"Crumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plainly in his eyes. And one day, beguiling him in the depths of the forest, she led him to a fair-seeming castle, and, bidding him enter its portals, offered to show him a realization of his dream. But, lo! even as he entered the stately corridor it seemed to crumble away before him, and disclosed a hideous abyss beyond, in which the whole of that goodly palace lay in heaped and tangled ruins—the fitting symbol of his ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... stood on each side of him and patted him on the shoulders and glared across at me. I felt that if I was a rock, Jim's ship had struck on me and was sinking, as he said, because of me. I began to crumble. ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... raised it to his lips and tried to bite off a piece, but only to break off what felt like wood, which refused to crumble but gradually ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... that it might be embalmed, was supposed to offer evidence of poison. The heart was dry, the other internal organs were likewise so desiccated as to crumble when touched, and the general color of the interior was of a blackish brown, as if it had been singed. Various persona were mentioned as the probable criminals; various motives assigned for the commission of the deed. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that there were causes, which ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... bolted. The other three, of course, did the same, and the coachman was not able to hold them. We travelled some few hundred yards off the road at a considerable speed and with terrible bumping, the shaky, patched-up carriage gradually beginning to crumble to pieces. The boards of the front part fell apart, owing to the violent oscillations of the roof, and the roof itself showed evident signs of an approaching collapse. We were going down a steep incline, and I cannot say that I felt particularly ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Babylon out there really does fall, and great will be the fall thereof (about which I quite agree with you, yet I think it will last my time), there's nothing to fall here in Russia, comparatively speaking. There won't be stones to fall, everything will crumble into dirt. Holy Russia has less power of resistance than anything in the world. The Russian peasantry is still held together somehow by the Russian God; but according to the latest accounts the Russian God is not to be relied upon, and scarcely ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... tomb where legal ghouls grow fat; Where buried papers, fold on fold, Crumble to dust, that 'thwart the sun Floats dim, a pallid ghost of gold. The day is dying. All about, Dark, threat'ning shadows lurk; but still I ponder o'er a dead girl's name Fast fading from a dead ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... power." The Kirchenzeitung, of the Ohio Synod, May 12, 1917: "The great and glorious work of Dr. Krauth in the Council has been nullified. The General Synod's practise of fraternizing with the sects will prevail. What is sound and good in the Council will crumble; the proposed union is a great victory for the lax portion of the General Synod and a pitiable defeat for the Council. Indeed, we shall be told about the 'salt' that the Council may be in the new body, but that is an old, old game, which cannot fool people any more. And this to celebrate ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... buildeth many castles, but he abideth not therein, lest they crumble about his ears and crush him. Castles built of air often fall of stone. Therefore, only the foolish man keeps revel in the great hall or ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... is not enough,' said the ox; 'even supposing you get safely by, the treasures you have brought with you will crumble into dust if you do not give in exchange a baptized soul. It is needful that a Christian should die before you can enjoy the wealth ...
— The Lilac Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... into tombs, with painfullongings to behold once more the faces of their departed friends; and as they gaze upon them, lying there so peacefully with the semblance, that they wore on earth, the sweet breath of heaven touches them, and the features crumble and fall together, and are but dust. So did his soul then descend for the last time into the great tomb of the Past, with painful longings to behold once more the dear faces of those he had loved; and the sweet breath of heaven touched them, and they would not stay, but crumbled away and ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... almost a matter of life or death with her to keep her hold upon the New World. At home she was bankrupt and, upon the earthquake of the Reformation, her power was already beginning to totter and to crumble to pieces. America was her treasure house, and from it alone could she hope to keep her leaking purse full of gold and silver. So it was that she strove strenuously, desperately, to keep out the world from her American possessions—a bootless task, for ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... awe-stricken, expecting the cliff to crumble away beneath them, but save that a stream of fire roared out of the ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... they are ugly from the very beginning; and they will become as old-fashioned as old Buckingham House or Strawberry Hill itself, perhaps in the life-time of him who owns them; or else, like Fonthill, they will crumble about your ears, and remain as monuments of your folly rather than of your taste. But go and build as Thorpe, or Inigo Jones, or Wren used to build. Or even, if you will travel abroad for your models, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... constantly fighting against each other, it is well that every man should hold himself secure from attack. But now that cannon are getting to so great a point of perfection, walls are only useful to repel sudden attacks, and soon crumble when cannon can be brought against them. Me thinks the time will come when walls will be given up altogether, especially in England, where the royal power is so strong that nobles can no longer war with ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... take also a bushel of lentils[FN119] and sift and crush and cook them. Then must thou fetch water in barrels and fill the four fountains; after which thou must take three hundred and threescore and six wooden bowls and crumble the cracknels therein and pour of the lentil-pottage over each and carry every monk and patriarch his bowl." Said Ala al-Din,[FN120] "Take me back to the King and let him kill me, it were easier to me than this service." Replied the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... to era. The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the old world were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the fair ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... straight as we can, but get driven at an angle by the strange ribs of rock which come straight down. These are most tiresome to deal with, getting worse the higher we go, and so rotten and weather-eaten are they that they crumble into dust and fragments under our feet. Head man gets half a dozen falls, and when we are about three parts of the way up Xenia gives in. The cold and the climbing are too much for him, so I make him wrap himself up in his ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... his surroundings, and the fine quality of his thought. Wonder at the high levels whereon his life is laid, and marvel at the perfect adjustment between him and his circumstances. Subject this man to the onslaught of some vast, cyclonic passion, and see the barriers crumble, then fall. See all the artifice of civilisation swept away at one fell stroke, and behold your gentleman, transformed in an instant into a beast, with all a ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... pondering, Close to clasp thy soul 'twill brave, And if chance shall find thee wandering Heedless near my silent grave, Even my ashes then shall tremble, Thy approach relume their fire, And that stone in dust shall crumble, Covering what ...
— The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems • Alexander Pushkin and other authors
... among the rabble or other: one moment our intelligent, and higher faculties, as they call them, get the upper hand; the next they are beaten down and trod upon by something base and profligate: and thus veering to and fro, now toying now scolding, laughter clatters down the steps of idiocy, which crumble with the decay of our bodily strength ... and man ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... brown, fat and greasy-looking. To protect the plants put one quarter of a pound of paris-green with twenty-five pounds of slightly moistened bran, using a little sugar in the water and stirring the paris-green into the bran very thoroughly. If too wet, add more dry bran. It should crumble through the fingers. Sprinkle a little of this mixture with the fingers along the row close to the plants. The cutworms eat this poisoned bran quite readily. Care must be exercised in using this poison lest poultry should get at it. On the other hand, poultry should not be allowed ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... the last point of analogy which Professor Draper gives between individual and national life—nations, like individuals, die. Empires are only sandhills in the hourglass of Time; they crumble spontaneously away by the process of their ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... quietly reorganized the army, the bureaucracy, the very palace Guard. We have undermined the government's power, until when the word is passed to strike the blow, a honey-combed system will crumble under its own weight. When Karyl calls on his troops, not one man will respond. Well—" Jusseret smiled dryly—"perhaps I overstate the case. Possibly one man will. I think we will hardly ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... compound of one or more of the metals with sulphur; it is usually brittle, often crystalline, and of a dull somewhat greasy lustre. It is essential that the slag, when solid, shall be so much more brittle than the regulus, that it shall be easy to crumble, and remove it without breaking the latter; and it must not be basic. The effect of fusing a regulus with a basic slag is well seen when sulphide of lead is fused with carbonate of soda; the result is a button of metal (more or less pure), ...
— A Textbook of Assaying: For the Use of Those Connected with Mines. • Cornelius Beringer and John Jacob Beringer
... clothes were quite dry; indeed the very atmosphere of this strange beautiful place was so dry that it seemed to crumble in the nostrils. As he finished dressing Adan reached him. The horses' heads were hanging listlessly. Adan's face had lost its ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... forms of the venerable English monarchy. Finance has been the keystone. Take finance away from the House of Commons, take the complete control of financial business away from the representative Assembly, and our whole system of government, be it good, bad, or indifferent, will crumble to pieces like a house ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... love a woman—and worship with thy love, building for her an altar in thine heart. If altar crumble and heart burst, is she to blame who is but woman, or thou, who wouldst have made ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... a beast; Who dost, of punishment afraid, And by thy crimes a coward made, To every generous soul a curse Than Hell and all her torments worse, When crawling to thy latter end, Call on Destruction as a friend, Choosing to crumble into dust Rather than rise, though rise you must: 110 Thou hypocrite! who dost profane, And take the patriot's name in vain; Then most thy country's foe, when most Of love and loyalty you boast; Who, for the love of filthy gold, Thy friend, thy king, thy God ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... reconstruction of Europe—two empires, and seventeen new kingdoms with new sovereigns either from or in the interest of the imperial houses! "Rhapsodies," he said, "which proved that all Europe might crumble without exciting a single emotion of sorrow, astonishment, or satisfaction in a people degraded beneath all others, beneath all imagination, and which, worn out, demoralized to the point where every ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... unfathomable coil."—Tupper's Thoughts, p. 170. "Whether nature or art contribute most to form an orator, is a trifling inquiry."—Blair's Rhet., p. 338. "Year after year steals something from us; till the decaying fabric totter of itself, and crumble at length into dust."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 225. "If spiritual pride have not entirely vanquished humility."—West's Letters, p. 184. "Whether he have gored a son, or have gored a daughter."—Exodus, xxi, 31. "It is doubtful whether the object introduced by way of simile, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of praise—a purely impersonal existence, lived all alone, like a man at a prison window. This carcass, with its shaky machinery and defective breathing apparatus, is the prison. I look out of the window till the walls crumble away—" ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... get them, I'd crumble the earth away—bury them. They're underneath the debris, Kay, a mile deep, buried, beneath the impalpable powder that represented the inorganic salts and minerals of the earth. They'll never get out of that. Protoplasm needs oxygen. They'll ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... Undaunted then in answer here I cry, 'You wanton, that control the hand of him Who masquerades as wisdom in a sky Where holy, holy, sing the cherubim, I will not pay one penny to your name Though all my body crumble into shame.' ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... the old Zulu sits there, looking down the stairway he defended when alive, so long will the New House of the Stairway, springing from the union of the Englishman and Nyleptha, endure and flourish; but when he is taken from thence, or when, ages after, his bones at last crumble into dust, the House will fall, and the Stairway shall fall, and the Nation of the Zu-Vendi shall cease to be ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... speculations on the Arabian origin of the Scottish clans, and lamentations over the wickedness of servants; till the unaccountable figure, with its robes and its long pipe, loomed through the tobacco-smoke like some vision of a Sibyl in a dream. She might be robbed and ruined, her house might crumble over her head; but she talked on. She grew ill and desperate; yet still she talked. Did she feel that the time was coming when she ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... lashing the rear animal with his quirt, still faced the mound, a mere dim shadow through the mists of snow. He saw the flash of yellow flame that leaped from its summit, heard the sharp report of a gun, and saw Wasson crumble up, and go down, still clinging to his horse's rein. It came so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that the single living man left scarcely realized what had happened. Yet dazed as he was, some swift impulse ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Bruce, on his return to Camford, "that fellow Hazlet isn't worth making an experiment upon—in corpore vili truly; but the creature is so wicked at heart, that even his cherished traditions crumble at a touch. He's no game; he doesn't ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... follow, Till their dancing banners shone more fair Than the brightest ray Of the Cuban day On the hill and jungled hollow; And to "Maryland" some in the days gone by Had fought through the combat's rumble And some for "Freedom's Battle-Cry" Had seen the broad earth crumble. ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... masses of struggling humanity that seemed to drop from the clouds simultaneously with every missile to be in at its dismemberment, were as fierce as and more reckless than before in the fight for fragments. When the shells had been wont to crumble accommodatingly, as would a clay pipe, the winning of a curio had—I mix the metaphor advisedly—merely involved participation in a football scrimmage. But since the ball had, as it were, begun to turn "rusty" the popularity of the game, so far from diminishing, increased. All day long its ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... blue lightning divided Down the hillside scatters its course, So in twain their army is parted By the sabres sabring in force: They have striven enough for honour! . . . and now Crumble and shatter, and sheer o'er the bank Where torrent Danube hisses and swirls Slant and hurry in rankless rank:— There are sixty thousand the morn 'Gainst the Lions marching in scorn; But twenty, when even is here, Broken and brave and at bay, the ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... been fed for thousands of years: they are so dangerous, that if by a happy want of just inference, he did not derogate in his conduct from these afflicting ideas, he would fall into the most abject stupidity. How could man occupy himself with a perishable world, ready every moment to crumble into atoms? How dream of rendering himself happy on earth, when it is only the porch to an eternal kingdom? Is it then, surprising, that the superstitions to which similar doctrines serve for a basis, have prescribed to their disciples a total detachment from things below—an entire ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... little leaf edged with gold, yet flameless, like clouds at sunset—rich glowing crimson tinged with molten gold. After we had all looked at it and admired it, he advanced to Mrs. ——, and laughingly shook it out on her muslin dress. I expected to see it crumble away; but no, it was still green, though dry and withered. Unfortunately it was ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... her hand caressingly. "When we are all dead, dead! When our bodies crumble away and turn to flowers and birds and butterflies,—and our souls come out like white and red flames,—yes! . . . then we shall love each other and talk of such strange, strange things!" He paused and laughed wildly. Then ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... feeling that the ore was what miners of his grade call "rotten quartz," and he knew that it often held free gold in enormous richness. It was so friable he could crumble it in his hands, and so yellow with iron-stains that it looked like lumps of clay as the dawn light came. A stranger happening upon him would have feared for his reason, so pale was his face, so bloodshot ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... concentrated all that had transpired in her life for months past. It was the last remaining bulwark to her tottering mind, and though it still held reason dominant, the foundation of sanity had been shaken to such an extent that the slightest touch and the fabric would fall from its throne and crumble to dust at the feet of madness. But this was unknown to God. He who knoweth all things still kept his eyes away from the ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... for fight, this Tartar-power withstand, Let sweeping Vengeance lift her flickering brand; Rustem alone may stem the roaring wave, And, prompt as bold, his groaning country save. Meanwhile in flight we place our only trust, Ere the proud ramparts crumble in ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... Is this the cost of supreme human power? is it to be bought by nothing but the agony in which failure, real or apparent, is a part, and in which all the exquisite tenement of reputation, happiness, and delightsome life seems to crumble down like a house of cards before our eyes? Dread question for the genius of the future, sad yet sublime problem of the past! At all events it was so in the life of Scott, which in all its greatness was never so great, so ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... in the purple, his imperial soul Sits crowned and sceptred in the realms of mind. Kingdoms may fall, and crumble to decay, Time but confirms his empire ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among the populace is turning round, to come on into the place of execution, and end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and close behind the last plough as it passes on, for all are following to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting. On one of the fore-most ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... snaky-haired monster, but he must do it with his eyes shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time and the wind and weather should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds and to enjoy a great deal of happiness in ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... Canterbury, Salisbury, Ely, and other cathedrals, was quarried here, though other quarries of it exist in Britain. It is an aggregate of freshwater shells, which polishes handsomely, but is liable to crumble, and has in later years been generally superseded by other building-stone. The coast southward is lined with quarries, and the lofty promontory of St. Aldhelm's Head projects into the sea, a conspicuous headland seen from afar. It was named for the first Bishop of Sherborne, and its summit rises ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... the soap, and also on the amount of perfume or medicament to be added, but speaking generally, a range of 11 to 14 per cent. gives good results. If the soap contains less than this amount it is liable to crumble during the milling, will not compress satisfactorily, and the finished tablet may have a tendency to crack and contain gritty particles so objectionable in use. If, on the other hand, the soap is left too moist, it is apt to stick to the rollers and mill ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... a generation our country, shaken to its very foundations by the great social upheavals known as revolutions, has seen its old institutions crumble to pieces and other, entirely new institutions rise in their place; it has seen theories, beliefs, and codes of ethics, theretofore looked upon as immovable, give way to different principles and methods based upon democracy and liberty, ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... York, Philadelphia, and the Eastern field as a whole,—each was a problem in itself, and each was getting farther and farther out of hand. The Guardian's field men were demoralized, beholding the fine agency plant of their company crumble and melt away while they stood helpless to hold it together. And Mr. Gunterson, when asked for remedies, could reply only in nebulous words of even more crepuscular and doubtful pertinence. New York was admittedly beyond him, ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... if you are afraid of the passing of your secret from the few who know to the many who welcome a new scandal, is to go on walking with the light and confident step of youth, never so much as quailing in your own mind at the thought that the ground may crumble beneath you—that you may go home some fine day, or to your club, or to Lady Jane's five o'clock tea, and be confronted by the grinning skeleton on whom you had so carefully turned your ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... abandoned and allowed to fall to ruin. Some were prudently filled in with earth and sand, but this was exceptional. The majority were allowed to crumble in slowly; and at the present day such abandoned kilns may be found on all sides, ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... o'clock is brewed a large bowl of 'poor man's punch'—ale posset! This is the event of the night. Ale posset, or milk and ale posset as some call it, is made in this wise. Set a quart of milk on the fire. While it boils, crumble a twopenny loaf into a deep bowl, upon which pour the boiling milk. Next, set two quarts of good ale to boil, into which grate ginger and nutmeg, adding a quantity of sugar. When the ale nearly boils, add it to the milk and ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... philosophy will be ready to begin. That great awakening of a new popular interest in philosophy, which is so striking a phenomenon at the present day in all countries, is undoubtedly due in part to religious demands. As the authority of past tradition tends more and more to crumble, men naturally turn a wistful ear to the authority of reason or to the evidence of present fact. They will assuredly not be disappointed if they open their minds to what the thicker and more radical empiricism ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... they must show this character when exposed to discerning criticism. All categories have to be shown to be so hopelessly confused and to be without any conceivable notion that though apparent before us yet they crumble into indefiniteness as soon ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... me on my entablature Whereon I am to lie till I must ask "Do I live, am I dead?" There, leave me, there! For ye have stabbed me with ingratitude To death: ye wish it—God, ye wish it! Stone— Gritstone, a-crumble! Clammy squares which sweat As if the corpse they keep were oozing through— And no more lapis to delight the world! Well go! I bless ye. Fewer tapers there, But in a row: and, going, turn your backs {120} —Ay, like departing altar-ministrants, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... epitaph to guard a name Which men shall praise while worthy work is done. He lived and died for good, be that his fame. Let marble crumble: this is living-stone." ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... she persisted, as she continued mechanically to crumble her bread. "That's what I want ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... should be firm and preserve a certain amount of moisture, will, when cold, crumble easily when rubbed between the fingers. If, instead, it forms a close, soggy mass, it may be regarded as indigestible. This is one reason why hot, new yeast bread and biscuit are so indigestible. In demonstration of this, take a small lump of new bread, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... leaf mould, comparing them as to color; are they light or dark, are they moist or not? Test the soils for comparative size of particles by rubbing between the fingers (Fig. 19), noticing if they are coarse or fine, and for stickiness by squeezing in the hand and noting whether or not they easily crumble afterwards. ...
— The First Book of Farming • Charles L. Goodrich
... was threatened by a "tube," and only saved by vigorous protest from having its foundations jarred and shaken by rumbling trains in the bowels of the earth. Moreover, by sewers and drains the earth is made devoid of moisture, and therefore is liable to crack and crumble, and to disturb the foundations of ponderous buildings. St. Paul's still causes anxiety on this account, and requires all the care and vigilance of the skilful ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... Maria Echeandia, who arrived in San Diego late in October, 1825. While he and his superiors in Mexico were desirous of bringing about secularization, the difficulties in the way seemed insurmountable. The Missions were practically the backbone of the country; without them all would crumble to pieces, and the most fanatical opponent of the system could not fail to see that without the padres it would immediately fall. As Clinch well puts it: "The converts raised seven eighths of the farm produce;—the Missions had gathered two hundred thousand bushels in a single ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... But I never dreamed that Jenny would ever be angry or disappointed. I wouldn't talk about her to anybody ever, because I was so absolutely certain of her. I knew, I thought, that the whole world might crumble away, but that Jenny would always understand, down at the bottom, and that ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... established and the colonists had built some twenty houses, providing also for themselves a well of "excellent sweet water" within the fort. The conditions of living were somewhat improved. The fragile walls of the church, having begun to crumble, were renewed and a block house was built on the neck of the Island, to which point the savages were permitted to come for trade, but were prohibited from further passage by a garrison kept there. When not otherwise employed, the men spent their time fashioning ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... death is that we conceive ourselves as still alive, only in the grave, or wandering through horrors and shut out from wonted pleasures. It belongs to material growths to ripen, loosen, decay; but what is there in sensation, reflection, memory, volition, to crumble in pieces and rot away? Why should the power of hope, and joy, and faith, change into inanity and oblivion? What crucible shall burn up the ultimate of force? What material processes shall ever disintegrate the simplicity of spirit? Earth and plant, muscle, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the soldiers. One gets the impression that he is with the people pretty generally in their struggle with the privileged classes. For he has lived peaceably with a socialist cabinet for some time. He is wise enough to realize that if the aristocracy is crumbling, the institution of royalty will crumble with aristocracy if royalty makes an ally of the nobility. So the king and the Socialists get along splendidly. Now the Socialists in Italy are of several kinds. There are the city Socialists, who are chiefly interested in industrial conditions—wages, old ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... answered him. And yet something held him there—something hardened the grasp of his fingers. Newman's satisfaction had been too intense, his whole plan too deliberate and mature, his prospect of happiness too rich and comprehensive for this fine moral fabric to crumble at a stroke. The very foundation seemed fatally injured, and yet he felt a stubborn desire still to try to save the edifice. He was filled with a sorer sense of wrong than he had ever known, or than he had supposed it possible he should know. To accept his injury and walk away without ...
— The American • Henry James
... fails under the new needs. The only alternative to this profound reconstruction is a decay in human quality and social collapse. Either this unprecedented rearrangement must be achieved by our civilisation, or it must presently come upon a phase of disorder and crumble and perish, as Rome perished, as France declines, as the strain of the Pilgrim Fathers dwindles out of America. Whatever hope there may be in the attempt therefore, there is ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... schoolroom is probably the greatest factor in character building. As Daniel Webster once said: "If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon brass, time will efface it; if we rear temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal minds, if we imbue them with principles, with a just fear of God, and love of our fellow-man, we engrave on those tablets something that will brighten to all eternity." Teachers, ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... keep you forever, Yes, for ever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And molder in ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... the spray, When Australia first rose in the distance away, As welcome to us on the deck of the bark, As the dove to the vision of those in the ark! What fairylike fancies appear'd to the view As nearer and nearer the haven we drew! What castles were built and rebuilt in the brain, To totter and crumble ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... of a mountain covered with pine and savine, in which are found large coals resembling trees of ebony; which are so far mineralized as to be heavy and compact; and so to effloresce with pyrites in some parts as to crumble to pieces; yet from other parts white ashes are produced on calcination, from which fixed alcali is procured; which evinces their vegetable origin. (Dict. Raisonne, art. Charbon.) To these may be added another argument from the oil which is distilled ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... have lain where it is for indefinite ages; it must have been placed there at some finite time. Only one source for such an object is conceivable; it must have fallen from the sky. On the same plains the stony meteorites have also fallen in hundreds and in thousands, but they crumble away in the course of time, and in any case would not arrest the attention of the traveller as the irons are likely to do. Hence it follows, that although the stony meteorites seem to fall much more frequently, yet, unless they are ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... bit up,' asseverated Lance; but Fulbert growled, 'If you bother any more, I shall crumble the whole ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bowlder, in the torrent's course By tide and tempest lashed in vain, Obeys the wave-whirled pebble's force And yields its substance grain by grain; So crumble strongest lives away Beneath the wear of ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... dreadful and fluctuating glare. At the same moment we heard the fall of something heavy and inelastic in the upper story. The whole pavilion, it was plain, had gone alight like a box of matches, and now not only flamed sky-high to land and sea, but threatened with every moment to crumble and fall ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... smiled at the irony. She cared for him. Out of her memories she had built up something to care for, something no more himself than she was the woman of his dreams; but with this difference, that she was clinging, woman-fashion, to the thing she had built, and he had watched it crumble before his eyes. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... centuries the proudest capital of the Mogul Empire. Within a circle of twenty miles about the present city, one dynasty after another has established its capital, ruled in splendor, and passed away. Instead of occupying the same site, each has founded a new city, leaving the old to crumble into dust, scattering their debris over the plain, and telling of the mutability of human temples. All this ground is now abandoned to an army of foxes, jackals, and owls. Could this archaeological soil be plowed up, and its ancient monuments, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... impressed with her position at the side of an archbishop; she was not crumbling bread in her nervous excitement. The company did not seem to remember Sydney Smith's remark to the young lady next him at a dinner-party: "My dear, I see you are nervous, by your crumbling your bread as you do. I always crumble bread when I sit by a bishop, and when I sit by an archbishop I crumble bread with both hands." That evening I had the pleasure of dining with the distinguished Mr. Bryce, whose acquaintance I made in our own country, through my son, who has introduced me to many agreeable persons of his own generation, ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... formed, and against which the two old fossil parties united, as they always do. Now, this new great idea, if rejected, will disintegrate these old parties; take that which is fit, proper, and deserving for its own great mission, leaving the residuum to unite, and crumble and pulverize together under the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... they thought themselves ready to look into the flaming countenance of the Almighty, if they should be called before Him. Every fresh burst of thunder seemed to August to be the rocking of the world, trembling in the throes of dissolution. But the world might crumble or melt; there is something more enduring than the world. August felt the everlastingness of love; as many another man in a ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... garden enough, but still full of charm and delight, being a garden. There was a fine fragrance of grapes through the undergrowth, but the whole place was completely ruined; a little snake slid from the broken base of a sun-dial; the tall chimneys of the house were already beginning to crumble, and birds and squirrels lived in their crevices and flitted about their lofty tops. At some distance an old negro was singing,—it must have been Milton himself, still unbesought by his dependents, and the song was full of strange, monotonous wails and plaintive cadences, like a lament ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the nations involved, peace suddenly appeared. The debacle of the Teutonic alliance was both dramatic and unexpected, except to those who knew how desperate were the conditions in the nations that were battling for autocracy. Bulgaria was first to crumble, then Turkey fell, and Austria-Hungary deserted Germany. The Kaiser and his military advisers, left alone, appealed to the Allies through President Wilson, for an armistice during which peace terms might be negotiated. Prince Maximilian of Baden, a statesman whose liberal ideas were rumored ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... as every one can't entertain. Who could suppose that a sensible man could leave his house, France, his ward—a charming youth, for we saw him in the camp—to fly to the aid of a rotten, worm-eaten royalty, which is going to crumble one of these days like an old hovel. The sentiments you air are certainly fine, so fine that ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... front of the minster is beginning to crumble at places," said Mr Halgrove, looking up at the noble pile before them; "I hope it's not true. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... of big braves, mooses, bow and arrows, fish, deer, antelope, horses, lizards and almost everything imagined was carved in this timber. Those parts not exposed directly to the elements were in a good state of preservation, while those pieces exposed to the weather were brittle and would crumble like chalk. ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... letting a whole crop of millionaires live in New York at a third of the price they were charging me I was hurt, I was indignant, and said: "This is the last feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself." In that moment—in that memorable moment—I began to crumble. In fifteen minutes the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I had become just a mere moral sand-pile; and I lifted up my hand along with those seasoned and experienced deacons and swore off every rag of personal property I've got in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was continually starting up from confused dreams of the ground shaking under her, or she seemed to be standing on the brink of some dreadful abyss like the great chasm on the grain-field, when it began to tremble and crumble beneath her feet. It was near morning when, unable to endure it any longer, she managed without disturbing the sleeping Adele, who occupied the same curtained recess with her, to slip out from the awning. Wrapped in a thick shawl, she made her way through ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... swift (my love-pale groom) A white bird wings its flight. Then find you Death's cold room, Darker than darkest night; Then find you that dark door (And find it all men must) And love there nevermore But crumble back to dust, And kiss there nevermore In flower-drenched ecstasy; Too late then to implore, Too cold to ...
— A Legend of Old Persia and Other Poems • A. B. S. Tennyson
... the proud camps of Whig and Tory. If Mr. Hyndman were a man of keen humour, which is far from my conception of his character, he might rest from his troubling and look on: the walls of Jericho begin already to crumble and dissolve. That great servile war, the Armageddon of money and numbers, to which we looked forward when young, becomes more and more unlikely; and we may rather look to see a peaceable and blindfold evolution, the work of dull men immersed in political ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and a grinding despotism! Oh, my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God- created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... a colossus of wealth and stability to the eye, though ready to crumble at a touch, and, indeed, self-doomed; for bankruptcy was now his game. This was a miserable man, far more so than his son, whose happiness he was thwarting; and of all things that gnawed him, none ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... was beginning to crumble. "The emperor has been desiring twenty times," continued the envoy, "to get back to Prague from the Diet, but the people hold him fast like a steer. As I think over all that passes, I lose all judgment, for I have no money, nor influence, nor reputation. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... goose, dry it, and rub the inside with pepper and salt. Crumble some bread, but not too fine; take a piece of butter and make it hot; cut a middle-sized onion and stew in the butter. Cut the liver very small, and put that also in the butter for about a minute just ...
— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury
... of the Bontoc area, there are terrace walls certainly 75 feet in height, though many of these are not stoned, since the earth is of such a nature that it does not readily crumble. ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... I didn't know of any other way of applyin' 'em to her back, only to put 'em on it. But she insisted to the last that I didn't apply 'em right, and I didn't crumble the bread into the milk right, and the lobelia wuzn't picked right, ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... nerve on edge; then a second flying form, almost a blur in the gathering gloom, shot across the narrow opening. The shotgun spoke, and the wildly leaping figure seemed to crumble to the floor—its lower half had reached shelter, but head and shoulders lay exposed, revealing grey hair and a white moustache. Cavendish sprang erect, ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... she especially cared about that, either. But all his arrogance, his folly, his idleness and futility were built upon her fortune, which really did not belong to her after all. A cruel desire to see him crumble entered her heart, and she knew that she should tell him the truth if he ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... wring from the bulk of the Nonconformists any expression of gratitude or satisfaction. Dear as toleration was to them, the general interests of religion were dearer, and not only these but national freedom was now at stake. Holland, the bulwark of Protestantism abroad, seemed to crumble into ruin at the first blow of France. Lewis passed the Rhine on the twelfth of June, and overran three of the States without opposition. It was only by skill and desperate courage that the Dutch ships under De Ruyter held the English fleet under ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... revel at their own sweet will, and you may be sure they made the most of the opportunity. Didn't they steal sips of tea, stuff gingerbread ad libitum, get a hot biscuit apiece, and as a crowning trespass, didn't they each whisk a captivating little tart into their tiny pockets, there to stick and crumble treacherously, teaching them that both human nature and a pastry are frail? Burdened with the guilty consciousness of the sequestered tarts, and fearing that Dodo's sharp eyes would pierce the thin disguise of cambric and merino which hid their booty, the little sinners attached themselves ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... shut, or, at least, without so much as a glance at the enemy with whom he was contending. Else, while his arm was lifted to strike, he would stiffen into stone, and stand with that uplifted arm for centuries, until time, and the wind and weather, should crumble him quite away. This would be a very sad thing to befall a young man who wanted to perform a great many brave deeds and to enjoy a great deal of happiness in ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... long our Life-joys were locked in the sea-streams, Our Fortunes on earth; in the fire shall our treasure Burn in the blast; brightly shall mount, The red flame, raging and wrathfully striding 810 Over the wide world; wasted shall be the plains; The castles shall crumble; then shall climb the swift fire, The greediest of guests, grimly and ruthlessly Eat the ancient treasure that of old men possessed While still on the earth was their strength and their pride. 815 Hence I strive to instruct each steadfast man That he be cautious in the care of his soul, And not ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... and teaching and moral instruction upon religious subjects, which people in the south, pressed upon by northern opinion, are endeavouring to give their slaves. The kinder and the more cowardly masters are anxious to evade the charge of keeping their negroes in brutish ignorance, and so they crumble what they suppose and hope may prove a little harmless, religious enlightenment, which, mixed up with much religious authority on the subject of submission and fidelity to masters, they trust their slaves may ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... contact with this commonplace world. It was not his lot—as it has been the lot of so many poets—to move amongst mankind at once as an intimate and a stranger; to travel from disillusionment to disillusionment and from regret to regret; to construct around him a world of ideal beings, who crumble into dust at his touch; to hope from them, what they can neither understand nor accomplish, to lavish on them what they can never repay. Such pain, indeed, may become a discipline; and the close contact with many lives may teach to the poetic nature lessons of courage, of self-suppression, of ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... change and glide, Corrupt and crumble, suffer wreck and decay, But, obstinate dark Integrities, you abide, And obey but them who obey. All things else are dyed In the colours of man's desire: But you no bribe nor prayer Avails to soften or sway. Nothing of me you share, Yet I cannot think you away. And if I seek to escape ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... rise and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretch'd out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... has already been privileged to see something of this house in the company of Lady Beach-Mandarin. At the top of the steps stood Mrs. Crumble, the new and highly recommended cook-housekeeper in her best black silk flounced and expanded, and behind her peeped several neat maids in caps and aprons. A little valet-like under-butler appeared and tried to balance Snagsby by hovering ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... theology, the priesthoods have builded round about it, which for centuries they made the world believe was the true temple, and which, after incalculable mischiefs wrought, immeasurable blood spilled in its extension and consolidation, is only now beginning to crumble at the touch of reason. There is the same difference between the laws and the law—the naked statutes (bad enough, God knows) and the incomputable additions made to them by lawyers. This immense body of superingenious writings it is that we all are responsible to in person and property. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... not be lasting, 'Twould crumble in your hand; When fairies would be coming here To turn the meal to sand— But what will keep them dancing In their own green dell? O it's Finlay's little bannock ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... fur of the opossum, the contents proved to be a quartz-like substance of the size of a pigeon's egg, he allowed me to break it and retain a part. It is transparent like white sugar-candy; they swallow the small crystalline particles which crumble off as a preventative of sickness. It scratches glass, and does not effervesce with acids. From another specimen the stone appears to be agate of a milky hue, semi-pellucid, and strikes fire. The vein from which it appears broken off ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... great wall that held the body of water began to crumble at the top sent a message begging the people of Johnstown for God's sake to take to the hills. He reports no serious accidents ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... believe the youthful blood is to come, that being poured into the veins of this dying state, shall reproduce the very vigor and freshness of its early age. Rome, my mother, is now but a lifeless trunk—a dead and loathsome corpse—a new and warmer current must be infused, or it will soon crumble into dust.' ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... her nephew, though people were surprised, no doubt, that William Weir's wife should have a child, and nobody know she was expecting.—Well, with all the reports of the captain's money, none of it showed in this old place, which from that day began, as it were, to crumble away. There's been little repair done upon it since then. If it hadn't been a well-built place to begin with, it wouldn't be standing now, sir. But it's a very different place, I can tell you. Why, all behind was a garden with terraces, and fruit ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... The rocks I've gained through chimneys rough and steep That crumble at a careless touch, and send A rattling train of rubble bounding down The icy slopes, which great crevasses rend. Re-entrant over here the mountain dips Into a gulf, ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... as the captives who came in the triumphs, as the Goths and Huns, as the pilgrims of the Mediaeval Jubilees, and it subdues them: subdues them, as it subdues with the chemistry of this odd climate of crumble and decay, the new dreadful houses; as it has made, with the marvellous rank Roman vegetation, a sort of Forum or Palatine of the knocked-down modern houses, the empty unfinished basements behind the hoardings under my window. ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... Dead roses crumble to ashes in the gentle fingers that open the long folded pages—the violets of a forgotten spring impart a delicate fragrance to the yellowed spot on which they lay. The ink is faded and the letter much worn, as though it had lain next to some youthful breast, to be read in silence ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... men about to receive rather than to inflict a blow. He, the while, with steady impetus pushed forward his armament, like a ship-of-war prow forward. Wherever he brought his solid wedge to bear, he meant to cleave through the opposing mass, and crumble his adversary's host to pieces. With this design he prepared to throw the brunt of the fighting on the strongest half of his army, while he kept the weaker portion of it in the background, knowing certainly ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... progress of the age is trampling over the aristocratic institutions of England, and they crumble beneath it. This war has given the country a vast impulse towards democracy. The nobility will never hereafter, I think, assume or be permitted to rule the nation in peace, or command armies in war, on any ground except the individual ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... cloud, 260 Till all the wild beasts of the darkness hear; Till the Czar quake, till Austria cower for fear, Till the king breathe not, till the priest wax pale, Till spies and slayers on seats of judgment quail, Till mitre and cowl bow down And crumble as a crown, Till Caesar driven to lair and hounded Pope Reel breathless and drop heartless out of hope, And one the uncleanest kinless beast of all Lower than his fortune fall; 270 The wolfish waif of casual empire, born To turn all hate and ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... table, drawing nearer to Gentz, and fixing her large, flaming eyes upon him, she asked in a whisper, "I suppose you love Germany? You would not like to see her devoured by France as Italy was devoured by her? You would not like either to see her go to decay and crumble to pieces from ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... lives. What they have swallowed under that name was the vegetable with all its exquisite characteristics vulgarized or destroyed. Picture the "ball of flour" (as old-fashioned housewives call it) lying in the dish, diffusing the softest, subtlest aroma, ready to crumble, all but to melt, as soon as it is touched; recall its gust and its after-gust, blending so consummately with that of the joint, hot or cold. Then think of the same potato cooked in any other way, and what sadness will come ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... give her a chance, renew the soil. The rocks will crumble and, by and by, seeds will sprout and tiny plants obtain a foothold. But it may take a whole lifetime, or hundreds of years, even, for a new and ...
— Conservation Reader • Harold W. Fairbanks
... yet, walls of brick and stone may crumble and split. The laws which endure come into being through the ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hath gone forth from them after their death. For when the soul departeth, a man seeth corruption, and the bones of his body rot and become wholly loathsomeness, the members decay piecemeal, the bones crumble into an inert mass, the flesh turneth into foetid liquid, and he becometh a brother unto the decay which cometh upon him. And he turneth into a host of worms, and he becometh a mass of worms, and an end is made of him, and he perisheth in the sight of the god Shu even as doth every ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge
... glory betray; But long as thy songs murmur over the earth, No forces can carry thy splendors away! Then live, ye dear songs of my country, forever, With voices eternal to utter her name, That cycles may never her liberty sever, Nor trample her greatness nor crumble her fame! ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... gives us new flexible and durable fabrics that have other advantages over leather besides being cheaper and more abundant. Without such material for curtains and cushions the automobile business would have been sorely hampered. It promises to provide us with a book binding that will not crumble to powder in the course of twenty years. Linen collars may be water-proofed and possibly Dame Fashion—being a fickle lady—may some day relent and let us wear such sanitary and economical neckwear. For shoes, purses, belts and the like the cellulose ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... swore, that they had been present, when the devil came to their grandmother in the shape of a black dog, and asked her what she desired. She said, the death of John Robinson; when the dog told her to make an image of Robinson in clay, and after crumble it into dust, and as fast as the image perished, the life of the victim should waste away, and in conclusion the man should die. This evidence was received; and upon such testimony, and testimony like this, ten persons were led to the gallows, on the twentieth ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... gold-mounted ivory sceptre of Priam, of the lapis-lazuli casket which enshrines the tatters remaining of Ilione's veil; but more than at sight of them I have trembled with awe to look at that little statuette, no longer than my forearm, and to think that if it were destroyed the Empire would crumble and Rome would perish. You maybe sure I shall do all I can to keep safe the precious treasure ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... expressed a kind of doubtful confidence, a hope that was repressed by fear, remained still silent; and OMAR, perceiving the state of his mind, proceeded to fortify it by new precepts: 'If heaven,' said he, 'should vanish like a vapour, and this firm orb of earth should crumble into dust, the virtuous mind would stand unmoved amidst the ruins of nature: for He, who has appointed the heavens and the earth to fail, has said to virtue, "Fear not; for thou canst neither perish, nor be wretched." Call up thy strength, therefore, to the fight in which thou art sure ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth
... face now of Jim's silence in particular—but the alarm of the vain thing menaced by the touch of the real? Was this contribution of the real possibly the mission of the Pococks?—had they come to make the work of observation, as HE had practised observation, crack and crumble, and to reduce Chad to the plain terms in which honest minds could deal with him? Had they come in short to be sane where Strether was destined to feel that he himself had only ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... in the masonry about a foot from my head, in very unpleasant proximity to my right ear. This is the one that probably came with Mr. Ruffin's compliments. In a moment the firing burst forth in one continuous roar, and large patches of both the exterior and interior masonry began to crumble and fall in all directions. The place where I was had been used for the manufacture of cartridges, and there was still a good deal of powder there, some packed and some loose. A shell soon struck ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... sense, and a plan that brings in quicker profits, than well-doing; and so this godless, loveless, every-man-for- himself nation, or sham nation rather, this joint-stock company, in which fools expect that universal selfishness will do the work of universal benevolence, will quarrel and break up, crumble to dust again, as Babel did. "But," says God to Abraham, "I will make of thee a great nation. I make nations, and not they themselves." So it is, my friends: this is the lesson which God taught Abraham, the lesson which we English must learn nowadays over again, or smart for it bitterly—that ...
— Twenty-Five Village Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... hangs on the top of a wave that is about to break," said Willet. "Often you see waves hesitate that way just before they crumble." ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... were carried into drying furnaces, through which they made five loops, and were then delivered to cross-conveyors which carried them into the stock-house. At the end of this process the briquettes were so hard that they would not break or crumble in loading on the cars or in transportation by rail, while they were so porous as to be capable of absorbing 26 per cent. of their own volume in alcohol, but repelling water absolutely—perfect ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... terms, for he announced his intention of publishing the list of names if we carried out any important project, and no device could be contrived to stop his being as good as his word. The tyrant has walked unscathed except by mere private enterprise, and the government we could have caused to crumble to the ground has flourished and continued to work evil as before. We have been crippled, paralysed in every direction. It was only last year that there seemed reason to think that Lord Ashiel had removed the document from the Bank of England where it had for so long been guarded, and ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... few warped fragments of skins still hung, moth-eaten, riddled with holes, ready to crumble at ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... go without further notice. The whole world seemed to crumble beneath his feet, and above him the heavens were ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... filling and sealing small test-tubes with the contents of dishes. These tubes were extraordinarily delicate of structure, and Beale saw at least three crumble and shiver in ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... Bearing innate from birth the certain germs Of dissolution, whether by decay Or fire consumed, shall fall into the lap Of all-embracing nature. Thus if now Thou should'st deny the pyre, still in that flame When all shall crumble, (28) earth and rolling seas And stars commingled with the bones of men, These too shall perish. Where thy soul shall go These shall companion thee; no higher flight In airy realms is thine, nor smoother couch Beneath the Stygian darkness; for the dead No fortune favours, and our Mother Earth All ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... varying degrees and kinds) to this kind of trade. Sometimes this has been done by prohibitions, but more often by taxes imposed upon either imports or exports. Sometimes the attempt is made to justify the policy of governmental interference with foreign trade by arguments which crumble before the slightest examination, and again it is admitted that free trade is true in theory, but it is declared to be false in practice. The latter view is not to be entertained for a moment. If free trade in theory (as an explanation) ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... answered Sidney, as he handed the Easter toy to his sister. "But you'd better put him in the sun to dry, or he may crumble away." ...
— The Story of Calico Clown • Laura Lee Hope
... took his arm. "Fy, Harry, bid the daws seek their food elsewhere, for a gentleman may not wear his heart upon his sleeve. Empires crumble, and hearts break, and we are blessed or damned, as Fate elects; but through it all we find comfort in the reflection that dinner is good, and sleep, too, is excellent. As for the future—eh, well, if it mean little ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... the Galilean fishermen mending their nets, should we have ever imagined that those humble laborers were to be the people who should afterward regenerate the world?—should overthrow the idolatries and crumble the superstitions of ancient empires and kingdoms?—and that what they—uneducated, but, we admit, divinely inspired and supported—had taught should be joyfully received, as it is now, we may say, from the rising to the setting of the sun, to the ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... Tennessee mountaineers, and as they struck with all their weight, the new line of the South was compelled to give way. Success seen and felt filled the veins of the soldiers with fresh fire. Dick and the men about him saw the whole Southern line crumble up before them. The triumphant Union army rushed forward shouting, and the Confederates were forced to ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the natural sphere of woman, and to be forced, on the spur of the moment, to decide a delicate question of manners, awoke in him the dismay of one who sees his accustomed prop of authority beginning to crumble. Surely Pussy knew best about things like that! He would as soon have thought of interfering with her housekeeping as of instructing her in the details of ladylike conduct. And, indeed, he had not observed that Gabriella was ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... that, in general, cracking quality of nut samples from the trees in this study is poor. When cracked, the kernels crumble badly, making extraction difficult and quarter recovery low. Variation in cracking quality can be seen by studying the values in Table 1. Nuts from trees 28 and 136 were extremely small, averaging 9 and 10 grams, respectively. Nuts from trees ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... were full of the praises of women; financiers, statesmen, economists and politicians declared that without the aid of women it would be impossible to win the war. The anti-suffragism of Mr. Asquith even was beginning to crumble. In speaking of the heroic death of Edith Cavell in Belgium in October, 1915, he said: "She has taught the bravest men among us a supreme lesson of courage; yes ... and there are thousands of such women ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... may well imagine that Larry would have forgotten Lily's existence if she hadn't frequently reminded him of it by screaming his Christian name across banks of pansies and orchids. J. and I hoped that jerry-built betrothal might crumble in consequence, as Larry's fastidiousness is his most prominent feature. But no! it also stood; and I will tell you the reason when I ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... tragical power. It revealed the mother capable of doing anything to defend the happiness of the child whom she adored. Serge had calculated well. Between Jeanne and Micheline, Madame Desvarennes would not hesitate. She would have allowed the world to crumble away to make of its ruins a shelter where her daughter would be joyous ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... love. If you dislike your companion, you cannot minister cordially to his griefs, nor will he participate in yours. Marriage is an arch; if love be its keystone, it will stand firmly; it will grow stronger with time. That wanting, it will crumble in a day. Never should this relation be formed, except with such sentiments as give reasonable ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... year decay, And man's great buildings slowly fade away. One after one, They pay to that dumb breath The tribute of their death, And are undone. The towers incline to dust, The massive girders rust, The domes dissolve in air, The pillars that upbear The lofty arches crumble, stone by stone, While man the builder looks about him in despair, For all his works of pride and power ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... figures of those men and women who had told his story, finding them, to his dismay, unexpectedly crude and unlifelike. And the story itself. Was unhappiness so necessary, after all? They suddenly seemed to crumble away into insignificance, these men and women of his creation. In their place he could almost fancy a race of larger beings, a more extensive canvas, a more splendid, a riper and ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I will keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin, And moulder ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... lie to tell Of pleiocene days' garnered fold; Gray bones that pierce this weird waste Lie mounted on a torrid peak; Principalities of the past, Lie scatter'd in the mildewed dust; Serai's built in ages gone, Now crumble at a sound, a voice. And Boulders that the Djinnee cast As Vengeance swirl'd the heated dust, Now rock as devils rasp a son, And vampyres dance round and round. And where a dim, unstudded dome Leak odours strong and ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... joined a wood, and about a hundred yards from it, there was a pleasant hiding-place beside a pollard ash. The bank was hollow with rabbit-buries: the summer heat had hardened the clay of the mound and caused it to crack and crumble wherever their excavations left a precipitous edge. Some way up the trunk of the tree an immense flat fungus projected, roughly resembling the protruding lip of a savage enlarged by the insertion of a piece of wood. If formed a black ledge standing out seven or eight inches, two ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... ones at the present day, we soon found ourselves at the foot of the Hill Difficulty. Through the very heart of this rocky mountain a tunnel has been constructed of most admirable architecture, with a lofty arch and a spacious double track; so that, unless the earth and rocks should chance to crumble down, it will remain an eternal monument of the builder's skill and enterprise. It is a great though incidental advantage that the materials from the heart of the Hill Difficulty have been employed in filling up the Valley of Humiliation, thus obviating ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... beings, destroying thereby all those exquisite and delicate sensibilities whose existence cold-hearted worldlings have denied; annihilating all genuine passion, and debasing that to a selfish feeling which is the excess of generosity and devotedness. Their body and mind alike crumble into a hideous wreck of humanity; idiocy and disease become perpetuated in their miserable offspring, and distant generations suffer for the bigoted morality of their forefathers. Chastity is a monkish ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... of Autumn, the slow gold Of fruitage ripening in a world's decay, The falling leaves, the moist rich breath Of woods that swoon and crumble into death Over the gorgeous mould: Give us the flash and scent of keen-edged May Where wastes that bear no harvest yield their bloom, Rude crofts of flowering nettle, bents ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... of the waves, which we expected every instant to swallow us; even then, to show where our dependence ought to be, our God would make it His own work to deliver us. He it was that raised the wind, and brought it from the higher part of the bank, to shake our fastened ship, and crumble the loose sands; and no sooner had we taken a resolution of praying and resigning our souls to God, but He gave us our lives again, moving our ship by His powerful arm, making it to float again, none knowing how or by what means, but by the free act of His mercy, ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... iron curtain, but in addition to give expression and opportunity to the forces of growth and progress in the free world, to so organize and unify the cooperative community of free men that we will not crumble but grow stronger over the years, and the Soviet empire, not the free world, will eventually have to ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... magnitude that she could not grasp it clearly. The entire structure which her life training and all her purposes, the hope of her house and her husband's, the future of Judea and the King to come, had constituted, had been attacked and threatened to crumble and be swept away in ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... wait for an order, when anything was going to destruction without benefiting anyone. As the chateau is fast approaching the condition of the furniture, and my fortune does not permit me to repair it, I will sell it before the walls crumble away." ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... at watch; while we, breathlessly at the base O' the castellated bulk, note momently the mace Of night fall here, fall there, bring change with every blow, Alike to sharpened shaft and broadened portico I' the structure; heights and depths, beneath the leaden stress Crumble and melt and mix together, coalesce, Reform, but sadder still, subdued yet more and more By every fresh defeat, till wearied eyes need pore No longer on the dull impoverished decadence Of all that pomp of pile ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke |
