"Stumble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you two," he added, addressing the brothers, "I will say that when you are riding a trail, and especially a mountain trail, always let your pony have plenty of rein. It's easier for him. He won't be so likely to stumble and fall, and a pony can generally keep a trail ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... curiously at the boy, of whom it was said that he had "bumped off" two T-Bar-T boys in a raid some years ago. Young Pete felt his ground firmer beneath him. The men had ceased laughing. If it had not been for that unfortunate stumble ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the other two behind. To prevent the men from straggling in the night the four regiments were packed into a mass of quarter column as densely as was possible, and the left guides held a rope in order to preserve the formation. With many a trip and stumble the ill-fated detachment wandered on, uncertain where they were going and what it was that they were meant to do. Not only among the rank and file, but among the principal officers also, there was the same absolute ignorance. Brigadier Wauchope knew, no doubt, but his voice was soon to be ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of course," replied the stranger. "For instance, this 'notion,' as you call it, will never do. It isn't the thing at all; but see here, Judge, examine this hub. There's a 'notion' in that worth something. I tell you what it is, any boy who can stumble on such an idea, even by accident, has got good stuff ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... lameness is not marked. There is manifested a supporting-leg-lameness which varies as to degree in the same subject at different times. This may be noticed during the same trip in an animal that is being driven. There is a tendency for the subject to stumble and, of course, where the affection is bilateral, there is a stilted gait ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... to enforce the regulations. But don't you suppose, fellows, that officer was hazed, and did some hazing on his own account, when he was a cadet midshipman here years ago? Of course! And that's why the officer didn't question us any more closely than he did. He was afraid he might stumble on something that would oblige him to report the whole crowd for hazing. He didn't want to do it. That officer, I'm certain, knew that, if he questioned us too closely, he'd find a lot more beneath the surface that he simply didn't want ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies - The Prize Detail at Annapolis • Victor G. Durham
... gullies, on which I soon lost my way in a drizzling rain. The single telegraph wire came to my rescue, jumping lightly from moss-grown stick to tall slender tree-trunk across vast chasms down into and out of which I had to slip and slide and stumble pantingly upward in pursuit. Before dark I was delighted to fall upon a trail again, though not with its condition, for it was generally perpendicular and always thick with loose stones. A band of arrieros ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... the window. Flea saw Screechy hold out her arms toward him with an appealing gesture. He lifted his hand suddenly and drew down the shade, and his broad shoulders were silhouetted against it in sharp, black lines. After that the breathless girl saw the woman turn and stumble past her ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... behaved in their usual way:—without knowledge of war, without fear of death, or regard to utmost peril or difficulty; cheering their men, and keeping them steady upon the throats of the French, so far as might be. And always, after that first stumble with the French Horse was mended, they kept gaining ground, thrusting back the Enemy, not over the Dettingen Brook and Moor-ground only, but, knock after knock, out of his woody or other coverts, back and ever back, towards Welzheim, Kahl, and those Two Bridges ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... for life and its possibilities, as he had just beheld them; moral tumult, pity, remorse, a stinging self-reproach—all these things wrestled within him. What, preach to others, and stumble himself into such mire as this? Talk loudly of love and faith, and make it possible all the time that a fellow human creature should think you capable at a pinch of the worst ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had begun he asked those who were near him how it was going on. "'My lord,' they said, 'the Genoese are discomfited, and the king has given orders to slay them all; and all the while between our folk and them there is so great disorder that they stumble one over another and hinder us greatly.' 'Ha!' said the king, 'that is an ill sign for us; where is Sir Charles, my son?' 'My lord, we know not; we have reason to believe that he is elsewhere in the fight.' 'Sirs,' replied the old king, 'ye are my liegemen, my friends, and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... around young maples, and ferny groups—it would crush them by and by, poor trusting things—then it would stumble against a rock or pile of loose stones, wake up and repeat the strain it had learned at its mother's breast, far ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... brethren, lest you stumble Look carefully before you leap; Be modest, moderate and 'umble— Like the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... a barrage could be laid down, and an advance attack made. But it had to be made under somewhat adverse conditions, for gas masks must be worn. And to leap from the trench, and stumble over No Man's Land, under heavy fire, and discharge one's own rifle, all the while wearing one of the canvas and rubber contraptions, was not real fighting—at least ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... a dull hard winter in San Francisco; the rains were heavy, and the mud fearful. I have seen mules stumble in the street, and drown in the liquid mud! Montgomery Street had been filled up with brush and clay, and I always dreaded to ride on horseback along it, because the mud was so deep that a horse's legs would become entangled in the bushes below, and the rider was likely to be thrown and ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... Under its power the sea will stretch itself out dead, the white foam on the lip, in its crystal sarcophagus, and the mountains will stagger and reel and stumble, and fall into the valleys never to rise. Under one puff of that last cyclone all the candles of the sky will be blown out. ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... "since you parted. Tomkins was rude to the wench Phoebe—Joceline and he had a brawl together, and Tomkins is lying dead in the thicket, not far from Rosamond's Well. It will be necessary that Joceline and I go directly to bury the body; for besides that some one might stumble upon it, and raise an alarm, this fellow Joceline will never be fit for any active purpose till it is under ground. Though as stout as a lion, the under-keeper has his own weak side, and is more afraid of a dead body than a living one. When do you ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... we know when we die? Shall we die when we know? After all, are not these things to be known? Why place them under our eyes so that a child of five years will ask questions that no mortal, or immortal, has yet solved? Have we lost the clue to this knowledge? Do we overlook it? Do we stumble over it, perish, wanting it, with it in our hands without the power to see or feel it? Has some rift opened to a hidden store of truth, and has a gleam of it come to the eyes of this man, filling him with a hunger of which he is to die? When the man arises ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... transpirar transpire, appear. trapo m. rag, sails; a todo —— all sails set. tras prep. behind, after; —— de behind. traslado m. likeness, imitation. trasmontar sink beyond, set. trasparente adj. transparent, clear. traspasar pierce. traspi m. slip, stumble; dar ——s stumble, reel. trastornar disorder, confuse, upset. trastorno m. disorder, confusion, disturbance. trasunto m. likeness, copy. trato m. agreement, bargain, treatment. trecho ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... many tricks," observed Mr. Meelik as he took the brown sugar he had come in to purchase and walked out. "Altogether too many tricks. Still," he added with a smile, "I would like to have seen Bill stumble and watched his face when he seen that molasses runnin' ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster
... lavishing on us its treasures, seeking to win our poor love. It is sometimes said that this is a state of probation. But that phrase suggests far too cold an idea. God does not set us here as on a knife edge, with abysses on either side ready to swallow us if we stumble, while He stands apart watching for our halting, and unhelpful to our tottering feebleness. He compasses us with His love and its gifts, He draws us to Himself, and desires that we should stand. He offers all the help of His angels to hold us up. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hour after hour, only the creak of leather, the occasional stumble of a horse or the distant call of a coyote breaking the stillness. At length a low range of foothills, upflung before them, began to take shape out of the darkness with their near approach. Presently Jack ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... heavenward. You know men that run a race do not use to stare and gaze this way and that, neither do they use to cast up their eyes too high, lest haply, through their too much gazing with their eyes after other things, they in the mean time stumble and catch a fall. The very same case is this: if thou gaze and stare after every opinion and way that comes into the world, also if thou be prying overmuch into God's secret decrees, or let thy heart too much entertain questions about some nice foolish curiosities, ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... are to begin our investigation in Aristotle's way, and look at the [Greek: phainomena] of the subject, we shall immediately stumble over a maxim which is in everybody's mouth, and which, as it is understood in practice, is true and useful, as it is usually applied in argument, false and misleading. "General truths are more important ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... rule in these days to see gentlemen unsteady after dinner, yet Nance was both surprised and amused when her companion, who had spoken so soberly, began to stumble and waver by her side with the most airy divagations. Sometimes he would get so close to her that she must edge away; and at others lurch clear out of the track and plough among deep heather. His courtesy and gravity meanwhile remained unaltered. He asked her how far they ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... truth are come by Jesus Christ. Indeed, you must suffer the mortification of your flesh, you must endure the pain of the death of your lusts, the cutting off your right hand and plucking out your right eye, which would make you offend and stumble in the way, but let the remembrance of the life to come sweeten it all. When men undergo the hazard of losing life for a little pleasure, when, for a poor petty advantage, men will endure so much pains and trouble. O what should "eternal ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... and both of us felt the embarrassment of the moment. I broke the silence and spoke out my thoughts: "Men become accustomed to live from youth up as it were in a cage, and when they are once in the open air they dare not venture to use their wings, fearing, if they fly, that they may stumble against everything." ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... Christian's heart and conduct in the gospel times better than mine; and just so has the Lord dealt with me. When he slew me, then I trusted in him; when he gave me carnal ease and comfort, I forgot my Rock and rebelled. Often did I stumble too from legality, instead of looking at my own weakness and impotence, and trusting wholly in my Redeemer's strength. I was wroth with myself, wondered at myself, and thought it impossible I could be as I had been. I made strong ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... visionary only that which is far off. I will not blame you, for even the wisest has his hours of folly, but on this occasion you have certainly overlooked that which is at hand, in gazing at the distance, and I see you stumble in consequence. If you had not fallen into that error you would hardly have looked so bewildered when, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... step, or you'll stumble! Care for your coat, or you'll crock it! Down with your crown, man! Be humble! Put your head into your pocket, Else something or other will knock it. Don't hit that jar of cucumbers Standing an the broad-stair! They have not waked from their ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... reassuring smile broke out as the draught was administered. Vera tasted, thanked, swallowed, felt giddy, and lay down, hearing a lively bit of self-gratulation. "There, Mrs. Griggs, I'm getting my sea legs!" followed by an ignominious stumble as Mrs. Griggs caught the cup in good time as the vessel gave a lurch which completed Vera's awakening in the fear of being shaken ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... ancestors. The stone floor, with its great slabs, was so grandly carved with the crests and heraldry of her family, that to walk over these was like climbing a mountain, or tramping across a ploughed field. Common folks had to be careful, lest they should stumble over the bosses and knobs of the carved tombs. A long train of her servants, and tenants on the farms followed her, when she went to worship. Inside the church, the lord and lady sat, in high seats, on velvet cushions and ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... fifth day, seeing the old man stumble on the level flagstones of the garden, Hilary finished dressing hastily, and followed. He overtook him walking forward feebly beneath the candelabra of flowering chestnut-trees, with a hail-shower striking white on his high shoulders; and, placing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... all parenthetical in the present section, and so I say nothing more about it; and ask you, rather, just to look at the loving reasons which Christ here suggests for His present speech— 'that ye should not be offended,' or stumble. He warns them of the storm before it bursts, lest, when it bursts, it should sweep them away from their moorings. Of course, there could be nothing more productive of intellectual bewilderment, and more likely to lead to doubt as to one's own convictions, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... me, distorted unnaturally, in a life and death struggle, with bloodshot eyes, with foaming, gnashing mouths. They attack and kill one another and try to mangle each other. I leap to my feet. I race out into the night and tread on quaking flesh, step on hard heads, and stumble over weapons and helmets. Something is clutching at my feet like hands, so that I race away like a hunted deer with the hounds at his heels—and ever over more bodies—breathless... out of one field into another. Horror ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... their hearts, either greatly questioned their ultimate triumph; but they were allowing for the element of error so apt to set at naught human calculations. Calendar himself had already been proved fallible. Within the bounds of possibility, their turn to stumble might now be imminent. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... didn't like his head touched? Well, he's in the lead; and another bay, a twin to him, that the adjutant got from the —th Division. Changed 'Rabbits' for him. You remember 'Rabbits,' sir?—nice-looking horse, but inclined to stumble. All bays now, and not a better-looking telephone team ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... to the dead. Others of us mortals, more reserved, are content to keep such distance as we may from even the shadow of a shade. But there's no getting away from ghosts nowadays, for even if you shut your eyes to them in actual life, you stumble over them in the books you read, you see them on the stage and on the screen, and you hear them on the lecture platform. Even a Lodge in any vast wilderness would have the company of spirits. Man's love ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... in groups and sit on the top of the bank in the growing dusk. We can just see a suggestion of their gay colours and the gleam of their cheroots. G. and I go ashore and stumble along a deep, sandy road; on either side are little and big trees with open cottages behind them, made of neatly woven bamboo matting, lit with oil crusies. We come to a pagoda, and tall white griffins at its entrance staring up into the sky, strange, grotesque ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... present wrapped up in a cloth, as a mark of homage; and even if one person had occasion to go an hundred times in one day to speak to the king, the present had to be repeated every time he went. To look the king in the face was considered as a criminal disrespect; and if any one should happen to stumble while carrying the royal litter, so as to make it fall, his head was immediately cut off. At every half league on the public roads throughout the whole empire, there were Indians in constant attendance to relieve each other in carrying dispatches, which they did swifter than ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... it, but to learn your secret? If rumor is one-half true, the Arab buried somewhere enough ivory to finance this plan of theirs! They have been going about the search systematically, and sooner or later they feel they must stumble on it. They will not let you ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... often a vague endeavor to be "good," to be patient, to be not entirely absorbed in the things which are seen. But when pain comes, when the immense misery and evil in the world are borne in upon us, we too often stumble, or fail utterly, just because we do not understand our sonship; because we forget that Christians must be sin-bearers like their Master, pain bearers like their Master; because we will let ourselves be blinded by the mystery of evil and the mystery of pain, instead of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... thine own glad life: the plea Were like a wrangling babe's that fain would be Free from the help its hardy heart contemns, Free from the hand that guides and guards it, free To take its way and sprawl and stumble. See! Have we not here enough of diadems Hung high round portals pillared smooth with stems ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the strain of the day. Yet another hour remained before the afternoon session would draw to a close. How was she ever to hear the stupid geography recitation, or listen to the halting, singsong voices stumble through pages of a Reader ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... shades and depths of colour with which nature is filled render it impossible for anyone to attempt to imitate it beyond a certain point of general harmony. This is now more generally understood than it used to be; but still we often stumble across some glaring instance in which a gaudy eye and taste have been allowed to run riot, and the result has been the reproduction of something not very unlike a ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... Mark, 'Ah, to be sure. That's the question. How do they look now? On the very first morning of my going out, what do I do? Stumble on a family I know, who are constantly assisting of us in all sorts of ways, from that time to this! That won't do, you know; that ain't what I'd a right to expect. If I had stumbled on a serpent and got bit; or stumbled on a first-rate patriot, and got bowie-knifed, or stumbled on a lot of Sympathisers ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... following a slight depression in the ground reached a point within 150 yards of where the savages rested in fancied security. To prevent the possibility of arousing them by any accidental noise, we had dismounted some distance back, and carefully led our horses by the head, lest a stumble or neigh might discover us to the enemy. It was yet dark when we reached a spot opposite the camp, and standing at our horses' heads, impatiently awaited the dawn. Streaks of light soon began shooting through the eastern sky, but it seemed an eternity before we could see well enough ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... madam. He did but stumble over the dead. See, Woodson fights them back from him. For God's sake, get back ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... background of my own consciousness, and abolished into black nonentity by the first question which recalled me to actual life, as suddenly as if one of those iron shop-blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but honest shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden and unexpected descent, and left outside upon the sidewalk) had come down in front of it "by ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... beat it. Quintana's whole gang is in these woods, somewhere, hunting for you, and they might stumble on us here, at any moment." And, to the two men in front: "Lie down flat on your faces. Don't stir; don't speak; or it's you for the sink-hole. ... Lie down, I tell you! That's it. Don't move till I tell ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... him; again, as she had done hundreds of times, mourning pitifully over him, and ready to receive him patiently, impenitent as he was. She went up stairs to make his bed quite ready for him; and to put out of his way everything that could by any chance hurt him, if he should stumble and fall in his drunken weakness. When she returned to the kitchen, she lighted a candle, and opened the old family Bible, with its large type, which seemed to her a more sacred book than the little one ...
— Brought Home • Hesba Stretton
... out—or the eyes gone blind:—Too late? Can you repeat it? I tried to warn you before you left England: I should have written a letter to put you on your guard against my enemies:—I find I have some: but a letter is sure to stumble; I should have been obliged to tell you that I do not stand on my defence; and I thought I should see you the next day. You went: and not a word for me! You gave me no chance. If you have no confidence in me I must bear it. I may say the story is false. With your hand in mine ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... figure of speech; with it, democracy is possible. This is a path beaten by two hundred years of footprints, and while we walk it we are safe and need fear no evil; but if we diverge from it, be it for never so little, we stumble, and, unless we quickly retrace our steps, we fall and are lost. The tutelary goddess of American liberty should be the pure marble image of the Professor's Yankee school-mistress. Education is the fundamental support of our system. It was education which made us free, progressive, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... fopperies of orthodoxy, Asirvadam is continually dying of Pariah roses in aromatic pains of caste. If in his goings and comings one of the "lilies of Nilufar" should chance to stumble upon a bit of bone or rag, a fragment of a dish, or a leaf from which some one has eaten,—should his sacred raiment be polluted by the touch of a dog or a Pariah,—he is ready to faint, and only a bath can revive him. He may not touch his sandals with his hand, nor repose in a strange ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... a long run through the night, over many a treacherous bog and through many a cluster of bushes, which, as Jumbo said, had finger-nails; and there was many a stumble and jolt, and many a short stop at the edge of a sudden embankment. One of these pauses that brought the whole nine up into a knot was the little step-off where Tug and History had thought they were being shoved over the precipice ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... meaning as a duel between two rival gamebirds in a cockpit. We know, and it will some day dawn on the Germans, that this War has a deeper meaning than that. We are not nationalist; we are too deeply experienced in politics to stumble into that trap. We have had a better and longer political education than has come to Germany in her short and feverish national life. It is often said that the Germans are better educated than we are, and in a sense that is true; they are better furnished with schools and colleges and the public ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... of the story was just as thrilling to Art, because he must stumble through the rough land of "little sticks" in the dark with the constant apprehension of meeting some unwelcome Alaska brown bear, which were thick there, and also the extremely unpleasant experience of running into dead ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... down the kind of street, or rather goat's-path, which leads to the Japanese Nagasaki,—with the prospect, alas! of having to climb up again at night; clamber up all the steps, all the slippery slopes, stumble over all the stones, before we shall be able to get home, go to bed, and sleep. We make our descent in the darkness, under the branches, under the foliage, betwixt dark gardens and venerable little houses that throw but a faint glimmer on the road; and when the moon is absent or clouded ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... Wotan's spear, had power only to hurt those who feared it, then we might have had an adequate working-out of so noble a beginning. Instead of this, Kundry kisses Parsifal, Parsifal squeals, and we see him in a moment to be only an Amfortas who has had the luck not to stumble; and he, the poor fool who is filled with so vast a pity because he sees (what are called) good and evil in entirely wrong proportion—as, in fact, a hypochondriac sees them—he, Parsifal, this thin-blooded inheritor of rickets and an exhausted ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Pacific, with the blue outlines of Catalina and more distant islands etched upon the western sky. This picture is sometimes so distinct that you find yourself trying to recognize acquaintances on the streets of Pasadena. Again everything is dreamy with haze. Another morning you may stumble out trying to rub yesterday's sunburn from your eyes, and find everything below curtained by a bank of snowy fog. As for myself, I enjoy the prospect most when I cannot see it at all—that ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... hurt by a fall from his horse. In his diary[84] Coke thus describes this accident: "The 3rd of May, 1632, riding in the morning in Stoke, between eight and nine o'clock to take the air, my horse under me had a strange stumble backwards and fell upon me (being above eighty years old) where my head lighted near to sharp stubbles, and the heavy horse upon me." He declares that he suffered "no hurt at all;" but, as a matter of fact, ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... Turks, clowns, Indians, the tinselled, sequined, beaded, ragged flutter of the room, then from the coloured and composite clothing of a footballer, clown or jockey grinned the round face and owlish eyes of little Duval, who flew to her at once to whisper compliments and stumble on the swelling fortress of her white skirt. She realised dimly from him that her dress was as beautiful as she had hoped it might be, but what was the use of its beauty if Julien should be missing? And, looking over Duval's head, she tried to see ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... goin' westward, and travelled far with them. But they quarrelled and separated, I goin' with these that I liked best. One night though, I took my horse and left; for I knew there was evil in the heart of a man who sought me continually, and the thing drove me mad. I rode until my horse could stumble no farther, and then I took the saddle for a pillow and slept on the bare ground. And in the morning I got up and rode on, seein' no house nor human being for manny and manny a mile. When everything seemed hopeless ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... renascentur comes into our mind when we stumble on a remark by Wodhull the collector in an Acta Apostolorum printed at Oxford in 1715: "In May, 1810, Mr. Leigh, auctioneer, told me that a copy of this edition had lately sold for L20, observing, 'these are the times to sell books, not to ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... that there is such a thing as a special poetic vocabulary,[270] or that the commonplaces of rhetoric require to be interwoven with, not merely tacked on to, the fabric of their verse, and so it comes about that the writer who would turn the Civil War into an epic is apt to stumble beneath the burden he takes upon his shoulders, unless indeed he is permeated through and through with literature. You must not simply turn history into verse: historians do it better in prose. Rather the poet should sweep on his way borne by the breath of inspiration and untrammelled ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... brother of the Tchaks, considerate forder, 2. A swallow which fled in the sky; 3. A swallow with a whiskered breast; 4. Whose cattle was ever in so huddled a crowd, 5. They stumble for room when they ran. 6. Thou false adorer of the valor of another, 7. That valor thou tookest at the battle of Makonko. 8. Of the stock of N'dabazita, ramrod of brass, 9. Survivor alone of all other rods; 10. Others they broke and left this in the soot, 11. Thinking to ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... between these two islands; and as the 'Daylight' had a particularly heavy cargo this trip, and would not be clear for the next two days, we made up our minds to search the islands, and drive the blacks on to Hinchinbrook, so that one of our parties must stumble across them when we swept it. This may seem to the reader unnecessary trouble, but most of our party were conversant with the habits of the blacks and their limited method of reasoning; and we judged it probable that the Herbert River gins ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... oratory as the sense that the man who is addressing you, is thinking at the very moment he is speaking. You have the sense of watching the visible working of his inner mind; and you are far more deeply impressed than by the glib facility which does not pause, does not stumble, does not hesitate, because he does not stop to think. Many people, reading so much about Mr. Sexton's oratory, will be under the impression that he is a very rapid and fluent speaker. He is nothing of the kind. He speaks with a great slowness, ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... we get there at all there must be something in us worthy of the upper rounds. Can we ask Him to be our guide who noticed the falling of a sparrow to the ground? Do so; then we will not choose the wrong path, we will not stumble in our darkest hours. We will not think solely of our slavery, of our closing hour, or how we will spend the evening, but will put our mind on our duties and resolve that they shall have the best that is in us; and by and by we shall enjoy the ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... renew Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found Long since to be but just one other mound Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew. And once again, and wiser in no wise, I chase your colored phantom on the air, And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise And stumble pitifully on to where, Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes, Once more I ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... very cold water, and shortly afterwards Birdie put her foot into a prairie dog's hole which was concealed by the snow, and on recovering herself fell three times on her nose. I thought of Bishop Wilberforce's fatal accident from a smaller stumble, and felt sure that he would have kept his seat had he been mounted, as I was, on a Mexican saddle. It was too threatening for a long ride, and on returning I passed into a region of vivacious descriptions of Egypt, Palestine, Asia Minor, Turkey, Russia, and other countries, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... tell you much," said Christie, gravely. "I am not wise about such things. I know there are some who make this a stone to stumble over—that we can do nothing, and we must just wait. But don't you remember how it is said, 'Seek ye the Lord while He may be found; call ye upon Him when He is near.' 'They that seek Me early shall find Me.' And in the New Testament, ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... the reins is felt on the bit, and the directions are indicated by a turn of the wrist rather than by a pull; the horses are guided and encouraged, and only pulled up when they exceed their intended pace, or in the event of a stumble; for there is a strong though gentle hand ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... I stumble in The broad light, from this twilight weak and thin, What of me will change, What of that brightness will be new and strange? Shall I indeed endure New solitude in that high air and pure, Aching for these fingers On which my assured hand ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... frequented the streets of the noble city of Lancia was always of the scantiest, but in the depth of winter, when our story opens, with a bitter north-east wind and drenching rain, one would find it difficult to stumble upon a living soul. Not that all had surrendered themselves into the arms of Morpheus, for Lancia as capital of a province, albeit not one of the most important, had learnt to sit up late. But ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... on these occasions. I always made it difficult for them to talk in this, to them, gloomy room.—They had to stumble through themselves. ...
— A Christmas Story - Man in His Element: or, A New Way to Keep House • Samuel W. Francis
... that two could seldom come up abreast, and so steep that the enemy had much ado to struggle and stumble upwards. The men seemed half unwilling to proceed, and hung back more than once; but Amyas could hear an authoritative voice behind, and presently there emerged to the front, sword in hand, a figure at which Amyas and Cary ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... had managed to stumble backwards, somehow or other, into a large receptacle of lime which was being slaked for patching up a wall. Lime, in that condition, is boiling hot. Mr. Keith's trousers were rather badly scalded. He was sensitive on that ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... bad as that. But we won't smash it yet awhile. I'm going to look up the subject of secret drawers—perhaps I'll stumble upon ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... freedom from government and restraint; that it properly brought a slave under the control of the law, instead of that of an individual; and that it was possible so to apply law as perfectly to control the emancipated. This is an idea which seems simple enough when pointed out; but men often stumble a long while before they discover ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... impossible for the most powerful voice to make itself heard, unless at a very short distance and dead to windward, as was the barque when her skipper hailed us. We made several attempts to find the brigantine that night, but somehow failed to stumble across either her or the disabled ship upon which we suspected ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... middle of the second week, he came home tired after a long day's work. The lamp that usually stood all night in the hall had burned itself out, and he had to stumble upstairs in the dark. He made considerable noise in doing so, but nobody seemed to be disturbed. The whole house was utterly quiet, and probably everybody was asleep. There were no lights under any of the doors. All was in darkness. It was after ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... alone and the road is very dark. I stumble on, I know not how nor care, for the way seems leading nowhere, and there is no ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... disheartening. My health and spirits make me take but slight notice of the transition, and, under the persuasion of temperance being a talisman, I marched boldly on towards the descent of the hill, knowing I must fall at last, but not suspecting that I should stumble by the way. This confession explains the mortification I feel. A month's confinement to one who never kept his bed a day is a stinging lesson, and has humbled my insolence to almost indifference. Judge, then, how little I interest myself about public events. I know nothing of them since ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... tortures of Germinie, the consumption of Madame Gervaisais, the decay of Renee Mauperin, the record of pain in Soeur Philomene, in Les Freres Zemganno, and in other works of the Goncourts. Emotion in less tragic circumstances they rarely convey; and when they attempt it they are prone to stumble into an unimpressive sentimentalism. Their strength lay in pure observation, not in the philosophic or psychological presentment of nature. For their fine powers to have full play, it was necessary that they ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... sister was his abject slave, and if in her slow peregrinations about the cave she should stumble upon a scrap of anything edible, he would promptly roll her over with one of his exaggeratedly podgy front paws and snatch the morsel from her without the slightest compunction. In the same way he would chase her from teat to teat when ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... said aloud when she had finished whispering, "not I but the Englishman, yet, Horse, I think that I shall ride you again, but it will be beyond the darkness. Stay not, stumble not, for you go on your last and greatest gallop. Speed like the swallow to save the Swallow, for so shall you live on when your swift bones are dust. Now, ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... wide-boughed maples for the first glimpse of her home. At length it came into view—one of those big, square, old-fashioned wooden houses, built with no perceptible architectural idea beyond commodious shelter. She had thought her father might possibly stumble out to greet her, but no one stood waiting at ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... the dense darkness of the forest with no gleam of light to guide him on his way, and his feet were constantly snared in the knotted roots of the trees intersecting the path. So must he stumble along a dark and rugged track through the rest of his years. There was no cheering gleam beckoning him to a happy future. But though it was thorny and obscure it was not an ignoble path, and it might end at last even for him in the welcome words, "Well done, good and faithful servant; ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... "your business can hardly be so important as the pulling down a king from his throne. Besides, as you may see for yourself, the river is very boisterous; and if I should chance to stumble, it would sweep both of us away more easily than it has carried off yonder uprooted tree. I would gladly help you if I could, but I doubt whether I am strong enough to carry ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... burst in. There were eight of us, and I closed my ears to shut out the sound of the other's cries. Up at the house, too, I could hear screams and some pistol-shots, and then more screams and cries. The Indians were all round, everywhere, and I dreaded lest one of them should stumble up against me. Then a sudden glare shot up, and I knew they were firing the house. The light would have shown me clearly enough, had I remained where I was; so I crawled on my stomach till I came to some potato ground a few yards off. As I lay between ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... they would hurry to their task by dangerous short cuts, would use methods that were quicker and more effective in spite of the fact that they were also risky. His fourth day at his work Jurgis saw a man stumble while running in front of a car, and have his foot mashed off, and before he had been there three weeks he was witness of a yet more dreadful accident. There was a row of brick furnaces, shining white through every crack with the molten ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... remonstrated with him, representing the persecuting spirit of the people, which of late had been displayed in attempts upon his life. To this he answered there were twelve hours in the day, and consequently it was requisite to use despatch in the performance of the labour assigned to him who would not stumble in the night, or leave his work unfinished; and then intimating the departure of their friend Lazarus, he said, "I go that I may awake him out of sleep." Mistaking his meaning, and imagining that he had been speaking only of "taking rest," in ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... the change when evening gray Curtained a cloudy sky, And languid, I retraced the way My feet could scarce descry! By rugged care my heart was bruised, Hope's rainbow tints were gone; To this world's watch and ward unused, I could but stumble on. ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... problem as he found it, and came north to stumble over others, less picturesque but nearer. He squandered two or three months on Paris. From the first he had avoided Paris, and had wanted no French influence in his education. He disapproved of France in the lump. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... A stumble of the horse threw him, and as he lay on the ground, unable to move, one of the servants of the company came up and broke the lance across Don Quixote's ribs. It was not until a countryman came by that the Don was extricated, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... moderated her pace. "I know the path well, but it was thoughtless of me to walk so fast. I forgot you did not know it, and if you were to stumble you might hurt your arm terribly. How ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are gone astray; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are gone astray through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgement. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean.—'Whom will he teach knowledge? and whom will he make to understand the message? them that are weaned ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... contingency, dependence (uncertainty) 475; situation (circumstance) 8. statistics, theory of Probabilities, theory of Chances; bookmaking; assurance; speculation, gaming &c 621. V. chance, hap, turn up; fall to one's lot; be one's fate &c 601; stumble on light upon; take one's chance &c 621. Adj. casual, fortuitous, accidental, adventitious, causeless, incidental, contingent, uncaused, undetermined, indeterminate; random, statistical; possible &c 470; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... disconsolate straggling village street I saw the tired troops trudge: I heard their feet. The cheery Q.M.S. was there to meet And guide our Company in.... I watched them stumble. Into some crazy hovel, too beat to grumble; Saw them file inward, slipping from their backs Rifles, ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... wilderness of rock, heaped up in sharp confusion, we came out on a little ridge, and there before us lay Tuerin,—not a house but a village, built in and out among the rocks. It was an extraordinary sight to stumble upon, here on the edge of the uninhabited desert. A little apart from the rest were four large temples crowned with gilt balls and fluttering banners, and leading off from them were neat rows of small white plastered ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... to be red-hot rivals in business," he said with an agreeable laugh. "But that needn't prevent, eh? Funny I should stumble on you like this! I ride every night after supper—a man needs a bit of exercise after working all day in the store. I saw ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... am my brother's keeper, In all that I can do To save him from temptation, To help him to be true; To stay him if he stumble, To lift him if he fall; To stand beside him though his sin Has ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... and rapidly. The toboggan was crackling and slithering over the snow upon which the dark indigo shadows were throwing uncanny designs. The track was smooth and level now and the dog could manage very well alone, so that Hugo pulled no longer. Once, as he chanced to stumble, the girl thought she heard a groan from him. She began to wish that she had been able to believe him, but it was utterly impossible, although she suddenly found it in her heart to pity him, to extenuate ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... weak and desperate, he thought, "Before I finish the next round I shall die," he heard the other man stumble heavily, then stop. He stopped also. He had the back and Carlier the front of the house, as before. He heard him drop into a chair cursing, and suddenly his own legs gave way, and he slid down into a sitting posture with his back to the wall. His mouth was as dry as a cinder, ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... of grossly false scenery, as all Americans declare, though they praise parts of the poem. It is thus that self-love forever creeps out, like a snake, to sting any thing which happens, even accidentally, to stumble upon it." ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... sound did the guide make as he moved forward. Grace was almost equally quiet in her movement, but now and then Hippy Wingate would stumble, followed by a grunt or a growl of disgust that might have been ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... [Footnote: See Platonius, in Aristoph. cur. Kster, p. xi.] As they were prohibited from bringing portraits of real persons on the stage they were, after the loss of their freedom, very careful lest they should accidentally stumble upon any resemblance, and especially to any of their Macedonian rulers; and in this way they endeavoured to secure themselves against the danger. Yet the exaggeration in question was hardly without its meaning. Accordingly ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... if by its exercise we endanger another's soul. This is the teaching of St. Paul in the words: "It is good not to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor to do anything whereby thy brother stumbleth"; and "If meat maketh my brother to stumble, I will eat no flesh for evermore, that I make not ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... jumped the Monkey! Away leaped the Jack who lived in a Box. At the far end of the toy counter the Bold Tin Soldier and his men had placed some sofa cushions from the upholstery department. That was in case either of the three might stumble ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... "You'll stumble." He did not wait for her assent, and for that and for the strength of his hold she liked him, and, as she ran, and her blood quickened, she liked him better. She did not understand herself, for she had imagined horror at his nearness, but not horror pierced through with a delight that shrank. ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... mare round, set his heels into her sides and, before anyone could move, the horse and its rider sprang for the window, dashed clear through it on to the roadway and away at a gallop, without so much as a stop or a stumble; leaving a shower of broken glass and ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... I know why. I will take care not to stumble in the same way; and no Ganymede shall take my place ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... in the clay, Bays, and traverses, fringed with wasted herbage, Seed-pods of blue scabious, and some lingering blooms; And the sky, seen as from a well, Brilliant with frosty stars. We stumble, cursing, on the slippery duck-boards. Goaded like the damned by some invisible wrath, A will stronger than weariness, stronger than animal fear, ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... and Migwan plunged into the darker of the two paths. It was hard breaking through. Small scrub pines closed over the path, their branches intertwined, so that more than once she had to use her hatchet. Roots and vines tangled her feet and made her stumble. Then she wedged her foot in between two stumps and could not get it out. She pulled and twisted and finally grasped hold of the stem of a small tree and braced herself firmly while she endeavored to free herself. With a sudden jerk her foot came free, and at the same instant the tree came up by ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... the only thing that worry me," said Cummings. "Those damn reporters are never satisfied. They keep digging around until they stumble across something and then tear things to pieces. What about them? You haven't heard of anyone of them asking too many questions or ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... widow and the fatherless, I must smile. I recall the days of our storm and stress, when those sleek and slippery wolves, the 'business friends' of my father, sat round waiting for my poor distracted, gallant-hearted mother to stumble and stagger in her struggle with those wild-cats of investments. Wild cats! Bengal tigers were a better name for them! But she didn't! She won out and defied the whole caboodle, as she called them when she was roused. She won out, or I shouldn't be here now, maybe. She was a mother ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... the descent into the valley far more difficult than the ascent, the trail often leading them along a narrow footpath, the rocks rising perpendicularly on one side, while on the other were yawning chasms a hundred feet below, apparently ready to receive them, should they stumble, or deviate from the rugged path before them. They made the descent in safety, and rested themselves for the remainder of the day on the bank of the river. On examining the stream, they found it too deep to be forded in the usual way of riding their horses over. They built a ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... that followed, the wild cheer and onward dash, the race over blood-stained snow-patches, the stumble over falling forms (some friend, some foe), the ripping and slashing at fire-spitting lodges, in which some of the band had sought refuge, the agonized screaming of children, the appalling shrieks of the squaws—of all this it was difficult later to give clear account. Geordie only knew that he, ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... gather the sticks he lost the rope, and being quite blind he did nothing but stumble over fallen logs, and bruise himself against the trunks of trees, and scratch his face among the briers and brambles, until at last he could bear it no longer, and cried out to his comrade to ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... "Every time we stumble we hear them shouting; every time we blunder against their limits or stretch out to any ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... jump up and make for me and I make for the door! It was dark, all 'cepting the light from the chimney, and I fumble all up and down the door jamb before I find de latch pin. The old man shorely git me if he hadn't stumble over the eating table and whop his hand right down in de dish of fresh made butter. That make him so mad he jest stand and holler ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... this book anywhere and not find richness. To prove that this is true, I will open it at random and copy the page I happen to stumble upon. Here is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... profitable to the humble, and punitive to the proud. Not only the Lord's word, but also the Lord himself, partakes of this twofold character, and produces these diverse effects; the same rock on which a meek disciple surely builds his hope, is also the stone over which scoffers stumble in their ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... said he; "did you never never see a man stumble before? Come, the passage is free; now at length we will quench our thirst in Saumur," and taking his sword in his left hand, he again attempted to make good ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... tell the hour by a clock, but he knew to a second when the first of the seething mass of humans asleep on the beds and floors and stairs of the packed houses would yawn, rub the sleep from their eyes and stumble, shivering, into the street. He had still his greatest treasure to bring, and had no wish to be caught with it on his back; not because of the criminality of his proceedings—that never once entered his thick skull—but because he was scared of having the mirror reft from him. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... Remembering the experience of the evangelical McSnagley, he carefully avoided that Rock of Ages on which that unskillful pilot had shipwrecked her young faith. But if, in the course of her reading, she chanced to stumble upon those few words which have lifted such as she above the level of the older, the wiser, and the more prudent—if she learned something of a faith that is symbolized by suffering, and the old light softened in her eyes, it did not take the ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... usual practice, for hitherto they have made themselves perfectly clear to us when we have been offering them hecatombs. They come and sit at our feasts just like one of our selves, and if any solitary wayfarer happens to stumble upon some one or other of them, they affect no concealment, for we are as near of kin to the gods as the Cyclopes and the savage giants ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... Cecil Brown, looking over the desert with his dark, intolerant eyes. "If one could come wandering here alone—stumble upon it by chance, as it were—and find one's self in absolute solitude in the dim light of the temple, with these grotesque figures all around, it would be perfectly overwhelming. A man would be prostrated with wonder and awe. But when Belmont is puffing his bulldog pipe, and Stuart ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... washing-in a sky, it was announced that a gentleman was asking for Mr. Winslow. Churlishness bade us despatch him to the office, but humanity prevailed to invite him previously to share our luncheon. Yet we doubted whether it had not been a cruel mercy when he entered, evidently unprepared to stumble on a young lady and a deformed man, and stammering piteously as he hoped there was no mistake—Mr. ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ourselves, and then we go out to be shot into nothingness. Take care of us while you may. Job's horse was "clothed with thunder," but all we ask is a plain blanket. When we are sick, put us in a "horse-pital." Do not strike us when we stumble or scare. Suppose you were in the harness and I were in the wagon, I had the whip and you the traces, what an ardent advocate you would be for kindness to the irrational creation! Do not let the blacksmith drive the nail into the quick when he shoes me, or burn my fetlocks ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... or a stumble, hardly reeling in her ponderous frame, the straining engine plunged headlong into the curve. Only once, she staggered and rolled; once only, three reckless men rose to answer death as it knocked at their hearts; but their hour was not come, ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... I stumble into the large historic hall known as the Library, wherein the great trial of the Bishop of Lincoln is being held. The weird scene strongly resembles the Dream Trial in "The Bells," where the judges, counsel, and all concerned are in a fog. I expect the limelight ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... cross-sectioned both lines as I have, you wouldn't stumble over that," said Ford, falling back, as he commonly did, upon the things he knew. "We shall broaden the Plug Mountain without straightening a curve or throwing a shovelful of earth on the embankment, from beginning to end. On the other hand, the Green Butte narrow gauge runs ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... profusion? greater than that impetuous, that god-gifted genius, which chafed against the restraints of law? or in lyric poetry would you choose to be a Bacchylides or a Pindar? in tragedy a Sophocles or (save the mark!) an Io of Chios? Yet Io and Bacchylides never stumble, their style is always neat, always pretty; while Pindar and Sophocles sometimes move onwards with a wide blaze of splendour, but often drop out of view in sudden and disastrous eclipse. Nevertheless no one in his senses ...
— On the Sublime • Longinus
... to top speed. He must get there at a sufficient distance from them to escape close rifle fire, and certainly beyond point-blank revolver range. Accordingly he threw his weight more into the stirrups and over the withers of the mare. This brought greater poundage on her forehand and made her apt to stumble or actually miss her step, but it increased her ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... the Manse in order." On this occasion David Deans was delivered of his first-born joke; and apparently the parturition was accompanied with many throes, for sorely did he twist about his physiognomy, and much did he stumble in his speech, before he could express his idea, "That the lad being now wedded to his spiritual bride, it was hard to threaten him with ane temporal spouse in the same day." He then laughed a hoarse and brief laugh, and was suddenly ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... face with an eye that was single and therefore at once forgiving and fearless. The man who has no mote in his own eye cannot be knocked down by the beam in his neighbour's; while he who is busy with the mote in his neighbour's may stumble to destruction over ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... Ioasaph, "But how, after baptism, shall a man keep himself clear from all sin? For even if there be, as thou sayest, repentance for them that stumble, yet it is attended with toil and trouble, with weeping and mourning; things which, methinks, are not easy for the many to accomplish. But I desired rather to find a way to keep strictly the commandments ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... horse he made a rush at the mountain, and got up half-way, then he calmly turned his horse's head and came down again without a slip or stumble. The following day he started in the same way; the horse trod on the glass as if it had been level earth, and sparks of fire flew from its hoofs. All the other knights gazed in astonishment, for he had almost gained the summit, and in another moment he ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Leonora Blanche Alleyne Lang
... waiting for a cab. He has made up his mind to take the first that goes by. There can be no question of discrimination. Anything will be welcome. Yes, anything, even one of those evil-smelling antiquated hackneys drawn by a decrepit brute who will doubtless stumble and fall before having dragged you the first five hundred yards, thereby bringing down the pitiless wrath of his aged driver, not only on his own, ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... turning swiftly round, with my court hoop, and suddenly kneeling down to see my rose-coloured silk petticoat swelled around me by the wind. In the midst of this grave employment enters his Majesty, followed by one of the Princesses. I attempt to rise; my feet stumble, and down I fall in the midst of my robes, puffed out by the wind. 'Daughter,' said Louis XV., laughing heartily, 'I advise you to send back to school a reader who makes cheeses.'" The railleries of Louis XV. were often much more cutting, as Mademoiselle Genet experienced on ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... singular race is not even hinted at in the more celebrated treatises. Conscious of the diffidence with which any one should approach a matter which so many learned men have labored over, he advances the plea of the proverb, that they who study the stars will stumble at stones,—a plea, that much learning and genius may fail, where less would not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... it was a Union soldier, and that he was the object of his search. He was a clumsy man, not used to forests, because Harry heard him stumble twice, when his feet caught on vines. Nor was any comrade near, or he would have called to him for the sake of companionship. Harry judged that he was originally a mill hand, and he did not feel the least alarm about him, laughing a little at his clumsiness and awkwardness, ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... this: because then I throw the reins on his neck. I then set myself to observe; and I aver, that in riding above 100,000 miles I scarce ever remember my horse (except two, that would fall head over heels anyway) to fall, or make a considerable stumble, while I rode with a slack rein. To fancy, therefore, that a tight rein prevents stumbling, is a ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... there were in her strains of romantic, egotistic ability to which nothing in them corresponded. She could play, she could draw—brilliantly, spontaneously—up to a certain point, when neither Sarah nor Lulu could stumble through a "piece," or produce anything capable of giving the smallest satisfaction to their drawing-master. She could chatter, on occasion, so that a room full of people instinctively listened. And she had read voraciously, especially poetry, where they were content with picture-papers ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to remain quietly in one spot all night than to wander about in the dark and perhaps stumble upon dangerous places. If, when you find the points of the compass by the North Star, you mark them plainly on a stone or fallen log, they will be a ready guide for you ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... followed closely behind his leader and Murray, who now began to advance cautiously, hand in hand, pausing to listen from time to time, Caesar progressing more by thought than touch and evidently conscious that at any moment he might stumble upon those who were waiting ready ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... that border the great plain of Biguglia, had rolled northward before a hot and oppressive breeze, and the sun was now hidden. The carriage descended at a rapid trot, and once the man got down and silently examined his brakes. The road was a sort of cornice cut on the bare mountain side, and a stumble or the slipping of a brake-block would inevitably send the carriage rolling ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... had been too hasty a toilette for the garments to look perfectly natural; and the cropped head was so suspicious, that it was no wonder that at the first station, the old gentleman gathered up his umbrella, with intense courtesy squeezed gingerly to the door, carefully avoiding any stumble over perilous toes, and made his escape—entering another carriage, whence he no doubt signed cautions against the lunatic and his keeper, since no one again ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with a curtness he did not use when the civs were present. "Only don't delay too long. Remember, our boy's roaming around out there. He might just be picked off by something before these stumble-footed civs catch ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... A Policeman with a bull's-eye prevents my driver's energetic endeavours to drive through the Palace wall. I stumble into the large hall known as the Library. "Here," said I to myself, "is taking place the historic trial of the Bishop of LINCOLN." The weird scene strongly resembles the Dream Trial in The Bells, where the judges, counsel, and all concerned, are in a fog. Will ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... forgotten it. Here was a chance to mischievously banter that habitually careful little woman! He slipped it into his pocket and quietly entered the dark but perfectly familiar hall. He reached the staircase without a stumble and began to ascend softly. Halfway up he heard the sound of his wife's hurried voice and another that startled him. He ascended hastily two steps, which brought him to the level of the half-opened transom of the kitchen. A candle was burning ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... to arrest their progress at these times, did not always escape unscathed. When in a bad forest where the snow was deep, he often would stumble and fall, and, before he could regain his feet, had acted the part of a snowplough as he was rapidly dragged along. He received some painful bruises, but he pluckily kept to his work, and so had his dogs in fairly good submission before ...
— Winter Adventures of Three Boys • Egerton R. Young
... without which he never travelled far, and regaled Bess with candied violets and other dainties, while Dolly worked hard to hold his own against a most accomplished antagonist. He would have beaten her if an unlucky stumble, which produced an unsightly stain upon the knee of those new shorts, had not distracted his mind and made him careless. Much elated at her victory, Josie permitted him to rest, and offered ironical consolation for the mishap which ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott |
