length come alongside the hatchway, with me upon it, in a state of collapse. The negroes on the island had risen in insurrection against the whites only some six years previously, while slavery had been abolished only about four years, the relations between the blacks and the whites on the island were consequently ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... said were the two and two that made four. I am afraid that is not very grammatical, but it is true. Of course he wouldn't have told me if I had not said something about it; but the moment he told me about your brother's collapse that morning the truth came to me like a flash. Reginald Garthorne is a scoundrel, and his father is worse, for he is a hypocrite as well as a scoundrel. He pretends to be Sir Arthur's friend—he has done ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... generous sympathy with this bright-eyed enthusiast; even while I proceeded to test his wild dream by what I believed to be the standard of right Reason. Then, as the specious fabric was seen suddenly to collapse and melt away, should I not, with affectionate sorrow, secretly mourn that such brilliant parts had not been enlisted on the side of Truth? and feel as if I could have been content to go about for life maimed in body, or hopelessly impoverished in estate, if so great a disaster could ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... supplies, did not dare to join battle with the king in his kingdom." It was an age, to be sure, when wars were decided less by fighting in the open field than by the siege and defence of castles; and yet the collapse of so formidable an insurrection as this, after no resistance at all in proportion to its apparent fighting strength, is surely a significant fact. To notice here but one inference from it, it means that no ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... drove over this afternoon to "cheer me up". She means well, but her cheering capacities are not great. Her mode of attack is first to enlarge on every possible ill, and reduce one to a state of collapse from pure self-pity, and then to proceed to waft the same troubles aside with a casual flick of the hand. She sat down beside me, stroked my hand (I hate being pawed!) and ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... benches, a dusty space, and some swings. He threw himself into a corner of one of the benches and closed his eyes. He was worn out, physically exhausted. Yet all the time the sense of something wonderful kept him from collapse. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Syncope, shock, and collapse are clinical conditions which, although depending on different causes, bear a superficial resemblance to ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... be told of an Irish leader. We have bravery and reckless courage, but we have none of the stubborn obstinacy of your Scottish folk. Were the flag raised the people would flock to it, and would fight desperately; but if they lost, there would be utter and complete collapse. The fortitude to support repeated defeats, to struggle on when the prospect seems darkest, does not belong ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... hotly, "I don't say a word against liberalism. Liberalism is not a sin, it is a necessary part of a great whole, which whole would collapse and fall to pieces without it. Liberalism has just as much right to exist as has the most moral conservatism; but I am attacking RUSSIAN liberalism; and I attack it for the simple reason that a Russian liberal is not a Russian ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... swift pulsations and he was growing irritably impatient of his forced inactivity and of the obligation of office which held him stagnant while his sovereign rode to the wars. For as yet, no news had reached this distant section of the actual happenings in the South and the bloodless collapse of the rebellion. ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... than of lessons, has become a necessity, if Torrington's is to be saved from going to the dogs; and I should be very sorry to see the school go down. I went there when I was a lad, and have always been proud of Torrington's, and that is why I am anxious to save it from collapse.' ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... made to feel that he has no friend near him, that the world is all against him; he must be confounded till he forget his right hand from his left, till his mind be turned into chaos, and his heart into water; and then let him give his evidence. What will fall from his lips when in this wretched collapse must be of special value, for the best talents of practised forensic heroes are daily used to bring it about; and no member of the Humane Society interferes to protect the wretch. Some sorts of torture are, as it were, tacitly allowed even among humane people. Eels are skinned alive, and witnesses ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... has the advantage over the historian. Were I an artist, I should show James at this point falling backwards with his feet together and his eyes shut, with a semi-circular dotted line marking the progress of his flight and a few stars above his head to indicate moral collapse. There are no words that can adequately describe the sheer, black horror that froze the blood in his veins as this frightful speech smote ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... dinner, but was bitterly reproached for being able to think of any form of enjoyment at a moment when his poor dear father was in heaven. It reminded his mother of the special message to Cousin Jane, who up to that moment had been playing the part of comforter. With the collapse of Cousin Jane, dramatic in its suddenness, conversation disappeared. At nine o'clock the entire family ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... society was about to collapse. Perhaps Queen, deliberately courting destruction, and being destroyed, was the symbol of society. What matter? Perhaps civilisation, by its nobility and its elements of reason, and by the favour of destiny, would be saved from disaster after frightful ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... a town implies the decay of the trade of the town; and the decay of all towns simultaneously would imply a general collapse of the trade of the whole country. Walled towns, however, before the Reformation, existed for other purposes than as the centre points of industry: they existed for the protection of property and life: and although it ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Alice!" half rising. But he tumbled back upon the pillow with a swift collapse of weakness and his ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... fanned by a tribe of scribblers, who heaped distortion on the history and practices of the Jewish people. On the other hand, the proselytes to Judaism, "the fearers of God," who accepted part of its teaching—and in the utter collapse of pagan religion and morality they were many—desired to know something of the past grandeur of the nation, and doubtless were anxious to justify themselves to those who regarded their adoption of Jewish customs as an utter degradation. For those who mocked at him as a renegade ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... apprehensions had been entertained, until, one afternoon, he shut himself in, desiring not to be disturbed till evening. After two or three hours he called Lord Burghersh,—"Frank, Frank!" and was found to be almost in a state of collapse, and died that evening. Mr. H———'s story might very well have ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Chitral, Moberly reported that part of the wall had fallen on a sleeping sepoy, who was luckily saved by some beams catching and protecting him from being crushed by the debris. There was no apparent cause for the collapse, but the man is ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... sudden immersion was electric in its effect, sending a thrill through nerve and muscle, though the brain remained still drowsily inert, while the natural instinct of desire for life chased away the helpless state of collapse; and Mark Heath, old athlete, expert swimmer, man hardened by his life in the southern colony, rose to the surface, and struck out, swimming slowly and mechanically, as if it were the natural action of his muscles. On and on, breasting the ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... matter as though he had been prepared for it. The joke of it—that Lois should have come back with money, when her sisters certainly, and the rest of the community probably, assumed that her return to Montgomery meant nothing more or less than the collapse of her fortunes—this was a joke so delicious, so stupendous, that his enjoyment of it dulled the edge of his curiosity as to the history the fact concealed. She hadn't even taken off her gloves ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... subject of charity as practised by his Redeemer, and, as a result, was the recipient of numberless congratulatory handshakes later at the church door. Donald agreed that it was an unusually good sermon—in theory; but since he knew it would collapse in practise, he ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... fever, and that with a day or two of treatment he should be entirely recovered. On his second visit he was much irritated, as the young man had not made the promised improvement, and assured us that there was no cause for his collapse. During our first visit to Merida, in hunting through the city for Protestants—a practice in which he invariably indulged whenever we reached a town of consequence—Ramon had happened on an interesting little man who represents the American Bible Society in this district. ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... march, the hidden enemy became bolder and the regiment writhed and twisted under attacks it could not avenge. The crowning triumph was a sudden night-rush ending in the cutting of many tent-ropes, the collapse of the sodden canvas, and a glorious knifing of the men who struggled and kicked below. It was a great deed, neatly carried out, and it shook the already shaken nerves of the Fore and Aft. All the courage that they had been required to exercise ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... flowers vanish from the windows. Here, where the winter cold is so piercing, it is oppressively hot in summer. Our little toy train crosses a river several times on fragile bridges of beams, which seem as though they might at any moment collapse like a house of cards. Small strips of tilled land, creaking ox-carts on the deeply rutted roads, tiny Buddhist oratories, primitive stations with long rows of trucks of fuel, a country house or two—that is all that is to be seen the whole ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... please, monsieur, is there any real and immediate danger of the financial collapse of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... trying to break down our nerve so that we'll fail through sheer collapse," replied the president of the S.B. & L., rubbing his hands nervously. "Reade, why should there be ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... still infinite dangers, yet she could hardly wish that anything should be altered. Should Lord Rufford disown her, which she knew to be quite possible, there would be a general collapse and the world would crash over her head. But she had known, when she took this business in hand, that as success would open Elysium to her, so would failure involve her in absolute ruin. She was determined that she would mar nothing now by cowardice, and having so resolved, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... ended abruptly with the collapse of the singer upon a particularly inviting slope of grass. He was very dusty. He was very hot. The way from Wimbleton to Wombleton seemed suddenly extraordinarily long and tiresome. The slope was green and cool. Just below ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... neck, but the brisk and significant air with which Griffin spoke roused her to herself again. She put Elinor's arms away, and going to the mirror, smoothed her tumbled hair, and whisked away the telltale traces of her collapse, while Elinor sat quietly on the edge of the couch watching her with ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... novelist whom both the million-headed crowd and shoals of reviewers, of very uneven critical equipment, place 'well forward among America's novelists.' A penniless young woman brought up amid the standards of very common people marries for money, and comes to face the collapse of her dreams. She realises that she is tied to a man for whom she cares nothing. Also he is a brute, a typical bad egg of a husband from the extensive though rather monotonous stock of this article dealt in by our women novelists. Is it right for this young woman to throw ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... to take charge of advance on Ladysmith. If under Providence we are successful there and at Kimberley, I think collapse of opposition possible. These proposals are subject to High Commissioner's views of state of Cape Colony, and to what ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... the vast cliff some fifty yards away, and it was close up to it that they had been first buried, the fresh collapse, when the snow had fallen away and borne him with it, having taken him the above distance. It was probable, then, that Dallas would not be now very far below the glittering surface ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... forth alone to see the parade. The professor remained in bed, apparently in a state of utter collapse. ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... age. The outlines of the bodies are woolly or blurred; in the early stage there may be clear areas corresponding to cheesy foci. In progressive cases the bodies may be altered in shape and in size, and from destruction and collapse of the bones there is altered spacing, both of the bodies and of the ribs. In the interpretation of skiagrams, help is often obtained from an alteration in the axis of bodies, an angular deviation often drawing attention to the lesion which is located ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... learned that prostitution might be regarded as an economic evil. He found that sex morality was regarded by some as a useful taboo; psychology taught him that repression could be as harmful as excess; the collapse of the Darwinian optimists, who believed that all curves were upward, left him with the inner conviction that everything, including principle, was in a state of flux. And his intellectual guides, first Shaw, and then, when Shaw became vieux ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... rude, choleric grunt, his disgust to see his splendid fabrication, so painfully concocted for the delusion and discomfiture of P. Sybarite, threatening to collapse of sheer intrinsic flimsiness. He had counted so confidently on the credulity of the little bookkeeper! And Violet had supported his confidence with so much assurance! Disgusting wasn't the word ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... apprehensive for her, afraid that she might be in for a serious nervous illness. Perhaps what she wished to tell him might be buried in oblivion for months, if indeed it ever came to light. It even occurred to him that she might wake up completely ignorant of everything that had preceded her collapse. In that case what should he do? how should he behave? He knew he could never rid his mind entirely of the suspicion she had planted there, ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... shaking off the triple load. But by degrees Aramis beheld the block sink; the hands, strung for an instant, the arms stiffened for a last effort, gave way, the extended shoulders sank, wounded and torn, and the rocks continued to gradually collapse. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... as to his own motives, and the ruthless probing of himself it induced, both led to the same conclusion: Louise must go away. The day after the ball, too, he had found her in a state of collapse, which was unparalleled even in the ups and downs of the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... morality is involved in the dislike (within reasonable limits) of death. Morality aims at a maximum of comfortable life and a minimum of death; if then, a minimum of death and a maximum of life were no longer held worth striving for, the whole fabric of morality would collapse, as indeed we have it on record that it is apt to do among classes that from one cause or another have come to live in disregard ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... to face with the real Madame Desvarennes; and no politeness held good on her part when it was a question of business. From his first words, she had found a weak point in the plan, and had attacked him with such plainness that the financier, seeing his enterprise collapse at the sound of the mistress's voice-like the walls of Jericho at the sound of the Jewish trumpets—had beaten a retreat, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... decided opinion about the railway. The Editor would at any future time be able to refer to his article with equal pride whether the railway should become a great cosmopolitan fact, or whether it should collapse amidst the foul struggles of a horde of swindlers. In utrumque paratus, the article was mysterious, suggestive, amusing, well-informed,—that in the 'Evening Pulpit' was a matter of course,—and, above all things, ironical. Next to its omniscience its irony was the strongest weapon belonging ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... turnpike-keeper did not respond to the greeting. He stood stiffly by the table looking at the box that contained the voting-papers; suddenly his erect figure seemed to collapse, and the old man slunk out of the polling-station almost ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... had difficulty in remembering their lines, and when at the end of the last act, a piece of the scenery collapsed upon St. Patrick, John felt that he could have cheerfully seen the entire theatre collapse on everybody concerned with it. He went to the grubby Temperance hotel in which he had taken a room, and gave himself completely to gloom and despair. He felt that his play was not quite so brilliant as he had imagined it to be, but he was not sure that his dissatisfaction ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... Sarah Bland's only surviving son Giles had come to Virginia about the time of the untimely death of Theodorick Bland, who had managed the Bland interests in Virginia. Giles was a young "hot head," joined with the Bacon forces, and upon the collapse of that abortive revolution in the Colony, was apprehended, promptly condemned by Governor Berkeley's Court held at "Greenspring" and executed. Two years after her son's untimely death, and when some of the drastic measures confiscating the holdings of the deceased rebels had been lifted, Mrs. ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... longer on the scene of his collapse and defeat, and went towards the Palais Royal. He did not know the topography of his quarter yet, and was obliged to ask his way. Then he went to Very's and ordered dinner by way of an initiation into the pleasures of Paris, ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... slowly along the beach in rather deep water, when I suddenly felt a most excruciating pain in my left ankle. It seemed as though I had just received a paralysing shock from a powerful battery, and down I fell in a state of absolute collapse, unable to stir a finger to save myself, although I knew I was rapidly drowning. Fortunately the blacks who were with me came and pulled me ashore, where I slowly recovered. There was only a slight ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... outset of the course which was to culminate, more than two hundred years later, in Titian and Raffaelle. But in no field did the energy of the thirteenth century manifest itself as in that of politics. With the collapse of the Empire came the first birth of the "nationalities" of modern Europe. The process indeed went on at very different rates. The representative constitution of England, the centralised government of France were by the end of the century fairly started on the lines which they have followed ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... home now the last of the sailing fleet is loyal. We have enough still to show what once was there; the soft gradations of a ship's entrance, rising into bows and bowsprit, like the form of a comber at its limit, just before it leaps forward in collapse. The mounting spars, alive and braced. The swoop and lift of the sheer, the rich and audacious colours, the strange flags and foreign names. South Sea schooner, whaling barque from Hudson's Bay, the mahogany ship from Honduras, the fine ships and barques that still ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... money-making, and a craze for mergers and for the incorporation of private enterprises swept over the country. By 1907 there were at least $38,500,000,000 worth of securities in existence. The natural result was speculation. When investors began to fear the soundness of the securities a collapse of credit was due. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Phillips at some time in the dim future, and the only marriage before him that I could think of was this. Still I could not understand why it had come upon him so suddenly, or why, if it did come, he should so collapse under the pressure of ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... about three being a crowd? Donny, naturally, was all for taking me home, and didn't show any signs of collapse ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... been well if faintness and weariness had been all that was the matter; but now that the excitement was over, the collapse came; and the men sat down listlessly and sulkily by twos and threes upon the deck, starting and wincing when they heard some poor fellow below cry out under the surgeon's knife; or murmuring to each other that all was lost. Drew tried in vain to rouse them, telling them ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... any further effort to conceal his sudden exhaustion would be in vain. The collapse was too complete, but he had nothing to be ashamed of, as he had gone through far more than Willet and Tayoga, and he had reached the limit ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... preceding article, yet it was often productive of harm, and never of benefit. These remarks, however, apply more particularly to the use of tartar emetic during the state of excitement of the fever, and not to that of collapse which sometimes precede it, and in which it is recommended by some physicians of the southern states. In this condition of the system, I have never resorted to it, and, I must confess, could not easily be persuaded to do so; suspecting that even in such cases, the digestive organs are already ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... finding expression in low, crooning sounds such as women make over their sick babies. When she was quieted he drew the armchair up beside her, and, his hand stroking hers, asked about her illness. He had read in the paper that it was a nervous collapse caused by overwork, and he chided ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... any concussion within the crust sets up an earth jar, there are several minor causes of earthquakes, such as volcanic explosions and even the collapse of the roofs of caves. The earthquakes which attend the eruption of volcanoes are local, even in the case of the most violent volcanic paroxysms known. When the top of a volcano has been blown to fragments, the accompanying earth shock ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... speculation infinite, and that even a world-embracing mind must apportion its labour to its day? There is, however, the great question of health to be considered— the question, as every one knows, of Coleridge's whole career and life. If health was destined to give way, in any event—if its collapse, in fact, was simply the cause of all the lamentable external results which followed it, while itself due only to predetermined internal conditions over which the sufferer had no control—then to be ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... black snake who faithfully and cordially did his best to keep the presidential mansion from falling down. Without him innumerable mouse-sized holes, gnawed by mouse-sized dinies, would assuredly have brought about its collapse. The president was grateful, but he'd meant to keep Timothy out of sight. Timothy must have escaped and as a faithful snake, loyal to his duty, he'd wriggled straight back ...
— Attention Saint Patrick • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... more than ordinary courage to face a bayonet charge, just as it calls for a high order of valor to use that deadly weapon. Instances are given of young soldiers experiencing a sinking sensation, a feeling of collapse, at the order "Fix Bayonets!" their hands trembling violently over the task. But when the bugle sounds the charge, and the wild dash at the enemy's lines has begun, with the skirl of the pipes to stir up the blood, the nerves stiffen and the hands ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... dreamed about it, schemed for it, bartered my immortal soul for it. But—if I gave it to Matthew, what was there for Moreton? A steam locomotive caught my eye, almost as elaborate. Forcing my way through the doors, I captured a salesman, and from a state bordering on nervous collapse he became galvanized into an intense alertness and respect when he understood my desires. He didn't know the price of the objects in question. He brought the proprietor, an obsequious little German who, on learning my name, repeated it in every sentence. For Biddy ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to the ward, and when she heard the boy's desire for "turn-overs" promised him some. The next day she found an opportunity to keep her promise. At midnight, Dr. Gore and I having been hastily summoned, met at the bedside of the poor fellow, who was in a state of collapse, and died before morning. Dr. Gore was so overcome that he actually wept. The boy had been a patient of his from his infancy, and in a piteous letter, which I afterwards read, his mother had implored the doctor to watch over him in case of sickness. When, under the dead boy's pillow, ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... the deck began to open. Smoke poured out in thickening clouds. Points of light, fast changing to lines of flame, warned the skipper that he must retreat. It was not, however, until heat and smoke and the certain prospect of collapse compelled him, that he joined the crew. He was not a spectacular hero; when common sense dictated return, he obeyed without delay, and without maudlin complaint. Without a word he took the wheel from Billy Topsail's hands, and ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... she has her fling at the little squabbles and absurdities of provincial society, the "sets" and petty distinctions, giving a humorous relation of the collapse of her well-meaning efforts, in conjunction with friends at the sous-prefecture, to do away with some of these caste prejudices, of the horror and indignation created in the oligarchy of La Chatre by the apparition of an inoffensive music-master ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... a multi-millionaire, does not give fifty thousand dollars for a bubble, so the managing editors of the leading dailies rushed for their star reporters—and the star reporters rushed for Needley—and the red-haired, sorrowful-faced man in the Needley station grew haggard, tottered on the verge of collapse, and, between the sheafs of flimsy that the reporters fought for the opportunity of pushing at him, ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... ways came a striking couple. Luxuriously apparelled, they presented figures of great elegance. The handsome young "milord" was all tender solicitude for the fragile beauty clinging weakly to his arm in a state of collapse. Bystanders were considerably intrigued and greatly impressed by the distinguished strangers. Unquestionably they were rich, and certainly noble. It was indeed curious that such important people had no attendants, ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore
... scarcely delay his march to please the Christians at Puteoli; and the thought that the Apostle, whose spirit had never flagged while danger was near and effort was needed, felt some tendency to collapse, and required cheering when the strain was off, is as natural ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... young Duchess of Hereward, in a whirlwind of long-repressed excitement, slammed, locked and bolted all the doors leading from her apartments into the hall, and then fled into her dressing-room and cast herself head long down upon the floor in the collapse of utter, infinite despair—despair in all its depth of darkness, without ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... England, above all others, was instrumental in preserving that precarious Balance, and England now must confess the utter failure of her policy there throughout a century. It is humiliating to acknowledge the complete collapse of that which for so many decades has been the keystone of our ruling with regard to our Eastern Empire, but the arch has collapsed; Germany pulled the keystone out, and all our efforts to exclude Russia from free access to the Mediterranean have only resulted ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson
... was going to stand, walk about and amuse the audience by stories of Gladstone, Tennyson, Kitchener, politics, duels and drink. I did not add that I was so nervous that I would have to hold my head up high as, if I dropped it, I would certainly collapse. ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... classes travel first; valets, lady's maids, footmen, nurses, and head stillroom maids, second; and housemaids, grooms, and minor and inferior stillroom maids, third. But for these social distinctions, the whole fabric of society would collapse and anarchy stalk naked through the land—as in ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... position on your mattress, fall asleep. On one of these occasions you find unexpectedly that the velvet-gray night has become steel-gray dawn, and that the kindly old quartermaster is bending over you. Sleepily, very sleepily, you stagger to your feet and collapse into the nearest chair. Then to the swish of water, as the sailors sluice the decks all around and under you, you fall into ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... these. He had not uttered a word since that dreadful moment. To all appearance her moans of contrition fell upon deaf ears, and she had reached the crisis of her misery without knowing the extent of the condemnation hidden in his persistent silence. Collapse seemed inevitable, but I did not know the woman or the really wonderful grip she held on herself. Seeing that he was moved by nothing she had said, she suddenly paused, and presently I heard her observe in ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... fresh, that welled up in it as from some secret source. I was so excited that I observed nothing outside myself, and when the cab stopped in front of my hotel, it seemed to me that the journey had occupied scarcely a few seconds. Do you imagine I was saddened by the painful spectacle of Diaz' collapse in life? No! I only knew that he needed sympathy, and that I could give it to him with both hands. I could give, give! And the last thing that the egotist in me told me before it expired was that I was worthy to give. My longing to assuage the lot ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... stammered something incoherent, his battered eyes wet with tears. The man was a wreck—nerves, stamina, mind on the very verge of collapse. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the corruption of the Church and its manifestations in daily life, giving it an immediate, lively reference. The Methodist practice of lay preachers, for example, Lloyd treats as an instance of the collapse ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd
... has continued and deepened in every part of the world during the past year. In many countries political instability, excessive armaments, debts, governmental expenditures, and taxes have resulted in revolutions, in unbalanced budgets and monetary collapse and financial panics, in dumping of goods upon world markets, and in diminished ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Herbert Hoover • Herbert Hoover
... these people believed that the spirit of each tree of the forest is attached to the spirit of a human being, although that being may dwell in other lands, far away, which dies when the tree dies, sometimes slowly by disease, and sometimes in swift collapse, so that they pass together into the ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... great deal too universal to be ignored. If humility has been discredited as a virtue at the present day, it is not wholly irrelevant to remark that this discredit has arisen at the same time as a great collapse of joy in current literature and philosophy. Men have revived the splendour of Greek self-assertion at the same time that they have revived the bitterness of Greek pessimism. A literature has arisen which commands us all ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... Winter, in coming to the country hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might have been successively observed the retreat of the snakes, the transformation of the ferns, the filling of the pools, a rising of fogs, the embrowning by frost, the collapse of the fungi, and an ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy |
