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More "Prop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I saw those of Hepatica and the Skeptic and the Philosopher drop, although they made haste to prop ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... much as fom'ly, sah! Yo' see, de Kernel's prop'ty lies in de ole parts ob de town, where de po' white folks lib, and dey ain't reg'lar. De Kernel dat sof' in his heart, he dare n' press 'em; some of 'em is ole fo'ty-niners, like hisself, sah; and some ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... undisturbed until exchanged. The officers to take their side-arms and baggage to their homes, on the same conditions, etc. There were 290 pieces of artillery belonging to this army a few weeks ago. This army was the pride, the hope, the prop of the Confederate cause, and numbered, I believe, on the rolls, 120,000 men. All is lost! No head can be made by any other general or army—if indeed any other army remains. If Mr. Davis had been present, he never would have consented to it; and I doubt if he will ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... I have said, delighted in his prop. It was as necessary to him as his cane; and I generally accompanied him, when he visited any ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... pair of bits in the deck, through which ran a piece of horizontal timber, on which they worked; so that they could be raised or depressed at pleasure. The after pole was shorter than the others, and served as a prop to them. When the pirates intend to board an enemy, they allow this mast to fall over the bows, and it serves them as a ladder to climb on to her decks. They were steered in a curious way, by two broad-bladed oars running through the counter at either ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... fortification walls. Then, as the lower layers of bricks became saturated and refused their support to the rows above, the wall began to crack and soon to totter to its fall. The citizens for some time tried to prop it with pieces of timber, and used other devices to avert the imminent ruin of their tower; but finding themselves overmatched by the water, and in dread lest the fall at some point or other of the circular wall (9) might deliver them captive to the spear of the enemy, they signified their consent ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... most urgent wants indeed, Mrs. Haller has relieved; but whether she has or could have given as much as would purchase liberty for the son, the prop of his age— ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... if by the body's prop she stand— If on the body's life her life depend, As Meleager's on the fatal brand; The body's good she only ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... narrow strip of wood under the board, near the front edge. Resting on the floor and wedged under this cleat there is a prop of planed wood, slender and neat looking. You can put a beading around the board, with small brads and stain it cherry or ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... dragged wearily on. At short intervals his guards would look in to see that he was not attempting to escape, and, satisfied with their inspection, would prop themselves in a sitting posture outside the door against the wall, and to all ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... to prop my woman's pity," she said, as she broke off her laughter, "and, believe me, ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... rake determined the life of this girl. She fell, not through ignorance or curiosity, but moved by anger and, as it were, out of bravado. Since she was without social position, motherless and isolated, having no family, without a prop and unloved, well, she threw off the yoke absolutely. She broke through her shackles ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... seems to me, it were easier to count one, two, three, with folded hands, than to let fall the peas from one hand to the other, beneath thy scapulary. Howbeit, a method which would be but a pitfall to one, may prove a prop to another. So I give thee leave to continue to count with thy peas. Also the games in thy cell are harmless, and lead me to think, as already I have sometimes thought, that games with balls or rings, something in which eye guides the hand, and mind the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... Mrs. Marston's black and white hens and the minorca cockerel pecked about the open door and came in inquiringly, upon which Martha, who sat near the door for that purpose, swept them softly out with the clothes-prop, which she manipulated in ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... associates, his recreations. He haunted the old Astor Library and the Metropolitan Museum, learned something about pictures and porcelains, took singing lessons, though he had a voice like a crow's. When he sat down to his baked apple and doughnut in a basement lunch-room, he would prop a book up before him and address his food with as much leisure and ceremony as if he were dining at his club. He held himself at a distance from his fellow-workmen and somehow always managed to impress them with his superiority. He had inordinate vanity, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... David: "Major, this is the day for you to say the last lines. You know this afternoon the 'Six Hundred' are going by. You'll hear the band play, and Uncle Chester and Uncle Stephen will be marching in the ranks. Stuart and I will be there, too, somewhere, and I think if we can just prop you up a little bit you'll be able to see at least the heads of the men. And you can salute, you know, even if ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... up all their lives are seldom good for anything in a crisis. When misfortune comes, they look around for somebody to lean upon. If the prop is not there down they go. Once down, they are helpless as capsized turtles. Many a boy has succeeded beyond all his expectations simply because all props were knocked out from under him and he was obliged to stand upon his own feet. "Poverty ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... was a good friend of mine, but it would have required a bolder man than I was at that time to ask him for the gift of his niece, who was the head of his household, and, according to his own frequent statement, the main prop of his declining years. Had Madeline acquiesced in my general views on the subject, I might have felt encouraged to open the matter to Mr. Hinckman, but, as I said before, I had never asked her whether or not she would be mine. I thought of these things at ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... can one be very respectful to a person who wishes to be called John Smith? Why couldn't you have picked out a name with a little personality? I might as well write letters to Dear Hitching-Post or Dear Clothes-Prop. ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... for the little one: no, not like that; upside-down, so he won't roll out; and it's still warm from the mare's back. Prop it up on each side with those stones you ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... the prince. But the prince had a favourite already; and Doddington failed again. He then returned to Walpole, who made him a lord of the treasury. But Walpole himself was soon to feel the chances of power; and Doddington, who was never inclined to prop a sinking cause, crossed the House again. There he was left for a while, to suffer the penalties of a placeman's purgatory, but without being purified; and, after some continuance in opposition, a state for which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... attempt to prove its weaknesses inherent; to look obstinately at the golden side only of the double-wielded shield: instead of picking away at a soft stone in constitutional foundations, our feeble wish magnanimously prefers to prop it and plaster it, flinging away that injurious pick-axe. The title of this once-considered lucubration is far too suggestive to carping minds of more than the much that it means, to be without objection: nevertheless, I did begin, and therefore, always under shelter of a domino, and protesting against ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and unprotected as at Dorey. On board the steamer they had a pair of tree kangaroos alive. They differ chiefly from the ground-kangaroo in having a more hairy tail, not thickened at the base, and not used as a prop; and by the powerful claws on the fore-feet, by which they grasp the bark and branches, and seize the leaves on which they feed. They move along by short jumps on their hind-feet, which do not seem particularly well adapted for climbing trees. It has been supposed that these ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... many other places. They are great sawyers, however. They stand heavy pine spars on end, if rather short, say 8 feet, the common length of many intended for making coffins, and cut them up into three-eighths or half-inch stuff with great patience. A longer one they will lean over and prop up, raising it towards the perpendicular as they advance. They must have some hard jobs. I have just measured a poplar plank in front of a coffin manufactory, which I found to be 5 ft. 3 in. at the butt, 3 ft. 10 in. at the top, 8 feet ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... Mr. Freeman. "For my part, I see no light ahead. Every day come new reports of failures; every day confidence diminishes; every day some prop that we leaned ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... clay in a wooden framework placed near the centre. The outside wall of this side of the house is carried up to meet the roof. The entrance of light and air and the egress of smoke are provided for by the elevation on a prop of one corner of a square section of the roof, marked out by a right-angled cut, of which one limb runs parallel to the outer wall, the other upwards from one extremity of the former. This aperture can be easily closed, E.G. during heavy rain, by removing the prop and allowing the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Accedam? an potius mediter finire dolores? Exclusit: reuocat, redeam? non si obsecret. Ecce Seruus non Paulo sapientior: Here, qu res Nec modum habet, neque consilium, ratione modque Tractari non vult. In amore, hc sunt mala, bellum, Pax rursum: hc si quis tempestatis prop ritu Mobilia, et cca fluitantia sorte, laboret Reddere certa, sibi nihil plus explicet, ac si ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... wasted face and hollow eyes, who had been fighting the wolf and keeping fast hold of her integrity, or a tender, innocent-looking girl, the messenger of a weak and shiftless mother, or a pale, bright-eyed boy whose much-worn but clean and well-kept garments gave sad evidence of a home out of which prop and stay had been removed. The strong and the weak, the pure and the defiled, were there. A poor washerwoman who in a moment of weakness has pawned the garments entrusted to her care, that she might venture upon a "row" of which she had dreamed, ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur
... and in making toast before a blazing fire, stand the wire toaster upright before the fire and prop it ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... saving. There has been no propaganda as yet appealing to women to value dress according to durability and comfort rather than according to its prettiness, to bow to no fashion which means the lessening of power. To corset herself as fashion dictates, to prop herself on high heels, means to a woman just so much lost efficiency, and even the most thoughtless, if appealed to for national saving, might learn to turn by preference in dress, in habits, in recreation, to ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... nearly the truth. Speedily dismounting, he told the servants to prop him up. "Uncle Hseh," he laughed, "you daily go in for lewd dalliance; but have you to-day come to dissipate in a reed-covered pit? The King of the dragons in this pit must have also fallen in love with your charms, and enticed you to become his son-in-law ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... whether this House stands firm upon its ancient foundations, and is not, by time and accidents, so declined from its perpendicular as to want the hand of the wise and experienced architects of the day to set it upright again, and to prop and buttress it up for duration;—whether it continues true to the principles upon which it has hitherto stood;—whether this be de facto the Constitution of the House of Commons as it has been since the time that the House of Commons ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... which this room communicates with an adjoining one is raised about 18 inches above the floor, and is provided with a rudely mortised door in a single panel. Alongside is a small hole through which the occupant can prop the door on the inside of the communicating room. The subsequent sealing of the small hand-hole with mud effectually closes the house against intrusion. The unusual height of this door sill from the floor has necessitated the construction ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... not meant for monsieur's weight," he laughed, and putting the breakfast on the ground, contrived to prop the ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... the famous Marble Soap. Jowett spent on advertising every year a quarter of a million, it was said. Jowett was the stay and prop of periodical literature. New papers that secured the Marble Soap advertisement lived and prospered; the new paper to which it was denied languished and died. Jowett, and how to get hold of him; Jowett, and how to get round him, formed the chief topic of discussion ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... heaven, and cried, "Thy will be done!" But, oh! the father no such solace found— Dark, cheerless anguish wrapt his spirit round; He was a stranger to the Christian's hope, And in bereavement's hour he sought a prop On which his pierced and stricken soul might lean; Yet, as he sought it, doubts would intervene— Doubts which for years had clouded o'er his soul— Doubts that, with prayers he struggled to control; ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... control inflation, but it also caused high interest rates and led to operating losses for the bank. Early in 1998, it relaxed its monetary policy in an effort to correct these problems, but increased pressure on the quetzal has prompted the bank to intervene to prop up ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... be taken of the common native habit (not one to be imitated by Europeans learning the language) of inserting in a sentence words which have no meaning to fill a temporary hiatus while the speaker is thinking of his next word. These prop-words or pillow-words, to borrow a Hindustani phrase,[2] are numerous in Malay and vary in different localities. Anu, bahasa-nia, misal[3]-nia, and kata-kan are some of ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... our victory over despotism as to run into anarchy. It was not in our power to overturn the bad institutions which lately afflicted our country, without shocks which have loosened the foundations of government. Now that those institutions have fallen, we must hasten to prop the edifice which it was lately our duty to batter. Henceforth it will be our wisdom to look with jealousy on schemes of innovation, and to guard from encroachment all the prerogatives with which the law has, for the public ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... stall she bought a photograph frame which had lost its prop in an unequal contest with a tea-tray which had collapsed from the heartiness of the Rector's clapping at the conclusion of the Countess's speech; and a Noah's Ark from which the star performer and his very ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... confronting his sisters, who were standing on the defensive. The heir, too, had a strong sense of property, as was natural, and the disarrangement of the room struck him in that point of view, especially as Miss Wodehouse continued to prop herself up against the St Agnes in the back of her chair. Wodehouse looked from the wall to the table, and saw what appeared to him a clear case of intended spoliation. "By Jove! they didn't mean to go empty-handed," said the vagabond, who naturally judged according to his own standard, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... to share that feeling, but with the addition of a man's half-unconscious selfishness. I needed her indomitable frailness to prop my grosser strength. I needed that something not wholly of this world, which women's more exalted nature infuses into their passions, into their sorrows, into their joys; as if their adventurous souls had the power to range beyond the orbit of the earth for the gathering of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... persisted in abusing Sumner he should be obliged to leave their company; Sumner being looked upon by the Democrats and more timid Republicans as the chief obstacle to pacification; as if any one man could prop a house up when it was about to fall. After the War began, this naturally came to an end, and Sumner was afterwards invited to join the Club, with what satisfaction to Hoar, Lowell, and Holmes it might be considering rather curiously to inquire. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... Yes, and Catiline too; Though story wrong his fame; for he conspired To prop the reeling glory of his country, His ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... evening, increased around us, the woods seemed to melt into the mountains; the rivers veiled their course by their misty incense to the heavens—wreath after wreath of vapor creeping upwards; and as the distances faded into indistinctness, the bold headlands seemed to grow and prop the clouds; the heavens let down the pall of mystery and darkness with a tender, not terrific, power; earth and sky blended together, softly and gently; the coolness of the air refreshed us, and yet the stillness on that high point was so intense as to become almost ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... places stone on stone; He scatters seed: you are at once the prop Among the long roots of his fragile crop. You manufacture for him, and insure House, harvest, implement and furniture, And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... sound of friendly voices, the changed room, and the strange looks of all around me. The passage was terrible to me; but I had yet more to undergo. I was recovered just in time to witness the poor wretch, whose prop and consolation I had undertaken to be, carried, exhausted and in nerveless horror, to the ignominious tree—his head drooping on his breast, his eyes opening mechanically at intervals, and only kept from fainting and utter insensibility by the unused and fresh morning air, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... of Macedon have always been thought to love their kings, but now, as if some main prop had broken, and the whole edifice of government fallen to the ground, they gave themselves up to Aemilius, and in two days constituted him master of the entire kingdom. This seems to confirm the opinion of those who say that these successes were ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... the first, either because he has not yet forgotten the things which he heard without any demonstration from his school-master, or because he has seen the truth of the rule with the more simple numbers, or because from the 19th Prop. in the 7th book of Euclid he understands the ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... Beckett, whose name—with those of men of vastly superior literary attainments—was associated in after years with the early fortunes of Punch. The literary part of the performance was indeed sorry stuff,—the main stay and prop of the paper from its very commencement was Seymour, whose drawings however suffered severely at the hands of the engraver and paper maker. An eccentricity of the publication perhaps deserves notice. It professed to look with ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... ceased, for the most grasping geologist or biologist would content himself with a fraction of that time. But the case for the geologist was to receive yet another prop from the studies of radio-activity, which seem to prove that the atom of matter has in store a tremendous, supply of potential energy which may be drawn on in a way to vitiate utterly all the computations to which I have just referred. Thus a particle of radium ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... their "property" students, cheeks scarred with red ink, singing "Heidelberg" (from "The Prince of Pilsen") for the edification and impression of foreign visitors, and fiercely and frequently challenging other prop. students to immediate duel. The girls, alas, in these places are not unlovely. Well do I remember the dainty Elsa of the Hopfenbluethe, she of face kissed by the Prussian dawn, and employed at sixteen marks the week to wink dramatically at the old roues and give ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... the eye can reach all the land is his; the other sees himself as a merchant, with a heavy golden chain on his paunch, standing at his shop-door; the third means to cultivate black roses and incidentally become a millionaire—and this castle in the air we cherish, and care for, and prop up, and support as long as we live, and for the most part we do not in the least notice that it has long since collapsed beyond repair. I have long thought I must tell you this some time, in order that you might know it and thank God!" He straightened up, looked me ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... high contracting parties was wordy, bristled with the gesticulations of two pair of hands, and was commented on by all the guests in the "Fiore del Marinajo." The girl, said Don Urbano, was the very pride of his eye, prop of his failing years, a little mother to the children. She had had a most pious bringing-up, never missed the Rosary, knew the Little Hours of the Virgin, could do sums with notches in a stick, market like a Jew's housekeeper, sew like a nun, and make ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... of the natural harmony of interests. His use of the term introduced into competition the notion of struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. This new conception, in which competition appears as a fundamental process in all life, has been a powerful prop to the laissez faire policy and has led to its continuance regardless of the misery and destitution which, if it did not create, it certainly did not remedy. The works of Herbert Spencer, the greatest expounder of the doctrine ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... books and antiquities and rare marble fragments, in a spacious room surrounded with laden shelves, Romola was his daily companion and assistant. There was a time when he had hoped that his son, Dino, would have followed in his steps, to be the prop of his age, and to take up and continue his scholarly labours after he was dead. But Dino had failed him; Dino had given himself up to religion and entered the priesthood, and the passion of Bardo's resentment had flamed into fierce ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... dry-footed to the holy sacrament in St. Castor's. One day, the sacred legend goes on to say, the stream was agitated by a storm. For the first time doubt entered the maiden's heart as her foot touched the waves. Prudently tearing a prop from a neighbouring vineyard, she took it with her for a staff over the troubled waters. But after a few timid steps, she sank like St. Peter on the Galilean lake. In this wretched plight she became full of remorse for her want of faith in God. She flung the stick far away, and ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... through the town their dreams and omens fly; So the Sibylline leaves were blown about, Disjointed scraps of fate involved in doubt; So idle dreams, the journals of the night, Are right and wrong by turns, and mingle wrong with right.- Some champions for the rights that prop the crown, Some sturdy patriots, sworn to pull them down; Some neutral powers, with secret forces fraught, Wishing for war, but willing to be bought: While some to every side and party go, Shift every friend, and join with every foe; Like sturdy ...
— The Village and The Newspaper • George Crabbe
... body that makes it wind, bend, and creep upon the ground; for those qualities check its rise, and depress it in its ascent, and render it like a weak traveller, that often sits down and then goes on again. And therefore the ivy requires something to twine about, and needs a prop; for it is not able to sustain and direct its own branches, because it wants heat, which naturally tends upward. The snow is melted by the wetness of the leaf, for water destroys it easily, passing through ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... predecessors, has taught me that individuals are nothing in the sight of God. Six emperors have succumbed to the immutable laws of Nature, but the house of Hapsburg is still erect. What, then, if I meet with reverses? The Lord has given me a son, who, if I should be unfortunate, will prop up our dynasty, and ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... at the tender age of four years, having no brothers or sisters to prop me round with young affections and sympathies, I fell into three pairs of hands, excellent in their way, but peculiar. Patience, Eunice, and Mary Ann Pettibone were my aunts on my father's side. All my mother's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... proportions be found to hold good with respect to thin plates of a denser medium, which is, indeed, not improbable, it will be necessary to adopt the connected demonstrations of Prop. IV., but, at any rate, if a thin plate be interposed between a rarer and a denser medium, the colors by reflection and transmission may be ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the drill of some raw Kano recruits who had ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... dimensions of ordinary vain and amorous humanity. Lilith and Eve unmask themselves under stress of terror, as Balkis and Solomon at the compulsion of the magic ring, and Adam urbanely replaces the mask. Jochanan Hakka-dosh, the saintly prop of Israel, expounds from his deathbed a gospel of struggle and endurance in which a troubled echo of the great strain of Ben Ezra may no doubt be heard; but his career is, as a whole, a half-sad, half-humorous commentary on the vainness of striving ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... edit. and MSS. E, A, and I, is this marginal note—"This is to be understood of circumstance of worldlie men, and not of them of God; for the neirer that men draw to God, we ar bound the more to love them." Also a similar note to page 24, Prop. IV., "Christ is the ende and fulfillinge of the lawe to everie ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... urged against this narrative are not serious." [135:1] They have been considered so by men like Keim, Schuerer, Lipsius, and Holtzmann. The account has too much need to be propped up itself to be of much use as a prop for the Gospels. Dr. Lightfoot points out that an "idea of literal conformity to the life and Passion of Christ runs through the document," [135:2] and it is chiefly on the fact that "most of the incidents have their counterparts in the circumstances of the ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... my little flock, the loveliest and the last, 'Tis sweet to dream what thou may'st be, when long, long years have past; To think when time hath blanched my hair, and others leave my side, Thou may'st be still my prop and stay, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... the proper treatment is rest. When it is absolutely impossible to remain in bed long enough for the swelling to disappear, the next best plan is to accept every opportunity, during the day, to sit down and prop up ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... mother's tenderness, a mother's care? In the name of God, assist me to snatch her from destruction! Let me but give her an education—let me but prepare her body and mind to encounter the ills which await her sex, and I will teach her to consider you as her second mother, and herself as the prop of your age. Yes, Jemima, look at me—observe me closely, and read my very soul; you merit a better fate;" she held out her hand with a firm gesture of assurance; "and I will procure it for you, as a testimony of my esteem, as ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... said the citizen, "the Duke of Buckingham sneers at our city money-bags; yet they can sometimes open, to prop a ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... parallels to many episodes in the Aeneid. He also drew certain hints from the Phoenissae and Oedipus of Seneca: for details see Legras, Etude sur la Thebaide de Stace, part i, ch. 2, part ii, chh. 1 and 2. The subject had been treated also by one Ponticus, the friend of Propertius (Prop. i. 7. 1, Ov. Tr. iv. 10. 47) and possibly by ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... demonstration of general British superiority in manufactures the Great Exhibition was a great success; but as heralding an era of universal peace it was a mournful failure. Three years later England, France, and Sardinia were fighting Russia to prop the rotten empire of the Turk. Then came the Great Mutiny; then the four years of fratricidal strife between the Northern and Southern States; then the war of Prussia and Austria; then the overthrow of France by Germany. ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... scene! Here glittering turrets rise, upbearing high (Fantastic misarrangement!) on the roof Large growth of what may seem the sparkling trees And shrubs of fairyland. The crystal drops, That trickle down the branches, fast congealed, Shoot into pillars of pellucid length, And prop the pile they but adorned before. Here grotto within grotto safe defies The sunbeam; there, embossed and fretted wild, The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain The likeness of some ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... some may object that if we understand God to be the cause of all things, we do for that very reason consider Him to be the cause of sorrow. But I reply that in so far as we understand the causes of sorrow, it ceases to be a passion (Prop. 3, pt. 5), that is to say (Prop. 59, pt. 3) it ceases to be a sorrow; and therefore in so far as we understand God to be the cause of sorrow do we rejoice." The third proposition of the fifth part which he quotes merely proves that in so far as ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... of its population living in overpopulated rural communities. Nevertheless, Uzbekistan is the world's third largest cotton exporter, a major producer of gold and natural gas, and a regionally significant producer of chemicals and machinery. Since independence, the government has sought to prop up the Soviet-style command economy with subsidies and tight controls on prices and production. Such policies have buffered the economy from the sharp declines in output and high inflation experienced by many other former Soviet republics. They had become increasingly unsustainable, ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency
... enough. The deputation broke up at once; but with how many lamentations over this unexpected reception, given by one whom they had reckoned upon as the chief stay and prop ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... was the case with a certain gallant captain renowned in song? Neither the one nor the other. The simple fact was, that Sir Francis Levison was in a state of pecuniary embarrassment, and required something to prop him up—some snug sinecure—plenty to get ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... not to be left to try to prop up a tumble-down log-hut with my own shoulder,' he laughed. 'This journey to England has been the great desire of my life, and I am very thankful to have had ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... can remove all clothing except his shirt, stockings and napkin; change his position sometimes and let him lie on his stomach for awhile. Of course this exercise cannot be taken after a meal and before the fourth month. Take a large clothes basket, put a blanket and some large pillows in it and prop baby up in a half sitting position for a little while each day, beginning with fifteen minutes, then one-half hour, and you can also at this time (fourth month) play with baby for a short time every day, but never ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... later, Tom was rejoiced by symptoms of invigoration in his patient. A telegram came for Harkless, and Meredith, bringing it into the sick room, was surprised to find the occupant sitting straight up on his couch without the prop of pillows. He was reading the day's copy of the "Herald," and his face was flushed and ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... over his breast; a hooded kirtle girded around him reaching down to his calves; a straightsword with ornaments of walrus-tooth on his left thigh." "But who might he be?" [LL.fo.98b.] asked Ailill of Fergus. "I know him indeed," Fergus made answer. "He is the prop of battle; [2]he is the wild heat of anger; he is the daring of every battle;[2] he is the triumph of every combat; he is the tool that pierces, is the man who comes thither. Connud macMorna, from the Callann in the north, is ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... sob, half a sigh, escaped the lawyer's lips. "A spirit like hers needs no other prop than ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... meager family life to be thrown away, and Tira found it "up attic" and brought it down to him. She waited, in a sympathetic interest, to see him try it, and when he did and swung across the kitchen with an angry capability, she caught her breath, in a new fear of him. The crutch looked less a prop to his insufficiency than like a weapon. He could reach her with it. He could reach the child. And then she began to see how his helplessness had built up in her a false security. He was on the way to strength again, and the security ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... home of an evening to add lightness and gaiety to the cottage life. Jennie, through her growing appreciation of Vesta's fine character, became more and more drawn toward her. Lester was gone, but at least she had Vesta. That prop would probably sustain her in the ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... in a minute," said Henrietta, who was assisting in adjusting the prop to which the old daphne ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... before her, filled with fears, Wept sore and checked the fiery suitor's way. "O Turnus! if thou heed'st me, by these tears;— Hope of my age, Latinus' strength and stay, Prop of our falling house! one boon I pray; Forbear the fight. What fate awaiteth thee, Awaits me too. If Trojans win the day, With thee I'll leave the loathed light, nor see AEneas wed my child, a captive slave, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... Canada and the law has Convicted and Sentanced him to the Stats prison for 10 yeares his White Frands ofered 2 thousen Dollers to Redem him but they would not short three thousen. I am in Canada and it is a Dificult thing to get a letter to any of my Frands in Maryland so as to get prop per infermation abot it—if you can by any means get any in telligence from Baltimore City a bot this Event Plese do so and Rit word and all so all the inform mation that you think prop per as Regards ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... President Lowell, of Harvard, twenty years ago said that the nebular hyopthesis was "founded on a fundamental mistake." ("The Solar System," p. 119.) Do we find that scientists, though forced to surrender this prop, have given up atheistic evolution? By no means. Evidently, their atheism is older ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... Government upon a base not to be shaken by the fall of the present tyranny in Peru, of which there are not only indications, but the result is inevitable—unless, indeed, the mischievous counsels of vain and mercenary men can suffice to prop up a fabric of the most barbarous political architecture, serving as a screen from whence to dart their weapons against the heart of liberty. Thank God, my hands are free from the stain of labouring in any such work; and having ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... in which the citizen Indian figures as a party defendant and in a more widespread disposition to levy local taxation upon his personalty, but in a decision of the United States Supreme Court which struck away the main prop on which has hitherto rested the Government's benevolent effort to protect him against the evils of intemperance. The court holds, in effect, that when an Indian becomes, by virtue of an allotment of land to him, a citizen of the State in which his land is situated, he passes from under Federal ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... pear-tree, and even in his preoccupation he was struck with the signs of its extraordinary age. Twisted out of all proportion, and knotted with excrescences, it was supported by iron bands and heavy stakes, as if to prop up its senile decay. He tried to interest himself in the various initials and symbols deeply carved in bark, now swollen and half obliterated. As he turned back to the summer-house, he for the first time noticed that the ground rose behind it into a long undulation, ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... upon the bank of a small stream that fell purling over a long, smooth slide of limestone into the river. Mountains had loomed into existence in the last few days. In the distance they made a vast blue rampart which seemed to prop the western skies. When the sun sank behind them it was as though a mighty warrior had entered his fortress. Nearer at hand they fell into lofty hills, over which the forest undulated in unbroken green. In front the river made a sudden turn and was ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... of despair. And when he wrote that the free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and that his wisdom consists in meditating not on death but on life—homo liber de nulla re minus quam de morte cogitat et eius sapientia non mortis, sed vitae meditatio est (Ethic, Part IV., Prop. LXVII.)—when he wrote that, he felt, as we all feel, that we are slaves, and he did in fact think about death, and he wrote it in a vain endeavour to free himself from this thought. Nor in writing Proposition ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... more—disband your Rebel Troops, And strait with me to Abdelazer's Tent, Where all his Claims he shall resign to you, Both in my self, the Kingdom, and the Crown: You being departed, thousands more will leave him, And you're alone the Prop ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum"—— Last of its timber—they couldn't sell 'em, Never an ax had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin, too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through"—— ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... men of capital and enterprise! For what are these country squires compared to our wealthy merchants? What is this agricultural interest that professes to be the prop of ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... know 'bout Scripter when you say he secon' Moses. Don' want no more sich Moseses in dis town. Dey wouldn't lebe a brick heah ef dey could take dem off. He'n his tribe got away wid 'bout all ole Missus' and young Missus' prop'ty in my 'pinion. Anyhow I feels it in my bones dey's poah, an' I mus' try an' fin' out. Dey's so proud dey'd ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... laughed the monarch. "I ever prefer sober manhood to callow youth about me. The one is a prop, stanch, tried; the other a reed that bends this way and that, or breaks when you press ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... superabundance of ornament, is a monument in masonry to the successful mining jobber on a small scale. The solemn-looking, solid dwelling, standing in its own grounds, where every flower bush has its individual prop, where the lawn is trimmed with mathematical exactitude, and not one vagrant leaf is allowed to stray, speaks with a kind of brick-and-mortar eloquence of virtue that has never grasped the sublime fulness ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... of some sixty or seventy feet in length, is stepped almost amidships in a kind of tabernacle, and has neither stays nor shrouds, its only visible support being a wooden prop, which a few feet above the deck takes part of the pressure when running before the wind, so that on gazing up at its dizzy height one continually wonders why in heavy weather it does not go by the board or pound its way through the bottom ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... a part of the plateau which was invisible from the plain, and here in feverish haste they built a little cairn. Many flaky slabs of stone were lying about, and it did not take long to prop the largest of these against a rock, so as to make a lean-to, and then to put two side-pieces to complete it. The slabs were of the same colour as the rock, so that to a casual glance the hiding-place ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... illustrates this soul-supporting truth in his hymn (116, verse 2):-"How can I sink with such a prop, As my eternal God, Who bears the earth's huge pillars up, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... house, dark and weather-beaten. The front windows, some of them, were shattered and open, and others were boarded up. Trees and shrubbery were growing neglected, so as quite to block up the lower part. There was an aged barn near at hand, so ruinous that it had been necessary to prop it up. There were two old carts, both of which had lost a wheel. Everything was in keeping. At first I supposed that there would be no inhabitants in such a dilapidated place; but, passing on, I looked back, and saw a decrepit and infirm ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Soloman," the hostess interrupts, a gracious bow keeping time with the motion of her hand, "he is such an aristocratic prop in the character of ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... a mystie morning if thou wilt Make pitfalls for the larke and pheldifare, Thy prop and sweake shall be both overguilt, With Cyparissus selfe thou shalt compare For gins and wyles, the oozels to beguile, Whilst thou under a ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... hither side of our own extra-marginal self, we come at its remoter margin into commerce should be the absolute world-ruler, is of course a very considerable over-belief. Over-belief as it is, though, it is an article of almost every one's religion. Most of us pretend in some way to prop it upon our philosophy, but the philosophy itself is really propped upon this faith. What is this but to say that Religion, in her fullest exercise of function, is not a mere illumination of facts already elsewhere ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... reproued him saying, Reuilest thou the high priest? he repented & askt forgiuenesse. That which I suppose I doe not grant, the lawfulnes of the authoritie they oppose themselues agaynst, is sufficiently proued, farre bee it my vnderage argumentes should intrude themselues as a greene weake prop to support so high a building, let it suffice, if you knowe Christ, you know his father also, if you know Christianitie, you know the Fathers of the Church also, but a greate number of you with Philip haue bene long with Christ, and haue not knowen him, haue long professed your selues Christians, ...
— The Vnfortunate Traveller, or The Life Of Jack Wilton - With An Essay On The Life And Writings Of Thomas Nash By Edmund Gosse • Thomas Nash
... uttered—all done in half-an-hour—his whole nature had concentrated itself into one keen tense force, like a coiled spring. He felt power tingling to his finger-tips—power and the dulness of an immense despair. Every prop had been cut, every brace severed; he, the City of Rome, the Catholic Church, the very supernatural itself, seemed to hang now on one single thing—the Finger of God. And if that failed—well, nothing would ever ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... to a sitting posture, while Henri placed two pillows behind her to prop her up; and then, with the napkin spread before her and a plate on her knees, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... foolish thoughts fill thy swelled mind! It is too late our ruin to recall; Those, that have once great buildings undermined, Will prove too weak to prop ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... back to the savages. While this clashing of one object against another could not be called the beginning of music, and while it could not be said to originate a musical instrument, it did, nevertheless, bring into existence music's greatest prop, rhythm, an ally without which music would seem to be impossible. It is hardly necessary to go into this point in detail. Suffice it to say that the sense of rhythm is highly developed even among those savage tribes which stand the lowest in the scale of civilization to-day, for instance, ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... by known parallels or by experience, we do not so passively acquiesce in them; there is an exertion of confidence in depending upon them and assuring ourselves of their force. The inward energy of the reason has to be evoked, when she can no longer lean upon the outward prop of custom, but is thrown back upon herself and the intrinsic force of her premisses. Which reason, not leaning upon custom, is faith; she obtains the latter name when she depends entirely upon her own insight into certain grounds, premisses, and evidences, and follows it though ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... once at the threshold to prop his pike-pole against the house corner before he passed aimlessly inside, leaving the door wide open behind him. And he stood a long time in the middle of the dark room, staring dully at the cold, fireless stove. Never before had he given it more than a passing thought—he had accepted it ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... respecting. It reminded him of his own miserable schemings and follies, and how he had rejected that dear appeal, and ever since slipped and slipped out of reach of any love but the love of himself. It reminded him of the day when he heard that the one prop of his manhood had gone from him; and of how, even then, his sorrow was tempered by the thought that he was a free man to follow his own paths without question or reproof. Now, suddenly, the same hands seemed for a moment to lie on his shoulders, the same eyes to look into ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... that deference his experience was entitled to. He had, many years ago, been in some way attached to the diplomatic corps, which he ever after regarded with a sort of religious awe; and whenever a strange fit came over him he would do something he said was to prop up its dignity, of which none could be more jealous. I have, known him declare, that to maintain untarnished the character of the polite corps, he would swear by its virtue and his crutch. He would not have it held ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... good turns are rewarded! She of both is now discarded, Who to both had been so late Their support in low estate, All their comfort, and their stay— Now of both is cast away. But the league her presence cherish'd, Losing its best prop, soon perish'd; She, that was a link to either, To keep them and it together, Being gone, the two (no wonder) That were left, soon fell asunder;— Some civilities were kept, But the heart of friendship ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... will knock this prop of indebtedness system out from under the white slave business might appear to be a most difficult matter, and yet I believe that the legislature which enacts a statute of which the following clause is the essential part will ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... called, was situated in a beautiful valley, nine miles from Natchez, and near the Mississippi River. The once unshorn face of nature had given way, and the farm now blossomed with a splendid harvest. The neat cottage stood in a grove, where Lombardy poplars lift their tops almost to prop the skies, where the willow, locust, and horse-chestnut trees spread forth their branches, and flowers never ceased ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... sons: his devotion was something more than theirs. How should it be otherwise? In him, and in him alone, the father saw the zealous guardian of his lawless rule, the champion of his old age, the sole prop of tyranny. If grief did not kill him on the spot, despair, I knew, must do so; there could be no further joy in life for him when his protector was slain. Nature, grief, despair, foreboding, terror,—these were my allies; with these I hemmed him in, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... of trade or property at such a crisis?" interrupted an enthusiast, in figured trowsers and a gay cravat. "Our beloved Union must and shall be preserved. The fabric that our fathers reared for us must not be allowed to crumble. We will prop it with our mangled bodies," and he brushed a speck of dust from the fine broadcloth ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... general's worth, Still made the king victorious in the north. 20 Where Ca'ndish fought, the Royalists prevail'd; Neither his courage nor his judgment fail'd. The current of his vict'ries found no stop, Till Cromwell came, his party's chiefest prop. Equal success had set these champions high, And both resolved to conquer or to die. Virtue with rage, fury with valour strove; But that must fall which is decreed above! Cromwell, with odds of number and of fate, Removed ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... been having supper with the Wares, have you, while I ate here all by myself? A nice way to treat a lone old woman,—leaving me to prop the 'Indiana Farmer' on the coffee pot for company! I had to stay at Lexington longer than I wanted to, and some of my Kentucky cousins held me up in Louisville. I notice, Daniel, that there are some doings at the State House. I must say it was a downright sin for old ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... the prop to his fame—that he had broken Jim Wilder's outlaw. Certainly he was admired and commended for the unhesitating action he had taken in avenging the death of his friend, but in that he had done only what was expected of any man worthy the name. Breaking ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... old medicament, Whose fusty vials have long dried impotent, Why prop ye meretricious things, Denounce the sane as vicious things, And call outworn ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... Esq., son of Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone, of Osbaldistone Hall, Bart., and so forth; and it only remains to pitch upon the happy man whose name shall fill the gap in the manuscript. Now, as Percie is seldom sober, my father pitched on Thorncliff, as the second prop of the family, and therefore most proper to carry on the line ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and the Metropolitan Museum, learned something about pictures and porcelains, took singing lessons, though he had a voice like a crow's. When he sat down to his baked apple and doughnut in a basement lunch-room, he would prop a book up before him and address his food with as much leisure and ceremony as if he were dining at his club. He held himself at a distance from his fellow-workmen and somehow always managed to impress them ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... you he places stone on stone; He scatters seed: you are at once the prop Among the long roots of his fragile crop. You manufacture for him, and insure House, harvest, implement and furniture, And hold them ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... ladies devoted to God after their own wishes and the traditions of their creed was offensive to the Republic; no, not by any means. The nuns protested that if their convent and church were in a dangerous condition the proper measure to take was to prop them up, not pull them down. But the blustering heroes of the municipality would not listen to this reasoning; they were too careful of the lives of the citizens, the nuns included; down the edifices must come. The Commune of Paris over again. The ladies of Cadiz, those who ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... in a voice so commonplace that he jumped to hear it, 'the kind creatures have left us half a bottle. One glass, Mr. Armstrong, will do you good. You dress with Berry; hell help you with your make-up. Don't be nervous. You've got the book to prop you till the very end, and there you'll be as right as rain. Here's luck to ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... designate those in which people receive more from others than they give), who had lost them, and who wished to occupy them again. To one, two hundred rubles were indispensable, in order that he might prop up a failing business, and complete the education of his children which had been begun; another wanted a photographic outfit; a third wanted his debts paid, and respectable clothing purchased for him; a fourth needed a piano, in order to perfect himself ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... eclipse, I may say. The fact is, my head is so heavy, that it rolls about on my shoulders; and I must have a stiffener down my throat to prop it up. So, Moonshine, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... prop'ty somewhars, and they own all the Neck here, and lays areound on her through the summer. Why, Note's father—he 's dead neow—he and I uster stand deown on the mud flats when we was boys, a-diggin' clarms tergether, barefoot; 'tell he cruised off ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... for himself: the flocks of Abraham and Laban: the trek of Jacob's sons to Egypt for corn: the figures of Rebekah at the well, Ruth at the gleaning, and Rispah beneath the gibbet: Sisera bowing in weariness: Saul—great Saul—by the tent-prop with the ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... that she had been incautious, "he rather idolized the man, and I suppose it was painful to discover by accident that he wasn't quite all he thought him. Now, however, he has transferred his homage to you—I'm afraid Jim must always have somebody to prop him—but I've ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... prying, the cart might have been a prop to take up as soon as he came out. On the other hand, what could she in her technical ignorance ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... cracking," said the boy, drawing his father's attention to a breaking prop; but as this is a common occurrence in all mines where there is extra weight after development, Geordie thought nothing of it at the time, intending merely, before he lighted his shot, to put in ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... exclaimed. "Let us shut the window quick," he added impatiently; and then creeping softly up to the place, he took hold of the prop which held the shutter up, and gently drawing it in, he let the shutter ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... expression of most benign dignity, with the earliest mention I remember of that luckless property, which weighed like an incubus upon my father all his life, and the ruinous burden of which both I and my sister successively endeavored in vain to prop. ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... mighty bad patch, Nan," he said abruptly. "Ef things kep hittin' their present gait, why, I don't jest see wher' we're to strike bottom. The pinch ain't yet, but you can't never kick out a prop without shakin' the whole darned buildin' mighty bad. An' that's how the Obar's fixed. Ther's a mighty big punch gone plumb out o' Jeff's fight, an', well, I guess we're needin' all our punch to fix the things crowdin' ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... if I had lost a stay or prop," replied Mrs Seagrave. "So accustomed have I been to look to him for advice since we have been on this island. Had he not been thus snatched from us—had he been spared to us a few years, and had we been permitted to surround his death-bed, ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the pajongs form a complete system of heraldry. In the dusky angle of a mossy wall, four elephants, used in State processions, feed upon bundles of bamboo and sugar-cane. Mud huts and bamboo sheds prop themselves against tiled eaves and windowless houses. Open doors afford glimpses of squalid interiors, crowded with slatternly women and dirty children, the hereditary retainers and hangers-on of this effete and moribund ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... physical maintenance for an average family to such a wage as would provide the real minimum requirements of a civilized life and meet all its contingencies without having to lean on any external prop, we should have to make additions to Mr. Rowntree's figure which have not yet been computed, but as to which it is probably well within the mark to say that none but the most highly skilled artisans are able to earn a remuneration meeting the requirements of the case. But, if that is ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... solid forest gives fluid utterances, They tumble forth, they rise and form, Hut, tent, landing, survey, Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade, Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, lamb, lath, panel, gable, Citadel, ceiling, saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library, Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, turret, porch, Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, wagon, staff, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... rivers, lakes, and ponds are endowed with added beauty from the lovely names they wear—a tragic yet a charming legacy from Kanonsis and Kanonsionni, the brave and mighty people of the Long House, and those outside its walls who helped to prop or undermine ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... system an' a spindlin' trunk, all the growth havin' gone to height, an' a tree in the center of a forest is often the same way. The wind can't git through the forest, an' so the trees don't need ter prop themselves ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... too, but we've got to prop up feeling with a power of work and patience and danger, and it's likely too, Will, that it will be a long time before we reach the end of the line on ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... making on't mixt, And by non-resistance o'erthrown; And preaching obedience Destroys our allegiance, And thus the Whigs prop up ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... hurt than she had realized. Jacqueline, at seventeen, doubtless considered herself a blighted being.—She controlled the smile that twitched at her lips, and said cheerfully, "Then you will just have to be a prop for my declining years. You won't begrudge me a prop, dear? Surely you don't want to ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... plumes from wounded birds, leaving the crippled birds to die of starvation, unable to respond to the cries of their young in the nests above, which were calling for food. I have known these people to tie and prop up wounded egrets on the marsh where they would attract the attention of other birds flying by. These decoys they keep in this position until they die of their wounds, or from the attacks of insects. I have seen the terrible red ants of that country ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... The prop and stay of her life would be taken away if Ben should be laid aside. No more stray half or quarter dollars would come to help her out when she ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... 1: The higher a virtue is, the greater the number of things to which it extends, as stated in De Causis, prop. x, xvii. Wherefore from the very fact that wisdom as a gift is more excellent than wisdom as an intellectual virtue, since it attains to God more intimately by a kind of union of the soul with Him, it is able to direct us not only in contemplation ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... with Richmond, and swells the central forces; then the Rebels are lured from their lines and scattered on their right; the same night the intrenchments of Petersburg are stormed, Richmond falls as this prop is removed, being already hungry-hearted, and the flushed army falls upon Lee and finishes the war. Is not this work for gratulation? Glory to the army, perfect at last, and to Grant, to Sheridan, to each ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Prop. 1. That all the churches make an annual collection, which shall be brought to the Association, and that the total amount shall be applied to the liquidation of the debt on one chapel, as shall be ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... arises:—Whether this House stands firm upon its ancient foundations, and is not, by time and accidents, so declined from its perpendicular as to want the hand of the wise and experienced architects of the day to set it upright again, and to prop and buttress it up for duration;—whether it continues true to the principles upon which it has hitherto stood;—whether this be de facto the constitution of the House of Commons, as it has been since the time that the House of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "for now I will call you so, your grief, though deep and poignant, will pass away in time, but mine will abide with me whilst I stay here. That period, however, will not be long; the prop of my existence, the source of my happiness, is gone; and I will never know what happiness is until I rejoin her and her blessed mother. Good-by, my daughter; I will have neither reply nor remonstrance, nor will I be moved by any argument ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... days I was a man, the most wedded to his idols of my generation. I was a dweller under roofs: the gull of that which we call civilisation; a superstitious votary of the plastic arts; a cit; and a prop of restaurants. I had a comrade in those days, somewhat of an outsider, though he moved in the company of artists, and a man famous in our small world for gallantry, knee breeches, and dry and pregnant sayings. He, looking ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... person" who defaced the Parthenon. He believes that had this person been at Athens himself, his underlings could hardly have behaved in the reckless way they did, pulling down more than they wanted, and taking no care to prop up and save the work from which they had ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Vol VIII - Italy and Greece, Part Two • Various
... And when any comes hither they are won by my complemental and genteel Discourse; my comely presence brings in many a Guest into the House, besides particular Acquaintance: So that I may well affirm I am the Prop of the House. If I didn't introduce Gentleman into your Company, I wonder what you'd do; you might e'en sit still, and be forc'd to make use of a Dildo, before any Body would come to you if it ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... thy father's hoary hair Is water'd with his tears; He has but thee to sooth his care, And prop ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... this. She had dreamed, if she had not thought, of being able to worship a man; but she could hardly worship Mr. Glascock. She had dreamed, if she had not thought, of leaning upon a man all through life with her whole weight, as though that man had been specially made to be her staff, her prop, her support, her wall of comfort and protection. She knew that if she were to marry Mr. Glascock and become Lady Peterborough, in due course she must stand a good deal by her own strength, and live without that ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... one would select for traveling on horseback, unless his business was urgent. However, the man's seemed to be of this nature, for he rode behind a large signboard which advertised the wares of the Prouty Emporium, dismounted, tied his horse to the prop that held the signboard upright, and with a show of haste took a coil of rope from his saddlehorn, an axe—the head of which was wrapped in gunny sacking—and a gun that swung in loops of saddle thongs at an angle to fit comfortably in the ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... gone through such wretched treatment, Sometimes forgetting the taste of bread, And scarce remembering what meat meant, That my poor stomach's past reform; And there are times when, mad with thinking, I'd sell out heaven for something warm To prop a horrible ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... the high contracting parties was wordy, bristled with the gesticulations of two pair of hands, and was commented on by all the guests in the "Fiore del Marinajo." The girl, said Don Urbano, was the very pride of his eye, prop of his failing years, a little mother to the children. She had had a most pious bringing-up, never missed the Rosary, knew the Little Hours of the Virgin, could do sums with notches in a stick, market like a Jew's housekeeper, sew like a nun, and make a stew against any wife in the contrada. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... that this and the other little prop has been added, where possibility allowed. Civil-list and Privy-purse were from of old well cared for. King's Constitutional Guard, Eighteen hundred loyal men from the Eighty-three Departments, under a loyal Duke de Brissac; this, with ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... got yer smile rubbed off yet. Stick to it if y'can. It's a fine prop. I otta go in a minute, but you're such a chicken if I don't watch out for you y'might get lost in the wash. Any one put you wise ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... know, so far at least, the plan of these blood-thirsty tiger-cats," muttered he. "They wish to give Henry a popish queen; and so Cranmer must be overthrown, that, when they have deprived the queen of this powerful prop, they may destroy her also and tread her in the dust. But as God liveth, they shall not succeed in this! God is just, and He will at last punish these evil-doers. And supposing there is no God, then will ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... I would prop her up in her cot while I sang "Sally" to her; or if that did not serve, and her little lip continued to drop, I both sang and danced, spreading my skirts and waltzing to the tune of "Clementina" while the kettle hummed over the fire and the bricklayer's ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... and zealous prop of Protestantism walked to and fro his study, almost gnashing his teeth from the apprehension of not having an appetite for ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Dr. Wordsworth's[4] Theophilus Anglicanus, cap. vii. p. 219. A careful examination of the evidence adduced in support of the latter assertion, shows it to be of the most flimsy description, and refers it to its true basis, viz. hearsay: the reasoning and inferences which prop the evidence are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... in one. From a neat chest of drawers she drew her best and only white table-cloth and spread it on the table. The table was a little rickety in one leg, but several folds of newspaper acted as a splendid prop, and quite removed the difficulty. Her supply of china and silver was scarce, but it would do with washing between courses. Four chairs were all she had, but they were quite enough as her guests numbered four. An empty soap-box concealed beneath the table-cloth, ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... large branch which came out on one side, and which hung down loaded with fruit. It would have broken down, perhaps, if there had not been a crotched pole put under it, to prop it up. ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... afraid of John Hinckman. This gentleman was a good friend of mine, but it would have required a bolder man than I was at that time to ask him for the gift of his niece, who was the head of his household, and, according to his own frequent statement, the main prop of his declining years. Had Madeline acquiesced in my general views on the subject, I might have felt encouraged to open the matter to Mr. Hinckman; but, as I said before, I had never asked her whether or ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... live in Europe. She was a partner with a partner's obligations. To desert Mortimer would not only be to banish him from Ballinger House to dreary bachelor quarters, with none of the comforts and little luxuries he intensely loved, but it would also deprive him of his surest social prop. People had accepted him and liked him as well as they liked the totally uninteresting of the good old stock; but many would drift into the habit of not inviting him to anything but large dances, if his wife were absent. Alexina knew that her invitations to all important and many ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... it, because I saw that the powers of the performers were being relaxed by eternal repetition, and it was now evident that I must trust to my own ability to pull the matter quickly through as I thought best. But it was not the fatigue due to this system that finally made Niemann, the main prop in my work, recoil from the task which at the start he had undertaken with an energy full of promise. He had been informed that there was a conspiracy to ruin my work. From this time forward he was a victim to a despondency to which, in his relations with me, he sought to lend a sort of ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... with plaster of Paris; to humour them, while the plaster is yet moist, into something which resembles the human leg divine, is the work of a few moments. To fix them firmly to the wooden plinth, and prop over them the incomplete torso by means of laths cunningly concealed, occupies little more than an hour and a half. A coat of thick white paint administered below, completes the operation, and Parmentier is ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... the song. What you have to remember, my dear sir, if you wish to achieve success, is that music, if it is to sell, must appeal to the average amateur young person. The average amateur young person is the main prop of music ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... awandering till at a spot of knotted signs they stopped. "Why, here is something about thy Isis," exclaimed Heru, as though amused at my perspicuity. "Here, halfway down this chapter of earth-history, it says," and putting one pink knee across the other to better prop ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... the contrary, Sudden Dejection is the passion that causeth WEEPING; and is caused by such accidents, as suddenly take away some vehement hope, or some prop of their power: and they are most subject to it, that rely principally on helps externall, such as are Women, and Children. Therefore, some Weep for the loss of Friends; Others for their unkindnesse; others for the sudden stop made to their thoughts of revenge, by Reconciliation. ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... been propped up with a stick," went on Amy. "When I walked in, so foolishly, I must have knocked the stick down, and the door fell. The prop is here. Oh, I'll ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Winter Camp - Glorious Days on Skates and Ice Boats • Laura Lee Hope
... do nothing for her?" As much to prop an opinion of human nature that was already too low for comfort as in Andrea's interest, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... "Then prop me up in bed, if you please. Place me so that I can talk freely. There, thank you. You are so gentle and so kind. I have never in all my life had any one touch me so gently. And now, if you are ready, be seated in the great chair and turn your face ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... when surrender come. Massa don't call us to him like other massas done. Him jus' go 'mongst de folks and say, 'Well, folks, yous am free now and no longer my prop'ty, and yous 'titled to pay for work. I 'member old Jerry sings, 'Free, free as de jaybird, free to flew like ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... formed his ensign; and when perched on the top of his chariot, it looked like the image of the all-destroying fire. And the presiding deity of the power which conduces to the victory of the god, and which is the director of the exertions of all creatures, and constitutes their glory, prop and refuge, advanced before him. And a mysterious charm entered into his constitution, the charm which manifests its powers on the battlefield. Beauty, strength, piety, power, might, truthfulness, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... always watching me, Floy, let me watch you, now!' They would prop him up with cushions in a corner of his bed, and there he would recline the while she lay beside him: bending forward oftentimes to kiss her, and whispering to those who were near that she was tired, and how she had sat up so many nights ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... series. The sill of the doorway by which this room communicates with an adjoining one is raised about 18 inches above the floor, and is provided with a rudely mortised door in a single panel. Alongside is a small hole through which the occupant can prop the door on the inside of the communicating room. The subsequent sealing of the small hand-hole with mud effectually closes the house against intrusion. The unusual height of this door sill from the floor ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... murmured Dicky, and he seemed to study the sleepy sarraf who pored over his accounts in the garden. "The price is 'England, home, and beauty.' Also to prop up the falling towers of Khedivia—ten ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of the wood the track became worse and worse. The rough-hewn runners constantly sank into snow-drifts and the sledge canted over, so that the poor man, trembling with fear and cold, had to prop it up with all his strength. If his twisted foot gave way, there was an end to him ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... of tea, David would reply, "Botheration, Betty, wench! Dunna tell me about thy tea and such-like pig's-wesh. It's all very well for women; but a man, Betty, a man mun ha' a sup of real stingo, lass. He mun ha' summut to prop his ribs out, lass, as he delves through th' chert and tood-stone. When tha weylds th' maundrel (the pick), and I wesh th' dishes, tha shall ha' th' drink, my wench, and I'll ha' th' tea. Till then, prithee let me aloon, and dunna bother me, for it's ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... uncomfortable lodging, it being a perfect swamp; and we had nothing to cover us, though it rained very hard. The Indians were little better off than we, as there was no wood here to make their wigwams; so that all they could do was to prop up the bark they carry in the bottom of their canoes with their oars, and shelter themselves as well as they could to leeward of it. They, knowing the difficulties that were to be encountered here, had provided themselves with some seal; but we had not the least morsel ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... favor," laughed the monarch. "I ever prefer sober manhood to callow youth about me. The one is a prop, stanch, tried; the other a reed that bends this way and that, or breaks when you press it ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... you desired in your last, that I would write often to you, would be a very easy task: for every day I talk with you, and of you, in my heart; and I need only set down what that is thinking of. The nearer I find myself verging to that period of life which is to be labour and sorrow, the more I prop myself upon those few supports that are left me. People in this state are like props indeed; they cannot stand alone, but two or more of them can stand, leaning and bearing upon one another. I wish you and I might pass this part of life together. My only necessary care is at an end. ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... tragedy at the other end of the wire, where, in the nature of things, she was unable to arrest it. The gaze she fixed on her extravagant kinsman was of a kind to make him wonder how he contrived to remain, as he beautifully did, rigid. His prop was possibly the reflection that flashed on him that, if she abounded in attenuations, well, hang it all, so did he! It was simply a difference of plane. Readjust the "values," as painters say, and there you were! He was to feel that he was only ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... sure I do; let me breathe it in. Prop me up in bed, Nora. They said I was to lie flat on my back, but, bedad! I won't now ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... self-sufficingness, they must have the countenance of others. It is these pressing needs that will hurry the primates to build, out of each shred of truth they can possibly twist to their purpose, and out of imaginings that will impress them because they are vast, deity after deity to prop up their souls. ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... great individually than in the mass. If they are giants, few of them are giants who can stand on their own legs. They prop one another up. There are not more than a dozen Elizabethan plays that are individually worth a superlative, as a novel by Jane Austen or a sonnet by Wordsworth is. The Elizabethan lyrics are an immensely more precious possession than the ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... a champion of the men of Ireland, their prop in the middle of the fight; you were the head of every battle; your ways ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... however, as I have said, delighted in his prop. It was as necessary to him as his cane; and I generally accompanied him, when he visited any kind of ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... was right in considering Moses a Schlemihl in comparison with many a fellow-immigrant, who brought indefatigable hand and subtle brain to the struggle for existence, and discarded the prop of charity as soon as ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... she began again, "it seemed to have been written in Katya's fate, that she should be unhappy. She was convinced of it herself from her early youth. She would prop her head on her hand, meditate, and say: 'I shall not live long!' She had forebodings. Just imagine, she even saw beforehand,—sometimes in a dream, sometimes in ordinary wise,—what was going to happen to her! 'I cannot live as I wish, so I will not live at all,' ... ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... a great access of litigation in which the citizen Indian figures as a party defendant and in a more widespread disposition to levy local taxation upon his personalty, but in a decision of the United States Supreme Court which struck away the main prop on which has hitherto rested the Government's benevolent effort to protect him against the evils of intemperance. The court holds, in effect, that when an Indian becomes, by virtue of an allotment of land to him, a citizen of the State in which his land is situated, he passes from under Federal ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... sound of the stump, ascending the wooden staircase with such velocity, that they at first mistook it for the application of drumsticks to the head of an empty barrel. This uncommon speed, however, was attended with a misfortune; he chanced to overlook a small defect in one of the steps, and his prop plunging into a hole, he fell backwards, to the imminent danger of his life. Tom was luckily at his back, and sustained him in his arms, so as that he escaped without any other damage than the loss of his wooden leg, which was snapped in the middle, by the weight of his body in falling; and ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... Each man shall eat his own stolen eggs, and butter, In his own shade, or sun-shine, and enjoy His own dear Dell, Doxy, or Mort, at night In his own straw, with his own shirt, or sheet, That he hath filch'd that day, I, and possess What he can purchase, back, or belly-cheats To his own prop: he will have no purveyers For Pigs, ...
— Beggars Bush - From the Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher (Vol. 2 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... do. We have Christ's bare word, and no more, to trust to for everything. We must be content to go out of the presence-chamber of the King with only His promise, and to cleave to that. A feeble faith requires the support of something sensuous and visible, as some poor trailing plant needs a prop round which it may twist its tendrils. A stronger faith strides away from the Master, happy and peaceful in its assured possession of a blessing for which it has nothing to rely upon but a simple bare ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... such loud cries; not that they cared about me, but simply curious to know whether, when trodden down by my enemy, I would not hurl at him some taunt. Noticing this, I have played the wheedler a bit; but now, look! the prop is ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... Doodles! It's all settled, isn't it? And when a thing's fixed—it ought to stay fixed. Mrs. Calvert don't want either of us. She said so, more 'n once, too. She's tickled to death to think there's such a good time comin' for us. She's got all that prop'ty that got itself into trouble to look after, and she's got them ladies, her old friends, that's been in San Diego all winter, to go home to New York with her. You better stop frettin' and lookin' out o' winder, and pick up your things. You've lots more 'n I have and that's sayin' ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... native names shows where it belongs and what it refers to. These names are three, and their significations are, "The Rain-God," "The Tree of our Life," "The God of Strength."[1] As the rains fertilize the fields and ripen the food crops, so he who sends them is indeed the prop or tree of our subsistence, and thus becomes the giver of health and strength. No other explanation is needed, or is, in ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... have swayed me just as easily, while he said with a kind of approbative chuckle: 'That's right—a very good lad; that's right—a very smart lad.' Then he suddenly lifted his hand, and I, unprepared for the removal of my prop, staggered against the counter, while he ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... been bolstered up all their lives are seldom good for anything in a crisis. When misfortune comes, they look around for somebody to lean upon. It the prop is not there, down they go. Once down, they are as helpless as capsized turtles, or unhorsed men in armor. Many a frontier boy has succeeded beyond all his expectations simply because all props were early knocked out from under him and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... wheat-field near by. The children took a few handfuls of wheat, which they scattered upon the ground; and, as Maggie could sew better than the boys, she strung some grains of wheat on a small thread. This was tied to a slender prop which held up the cover of the trap, which was made by putting four blocks together in the shape of a box. In it was a handful of wheat. When all was ready the children hid behind some shrubbery and watched and waited the result. They whispered to each other, and laid plans ...
— Golden Moments - Bright Stories for Young Folks • Anonymous
... bless you, my poor lamb! I hate to harrify your heart. The Doctor comforted her all he could, and tole her bizness of importance had done kept you South. Miss Ellie axed how long she could live; he said only a few hours. She begged him to prop her up, so she could write a few words. He says he held the paper for her, and she wrote a little, and rested; and then she wrote a little mere and fell back speechless. He pat the piece of paper in a invellop and sealed it, and axed her if she wished it given to her daughter Beryl. ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... pure and honest and self- respecting. It reminded him of his own miserable schemings and follies, and how he had rejected that dear appeal, and ever since slipped and slipped out of reach of any love but the love of himself. It reminded him of the day when he heard that the one prop of his manhood had gone from him; and of how, even then, his sorrow was tempered by the thought that he was a free man to follow his own paths without question or reproof. Now, suddenly, the same hands seemed for a moment to lie on ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... made such diligent use of his time, that in the course of the afternoon the mine was free of water and dirt, and Mike announced that he could commence digging in the morning if he had a few "shores" and boards to prop up the places where excavations had been going on. These we readily granted, and began to take an interest in our claim that ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... he made the most of them. Indeed, Marishka sat leaning forward looking at him appealingly, aware that after all here was the only prop she had to lean upon in this extremity. She did not speak. The wrong he had done her and Austria was great—unforgivable, but the merit of his service in this situation was unmistakable. Inimical as he might be to the sentiments in her heart, ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... (R. C.) Yes, and Catiline too; Though story wrong his fame; for he conspired To prop the reeling glory of his country, His ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... of the river Yuan (in Honan), I had no appetite for the political affairs of the country. As the result of the revolution in Hsin Hai, I was by mistake elected by the people. Reluctantly I came out of my retirement and endeavoured to prop up the tottering structure. I cared for nothing, but the salvation of the country. A perusal of our history of several thousand years will reveal in vivid manner the sad fate of the descendants of ancient kings and emperors. What then ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... in largesse, When the fight's red rain-drops fell, Bright of face, with heart-strings hardy, Hogni's father met his fate; Then his brow with helmet shrouding, Bearing battle-shield, he spake, "I will die the prop of battle, Sooner die than yield an inch. Yes, sooner die than yield ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... must depend on the girl," he repeated. "I wonder what would happen if anybody tried to prop up a hundred pound weight against ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a whole system after proving that its premises are rotten. I shall accordingly confine myself to a few of the points that captivate beginners most; and assume that if they break down, so must the system which they prop. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... Today I am not going to the restaurant. I am after all this time weary of the waiters, Who scornfully bring us, with their smug grimaces, Dark beer and make us so confused That we cannot find our home And we must Use the foolish street lights To prop ourselves up with weak hands. Today I have bigger things in mind— Ah, I shall find out the meaning of existence. And in the evening I shall do some roller skating Or go at ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... blent with eternity, and when the last sigh seems to waft the immortal spirit into a state of existence of which no adequate conception can be formed. After all was over, and the breath of life had fled, I could not believe my senses, that the prop of my affections was gone from my love and my embrace, and that all which remained on earth of my father, protector, and gentle monitor, was a lifeless wreck on the shore of time. The world appeared to my young eye and heart as a wide scene ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... the village. But Joe and Moll would be sure to follow them, in order to make an attempt to recover their captives. Several times before Joe had tried to kidnap an attractive smart child whom he could train to be a sort of golden prop upon which his laziness could lean, but hitherto he had always been balked in his purpose. He would be furiously angry, Bambo knew, when he discovered that, just when a life of ease and idleness such as he had longed for seemed ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... though my Lord Brougham is quite sure, without the proof of natural Theology, revelation has no other basis than mere tradition; we have even better authority than his Lordship's for the staggering fact that natural Theology, without the prop of revelation, is a 'rhapsody of words,' mere jargon, analogous to the tale told by an idiot, so happily described by our great poet as 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.' We have a Rev. ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... the Midianites. Judges vi. 11. The superior honorableness of agriculture, is shown by the fact, that it was protected and supported by the fundamental law of the theocracy—God thus indicating it as the chief prop of the government, and putting upon it peculiar honor. An inheritance of land seems to have filled out an Israelite's idea of worldly furnishment. They were like permanent fixtures on their soil, so did they cling to it. To be agriculturalists on their own inheritances, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... nine-thirty before the big lights jarred finally off and the director said, "That's all, boys." Then he turned to call, "Jimmie! Hey, Jimmie! Where's that prop-rustler gone to now?" ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... me lay a finger on you," he said in an altered tone, "I don't see how I can be any use. But if you will condescend to use me as a prop, I'll put you up on the mare, and walk beside you; then you can hold on to me if you feel shaky. We are not far off now, and the boy can take my pony on. Will ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... to a stop after running a few yards further. But finding that no lives were lost, it put on steam and disappeared on its course, and Zene and his trembling assistant were trying to prop up one corner of the wagon when Grandma Padgett brought her spectacles ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... be compared to the efforts of a man to prop up his falling house who so surrounds it and fills it with props and buttresses and planks and scaffolding that he manages to keep the house standing only by making it ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... predestined day. Strong in themselves, but stronger in his aid, Close to the works their rigid siege they laid. In vain the mounds and massy beams defend, While these they undermine, and those they rend; Upheaved the piles that prop the solid wall; And heaps on heaps the smoky ruins fall. Greece on her ramparts stands the fierce alarms; The crowded bulwarks blaze with waving arms, Shield touching shield, a long refulgent row; Whence ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... on additionally in the midst of all this was the remembrance of the cardinal. What must the mistrustful, restless, suspicious cardinal think of her silence—the cardinal, not merely her only support, her only prop, her only protector at present, but still further, the principal instrument of her future fortune and vengeance? She knew him; she knew that at her return from a fruitless journey it would be in vain to tell him ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... use reproaches, and I shall refer as little as I may to the past. I ask you all to do me justice. Have I not laboured like a slave for the common good? Have I not toiled in order to avoid the evil hour that has come upon us? Have I not given every thing—have I not robbed another in order to prop up our house and keep ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... Provence, by the highway. They are surrounded with high stone-walls, or ditches, planted with a kind of cane or large reed, which answers many purposes in this country. The leaves of it afford sustenance to the asses, and the canes not only serve as fences to the inclosures; but are used to prop the vines and pease, and to build habitations for the silkworms: they are formed into arbours, and wore as walking-staves. All these gardens are watered by little rills that come from the mountains, particularly, by the small branches of the two sources which I have described in a former letter, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... freightage of your happiness in crazy vessels. If you do, be sure that, somewhere or other, before your life is ended, the poor frail craft will strike on some black rock rising sheer from the depths, and will grind itself to chips there. If your life twines round any prop but God your strength, be sure that, some time or other, the stay to which its tendrils cling will be plucked up, and the poor vine will be lacerated, its clusters crushed, and its sap ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... living. No church is better adapted to this end than the Protestant Episcopal. (a) She seeks after the example of her Master's method to develop the permanent power of the will, rather than the unstable prop of emotionalism. This is evidenced in her majestic liturgies and dignified but helpful services. (b) In doctrine, discipline and worship the Protestant Episcopal Church is the school of mental, moral and spiritual training, that a people but now coming to the light ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... entrance, and so two-thirds of it looked still gloomier by contrast. This hall, or the central temple, is very spacious, eighty—four feet square, and sixteen feet high. Twenty-four massive pillars form a square, six pillars at each side, including the corner ones, and four in the middle to prop up the centre of the ceiling; otherwise it could not be kept from falling, as the mass of the mountain which presses on it from the top is much greater than in Karli ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... said Dan'l; "I've got it. You get a big strong clothes-prop, and I'll get another, and we'll poke him off. If he comes down your side, mind this: he'll be like a rat, and off as quick as quick; but don't you let him go. Drop your prop, and throw yourself on him; we'll ketch him, and take ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... their busy care: Studious of honey, each in his degree, The youthful swain, the grave, experienced bee; That in the field; this in affairs of state, Employed at home, abides within the gate, To fortify the combs, to build the wall, To prop the ruins, lest the fabric fall: But late at night, with weary pinions come The laboring youth, and heavy laden home. Plains, meads, and orchards, all the day he plies, The gleans of yellow thyme distend his thighs: He ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... said he, "nothing could be more agreeable to me and your mother than to have a snug cottage near you both, on the very spot which you say I pitched upon two years ago. This cabin that we now live in, after all I have tried to do to prop it up, and notwithstanding all Rose does to keep it neat and clean withinside, is but a crazy sort of a place. We are able now to have a better house, and I shall be glad to be out of the reach of Mr. Hopkins's persecution. Therefore, let us set about and build ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... farewell. The Melancholy Tale of Me, he calls them, perhaps because they are not in the least melancholy—a good and sufficient reason. Yet Mr. Sothern strangely neglects the subject of sundials in his book, although they were his prop in how many a play back in the golden Nineties!—the golden, promise-laden, contradictory Nineties, that fin-de-siecle decade when Max Nordau thundered that we were going to the dogs of degeneracy, and we youngsters knew that we were headed not alone for a new heaven, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... here is displayed the force of many sympathies. Our moral sentiment is itself a feeling chiefly of that nature, and our regard to a character with others seems to arise only from a care of preserving a character with ourselves; and in order to attain this end, we find it necessary to prop our tottering judgement on ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... Goddess!" quoth he, "of thy might, My scornes all and scoffes, that I have No power for to mocken any wight That in thy service dwell: for I did rave; This know I well right now, so God me save, And I shall be the chief post* of thy faith, *prop, pillar And love uphold, the reverse ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... to return to Eden and its inhabitants. They have little to do but "to lop and prune and prop and bind," to adore their Maker, and to avoid the prohibited tree. It would perhaps have been impossible for a poet with more dramatic genius than Milton to make these favourites of Heaven interesting in their happy state, while yet the key that ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... post office to leave the mail, and where two ladies appeared as claimants for seats in the stage. The driver at first demurred; but, finding the ladies persistent, he drew forth a board, and, fastening it at either end to a perpendicular prop, constructed a third bench, on which the two ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... left your charms on earth, that I, reminded By them, might be consoled though you depart; But vainly! Far from you, by sorrow blinded, I find no prop of comfort ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... given span can be only half as high as it is wide, but the pointed arch may have a great diversity of proportions. The development of the Gothic style was greatly forwarded by the invention of the "flying buttress." By means of this graceful outside prop it became possible to lighten the masonry of the hitherto massive walls and pierce them with great windows which let a flood of light into the ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... for the first time, what an all-round, valuable creature he has become at 'The Seven Stars.' When he was along with his dying relation, I missed the man a thousand times in every twelve hours and I felt properly astonished to find how he was the prop and stay of my business. That may seem too much to say, seeing I'm a fairly clever woman and know how to run 'The Seven Stars' in a pretty prosperous way; but there is no doubt Legg is very much more than what he seems. He's ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... part of the plateau which was invisible from the plain, and here in feverish haste they built a little cairn. Many flaky slabs of stone were lying about, and it did not take long to prop the largest of these against a rock, so as to make a lean-to, and then to put two side-pieces to complete it. The slabs were of the same colour as the rock, so that to a casual glance the hiding-place was not very visible. The two ladies were ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... she s'anter ter de winder wid 'er gun sort o' hangin' loose, an' holler: 'Adam! Come outer dem bushes 'fo' I pickle yo' hide! You my witness ob dis ruffian trispassin' on my prop'ty an' cussin' an' seducin' a ol' woman widout 'er consent,' she says. 'Has I retched my age,' says ol' Mis' Scarlett, 'to have his fowls ruinin' my gyardin', an' him whut's a dunghill rooster himself flyin' ovah my ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... strike the right note in these matters," he said. "And it weren't till the third time that I struck it with your sister. Afore that I talked of being her right hand and protector and so on, and I offered to be a prop to her declining years, and all that. And I knew I'd failed almost before the words were spoken. But the third time I just went for her all ends up, as if we was boy and girl, and told her that I loved her, and wanted ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... example of what my own fate was to be? That thought made me furious: for the third time I approached the hand with my own: I clasped it, and at the same instant I tried to rise, to draw this dead body towards me, and be certain of the hideous crime. But, as I strove to prop myself on my left elbow, the cold hand I was clasping became alive, and was withdrawn—and I knew that instant, to my utter astonishment, that I held none other than my own left hand, which, lying stiffened on the hard floor, had ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... day away! She shrank and trembled at the prospect of relying upon herself alone for six long days. Every prop had been taken away from her. Even the dubious prop of the strange, unsatisfactory Keith. For had he not failed her? She had said, "must" and "at once"; and he had responded with three words of ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Probably Wain will want to see you, and tell you all about things, which is your dorm. and so on. See you later," he concluded airily. "Any one'll tell you the way to the school. Go straight on. They'll send your luggage on later. So long." And his sole prop in this world of strangers departed, leaving him to find ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... would then describe, in the most glowing language, the domestic happiness which he enjoyed in his native isle. He would paint, in harrowing sentences, the eternal misery and disgrace which his ignominious execution would entail upon the grey-headed father, who looked up to him as a prop for his old age; the affectionate mother, who perceived in him her husband again a youth; the devoted wife, who could never survive his loss; and the sixteen children, chiefly girls, whom his death ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... lean and he is sick; His body, dwindled and awry, Rests upon ankles swoln and thick; 35 His legs are thin and dry. One prop he has, and only one, His wife, an aged woman, Lives with him, near the waterfall, Upon the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... minister to the male communicants alone, but we think that every baptized adult person who contributes to the maintenance, should have a vote in electing." [Footnote: History of Brattle St. Church, p. 25, Prop. 16.] ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... did, he was exceedingly apt to visit his wrath on the head of the devoted George, saying things to him which he should not have said. But his retainer took it all in the day's work, and never bore malice, continuing in his own cadging pigheaded sort of way to labour early and late to prop up his master's broken fortunes. "Lord, sir," as he once said to Harold Quaritch when the Colonel condoled with him after a violent and unjust onslaught made by the Squire in his presence, "Lord, sir, that ain't nawthing, that ain't. I don't ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... of my third fo' some time back," he said. "She got a divorce six years ago. I've kept the matter secret as a so't of insurance policy. I've allus been sort of unbalanced in my leanin's to'ards the sex, you see. An' it sure acted as a prop an' a defense ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... liable to mislead, amidst appearances sometimes dubious, vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging, in situations in which not unfrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts, and the guarantee of the plans by which they ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... Mr. Jope answered cheerily. "You come along o' me to Plymouth an' I'll put you into the very job. A cook's galley, it is, and so narra' that with a wooden leg in dirty weather you can prop yourself tight when she rolls, an' stir ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... things differently in the country. We don't build a house by way of experiment and live in it a few years, then tear it down and build another. We live in a house till it cracks, and then we plaster it over; then it totters, and we prop it up; then it rocks, and we rope it down; then it sprawls, and we clamp it; then it crumbles, and we have a new underpinning,—but keep living in it all the time. To know what moving really means, you must move from just such a rickety-rackety old farmhouse, where you have clung and grown like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... given him—a sight of the uncleanness of his best performance. The former sight of his immoralities did somewhat distress him, and make him betake himself to his own good deeds to ease his conscience; wherefore this was his prop, his stay. But behold, now God has taken this from under him, and now he falls. Wherefore his best doth also now forsake him, and fly away like the ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... leaders: Autonomous Haitian Workers or CATH; Confederation of Haitian Workers or CTH; Federation of Workers Trade Unions or FOS; National Popular Assembly or APN; Papaye Peasants Movement or MPP; Popular Organizations Gathering Power or PROP; Roman Catholic Church ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... that Felicia hardly dared to look at him until after they were on the steamer. He was really very gentle with her, he tried his best to make her comfortable, he did not refer at all to the events of the night before as he wrapped a steamer rug about her and helped the whining-voiced stewardess to prop a pillow under the ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... then frequented the Elysee, but without giving his adherence. He promised his support to General Bedeau, who counted upon him. At daybreak on the 2d of December some one came to waken X. It was Edgar Ney. X. was a prop for the coup d'etat, but would he consent? Edgar Ney explained the affair to him, and left him only after seeing him leave the barracks of the Rue Verte at the head of the first regiment. X. took up his position at the Place de la Madeleine. As he arrived there La Rochejaquelein, thrust ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... sit still. He rose, and went to prop himself against the corner of the mantel-piece, at a different angle from her face. But when she had pressed her handkerchief against her cheeks, she turned and looked up at him, awaiting ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... survive his loss. Other fathers may be devoted to their sons: his devotion was something more than theirs. How should it be otherwise? In him, and in him alone, the father saw the zealous guardian of his lawless rule, the champion of his old age, the sole prop of tyranny. If grief did not kill him on the spot, despair, I knew, must do so; there could be no further joy in life for him when his protector was slain. Nature, grief, despair, foreboding, terror,—these were my allies; ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... granted, they must be distinguished one from the other, either by the difference of their attributes, or by the difference of their modifications (Prop. iv.). If only by the difference of their attributes, it will be granted that there cannot be more than one with an identical attribute. If by the difference of their modifications—as substance is naturally prior to its modifications (Prop. i.)—it follows that setting the ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... "first one prop's taken away, and then another; and after a bit the roof'll fall in, and ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... was a man, the most wedded to his idols of my generation. I was a dweller under roofs: the gull of that which we call civilisation; a superstitious votary of the plastic arts; a cit; and a prop of restaurants. I had a comrade in those days, somewhat of an outsider, though he moved in the company of artists, and a man famous in our small world for gallantry, knee breeches, and dry and pregnant sayings. He, looking on the long meals and waxing bellies of ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... the chapel; but we didn't understand the young man, couldn't fathom his "excursion" sentiments, and afterwards threw ourselves into the arms of one of the ministers for numeric protection. There is a good gallery in the building, and the pillars which support it prop up a sort of arched canopy, like an oblong umbrella, which is too low, too near the head, and must consequently both confine the air, and develope sweating when the place is filled. There is a neat pulpit in the chapel, and it is ornamented ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... (and pays you too) so much, Yet Europe doubtless owes you greatly more: You have repaired Legitimacy's crutch, A prop not quite so certain as before: The Spanish, and the French, as well as Dutch, Have seen, and felt, how strongly you restore; And Waterloo has made the world your debtor (I wish your bards would sing ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... his daughter; I believe it was in the postscript; and that I was immediately going to—Pshaw! I am beginning my story now at the wrong end. It is throughout exceedingly whimsical. Listen, and let amazement prop your open mouth. ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... way as I took yer that night, Master Nic, and then work your way up for a hour or so, and all under they tree-ferns you'll find pools and pools with lots o' fish in 'em; but I don't know how you're going to get on with that long thin clothes-prop of a thing. But, there, you're a gen'leman, and I s'pose you ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... reality possessed such an authority, not having availed himself at a crisis like the one in which he was called upon to act, rendered his conduct doubtful, and all his intended operations suspicious to both parties, whether his feelings were really inclined to prop up the fallen kingly authority, or his newly-acquired republican principles prompted him to become the head of the democratical party, for no one can see into the hearts of men; his popularity from ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... reality, however, was sadly different from his expectations. In vain, by his orders asphalt paths were made in all directions, and landscape gardeners worked for months, trying with stones cunningly inserted to prop up the steep, slippery slope, and to form little terraces on which something might have a chance of growing. With the slightest shower, down tumbled these plateaus; and the work of building had to begin again. It was amusing, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... their daring hands from seizing your crown. To whom—to whose party does your tutor belong? Who are his allies? What authority has he? What services can he do you? What weight do his words carry? Instead of finding a prop to sustain your power, you have cut the ground from under it. The Cardinal de Lorraine is a living threat to you; he plays the king; he keeps his hat on his head before the princes of the blood; it was urgently necessary to ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... make all the words clear and distinct; open your mouth and let the sound out. Once I had a big grown boy in one of my classes who did not open his lips properly when he spoke. So I asked him to prop his mouth open with a piece of stick and then talk. I made him do it until he learned to speak much more clearly. A famous Greek orator, named Demosthenes, who had a habit of mumbling his words, trained himself to speak clearly by putting pebbles in his mouth and then reciting ...
— The Child's Day • Woods Hutchinson
... entirely in the merits of Jesus Christ, he found a satisfying sense of God's saving presence and power to the very last. He would often say, 'my feet are on the Rock of Ages. I cannot sink under such a prop, as bears the world and all things up.' His affliction, water on the chest, and an enlargement of the heart brought on by his frequent plunges into the water, and exposure to wet and cold, was protracted and very severe. He found great difficulty ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... It was their prop, their guide, their whole youth, all the best part of their lives which was disappearing. It was their bond with life, their mother, their mamma, the connecting link with their forefathers which they would thenceforth ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the tender age of four years, having no brothers or sisters to prop me round with young affections and sympathies, I fell into three pairs of hands, excellent in their way, but peculiar. Patience, Eunice, and Mary Ann Pettibone were my aunts on my father's side. All my mother's relations kept ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... prevailing strength on the part of that huge bully world, which seemed really to embrace the atmosphere. Emma had said: 'The rules of Christian Society are a blessed Government for us women. We owe it so much that there is not a brick of the fabric we should not prop.' Emma's talk of obedience to the Laws, being Laws, was repeated by the rebel, with an involuntary unphrased comparison of the vessel in dock and the vessel ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... neighborhood; a slave who had once undergone the shame of this, and been thus seen by the household and the neighbors, had no longer any trust or credit among them, and had the name of furcifer; furca being the Latin word for a prop, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... of course a good deal alarmed. We made the door fast with a prop in case an attack ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... in a mystie morning if thou wilt Make pitfalls for the larke and pheldifare, Thy prop and sweake shall be both overguilt, With Cyparissus selfe thou shalt compare For gins and wyles, the oozels to beguile, Whilst thou under a bush shalt ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... favor on his daughter. And since love, like life, is but a game, and much may be done by a player who handles his pawns wisely, Eudemius began to conjure up hopes which, in spite of himself, he knew might never see fulfilment. The more he saw of Marius, the more he coveted his strength to prop his dying house. His fortune would be safe in Marius's hands, his name would be safe in Marius's keeping. For with all his faults Marius had a soldier's honor, and could guard what was given to his charge. Forthwith, then, Eudemius ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... augment, and win } His share of future spoils, reward of clamorous din. } The torrent of sedition swells amain, Disloyalty invades the firmest Dane; And Christiern's arm, outstretch'd without delay, Alone has power to prop his tottering sway. Haste, while in momentary bounds is kept, The struggling flood, which else may intercept Your passage; haste! your new dominions quit; Their care to some experienced chief commit; Haste, and by ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... one day she sent Jack to market to buy the finest Goose he could find. It was early in the morning when he started, and his way lay through a wood. He was not afraid of robbers; so on he went, with his Mother's great clothes-prop over his shoulder. The fresh morning air caused Jack's spirits to rise. He left the road, and plunged into the thick of the wood, where he amused himself by leaping with his clothes-prop till he found he had lost himself. After he had made many attempts to find the path again, he ...
— My First Picture Book - With Thirty-six Pages of Pictures Printed in Colours by Kronheim • Joseph Martin Kronheim
... the door, and we drove up the mountain, took the little narrow-gage railroad which is there to carry the logs down to the lake. Sitting on the front logs, we rode down the mountain. The big beams of timber are brought to the mines in order to prop up the places where the ore has been taken out. These logs do a lot of traveling. They are cut on the other side of Lake Tahoe, dragged over the lake by a tug, sawed the right length by a sawing-mill, then carried ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... of milk, gleaming along the wall of Herons' Holt, drew every stray cat within a radius of two miles. Beneath, each armed with a clothes-prop, toiled Mr. Fletcher and Frederick under the ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... read. This List you will observe is headed by one of our Judges of the Admiraltry, & seconded by another—there is also the Solicitor General (a Wedderburne in Principle but not equal to him in Ability) the Advocate General &c &c. The whole Design of these Addresses is to prop ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... subtlety and her desire to conceal, made her suddenly realize their altered relations with a vividness that frightened her. Where was the beautiful friendship that had been the comfort, the prop of her bereaved life? It seemed already to have sunk away into the past. She wondered what was in store for her, if there were new sorrows being forged for her in the cruel smithy of the great Ruler, sorrows that would hang like chains about her till she could go no farther. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... of the chivalrous past, was a source of still more satisfaction to the baron than he cared to avow. The congratulations of his numerous acquaintance pleased him, and he felt it a prop to his self-respect, which it often needed. A week later, Ehrenthal came on his way to the neighboring village to offer his congratulations too, and just as he was making his final bow he said, "You had once a notion, baron, of setting up a beet-root-sugar factory. I find that a ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... the dust at least one insolent and murderous Invader;—these have attested the efficacy of the passions which we have been contemplating—that the will of good men is not a vain impulse, heroic desires a delusive prop;—have proved that the condition of human affairs is not so forlorn and desperate, but that there are golden opportunities when the dictates of justice may be unrelentingly enforced, and the beauty of the inner mind substantiated ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... if I were a Person of Quality; And when any comes hither they are won by my complemental and genteel Discourse; my comely presence brings in many a Guest into the House, besides particular Acquaintance: So that I may well affirm I am the Prop of the House. If I didn't introduce Gentleman into your Company, I wonder what you'd do; you might e'en sit still, and be forc'd to make use of a Dildo, before any Body would come to you ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... greater the truth.' Take that with you. A lie must, somewhere, have a truth to prop it. In the heart of every big successful lie you will find some reality. Of course you cannot build a house on nothing. A pyramid cannot be constructed in the air. Now a lie is nothing, the very definition of nothing. It is what is not. So, of course, no pure and simple lie exists. ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... gods! when barbarous Scythians come From their cold north to prop declining Rome. That I should see her fall, and ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... 1835, chance avenged Pons for the indifference of womankind by finding him a prop for his declining years, as the saying goes; and he, who had been old from his cradle, found a support in friendship. Pons took to himself the only life-partner permitted to him among his kind—an old man and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Giraud How is this, Pamela—you the solace of all our misfortunes, the prop of our old age, ...
— Pamela Giraud • Honore de Balzac
... I hope he will recover. Just imagine, general; he was found by the road, and brought home with a dagger in his breast, like a prop in ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... out of the wood the track became worse and worse. The rough-hewn runners constantly sank into snow-drifts and the sledge canted over, so that the poor man, trembling with fear and cold, had to prop it up with all his strength. If his twisted foot gave way, there was an end to him and ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... was revived, and it became manifest that the prop upon which she had leaned had been slipped from under her. The spirit which had made her strong to endure the death of her boy failed when the sordid bald truth of a miserable and horrible waste of life gave the lie to the splendid fighting ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... in the case. If the Tritons of the Solway shall proceed to pull down honest Joshua's tide-nets, I am neither Quixote enough in disposition, nor Goliath enough in person, to attempt their protection. I have no idea of attempting to prop a falling house by putting my shoulders against it. And indeed, Joshua gave me a hint that the company which he belongs to, injured in the way threatened (some of them being men who thought after the fashion of the world), ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... in that warm, cosy little 'WE;' it took her into the firm so pleasantly. She was a weak prop indeed when it came to cows, but all the courage in her soul rose to arms when Elisha said, "What shall WE do next?" She became alert, ingenious, strong, ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... opinion not only of the victors, but of the vanquished, to have given the finishing stroke to the American Revolution, Lee's force, augmented by the junction of the troops marching down to join him, was the sole prop and stay of the ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... its population lives in densely populated rural communities. Uzbekistan is now the world's second largest cotton exporter, a large producer of gold and oil, and a regionally significant producer of chemicals and machinery. Following independence in December 1991, the government sought to prop up its Soviet-style command economy with subsidies and tight controls on production and prices. The state continues to be a dominating influence in the economy and has so far failed to bring about much-needed structural changes. The IMF suspended Uzbekistan's $185 million ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... as next of kin to Asahel, was by the law and custom of the country the avenger of his blood. For some time afterwards the war was carried on, the advantage being invariably on the side of David. At length Ishbaal lost the main prop of his tottering cause by remonstrating with Abner for marrying Rizpah, one of Saul's concubines, an alliance which, according to Oriental notions, implied pretensions to the throne (cp. 2 Sam. xvi. 21 sqq.; 1 Kings ii. 21 sqq.). Abner was indignant ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... within five feet of the chimney and dropped so low that his prop wash flattened the reeds in the marsh. Then, climbing again, he swung wide and went over Seaford at a legal altitude. He was, even the critical Gus admitted, a safe-and-sane flier, but the temptation to get back at Carrots Kelso a little was too much. High ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... refuse them all nourishment, and permit them to die with hunger; or they may KILL THEM as enemies, who violate the rights of humanity.—Escobar, Theolg. Moral, vol. 4, lib. 31, sec. 2, precept 4, prop. ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... come almost every afternoon to inquire. One day she found Charles alone, crutching himself slowly along the terrace, and she thought nothing showed the forlorn state of the family so much as to see him out of doors with no one for a prop. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cruel and brutal nature. I have seen them frequently pull the plumes from wounded birds, leaving the crippled birds to die of starvation, unable to respond to the cries of their young in the nests above, which were calling for food. I have known these people to tie and prop up wounded egrets on the marsh where they would attract the attention of other birds flying by. These decoys they keep in this position until they die of their wounds, or from the attacks of insects. I have seen the terrible red ants of ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... was only about a mile from the village. But Joe and Moll would be sure to follow them, in order to make an attempt to recover their captives. Several times before Joe had tried to kidnap an attractive smart child whom he could train to be a sort of golden prop upon which his laziness could lean, but hitherto he had always been balked in his purpose. He would be furiously angry, Bambo knew, when he discovered that, just when a life of ease and idleness such as he had longed for seemed certain in ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... so many years, a war in a remote country, in spite of the violent opposition made by a powerful faction at home, which refused him supplies of every kind, and thwarted him on all occasions; it may be affirmed, that Hannibal, during the whole series of this war, seemed the only prop of the state, and the soul of every part of the empire of the Carthaginians, who could never believe themselves conquered, till Hannibal confessed ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... I'll tell thee; But listen with attention while I speak; And yet I know 'twill shock thy gentle soul, And horror o'er thee 'll spread his palsy hand. O, my lov'd Son! thou fondness of my age! Thou art the prop of my declining years, In thee alone I find a Father's joy, Of all my ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... enough extra to experiment around on his own. And, primarily, it had always been the experimentation that had been the purpose of Bending Consultants; the consulting end of the business had always been a monetary prop for the lab itself. His employees—mostly junior engineers and engineering draftsmen—worked in the two-story building next door to the lab. Their job was to make money for the company under Bending's direction while Bending himself ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... grunted in reply. He pursed his lips for a meditative whistle, thought better of it, took the frying-pan from its prop, and sounded the ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... flagrantly as Southern, Confederate credit in Europe declined. Her bonds were soon withdrawn from the market. At the same time Walker succeeded in borrowing $250,000,000 from European bankers, and thus at a critical period he was able to prop the declining fortunes of his country. To say that Walker destroyed the credit of the Confederacy and at the same time restored that of the Union would be an exaggeration. But his services were of incalculable value to ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... my beloved son, he whose birth made all my happiness, whose infancy and growing years were all my occupation, whose youth was my pride and consolation, and who would, as I hoped, be the prop of my old age, no longer lives. He has been taken from us in the midst of completed happiness, and of the happiest prospects of the future, whilst each day he gained in virtue, in understanding, in wisdom, following the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... anything about anythin'. Never have any church. Effen you go you set in de back of de white folks chu'ch. But de niggers slip off an' pray an' hold prayer-meetin' in de woods den dey tu'n down a big wash pot and prop it up wif a stick to drown out de soun' ob de singin'. I 'member some of de songs we uster sing. One of dem went ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves, North Carolina Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... eyes as she kissed her son; old Gottlieb said: "Philip, you are the prop and stay of our old age. Continue to be honest and good, and to love your parents, so will a blessing rest on you. I can give you nothing for a New Year's gift, but a prayer that you may keep your heart pure and true—this is in your power—you will be rich enough—for a clear ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... pretty nearly the truth. Speedily dismounting, he told the servants to prop him up. "Uncle Hsueeh," he laughed, "you daily go in for lewd dalliance; but have you to-day come to dissipate in a reed-covered pit? The King of the dragons in this pit must have also fallen in love with your charms, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... them did not hesitate to thrust a book into my hands, saying, "Give that to that fellow over there, will you?" while another of them exclaimed as he pushed past me, "By your leave, young fellow!" and a third made use of my shoulder as a prop when he wanted to scramble over a desk. All this seemed to me a little rough and unpleasant, for I looked upon myself as immensely superior to such fellows, and considered that they ought not to treat me with such familiarity. At length, the names began to be called out. The gymnasium men ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... lavished rings in largesse, When the fight's red rain-drops fell, Bright of face, with heart-strings hardy, Hogni's father met his fate; Then his brow with helmet shrouding, Bearing battle-shield, he spake, "I will die the prop of battle, Sooner die than yield an inch. Yes, sooner die than ...
— The story of Burnt Njal - From the Icelandic of the Njals Saga • Anonymous
... After the christenin', he took a pal or two round to the same bar to stand treat. That time the two halves of the door were closed, an' any ass could see that the letters stood for 'No Smoking.' Well, the other fellows told me his language was so sultry that his prop caught fire." ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... his chair, pale as ashes. All was lost, then. Cora had betrayed him! But he resolved not to commit himself. Perhaps Madeline had only verbal information. While he was trying to frame a speech, however, she knocked this last prop from under him. ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... is nigh, my faith is strong, His arm is my almighty prop: Be glad, my heart; rejoice, my tongue, My dying flesh shall ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... nailing at the Craddock family estate pretty early in the action though it's none too soon, and mighty glad I am to see you do it while there is still a little odd lumber left. I've always said that it's women folks that prop a family and it will soon tumble without 'em. I am so glad you've come, honeybunch, that tears are laughing themselves out of the corner of my eyes." This time the white kerchief was dabbed ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... constrain'd to wear the hat that still From bad to worse it shifted.—Cephas came; He came, who was the Holy Spirit's vessel, Barefoot and lean, eating their bread, as chanc'd, At the first table. Modern Shepherd's need Those who on either hand may prop and lead them, So burly are they grown: and from behind Others to hoist them. Down the palfrey's sides Spread their broad mantles, so as both the beasts Are cover'd with one skin. O patience! thou That lookst on this and doth endure so long." I at those accents saw the splendours down From ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Umph! Let's see. Bond and mortgage'll do for me. Good. That gal that passed me by Scornful like—why, mebbe I Some day'll hold in pawn—why not?— All her father's prop. She'll spot What's my little game, and see What I'm after's ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... of his limbs. He accordingly had him carried into a little room, where he desired the gentleman to attempt to stand. 'That is impossible,' answered the patient, 'for I have not been able to use a leg these three years.' 'Prop yourself, then, upon your crutches, and lean against the wall to support yourself,' answered the physician. The gentleman did so, and the doctor went abruptly out, and locked the door after him. He had not been long in this situation before he felt ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... considering the shape of 'em. Ginger Dick nearly lost 'is temper with 'im, and it was all old Sam could do to stop himself from casting 'im off forever. He was finished at last, and arter Peter Russet 'ad slipped downstairs and found a bit o' broken clothes-prop in the yard, and 'e'd been shown 'ow to lean on it and make a noise, Ginger said as 'ow if Ted Reddish got 'im for a 'undered pounds 'e'd get ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... and there In peace and promise reconciled Unite them: nor could Nature's care With subtler sweet beneficence Have fed the springs of penitence, Still keeping true, though harshly tried, The vital prop of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... couldn't stop fer a lantern, Besides, the moonlight was bright enough in all conscience. Then I scooped that awful thing up in th' spade. I had a sight o' trouble doin' it. It slid off, and tipped over, and I couldn't bear Ev'n to touch it with my foot to prop it, But I done it somehow. Then I carried it off be'ind the barn, Clost to an old apple-tree Where you couldn't see from the house, An' I buried it, ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... men mutter, but they seldom fight. O holy Alha! that I live to see Thy Granadines assist their enemy! You fight the christians' battles; every life You lavish thus, in this intestine strife, Does from our weak foundations take one prop, Which helped to hold ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... Fulke, who to his brother will convey All his Italian birth-right, and command To take a mighty dukedom far away From his fair home, in Almayn's northern land. There he the house of Saxony shall stay, And prop the ruin with his saving hand; This in his mother's right he shall possess, And with his progeny maintain ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... friend the Dairyman was in any danger of falling into idolatry, his child would have been the idol of his affections. She was the prop and stay of her parents' declining years, and they scarcely knew how sufficiently to testify the gratitude of their hearts for the comfort and blessing which she was the ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... and Harrington went away—the younger partner taking leave of the older with a sneer for an outworn prop which no man could ever again have use for. Old and beaten—that was all Harrington now stood for in Quarrier's eyes. Never a thought of the past undaunted courage, never a memory of the old victories which had made the Quarrier fortune possible—only contempt for age, a sneer for the mind ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... filled her ambitious little head. Yes, father would see that he was right in trusting her; Nell would discover that there was no one so clever as Polly; Mrs. Power would cease to defy her; Alice would obey her cheerfully; in short, she would be the mainstay and prop of ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... the child was the child of her son, and upon the babe she lavished all the loving tenderness of her great, welling, mother heart. She had no words but those of gentleness and love for the son that had brought this charge to her. And did she guess that this child would be the sustaining prop for her son when she, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... back, the muscles relax, and the patient rests. In packing and fomenting an inflamed knee, for example, it is usually better done in a slightly bent position, which is more restful than a straight one. Employ two or three small pillows to prop it comfortably. And so on, in multitudes of cases, the earnest healer will be guided by the patient's own restful feelings. ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... no use for us to enlarge our markets unless other countries did so also at the same time and in the same way; and in condemning all reduction of import duties that was not based on "reciprocity," he certainly added all the weight of his authority to prop up a system whose injurious influence has affected the very vitality of our social state, and whose overthrow will yet require no small amount of moral force ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... replied. "He might prop a little, certainly; but it's only playfulness." So I swung into the deep seat of the stolen saddle, and lightly touched the lotus-loving Memphian with ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Notional 'information-space' loaded with visual cues and navigable with brain-computer interfaces called 'cyberspace decks'; a characteristic prop of {cyberpunk} SF. At the time of this writing (mid-1991), serious efforts to construct {virtual reality} interfaces modeled explicitly on Gibsonian cyberspace are already under way, using more conventional devices such as glove sensors and binocular TV headsets. Few ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... who was like iron with mob and mutiny, was pitiably helpless before such a prop of the aristocracy. He flew into a rage, and rated the landlord in Scotch and English, and I was fain to put my tongue in my cheek and turn my back that my laughter might not ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... our wheels whenever they should get entangled, also, to be himself the drag, to prevent our too rapid descent. Such generosity deserved trust; however, we women could not be persuaded to render it. We got out and admired, from afar, the process. Left by our guide—and prop! we found ourselves in a wide field, where, by playful quips and turns, an endless "creek," seemed to divert itself with our attempts to cross it. Failing in this, the next best was to whirl down a steep bank, which feat our charioteer performed with an air not unlike that of Rhesus, ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... not easy to get him down the two flights of stairs. More than once they had to prop the case on a step while they rested; and at one time, just before they reached that curious heap of rubbish at the foot of the upper stairs, Jackson's strength gave way and it looked as though the whole thing would get away ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... this House stands firm upon its ancient foundations, and is not, by time and accidents, so declined from its perpendicular as to want the hand of the wise and experienced architects of the day to set it upright again, and to prop and buttress it up for duration;—whether it continues true to the principles upon which it has hitherto stood;—whether this be de facto the constitution of the House of Commons, as it has been since the time that the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... knit him a warm jacket," said Mary, "and surely Edmund could help them to prop up ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... these all their Instruments; to prop Their Mighty Cause, and Israels Murmurs stop; They find a sort of Academick Tools; Who by the Politick Doctrine of their Schools, Betwixt Reward, Pride, Avarice, Hope and Fear, Prizing their Heav'n too cheap, the World too dear, Stand bold and strong for Absolons Defence: Interest the ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... he walked with no less indecision than Cosette. He protected her, and she strengthened him. Thanks to him, she could walk through life; thanks to her, he could continue in virtue. He was that child's stay, and she was his prop. Oh, unfathomable and divine mystery of the balances ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... surmised pretty nearly the truth. Speedily dismounting, he told the servants to prop him up. "Uncle Hseh," he laughed, "you daily go in for lewd dalliance; but have you to-day come to dissipate in a reed-covered pit? The King of the dragons in this pit must have also fallen in love with your charms, and enticed you to become his son-in-law that you've come ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... pots down at night so that they could pray. They had big pots then—big enough for you to get into yourself. I've seen some of them big old pots and got under 'em myself. You could get under one and pray if you wanted to. You wouldn't have to prop them up to send your voice in 'em from the outside. The thing that the handle hooks into makes them tilt up on one side so that you could get down on your hands and knees and pray with your mouth close to the opening if you wanted ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... steps. Again he was an unregarded and negligible spectator. I presume he missed Johnny's hand in Albert's, and Johnny's pressure on Albert's shoulder—the one with the stain; and I hope he did. It was the hand of the stronger, taking possession. "My prop, my future mainstay!" said ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... away the chief prop which sustained the Alderman, and when the news of its passage reached Philadelphia, Tom was the most indignant man that had been seen there ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... policy we are all, of whatever party, firmly bound by the voice of the people—a power vastly more potential than the expression of any political platform. The paramount duty of Congress is to stop deficiencies by the restoration of that protective legislation which has always been the firmest prop of the Treasury. The passage of such a law or laws would strengthen the credit of the Government both at home and abroad, and go far toward stopping the drain upon the gold reserve held for the redemption of our currency, which has ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... a large branch which came out on one side, and which hung down loaded with fruit. It would have broken down, perhaps, if there had not been a crotched pole put under it, to prop it up. ...
— Rollo at Work • Jacob Abbott
... we to do?" went on Odilon Barrot. "How are we to rebuild this old society in which everything is collapsing? Efforts to prop it up only help to bring it down. If you touch it, it topples ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... at fighting edge by a little judicious pessimism now and then, and rumors of the popularity of Purplevein among the hard drinkers. Day after day Quimbleton and Miss Chuff, after a little psychic communing, would prop the editor among cushions in the big gray limousine and spin him about the city and suburbs to bow, smile, say a few automatic words and pass on. Over the car floated a big banner with the words: Let Bleak Do Your Drinking For You: He Knows How. The ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... body's prop she stand— If on the body's life her life depend, As Meleager's on the fatal brand; The body's ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... that of a nurse maid. "I had to hol' the baby all de time she slept" she said "and sometimes I got so sleepy myself I had to prop ma' eyes open with pieces of ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: The Ohio Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... INVOLUCRUM.—Any kind of wrapping or propping condition of leafage at the base of a flower may properly come under this head; but the manner of prop or protection differs in different kinds, and I will not at present give generic names to ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... black bumblebees floated in through the open windows. Mrs. Marston's black and white hens and the minorca cockerel pecked about the open door and came in inquiringly, upon which Martha, who sat near the door for that purpose, swept them softly out with the clothes-prop, which she manipulated ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... was the grim retort. "But anyway, whether or no, it is wonderful to have you so close at hand. I shall feel as if I had a great prop behind me." ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... causes it to see, hear, and decide. The government is convinced that it depends for its salvation wholly on them, that it is sustained because they uphold it, and that the day on which they cease to support it, it will fall like a manikin that has lost its prop. They intimidate the government with an uprising of the people and the people with the forces of the government, whence originates a simple game, very much like what happens to timid persons when they ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... I can only repeat that the truest kindness is only to refuse assistance. I assure you it is. The circumstances forbid it. Clearly, what you have to do is to call together your creditors, and arrive at an understanding. It is my principle never to try to prop up a hopeless concern such as yours evidently is. Good day to you, Mr. Humplebee; ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... train comes in; but after that, we will with pleasure." Mr. Tatt waits, and the train comes in, and then Witchem and me go off with him to the Hotel. Mr. Tatt he's got up quite regardless of expense, for the occasion; and in his shirt-front there's a beautiful diamond prop, cost him fifteen or twenty pound - a very handsome pin indeed. We drink our sherry at the bar, and have had our three or four glasses, when Witchem cries suddenly, "Look out, Mr. Wield! stand fast!" and a dash is made into the place by the Swell Mob - four of 'em - that have come ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... measures of domestic improvement, and more specially incompetent either to prepare for or prosecute a great war, has John done right, has he done what the welfare of the country requires, in lending himself so long as its indispensable prop? It is not incompetent from want of ability, but of unity.... He is considered by them to have wedded himself to them for better for worse more closely than ever by the withdrawal of Reform.... ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... individual in France that in reality possessed such an authority, not having availed himself at a crisis like the one in which he was called upon to act, rendered his conduct doubtful, and all his intended operations suspicious to both parties, whether his feelings were really inclined to prop up the fallen kingly authority, or his newly-acquired republican principles prompted him to become the head of the democratical party, for no one can see into the hearts of men; his popularity from that ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... conscience and the soul; it soon had kings and armies at its orders, and Constantine and Charlemagne bore it triumphant throughout Europe. Religion then laid down her arms of war. It laid open to all the principles of peace and order which it contained; it became the prop of Government, as it was the organizing element of society. Thus will it be with liberty. In 1793 it frightened people and sovereigns alike; then, having clothed itself in a milder garb, IT INSINUATED ITSELF EVERYWHERE IN THE TRAIN OF OUR BATTALIONS. In 1815 all parties adopted its flag, and armed ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... freedom instead of compulsion; that real nationality is a psychological state, a tribute of sympathy, a voluntary service to which the mind is drawn by affection. To some who lightly praised the idea, treating it as an admirable prop to war, the consequences and application will bring dismay. For here you have the pivot of a social revolution such as the world has never yet seen. It cannot only remain a question of Belgium, or Serbia, or Alsace-Lorraine. It will inevitably be ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... looks, he was a fine-looking man to just below his hips, and there he had been razed, as he called it to Aleck Donne, while the most peculiar thing about him as he toddled along was what at first sight looked like a prop, which extended from just beneath his head nearly to the ground, as if to enable him to stand, tripod-fashion, steadily on a windy day. But it was nothing of the sort, being only his pigtail carefully bound with ribbon, and the ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... access of litigation in which the citizen Indian figures as a party defendant and in a more widespread disposition to levy local taxation upon his personalty, but in a decision of the United States Supreme Court which struck away the main prop on which has hitherto rested the Government's benevolent effort to protect him against the evils of intemperance. The court holds, in effect, that when an Indian becomes, by virtue of an allotment of land to him, a citizen ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... keen was their mental anguish! There was bereaved love; with all purity the strongest love had grown up around Christ; and now that He was gone, it seemed as if there was nothing more to live for. The prop had been rudely taken away, and the tendrils of their hearts' affection were torn and wrenched. Then there would come a rush of hot tears, indignant passion with those who had pursued Him, with such unrelenting torture, to ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... you can get hold of the general principle. You can make very good bread in a frying-pan. You must mix the dough up stiff so that when the pan is nearly upright it won't tumble out. You fix the pan up with a prop behind it so that the dough faces the fire, quite close, and you draw some more fire behind it so that the back is warmed as well. When it burns a good crust on ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... sunshine of their balconies, With a half-legend of a martyrdom And some weak wine and withered graces before them, Note by their foot the wheel of melody That catches and rolls on the sabbath dance. To drag the steady prop from failing age, Break the young stem that fondness twines around, Widen the solitude of lonely sighs, And scatter to the broad bleak wastes of day The ruins and the phantoms that ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... amount to 123,249,600 Paris feet, as the French have found by mensuration. And now, if we imagine the moon, deprived of all motion, to be let go, so as to descend towards the earth with the impulse of all that force by which (by Cor. Prop. iii.) it is retained in its orb, it will in the space of one minute of time describe in its fall 15 1/12 Paris feet. For the versed sine of that arc which the moon, in the space of one minute of time, would by its mean motion describe at the distance of sixty semi-diameters ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Republican. The demonstration was a mistake. Public characters should not let their personal preferences betrumpeted: a diplomatic truism:—but I must add, least of all a cantatrice for a king. The famous Greek amateur—the prop of failing finances—is after her to arrest her for breach of engagement. You wished to discover an independent mind in a woman, my Carlo; did you not? One would suppose her your wife—or widow. She looked a superb thing the last night ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the lord of land—and is also, what he seems still more proud of, a lord of parliament; but I will front him in both capacities, and frankly tell him, that in the first he is a burthen to his own estate, and not a benefactor; and in the second, a peer but not a prop. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... don't!" she cried. "You may flout our beliefs,—but wouldn't you like to bolster up your report with an endorsement by the wife of a clergyman! It sounds so respectable and sane, doesn't it? No, sir! You can't prop up your wild-eyed theories against the good black of one minister's coat. Not by any means! I think myself that you have probably stumbled on the truth about Willem's mother; but that doesn't prove there's anything in all ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... fill the kingdom with clamour and confusion. But the greatest shock occasioned by his decease was undoubtedly among our allies and fellow-subjects in Germany, who saw themselves suddenly deprived of their sole prop and patron, at a time when they could not pretend of themselves to make head against the numerous enemies by whom they were surrounded. But all these doubts and apprehensions vanished like mists before the rising sun; and the people of Great Britain enjoyed the inexpressible ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... silent for a moment, and he saw her hand go up and prop her chin while she considered what ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... while she mourned a daughter and a son, She looked to heaven, and cried, "Thy will be done!" But, oh! the father no such solace found— Dark, cheerless anguish wrapt his spirit round; He was a stranger to the Christian's hope, And in bereavement's hour he sought a prop On which his pierced and stricken soul might lean; Yet, as he sought it, doubts would intervene— Doubts which for years had clouded o'er his soul— Doubts that, with prayers he struggled to control; For though a grounded faith ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... his voice. I learned that we were aground. I asked him if I could help. "Yes, if you can carry messages to the engineer and translate them into Spanish." I ran to and fro, stumbling up or down, forgetting every time I passed that a certain part of the ship had a raised ledge. The effort was to prop the boat with spars that it might not tip as it crunched and settled down upon the coral reefs. We could hardly wait until daylight to measure the predicament. When the light grew clear so that I saw the illuminated waters, there was a scene of new and wonderful beauty,—a garden of ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... Moll would be sure to follow them, in order to make an attempt to recover their captives. Several times before Joe had tried to kidnap an attractive smart child whom he could train to be a sort of golden prop upon which his laziness could lean, but hitherto he had always been balked in his purpose. He would be furiously angry, Bambo knew, when he discovered that, just when a life of ease and idleness such as he had longed for seemed certain in the near future, he was as far ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... exact form of the object on which they seize, is very remarkable. If the support is round, the ring is also round; but if they fix on a square lath, or other angular thing, the stem forms to it, so that when the prop is removed, the ring retains the exact form of that prop, every angle being as sharp and true, as if ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... but they seldom fight. O holy Alha! that I live to see Thy Granadines assist their enemy! You fight the christians' battles; every life You lavish thus, in this intestine strife, Does from our weak foundations take one prop, Which helped to hold ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... should reckon that 'ere brother of yourn wa'n't one that you had tamed down fit to be turned loose. But you tell him for me, the next time you see him, that I'll plug the end of that bridge against him if it takes ev'ry dum cent of the prop'ty I'm wuth—and that's thutty thousand dollars, if it's a cent. I ain't none of your two-cent chaps!" he roared, visiting his wrath vicariously on her as a representative of the family. "I've got money of my own. Your brother seems to have made door-mats out'n most ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... rushed to Fargo. They had wired ahead to ground the plane. They wanted to check it over before it flew again. When they arrived, only a matter of hours after the incident, they went over the airplane, from the prop spinner to the rudder trim tab, with a Geiger counter. A chart in the official report shows where every Geiger counter reading was taken. For comparison they took readings on a similar airplane that ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... "'Akakir" plur. of 'Akkar prop.aromatic roots; but applied to vulgar drugs or simples, as in the Tale of the Sage Duban, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... it were easier to count one, two, three, with folded hands, than to let fall the peas from one hand to the other, beneath thy scapulary. Howbeit, a method which would be but a pitfall to one, may prove a prop to another. So I give thee leave to continue to count with thy peas. Also the games in thy cell are harmless, and lead me to think, as already I have sometimes thought, that games with balls or rings, something in which eye guides the hand, and mind the eye, might be helpful ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... than three centuries there flowed from the mines of Mexico and Peru, millions and millions of silver and gold, which went to fill the needy coffers of Spain, to enrich a distant and callous or careless monarch, and to prop up a moribund nation. The appalling system of the mitad and the encomenderos, by which silver and gold were extracted with indecent haste, form such pages as can never be erased from the history of metallurgy in ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... as if I had lost a stay or prop," replied Mrs. Seagrave. "So accustomed have I been to look to him for advice since we have been on this island. Had he not been thus snatched from us - had he been spared to us a few years, and had we been permitted to surround his death-bed, ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... world's third largest cotton exporter, a major producer of gold and natural gas, and a regionally significant producer of chemicals and machinery. Following independence in December 1991, the government sought to prop up its Soviet-style command economy with subsidies and tight controls on production and prices. Faced with high rates of inflation, however, the government stepped up the pace of reform in mid-1994, by introducing tighter monetary policies, expanding privatization, slightly reducing ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of the car's owner, he slipped off his own sun-faded coat and rolled the sleeves of his flannel shirt above his elbows, and then, with shoulder thrusting up; and arms straining, he heaved the car high enough so that the flabby gentleman could set the prop under the axle. And when the gentleman began to dust his gloves and to search for spots on his gray immaculateness, Farr dug tools from the box and proceeded to the work ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... away—the younger partner taking leave of the older with a sneer for an outworn prop which no man could ever again have use for. Old and beaten—that was all Harrington now stood for in Quarrier's eyes. Never a thought of the past undaunted courage, never a memory of the old victories which had made the Quarrier fortune possible—only contempt for age, a sneer for the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... a point at last where even the hauteur of her class would no longer suffice to cover the humiliations of her daily life. Now that the final climax had come, it found her quite denuded of all force, all strength, all hope. Her one raison d'etre was to be removed, her single prop drawn from her. Therefore she fell, quietly, with scarcely a word of protest, only an instant of tottering. This the metaphor. To speak plainly, so complete was her desolation that, outwardly, she betrayed nothing. Ivan was drawn to ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... been left a widow three years before this story opens. She was a fair, fragile little woman, still pretty, and pathetically helpless. She had been accustomed to lean upon her husband, and now, for lack of firmer support, she leaned upon Winona. Winona was young to act as prop, and though it flattered her sense of importance, it had put a row of wrinkles on her girlish forehead. At fifteen she seemed much older than Percy at sixteen. No one ever dreamt of taking Percy seriously; he was one of those jolly, easy-going, happy-go-lucky, unreliable people who saunter ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... seeking to distinguish definite outlines amid the darkness. My groping feet encountered numerous obstructions along the path—here a pile of loosened earth over which I plunged headlong, or a flat stone dropped by the rotting away of its supporting prop, or some sharp declivity, as though softer earth had yielded to rude implements; yet it became evident from the start that the tunnel level rapidly descended, boring deeper and deeper into the bosom of the earth. Finally, my fingers came into contact with ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... peace, and peaceful song, Look down with gracious eyes; And bless auld Coila, large and long, With multiplying joys: Lang may she stand to prop the land, The flow'r of ancient nations; And B[urns's] spring, her fame to sing, Thro' ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... about? you will ask. Apropos of everything, and of nothing; apropos of the Oudenarde tower, which was falling, and which some wished to pull down, and others to prop up; apropos of the police regulations issued by the council, which some obstinate citizens threatened to resist; apropos of the sweeping of the gutters, repairing the sewers, and so on. Nor did the enraged orators confine themselves to ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... hope himself; he dared not hope. Hope meant a prop to his old age; hope meant joy to Jane, who would welcome the prodigal; hope meant relief to the doctor, who could then claim his own; hope meant redemption for Lucy, a clean name for Archie, and honor to himself ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... reached him from the capital, and nothing would convince him that his wife was not cognizant of her son's doings. The poor Princess clung to her boy as to all that was left her of life, and tried to prop her failing strength with the hope of his speedy return. She was now too helpless to thwart his wishes in any way; but she dreaded, more than death, the terrible SOMETHING which would surely take place between father and son if her conjectures ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... would have understood all his subsequent reasoning. If a child attempts to push any thing heavier than himself, his feet slide away from it, and the object can be moved only at intervals, and by sudden starts; but if he be desired to prop his feet against the wall, he finds it easy to push what before eluded his little strength. Here the use of a fulcrum, or fixed point, by means of which bodies may be moved, is distinctly understood. If two boys lay a board across a narrow block of wood, or stone, and balance each other at the ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... iron chair, so that he can lean his elbows on the little table to prop his head as he sits. He soon recovers, and begins to unbutton his overcoat. Meanwhile Valentine ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... aweer as a fighter you're truly tip-top, Our party's pecooliar pride, and our cause's particular prop! You can "pop in a slommacking wunner," if ever a lad could, dear boy: But—well, there, you ain't scored this round; and yer foes is a-chortling with joy! 'Ow is it, my ARTHUR, 'ow is it! I've ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... Only after a moment he said, "If you take away one prop, old chap, you must provide another. A broken thing can't stand alone. But need we discuss it now? As I told you, she is coming out presently, and this glorious air is bound to make a difference to her. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... no more!—one, one only comfort remains—one friend, one solace in adversity—one ray of light in the dark hour! Amidst universal desertion, RUTH has not forsaken her; but is become her joy in sorrow, her companion in solitude, her prop in decrepit age! Can we wonder that she wishes to discard a name which awakened such recollections, and only recalled the dream of happiness? "Call me not Naomi,—call me Mara; for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Spinoza has left unsolved must have occurred to him. "But some may object that if we understand God to be the cause of all things, we do for that very reason consider Him to be the cause of sorrow. But I reply that in so far as we understand the causes of sorrow, it ceases to be a passion (Prop. 3, pt. 5), that is to say (Prop. 59, pt. 3) it ceases to be a sorrow; and therefore in so far as we understand God to be the cause of sorrow do we rejoice." The third proposition of the fifth part which he quotes ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... the constable shall take my horse, and I will drive; and then I can look after you, and you can use me for a prop, if you feel weak; but before we start, I must insist on your taking a sip of ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... by the law and custom of the country the avenger of his blood. For some time afterwards the war was carried on, the advantage being invariably on the side of David. At length Ishbaal lost the main prop of his tottering cause by remonstrating with Abner for marrying Rizpah, one of Saul's concubines, an alliance which, according to Oriental notions, implied pretensions to the throne (cp. 2 Sam. xvi. 21 sqq.; 1 Kings ii. 21 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... supporting outside prop of the thrust variety. Notably a distinguishing feature of mediaeval ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... creep upon the ground; for those qualities check its rise, and depress it in its ascent, and render it like a weak traveller, that often sits down and then goes on again. And therefore the ivy requires something to twine about, and needs a prop; for it is not able to sustain and direct its own branches, because it wants heat, which naturally tends upward. The snow is melted by the wetness of the leaf, for water destroys it easily, passing through the thin contexture, it being nothing but a congeries of small bubbles; and therefore in very ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the thoughts and aspirations of mankind to cherish. For by the time the adequacy of these theories of knowledge began to be questioned they had made an insistent appeal, and had come to be regarded as an essential prop to lend support to man's conviction of the reality of a life beyond the grave. A web of moral precept and the allurement of hope had been so woven around them that no force was able to strip away this ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... and Norrises; at the Flemings, old Mrs. Fleming, and Louie and Emmeline and Edith, and the disgraceful Maurice, all five of them useless pensioners on his brother's bounty; Maurice a thing of battered, sodden flesh hanging loose on brittle bone, a rickety prop for the irreproachable summer suit bought with Anthony's money. He scowled at the tables covered with fine white linen, and at the costly silver and old china, at the sandwiches and cakes and ices, and the piled-up fruits and the claret cup and champagne cup glowing ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... sitting posture, while Henri placed two pillows behind her to prop her up; and then, with the napkin spread before her and a plate on her knees, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... this soul-supporting truth in his hymn (116, verse 2):-"How can I sink with such a prop, As my eternal God, Who bears the earth's huge pillars up, And spreads ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and contributed to President SOEHARTO's resignation on 21 May 1998. His successor, B.J. HABIBIE, improved cooperation with the IMF. The money supply—which expanded rapidly early in the year to prop up banks hit by deposit runs—was tightened within a few months, and by October, inflation—which reached a 77% annual rate—was significantly dampened. The government also announced a bank recapitalization program in late 1998, but by early 1999 the plan faced growing challenges over its reliance ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... his breath. He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the drill of some raw Kano recruits who had been sent from ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... overburdened by law Ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon it Assurance they give us of the certainty of their drugs At least, if they do no good, they will do no harm At the most, but patch you up, and prop you a little Attribute facility of belief to simplicity and ignorance Attribute to itself; all the happy successes that happen Authority of the number and antiquity of the witnesses Authority to be dissected by the vain fancies of men Authority which a graceful presence and a majestic mien ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... thin, fair young man shakily heaved himself into a hammock under the trees in that broad backyard wherein, as Valentine Corliss had yesterday noticed, the last iron monarch of the herd, with unabated arrogance, had entered domestic service as a clothes-prop. The young man, who was of delicate appearance and unhumanly pale, stretched himself at full length on his back, closed his eyes, moaned feebly, cursed the heat in a stricken whisper. Then, as a locust directly overhead ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... eyes. All the animation and defiance were gone from her face. She was so exhausted that she made no resistance to anything. She let them raise her, prop her up with a pillow, and nearly feed her with the dinner. Then she lay back, ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... recreations. He haunted the old Astor Library and the Metropolitan Museum, learned something about pictures and porcelains, took singing lessons, though he had a voice like a crow's. When he sat down to his baked apple and doughnut in a basement lunch-room, he would prop a book up before him and address his food with as much leisure and ceremony as if he were dining at his club. He held himself at a distance from his fellow-workmen and somehow always managed to impress them with his superiority. He had inordinate vanity, and there are many stories about ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... happened. The dainty roof was crushed in, and the poor little egg, for which such loving preparations had been made, lay pathetically on the ground outside the door. My comrade crept carefully up, raised the tiny roof to place, and with deft fingers put a twig under as a prop to hold it, then gently laid the pretty egg in the ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... spoiling the Strong-Man picture by so everlastingly posing at one end of the grand-piano! You know the way they do it, one pensive elbow on the piano-end and the delicately drooping palm holding up the weary brains, the same as you prop up a King-orange bough when it gets too heavy with fruit! And then he had a lovely bang and a voice like a maiden-lady from Maine. And take it from me, O lord and master, that man devoured all his raw beef and blood on his typewriter-ribbon. I dubbed him the King of the Eye-Socket school, and instead ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... a bed for the child. No, not that way. Upside down. He will not roll off into the hollow, and it is still very warm from the horse's back. Prop it up all around with the stones that you ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... and napkin; change his position sometimes and let him lie on his stomach for awhile. Of course this exercise cannot be taken after a meal and before the fourth month. Take a large clothes basket, put a blanket and some large pillows in it and prop baby up in a half sitting position for a little while each day, beginning with fifteen minutes, then one-half hour, and you can also at this time (fourth month) play with baby for a short time every day, but never just before bedtime, and the best time is just after his morning ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... running, At the tipsy-topsy Tunning Of Mistress Eleanor Rumming! How for poor Philip Sparrow Was murdered at Carow, How our hearts he does harrow Jest and grief mingle In this jangle-jingle, For he will not stop To sweep nor mop, To prune nor prop, To cut each phrase up Like beef when we sup, Nor sip at each line As at brandy-wine, Or port when we dine. But angrily, wittily, Tenderly, prettily, Laughingly, learnedly, Sadly, madly, Helter-skelter John Rhymes serenely on, As English ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... began the speaker, "behold all the tribes of our league assembled!"—and he named them one by one. "We are but a handful; you are the prop and stay of this nation. A thunderbolt has fallen from the sky, and rent a chasm in the earth. We shall fall into it, if you do not support us. Take pity on us. We are here, not so much to speak as to weep over our loss and ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... yeares his White Frands ofered 2 thousen Dollers to Redem him but they would not short three thousen. I am in Canada and it is a Dificult thing to get a letter to any of my Frands in Maryland so as to get prop per infermation abot it—if you can by any means get any in telligence from Baltimore City a bot this Event Plese do so and Rit word and all so all the inform mation that you think prop per as Regards the Evant ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... power, It triumphs in the dying hour; Christ is our life, our joy, our hope, Nor can we sink with such a prop." ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... of the guns, a sudden pause in the firing will cause them intense pain. Something of this feeling was experienced by Rufus Dawes. His faculties of hearing and thinking—both at their highest pitch—seemed to break down. It was as though some prop had been knocked from under him. No longer stimulated by outward sounds, his senses appeared to fail him. The blood rushed into his eyes and ears. He made a violent, vain effort to retain his consciousness, but with ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... and he made the most of them. Indeed, Marishka sat leaning forward looking at him appealingly, aware that after all here was the only prop she had to lean upon in this extremity. She did not speak. The wrong he had done her and Austria was great—unforgivable, but the merit of his service in this situation was unmistakable. Inimical as he might be to the sentiments in her heart, there was no disguising the relief his presence ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... speaking. She heard footsteps. Her father entered. Hugh Tryon had done his task gently, but the old planter, selfish and hard as he was, loved his daughter; and the meeting was bitter for him. The prop of his pride seemed shaken beyond recovery. But the girl's calm comforted them all, and poignancy became dull pain. Before parting for the night Marie said to Hugh: "This is what I wish you to do for me to bring over two of your horses ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... overhearing some tragedy at the other end of the wire, where, in the nature of things, she was unable to arrest it. The gaze she fixed on her extravagant kinsman was of a kind to make him wonder how he contrived to remain, as he beautifully did, rigid. His prop was possibly the reflection that flashed on him that, if she abounded in attenuations, well, hang it all, so did he! It was simply a difference of plane. Readjust the "values," as painters say, and there you were! He was ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... Jope answered cheerily. "You come along o' me to Plymouth an' I'll put you into the very job. A cook's galley, it is, and so narra' that with a wooden leg in dirty weather you can prop yourself tight when she rolls, an' stir the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on the way home, at a shoemaker's, we saw Santa Anna's leg lying on the counter, and observed it with due respect, as the prop of a hero. With this leg, which is fitted with a very handsome boot, he reviews his troops next Sunday, putting his best foot foremost; for generally he merely wears an unadorned wooden leg. The shoemaker, a Spaniard, whom I can recommend to all customers as the most impertinent ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... us, permanently with us. She declares that she intends to be the prop of our declining years; she makes the statement often, and always as if it were humorous. Nevertheless I sometimes notice a spirit of inquiry, a note of investigation in her encounters with the opposite sex that suggests an ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... give way at all it was just now when, for the moment, I was alone. I felt that all my hopes and prospects were dashed; still I could pray, and God was not far off. I was comforted. Man might fail me, but God would not. If anything, it was good to feel every earthly prop give way, and to cling alone to the ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... that when I visited it for the last time just before our removal to Iowa, I, too, was a little ashamed of it. Its disorder did not diminish my regard for the owner, but I wished he would clean out the stable and prop up ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a 'flighty' person who endeavours to 'prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation,' and whose 'mode of dealing with nature' is reprobated as 'utterly dishonourable to natural science.' And all this high and mighty talk, which would ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... his word; My soul each storm defies, while I have such a Lord. I trust his faithfulness and power, To save me in the trying hour. Though rocks and quicksands deep through all my passage lie, Yet Christ shall safely keep and guide me with his eye. How can I sink with such a prop, That bears the ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... daring hands from seizing your crown. To whom—to whose party does your tutor belong? Who are his allies? What authority has he? What services can he do you? What weight do his words carry? Instead of finding a prop to sustain your power, you have cut the ground from under it. The Cardinal de Lorraine is a living threat to you; he plays the king; he keeps his hat on his head before the princes of the blood; it was urgently necessary ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... he, "nothing could be more agreeable to me and your mother than to have a snug cottage near you both, on the very spot which you say I pitched upon two years ago. This cabin that we now live in, after all I have tried to do to prop it up, and notwithstanding all Rose does to keep it neat and clean withinside, is but a crazy sort of a place. We are able now to have a better house, and I shall be glad to be out of the reach of Mr. Hopkins's persecution. Therefore, let ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... catastrophe, which seemed, in the opinion not only of the victors, but of the vanquished, to have given the finishing stroke to the American Revolution, Lee's force, augmented by the junction of the troops marching down to join him, was the sole prop and stay of the cause ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... till the trial comes. And in the weakness consequent on protracted suffering, she had begun to fancy that the loss of Phemy was a punishment upon them for deserting the conventicle. Also the schoolmaster was under an interdict, and that looked like a judgment too! She must find some prop for the faith that was now shaking like a reed in the wind. So to the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... passion; but I was, also, dreadfully afraid of John Hinckman. This gentleman was a good friend of mine, but it would have required a bolder man than I was at that time to ask him for the gift of his niece, who was the head of his household, and, according to his own frequent statement, the main prop of his declining years. Had Madeline acquiesced in my general views on the subject, I might have felt encouraged to open the matter to Mr. Hinckman, but, as I said before, I had never asked her whether or not she would be mine. I thought ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... performers were being relaxed by eternal repetition, and it was now evident that I must trust to my own ability to pull the matter quickly through as I thought best. But it was not the fatigue due to this system that finally made Niemann, the main prop in my work, recoil from the task which at the start he had undertaken with an energy full of promise. He had been informed that there was a conspiracy to ruin my work. From this time forward he was a victim to a despondency to which, in his relations with me, he ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... husband whose life was ebbing away; for the son over whose heart she seemed to have so little control; for herself, soon to be left alone in the world, with only her daughter for her prop and stay. She was not a weak or helpless creature. She had been in her husband's confidence, and had been his helpmeet throughout their married life. She was well able to carry on single-handed the course of action he had pursued through his long rule at Gablehurst; ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... prisoners—five thousand—who cannot do so well, work the mud up into rude bricks, with which they build shelters that wash down at every hard rain. The remaining two thousand five hundred do not do even this, but lie around on the ground, on old blankets and overcoats, and in day-time prop these up on sticks, as shelter from the rain and wind. Let them be given not to exceed a pint of corn meal a day, and a piece of wood about the size of an ordinary stick for a cooking stove to cook it with. Then let such weather ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... by the imagination, are unavoidably sooner exhausted than the sentiments of the heart. Friendship is in general sincere at the commencement, and lasts whilst there is anything to support it; but as a mixture of novelty and vanity is the usual prop, no wonder if it fall with the slender stay. The fop in the play paid a greater compliment than he was aware of when he said to a person, whom he meant to flatter, "I like you almost as well as a new acquaintance." ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... 2. prop. 3 and 6. Dr. Smith, in his Harmonics, has an explanatory note upon this happy discovery, as he terms it, of Newton. Sect. 4. Art. 7. From this curious coincidence, it has been proposed to produce a luminous music, confiding of successions or combinations of colours, analogous to a tune in ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... from this particular prop of knighthood, we find here and there in Italy, for example at Ferrara, orders of courtiers whose members had a right ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... children, all the money I had earned and could earn by my night labor was consumed, till I found myself reduced to five dollars, and this I lost one day in going to the plantation. My light of hope now went out. My prop seemed to have given way from under me. Sunk in the very night of despair respecting my freedom, I discovered myself, as though I had never known it before, a husband, the father of two children, a family looking up to me for bread, and I a slave, penniless, and ...
— The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. • Lunsford Lane
... it," he said, "in the classic woods of Hawthornden, when I did not expect always to have been a bachelorI would not have given it for an ocean of sealsO Hector! Hector!thy namesake was born to be the prop of Troy, and thou to ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... wreak swift vengeance could not be doubted. As soon as the murderous work was over, guides were with difficulty engaged. Having fitted up a sort of prop in which I could tie Hamilton to the saddle, I saw both Father Holland and Eric set out for ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... write for his composition all about a holiday which the boys had had given them, so he gave an account of how he had gone for a long day in the country with his father and his little sister. Of all the sights he saw that day, none delighted him so much as to see a robin perched upon a clothes'-prop in a garden—for this bird always likes a high perch—singing with all his might and "showing all his red." This boy had read about robins at school, and learnt verses about them; but when he actually saw one, and ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... endeavoured to regain the channel of the Old Calabar river, but we found the tide stronger than the wind, and that it had carried us on a mud-flat off little Quay river, which, at about half ebb left the schooner aground, this obliged us to get some spars out, to prop her up on each side. At which time we were in the following situation: West point of Old Calabar river, W. by S. Fish Town point N. by W. 1/2 W. and the entrance of little Quay river N.N.E. At 5 in the afternoon we got the ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... highway, groping in darkness, pleading for help? "Jesus stood still, and had compassion on them, and touched their eyes!" Was it the speechless pleadings of a widow's tears at the gate of Nain, when she followed her earthly pride and prop to the grave? "When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said, Weep not!" Even when He rebukes, the bow of compassion is seen in the cloud, or rather, that cloud, as it passes, dissolves in a rain-shower of mercy. He ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... I did notice them, seeing that I had to prop him up—me and Murcher between us. He was a long chap, with a red face, the lower part ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... being composed of two compound derived shadows, forms a compound shadow and not a simple one, as happens with other intersections of compound shadows. This occurs, according to the 2nd [diagram] of this [prop.] which says:—The intersection of derived shadows when produced by the intersection of columnar shadows caused by a single light does not produce a simple shadow. And this is the corollary of the 1st [prop.] which says:—The intersection of simple ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... into the car and laid him back on the cushions; the boys rolled up the rugs, and their coats to prop him up. Again he ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... but that, under the blessing of the Most High, those countries would amply repay the undertaking, and that you would end by obtaining the sovereignty of at least Palestine. That the present attempt to prop up the Turkish Empire as at present constituted is a miserable failure, we who see what is going on around us must at once acknowledge. What turn events will take no one can possibly tell, but of this I am perfectly certain ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... oxen, we drove on after our companions. We had not gone a mile, when the shoeing of one of the wheels—that had shrunk from the extreme dryness of the atmosphere— rolled off; and the felloes came very near flying asunder. We were luckily able to prevent this, by suddenly stopping, and setting a prop under the body of the wagon. This, as you may perceive, was a much more serious accident than the breaking of the tongue; and at first I thought of galloping forward, and asking some of our companions to come back to my ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... to a deeper dejection. Not only had she lost Franklin; she had lost herself. She embarked on the dangerous and often demoralising search for a definite, recognisable personality—something to lean on with security, a standard and a prop. With growing dismay she could find only a sorry little group of shivering hopes and shaken adages. What was she? Only a well-educated nonentity with, for all coherence and purpose in life, a knowledge of ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... Maitland house, was a huddle of wooden tenements. Some of them were built on piles, and seemed to stand on stilts, holding their draggled skirts out of the mud of their untidy yards: some sagged on rotting sills, leaning shoulder to shoulder as if to prop one another up. From each front door a shaky flight of steps ran down to the unpaved sidewalk, where pigs and children and hens, and the daily tramp of feet to and from the Maitland Works, had beaten the earth into a hard, black surface—or a soft, black surface, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... called Tories and who, in the condition of things then prevalent, could scarcely even be termed Loyalists. Writing in 1812, Charles Knight, the historian, described the fierce national struggle of the previous twenty years with Napoleon and expressed a longing wish for the prop of a sincere and spontaneous loyalty to the throne in the critical times that were to follow. But such a sentiment of loyalty was not then expressed, and could hardly have been publicly evoked by a ruler of the type of George IV., whether governing ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... fold, The stay that saves the ship, of lofty roof {870} Main column-prop, a father's only child, Land that beyond all hope the sailor sees, Morn of great brightness following after storm, Clear-flowing fount to ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... Hod made a clicking sound in his throat. Zani put one hand quickly in her pocket and opened her eyes. They had been closed. The book was a prop ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... ax had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery tips; Step and prop iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, 5 Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thorough-brace, bison skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through." 10 "There!" said ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... little one: no, not like that; upside-down, so he won't roll out; and it's still warm from the mare's back. Prop it up on each side with those stones you ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... more permanently fixed. The derrick, or upright spar used for carrying the tackle to raise the first beam, was placed in such a position as to become useful for supporting the upper end of it, which now became, in its turn, the prop of the tackle for raising the second beam. The whole difficulty of this operation was in the raising and propping of the first beam, which became a convenient derrick for raising the second, these again a pair of shears for lifting the third, and the shears a triangle for raising ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wrath on the head of the devoted George, saying things to him which he should not have said. But his retainer took it all in the day's work, and never bore malice, continuing in his own cadging pigheaded sort of way to labour early and late to prop up his master's broken fortunes. "Lord, sir," as he once said to Harold Quaritch when the Colonel condoled with him after a violent and unjust onslaught made by the Squire in his presence, "Lord, sir, that ain't nawthing, that ain't. I don't pay no manner of heed to that. Folk du say how ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... except the remark in a note that "the objections which have been urged against this narrative are not serious." [135:1] They have been considered so by men like Keim, Schuerer, Lipsius, and Holtzmann. The account has too much need to be propped up itself to be of much use as a prop for the Gospels. Dr. Lightfoot points out that an "idea of literal conformity to the life and Passion of Christ runs through the document," [135:2] and it is chiefly on the fact that "most of the incidents have their counterparts in the circumstances of the Passion, as ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... fell upon the pear-tree, and even in his preoccupation he was struck with the signs of its extraordinary age. Twisted out of all proportion, and knotted with excrescences, it was supported by iron bands and heavy stakes, as if to prop up its senile decay. He tried to interest himself in the various initials and symbols deeply carved in bark, now swollen and half obliterated. As he turned back to the summer-house, he for the first time noticed that the ground rose behind ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... last frail prop had been knocked from under her precarious foothold in the faith and favour of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... be worn in the street; but what I object to is that the height should be given to the heel only, and not to the sole of the foot also. The modern high-heeled boot is, in fact, merely the clog of the time of Henry VI., with the front prop left out, and its inevitable effect is to throw the body forward, to shorten the steps, and consequently to produce that want of grace which ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... same way as I took yer that night, Master Nic, and then work your way up for a hour or so, and all under they tree-ferns you'll find pools and pools with lots o' fish in 'em; but I don't know how you're going to get on with that long thin clothes-prop of a thing. But, there, you're a gen'leman, and I s'pose you ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... "if my Lord Protector were the only prop of the Gospel, it had fallen long ago. The prop of the Gospel is not my Lord or thy Lord, but the Lord of the whole earth. His strength is ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... they'd do badly without him," muttered Joshua. "He's the very prop and pillar of the place, is Peter; if a wall's strong enough to hold the roof up, you don't ask if it's made ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... literature: there is no more wholesome course for the mind. Not that I hold the literary productions of the ancients to be irreproachable; but I think that they have some especial merits, admirably calculated to counterbalance our peculiar defects. They are a prop on the side on which we are in most danger ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Orientalism, the corner-stone is frequently referred to as the appropriate symbol of a chief or prince who is the defence and bulwark of his people, and more particularly in Scripture, as denoting that promised Messiah who was to be the sure prop and support of all who should put their trust in his ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... offers with indignation; and the gold that could seduce a man high in the esteem and confidence of his country, who had the remembrance of his past exploits, the motives of present reputation and future glory to prop his integrity, had no charms for three simple peasants, leaning only on their virtue, and ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... one," said Richard, lifting the heavy cross-piece into its place and fastening it with a wooden pin. "Now I must go and prop up ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "Just you prop yourself up in the corner an' rest a while," advised the Texan, with forced cheerfulness, "I can handle it all right, now." Wearily, the girl obeyed. At the bow and stern of the square-ended boat, the bottom curved upward so that the water was not more than six or eight inches deep ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Luka. We must make ourselves comfortable, for this storm may last for days for anything I know. We must prop this end of the boat up so that we can sit upright under it with something to spare. We must pile up some stones a couple of feet high under each gunwale." In a quarter of an hour this was done. The sail was then laid over ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... it was Dutchy! I know the Dutch come from Holland. I know something, if I am a poor, ignorant old 'oman, fallen from my high estate. And I know as I am descended from the Duke of England, and nobody shall take that prop from underneath of me! It has supported me in many a ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... with any mind so unstable, so utterly destitute of tone, so incapable of independent thought and earnest preference, so ready to take impressions and so ready to lose them. He resembled those creepers which must lean on something, and which, as soon as their prop is removed, fall down in utter helplessness. He could no more stand up, erect and self-supported, in any cause, than the ivy can rear itself like the oak, or the wild vine shoot to heaven like the cedar of Lebanon. It is barely possible that, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hours the child sang, acted, and danced in the suffocating stable, lighted by two petroleum lamps. The next day I saw Mignon sitting on one of the shafts of the caravan and gnawing the 'drumstick' of a fowl. The child-actress was the prop of her mother and the donkey; her talent also kept the youth, who began to agitate the nerves of Beynac with his diabolical ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... for the Huguenots flew to arms, and Guise was murdered, Mary losing thus her principal prop abroad. And Lethington now pushed vigorously what seemed to be Scotland's only chance of safety—the marriage of Mary with the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... how my theme doth rise; Nor wonder, therefore, if more artfully I prop the structure. Nearer now we drew, Arrived whence, in that part where first a breach As of a wall appeared. I could descry A portal, and three steps beneath, that led For inlet there, of different color each; And one who watched, but ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... about; Pleas'd with the Treatment I did find, I took my leave of Oast so kind; Who to oblige me, did provide, His eldest son to be my Guide, And lent me Horses of his own, A skittish Colt, and aged Rhoan, The four-leg'd prop of his Wife Joan: Steering our Barks in Trot or Pace, We sail'd directly for a place In Mary-Land, of high renown, Known by the Name of Battle-Town. To view the Crowds did there resort, Which Justice made, and Law their sport, ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... of consequences, his brother Dominick arose and endeavoured to prop the weak part of the structure with an additional piece ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... death before she could get back to him. Instantly, as she said that, she knew that she did not believe that he was dead! She knew that she had hope. With hope, a single thought possessed her. She must take him down the mountain.... But how? She could not carry him;—she had managed to prop him up against her knee, his blond head lolling forward, awfully, on his breast—but she knew that to carry him would be impossible. And Lion was not there! "I couldn't have harnessed him if he ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Center, which is not much of a center, Miss Dawes alighted from the buggy and entered a building bearing a sign with the words "Metropolitan Variety Store, Joshua Atwood, Prop'r, Groceries, Coal, Dry Goods, Insurance, Boots and Shoes, Garden Seeds, etc." A smaller sign beneath this was lettered "Justice of the Peace," and one ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was never quite ready for sleep. Then, as ever, he would prop himself up in bed, light his pipe, and lose himself in English or French history until sleep conquered. His room-mate did not approve of this habit; it interfered with his own rest, and with his fiendish tendency to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... (Philander) was about eight, a gang of boys were playing about an old, tumbled-down building, and somehow knocked out the prop holding up its remains. Three others were hurt, Philander got that cut-scar, and his ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... looked for the welfare of the Spanish monarchy in the maintenance of peace, especially with England. The scheme of the marriage was part of the system of powerful alliances by which it was sought to prop the greatness of Spain. Even the uncertain rumour of this scheme, which was instantly propagated, sufficed to agitate the Protestant party in Europe and in England itself. The King declared that he moved only with leaden foot towards the proposal which had been made to him; and that, if it were seen ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... sun says his prayers," said the fairy, Or else he would wither and die. "The sun says his prayers," said the fairy, "For strength to climb up through the sky. He leans on invisible angels, And Faith is his prop and his rod. The sky is his crystal cathedral. And dawn ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... I could be considered foolish— Today I am not going to the restaurant. I am after all this time weary of the waiters, Who scornfully bring us, with their smug grimaces, Dark beer and make us so confused That we cannot find our home And we must Use the foolish street lights To prop ourselves up with weak hands. Today I have bigger things in mind— Ah, I shall find out the meaning of existence. And in the evening I shall do some roller skating Or go at some ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... was therein among his officers and prayed for Kanmakan's return, that he might draw his heart to him with fair usage and bounty and make him commander of those troops that remained faithful to him, hoping thus to prop his [falling] power. The news of this reached Kanmakan by the merchants; so he returned in haste to Baghdad, riding on the aforesaid stallion, and the news of his coming reached King Sasan, as he sat perplexed upon his throne; whereupon he despatched all the troops and head-men of Baghdad to meet ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume II • Anonymous
... wronged, but perhaps he knew that I could not be killed; perhaps he had tried and found that he was but throwing spears at the moon which fell back on his own head. I forget. It is so long ago, and what does it matter? At least I took away from him the prop of my wisdom, and he fell—to rise no more. And so it has been with others. So it has been with others. Yet while he was great I knew his heart who lived in his heart, and therefore I ask myself, had he been sitting where the ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... heels of the two foremost were fitted in a pair of bits in the deck, through which ran a piece of horizontal timber, on which they worked; so that they could be raised or depressed at pleasure. The after pole was shorter than the others, and served as a prop to them. When the pirates intend to board an enemy, they allow this mast to fall over the bows, and it serves them as a ladder to climb on to her decks. They were steered in a curious way, by two broad-bladed oars running through the counter at either quarter. A broad platform extended ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... Empress herself grown weary of contending any longer in a cause where she had met with nothing but misfortunes of her own procuring, left the kingdom likewise, and retired to her husband. Nor was this the only good fortune that befell Stephen; for before the year ended, the main prop and pillar of his enemies was taken away by death; this was Robert Earl of Gloucester, than whom there have been few private persons known in the world that deserve a fairer place and character in the registers of time, for his inviolable ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... teown prop'ty somewhars, and they own all the Neck here, and lays areound on her through the summer. Why, Note's father—he 's dead neow—he and I uster stand deown on the mud flats when we was boys, a-diggin' clarms tergether, ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... hands, and that it depended, not on that prompt action which was the one course I had contemplated, but on twenty-four hours of resolute inactivity! I would not think it. I refused the condition. It took away my one prop, my one stay, that prospect of immediate measures which alone preserved in me such coolness as I had retained until now. I was cool no longer; where I had relied on practical direction I was baffled and hindered ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... rings in largesse, When the fights' red rain-drips fell, Bright of face, with heart-strings hardy, Hogni's father met his fate; Then his brow with helmet shrouding, Bearing battle-shield, he spake, 'I will die the prop of battle, Sooner die than yield an inch, Yes, sooner die than ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... antiquities and rare marble fragments, in a spacious room surrounded with laden shelves, Romola was his daily companion and assistant. There was a time when he had hoped that his son, Dino, would have followed in his steps, to be the prop of his age, and to take up and continue his scholarly labours after he was dead. But Dino had failed him; Dino had given himself up to religion and entered the priesthood, and the passion of Bardo's resentment had flamed into fierce hatred towards this recreant son of his, and none dared so much ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... big lights jarred finally off and the director said, "That's all, boys." Then he turned to call, "Jimmie! Hey, Jimmie! Where's that prop-rustler gone to now?" ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... submerged tenth of the Cabbage Patch. The submersion was mainly one of dirt and disorder, but Miss Hazy was such a meek, inefficient little body that the Cabbage Patch withheld its blame and patiently tried to furnish a prop for the clinging vine. Miss Hazy, it is true, had Chris; but Chris was unstable, not only because he had lost one leg, but also because he was the wildest, noisiest, most thoughtless youngster that ever shied a rock at a lamp-post. Miss Hazy had "raised" Chris, ...
— Lovey Mary • Alice Hegan Rice
... tarry, lodge, remain, continue, abide; support, prop, buttress, brace, uphold, strengthen; delay, obstruct, hinder, restrain, appease, withhold, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... failing merchant, and makes money by it. Tom Slink, who used to smoke Short Sixes and get acquainted with the little circus boys, is popularly supposed to be the proprietor of a cheap gaming establishment in Boston, where the beautiful but uncertain prop is nightly tossed. Be sure the Army is represented by many of the friends of my youth, the most of whom have given a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... promise—a promise now known to the whole city, and which he must in self-defence now speak openly of, he foresaw the speedy downfall of the kingdom. Who, he asked, will subject themselves to be deceived in an endeavour to prop it up by the removal of those who were living on its heart's blood, or be made liars by reporting promises never to be fulfilled?" ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... instead of compulsion; that real nationality is a psychological state, a tribute of sympathy, a voluntary service to which the mind is drawn by affection. To some who lightly praised the idea, treating it as an admirable prop to war, the consequences and application will bring dismay. For here you have the pivot of a social revolution such as the world has never yet seen. It cannot only remain a question of Belgium, or Serbia, or Alsace-Lorraine. It will inevitably be retrospective ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... word bloodee was thus described: "A kind of cudgel worn, or rather borne, by the bloods of a certain college in New England, 2 feet 5 inches in length, and 1-7/8 inch in diameter, with a huge piece of lead at one end, emblematical of its owner. A pretty prop ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... is this, Pamela—you the solace of all our misfortunes, the prop of our old age, ...
— Pamela Giraud • Honore de Balzac
... imagination, are unavoidably sooner exhausted than the sentiments of the heart. Friendship is in general sincere at the commencement, and lasts whilst there is anything to support it; but as a mixture of novelty and vanity is the usual prop, no wonder if it fall with the slender stay. The fop in the play paid a greater compliment than he was aware of when he said to a person, whom he meant to flatter, "I like you almost as well as a new acquaintance." Why am I talking ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... services as well as punish injuries. The story of Rhoecus proves this. Rhoecus, happening to see an oak just ready to fall, ordered his servants to prop it up. The nymph, who had been on the point of perishing with the tree, came and expressed her gratitude to him for having saved her life, and bade him ask what reward he would have for it. Rhoecus boldly asked her love, and the nymph yielded ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... awakened curiosity. This agreement was an unexpected prop for him. "You, too, think it a perfect likeness?" he asked her. Her old blue eyes, old in the antique tranquillity of their regard, yet still of such a vivid, unfaded turquoise, turned on him and again he had that impression ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... rapidly, as the moment of adventure approached, that he actually contemplated the desperate effort of going round the river, in order to escape the hazard of crossing it. It may not be necessary to dwell on the incredible ingenuity, with which terror will at any time prop a tottering argument. The worthy Obed had gone over the whole subject, with commendable diligence, and had just arrived at the consoling conclusion, that there was nearly as much glory in discerning the hidden sources of so considerable a stream, as in adding a plant, ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... repetition, and it was now evident that I must trust to my own ability to pull the matter quickly through as I thought best. But it was not the fatigue due to this system that finally made Niemann, the main prop in my work, recoil from the task which at the start he had undertaken with an energy full of promise. He had been informed that there was a conspiracy to ruin my work. From this time forward he was a victim to a despondency to which, ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... imply strength, but in a less degree, so much only as is sufficient to preserve what has been already communicated, rather than acquire any new degree; as if it were derived from the Latin sto; for example, stand, stay, that is, to remain, or to prop; staff, stay, that is, to oppose; stop, to stuff, stifle, to stay, that is, to stop; a stay, that is, an obstacle; stick, stut, stutter, stammer, stagger, stickle, stick, stake, a sharp, pale, and any thing deposited ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... PROP. 1. Throughout the paper he confounds together what I had distinguished, namely, the city of Gadara and the vicinage attached to it, not as a mere pomoerium, but as ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... the mine still bear on their rocky walls the marks made by the pick of the workman who toiled to excavate them. The space between each prop in the underground galleries might be marked as a miner's grave; and who can tell what each of these graves has cost, in tears, in privations, in unspeakable wretchedness to the family who depended on the scanty wage of the ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... pronounce the whole apparatus of the State rotten from top to bottom, and only kept from falling to pieces by all sorts of ingenious contrivances of an external and temporary nature,—here a wheel, or pivot, or spring to be replaced,—there a prop or buttress to be set up,—here a pipe choked up,—there a boiler burst,—and so on, from one end of the works to the other. However, the machine keeps a-going, and many persons ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... They were obliged to help to push round the wheels of the heavy vehicle, and to support it frequently in dangerous declivities, to unhar-ness the bullocks when the team could not go well round sharp turnings, prop up the wagon when it threatened to roll back, and more than once Ayrton had to reinforce his bullocks by harnessing the horses, although they were tired out already ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... unhappy. It was an alleviation that her mother was more of an invalid, so that some of the responsibilities of the household devolved on her, and her mother leaned on her a little. She was certainly not the prop of the house, or the lodestar to which they all turned for guidance, none of the satisfactory things women are called in poetry, but she was not such an odd-man-out as ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... spade. I couldn't stop fer a lantern, Besides, the moonlight was bright enough in all conscience. Then I scooped that awful thing up in th' spade. I had a sight o' trouble doin' it. It slid off, and tipped over, and I couldn't bear Ev'n to touch it with my foot to prop it, But I done it somehow. Then I carried it off be'ind the barn, Clost to an old apple-tree Where you couldn't see from the house, An' I ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... as her companion thus unwittingly revealed a strong phase of her character. She saw that her tendency was to lean upon the nearest prop; and, as to be "forewarned is to be forearmed," she ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... the savages. While this clashing of one object against another could not be called the beginning of music, and while it could not be said to originate a musical instrument, it did, nevertheless, bring into existence music's greatest prop, rhythm, an ally without which music would seem to be impossible. It is hardly necessary to go into this point in detail. Suffice it to say that the sense of rhythm is highly developed even among those savage tribes which ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... these staves henceforth to prop Thy roaming to and fro. Take thine own way! Since thou hast chosen to thwart thy nearest kin,— Beneath whose orders, though a royal man, I act herein,—and thine own native land. The time will surely come when thou shalt ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... and drew aside. The pony dashed off in the direction of the Pombo and, as I passed close to him, a man named Nerba (private secretary of the Tokchim Tarjum), knelt down, and, taking aim with his matchlock resting on its prop, deliberately fired a ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... window. "We have already secured a new trial, and the next time it will surely go in our favor. That is the history of nearly all such cases. Be strong just a little while longer. You have been our prop, and now you must not let ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... again seated there. We can afford to bide our time, and assuredly it will not be long before a party is formed against Warwick. Until then we must bear everything. Our interests are the same. If he is content to remain a prop to the throne, and not to eclipse it, the memory of the past will not stand between us, and I shall regard him as the weapon that has beaten down the House of York and restored us to our own, and shall give him my confidence and friendship. If, on ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... left Leipzig; he could not put his finger on a single person remaining with whom he had had a nearer acquaintance. No one was left to comment on what he did and how he lived. And this knowledge withdrew the last prop from his sense of propriety. He ceased to face the trouble that care for his person implied, just as he gave up raising the lid of the piano and making a needless pretence of work. Openly now, he took up ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... During the last weeks of her illness, when her wandering mind went back to the hills of her girlhood, her imagination played continually around this mimic mountain of Steve's, and as it seemed to be the one joy of her prairie-spent life, he would carry her out on the porch in good weather and prop her up so that she could sit and look at it. Jonas Hicks, becoming interested, took a hand in the work; he kept on making contributions as long as the resources of the country held out. Here was one reason that there was not a sole ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... has put an end to this unnatural rivalry. And my poor girl, undeceived in her opinion of you, longs to see you, and to give you that hand which your ill-fated brother and infatuated father so unjustly detained from you. You are now my only son, the only prop of my house, the only comfort of my old age! My son, do not abandon to his remorse ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... son, he whose birth made all my happiness, whose infancy and growing years were all my occupation, whose youth was my pride and consolation, and who would, as I hoped, be the prop of my old age, no longer lives. He has been taken from us in the midst of completed happiness, and of the happiest prospects of the future, whilst each day he gained in virtue, in understanding, in wisdom, following the footsteps of his noble and excellent father. He was more than a son ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... now faded from her bosom. Up to this time she had entertained a feeble expectation that her husband might be kept away from some other cause than the one she so dreaded; but now that prop became only as a broken reed, to pierce her with ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... syringe in each teat, filling them well with air, and repeat this treatment every hour until the cow stops staggering, or if lying down, stands on her feet. It is necessary to strip the milk from the bag before giving an injection of air. If the cow is lying flat on her side, prop her up by placing bags of hay or straw against her side, also make her as comfortable as possible. If lying in the hot sun, provide shade by placing a canopy over her made from burlap; if the weather is chilly, blanket; if flies annoy her, use ...
— The Veterinarian • Chas. J. Korinek
... but the man who was to enjoy it is gone from enjoyment, shrivelled with care, every appetite dried up. So learning devastates the scholar, is another plague of wealth, and our goodness turns out to be a hasty mistake. Is order disorder, then? Are we fools of fate? Is there only power enough to prop up this rickety old system, to keep it running and hold our noses to the grindstone? No man believes it: the madness of Time ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... me, Rose, give it me!" exclaimed Mrs. Myles, "it is from my own darling child, bless her!—my beauty! Oh, deary me! I'm sure that's a beautiful seal, if I could only see it; prop me up—there. How the jessamine blinds the window—now my spectacles—so"—She tried hard to read, but the power of sight was gone. "She used to write the best hand in the school, but this fashionable writing ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... descendants, white. The learned world, seeing the difficulties of the position, and the weakness of their foundation for such a tremendous superstructure as they were rearing on this supposed curse of Ham, by his father, undertake to prop it up by saying that Ham's name means black in Hebrew; and, as the negro is black, therefore it is that the name and the curse together made the negro, such as we now have on earth. And, although the Bible nowhere says, and nowhere ...
— The Negro: what is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed. • Buckner H. 'Ariel' Payne
... bolstered up all their lives are seldom good for anything in a crisis. When misfortune comes, they look around for somebody to lean upon. It the prop is not there, down they go. Once down, they are as helpless as capsized turtles, or unhorsed men in armor. Many a frontier boy has succeeded beyond all his expectations simply because all props were early knocked out from under him and he was ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... seized with remorse at the sight of this dreadful catastrophe, and cried out in a loud voice, 'Unhappy wretch that I am! What have I done? Like a madman I have killed the woman who is the prop and stay of my old age. How could I ever go on living without her?' Then he seized a pipe, and when he had blown into it for some time Nina sprang up alive ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... field full of hidden seed, which must inevitably spring up wheat or tares—a bountiful harvest of good or a terrific growth of evil. He made reading and writing compulsory to the whole of his people. With a stroke of the pen he threw aside the last prop to despotic rule. Yet he hoped to continue Czar of All the Russias. This tall, pale, gentle, determined man was a man of courage. When the time came he faced the consequence of his own ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... tender age of four years, having no brothers or sisters to prop me round with young affections and sympathies, I fell into three pairs of hands, excellent in their way, but peculiar. Patience, Eunice, and Mary Ann Pettibone were my aunts on my father's side. All my mother's relations kept shady when the lonely orphan looked about for protection; but Patience ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... Reason of man, perilous Reformation Reforms, suggested to princes Relics Rent-charges Repentance Roman Catholic doctrine Requiems Reservatio culpae poenae Reserved cases Resolutiones super prop. XIII. Rest, bodily spiritual Reuchlin Riches not sin Rietschl Right hand and left band Righteous man defined Rock, a type of Christ does not signify authority Roman Church See ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... to control inflation, but it also caused high interest rates and led to operating losses for the bank. Early in 1998, it relaxed its monetary policy in an effort to correct these problems, but increased pressure on the quetzal has prompted the bank to intervene to prop up its value. ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... things all gone wrong because of the few hours of His absence. What would they do if He were to go away from them altogether? They would never be able to stand it at all. It is impossible that He should leave them thus—raw, immature. The plant has not yet grown sufficiently strong to take away the prop round which it climbed. 'How long must I be with you?' says the loving Teacher, who is prepared ungrudgingly to give His slow scholars as much time as they need to learn their lesson. He is not impatient, but He desires to finish the task; and yet He is ready to let the scholars' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... "melancholici qui laudat vitam incultem et agrestem" (iv Prop., 35, note), that men can provide for their needs better by society than by solitude, hardly meets the higher criticism of the State. Yet it anticipates Fichte's retort to Rousseau. Spinoza, if this were written circa 1665, has in view, perhaps, the Trappists, then reorganized ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... did not hesitate to thrust a book into my hands, saying, "Give that to that fellow over there, will you?" while another of them exclaimed as he pushed past me, "By your leave, young fellow!" and a third made use of my shoulder as a prop when he wanted to scramble over a desk. All this seemed to me a little rough and unpleasant, for I looked upon myself as immensely superior to such fellows, and considered that they ought not to treat me with such familiarity. At ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... radiant human image, gone for ever. The son, to whom her heart now clung, was stern. She was alone. Every prop, every symbol of the divine love had been taken from her. But, so bereft, it was not, after the long pause of wonder, in weakness and abandonment that she stood still in the darkness and closed ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... They may mean to be straight enough, but before they knows where they are, nature's took hold of them, and there they are.... But even supposin' that 'asn't happened, I don't know as I'm much better off. That girl was the very prop of my business; she's gone, never to return, accordin' to her own account. As to this marryin' business, that may seem to you, Archdeacon, to improve things, but I'm not so sure that it does after all. You may be all very 'igh ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... the Weasel into the car and laid him back on the cushions; the boys rolled up the rugs, and their coats to prop him up. Again he opened ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... one prop's taken away, and then another; and after a bit the roof'll fall in, and make an ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... all that their purpose is right. The comprehension of my teachings would enable any one to prove these books to be filled with blessings for the whole human family. Fatiguing Bible translations and voluminous commentaries are employed to explain and prop old creeds, and they have the civil and religious arms in their defense; then why should not these be equally extended to support the Christianity that heals the sick? The notions of personality to be found in creeds ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy
... maid behind her back was fetching from the clothes-prop a waterglobe upon its stand; she set it down on the table before the rush-light, moving on tiptoe, for to her the writing of a letter was a sort of necromancy, and she was distressed for Katharine's sake. She had heard that to write at night would make a woman blind before thirty. The ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... been led tottering into the adjacent parlor, which was fitted up as his bedroom, and placed comfortably on a high prop of pillows, Marcus drew out his watch, made an amiable pretence of very important business down town, and bade his venerable ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... part, and they ought to take part, with the mother: she is the injured party; the shame brought upon her attaches, in part, to them: they feel the injustice done them; and, if such a man, when the grey hairs, and tottering knees, and piping voice come, look round him in vain for a prop, let him, at last, be just, and acknowledge that he has now the due reward of his own wanton cruelty to one whom he had solemnly sworn to love and to cherish to the last hour of his or ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... to be shaken by the fall of the present tyranny in Peru, of which there are not only indications, but their result is inevitable; unless, indeed, the mischievous counsels of vain and mercenary men can suffice to prop up a fabric of the most barbarous political architecture, serving as a screen from whence to dart their weapons against the heart of liberty. Thank God, my hands are free from the stain of labouring in any such work, and, having finished all which you gave me to do, I may now rest ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... as enough; but Willoughby now had chosen a poor hour for his acknowledgment, when he linked it to the tidings of his ruin. All that day she kept to her bed, her mind absorbed with the catastrophe that had swept out from under her the unsolid prop of her arrogant money pride. For, again, without ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... somewhere or other, before your life is ended, the poor frail craft will strike on some black rock rising sheer from the depths, and will grind itself to chips there. If your life twines round any prop but God your strength, be sure that, some time or other, the stay to which its tendrils cling will be plucked up, and the poor vine will be lacerated, its clusters crushed, and its sap will bleed out ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... up," he said. "We found all snail marks an' we was tryin' to clean up. We was tryin' to help. You said so last night, you know, when you was talkin' to me. You said to help. Well, I thought it was helpin' to try an' clean up. You can't clean up with water an' not get wet—not if you do it prop'ly. You said to try an' make Christmas Day happy for other folks and then I'd be happy. Well, I don't know as I'm very happy," he said, bitterly, "but I've been workin' hard enough since early this ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... poor, men mutter, but they seldom fight. O holy Alha! that I live to see Thy Granadines assist their enemy! You fight the christians' battles; every life You lavish thus, in this intestine strife, Does from our weak foundations take one prop, Which helped to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... agitated in every direction, were liable to mislead— amidst appearances sometimes dubious—vicissitudes of fortune often discouraging—in situations in which not unfrequently want of success has countenanced the spirit of criticism—the constancy of your support was the essential prop of the efforts and a guarantee of the plans by which they were effected. Profoundly penetrated with this idea, I shall carry it with me to my grave, as a strong incitement to unceasing wishes, that Heaven ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... wood under the board, near the front edge. Resting on the floor and wedged under this cleat there is a prop of planed wood, slender and neat looking. You can put a beading around the board, with small brads and stain it cherry ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... a Hebrew term for faith, which it defines as a firm prop or support, a foundation that abides. It pictures to us faith, not as emotion or credulity, nor the mere belief in, or acceptance of, some formulated creed; but as that clear assurance of what the present will produce or what the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... badly without him," muttered Joshua. "He's the very prop and pillar of the place, is Peter; if a wall's strong enough to hold the roof up, you don't ask if it's made of marble ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... he places stone on stone; He scatters seed: you are at once the prop Among the long roots of his fragile crop. You manufacture for him, and insure House, harvest, implement and furniture, And hold ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... name and am called the chief of a tribe, and many live on me. But I am poor, and this daughter of mine is worth much. Such a woman few men have bred. Well, I must make the best of her. My son-in-law must be one who will prop up my old age, one to whom, in my need or trouble, I could always go as to a dry log,[*] to break off some of its bark to make a fire to comfort me, not one who treads me into the mire as the buffalo did to Macumazahn. Now I have spoken, and I do not love such talk. ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... the laugh with which the narrator rewarded his own effort, and David went on: "Yes, sir, they jest petered out. Old Billy, Billy P.'s father, inheritid all the prop'ty—never done a stroke of work in his life. He had a collidge education, went to Europe, an' all that', an' before he was fifty year old he hardly ever come near the old place after he was growed up. The land was all farmed out on shares, an' his farmers mostly bamboozled him the hull time. He ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... the editor of a small magazine. He came to board with Mary's mother because of the quiet neighborhood. He was rather handsome in a dark slender fashion. He had the instincts of a poet, and he was not in the least practical. He needed a prop to lean on, and Mary ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... the men of Ireland, their prop in the middle of the fight; you were the head of every battle; your ways ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... say: and cold I will be, while a poor sister's destitute. My heart bleeds for her! and till I see her sorrows moderated, love has no joys for me. Lew. Can I be less a friend by being a brother? I would not say an unkind thing; but the pillar of your house is shaken. Prop it with another, and it shall stand firm again. You ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore
... into a savage again. He has come to depend upon science for his sustenance, and when he himself has destroyed the means of employing that science, he is as a babe without milk. And it is not necessary to destroy all men in order to exterminate mankind; one need only take from him the prop of ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz
... apply thereto the oracles of divine scripture to them, defaming the scriptures, and affirming their fragments to consist of them, blaspheme the word of God by their wrested suppositions of words, syllables, letters and numbers; endeavouring to prop up their villainous inventions, by arguments drawn from ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... my poor lamb! I hate to harrify your heart. The Doctor comforted her all he could, and tole her bizness of importance had done kept you South. Miss Ellie axed how long she could live; he said only a few hours. She begged him to prop her up, so she could write a few words. He says he held the paper for her, and she wrote a little, and rested; and then she wrote a little mere and fell back speechless. He pat the piece of paper in a invellop and sealed it, and axed her if she wished ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... reeling, and ready to fall at the least touch; also the childish amusement of riding upon the two ends of a plank, poised upon the prop underneath its centre, called also see-saw. Perhaps tatter is a ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... frequented the Elysee, but without giving his adherence. He promised his support to General Bedeau, who counted upon him. At daybreak on the 2d of December some one came to waken X. It was Edgar Ney. X. was a prop for the coup d'etat, but would he consent? Edgar Ney explained the affair to him, and left him only after seeing him leave the barracks of the Rue Verte at the head of the first regiment. X. took up his position at the Place de la Madeleine. As he arrived there La Rochejaquelein, thrust ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... badly missed him and found out, for the first time, what an all-round, valuable creature he has become at 'The Seven Stars.' When he was along with his dying relation, I missed the man a thousand times in every twelve hours and I felt properly astonished to find how he was the prop and stay of my business. That may seem too much to say, seeing I'm a fairly clever woman and know how to run 'The Seven Stars' in a pretty prosperous way; but there is no doubt Legg is very much more than what he seems. He's a very human man and I'll go so far as to say this: I like him. There's ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... themselves that the swelling lessens during the night, and from this usually learn that the proper treatment is rest. When it is absolutely impossible to remain in bed long enough for the swelling to disappear, the next best plan is to accept every opportunity, during the day, to sit down and prop up the feet. ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... "Then we'll prop the canvas up to let air inside the tent, and then you'll drive me to the Hotel Pleasant as fast as you ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... them, so he gave an account of how he had gone for a long day in the country with his father and his little sister. Of all the sights he saw that day, none delighted him so much as to see a robin perched upon a clothes'-prop in a garden—for this bird always likes a high perch—singing with all his might and "showing all his red." This boy had read about robins at school, and learnt verses about them; but when he actually saw one, and heard it sing, he ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... this affectionate and touching sorrow, he had solemnly confided her to his son Sampson as an invaluable auxiliary; and from the old gentleman's decease to the period of which we treat, Miss Sally Brass had been the prop and pillar of ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... main prop of an agricultural country such as Russia principally is, the peasant population, is pauperized, starving and is being driven under the banners of the Red Armies by lash and rifle. The numerically small ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... from the spurious deviltries of the Rothenburger Krug and the Staffelstein, with their "property" students, cheeks scarred with red ink, singing "Heidelberg" (from "The Prince of Pilsen") for the edification and impression of foreign visitors, and fiercely and frequently challenging other prop. students to immediate duel. The girls, alas, in these places are not unlovely. Well do I remember the dainty Elsa of the Hopfenbluethe, she of face kissed by the Prussian dawn, and employed at sixteen marks the week to wink dramatically ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... however, the prestige of his name, and the influence of his example, was expected to do much towards reviving the drooping fortunes of the Association. Nor was the anticipation illusory. From the day on which O'Brien became a Repealer, down to the date of the secession, the strongest prop of the Conciliation Hall was his presence and support; he failed indeed to counteract the corrupt influences that gnawed at the vitals of the Association and ultimately destroyed it; but while he remained within its ranks, the redeeming influence of his genius, his patriotism, ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... humility, and craved merely a species of scaffolding to buttress up one of the walls of the old manse. The heritors marvelled a little at the strange request, but, glad of being saved from the cost of a new building, authorised the buying of some sturdy joists to prop up a wall that the minister averred was off the plumb. No sooner was the buttressing timber in position than Mr. Rogers appeared with a violent complaint in the Sheriff Court, declaring that the manse was like to fall about ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... deliberation. The object he had in view was, in the words of Mr. Fox, "not to pull down, but to work upon our constitution; to examine it with care and reverence; to repair it where decayed; to amend it where defective; to prop it where it wanted support; and to adapt it to the purposes of the present time, as our ancestors had done from generation to generation, and always transmitted it not only unimpaired, but improved, to posterity." The measure was supported by Mr. Hobhouse, and opposed by Messrs. Dennison and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... his offers with indignation; and the gold that could seduce a man high in the esteem and confidence of his country, who had the remembrance of his past exploits, the motives of present reputation and future glory to prop his integrity, had no charms for three simple peasants, leaning only on their virtue, and a sense ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... the most glowing language, the domestic happiness which he enjoyed in his native isle. He would paint, in harrowing sentences, the eternal misery and disgrace which his ignominious execution would entail upon the grey-headed father, who looked up to him as a prop for his old age; the affectionate mother, who perceived in him her husband again a youth; the devoted wife, who could never survive his loss; and the sixteen children, chiefly girls, whom his death would infallibly send upon the parish. This, with an eulogistic ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... administered by a plurality of persons, the whole power and authority belonging to it was, on particular occasions, committed to one; and upon great alarms, when the political fabric was shaken or endangered, a monarchical power has been applied, like a prop, to secure the state against the rage of the tempest. Thus were the dictators occasionally named at Rome, and the stadtholders in the United Provinces; and thus, in mixed governments, the royal prerogative is occasionally enlarged, by the temporary suspension of laws, [Footnote: ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... that peace to me? I (by the honour of my marriage bed) After yong Arthur, claime this Land for mine, And now it is halfe conquer'd, must I backe, Because that Iohn hath made his peace with Rome? Am I Romes slaue? What penny hath Rome borne? What men prouided? What munition sent To vnder-prop this Action? Is't not I That vnder-goe this charge? Who else but I, And such as to my claime are liable, Sweat in this businesse, and maintaine this warre? Haue I not heard these Islanders shout out Viue le Roy, as I haue bank'd their Townes? Haue I not heere the best ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... hardly dared to look at him until after they were on the steamer. He was really very gentle with her, he tried his best to make her comfortable, he did not refer at all to the events of the night before as he wrapped a steamer rug about her and helped the whining-voiced stewardess to prop a ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... 'Ever bless you, Mas'r Davy, be a friend to him, poor dear!' Then, she immediately ran out of the house to wash her face, in order that she might sit quietly beside him, and be found at work there, when he should awake. In short I left her, when I went away at night, the prop and staff of Mr. Peggotty's affliction; and I could not meditate enough upon the lesson that I read in Mrs. Gummidge, and the new experience she unfolded ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... have it constantly kept before the public, that we do not seek to prop up woman; we only ask for her space to let her grow. Governments are not made; they grow. They are not buildings like this, with dome and pillars; they are oaks, with roots and branches, and they grow, by God's blessing, in the soil He gives to them. Now man has been allowed to grow, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... finds that this and the other little prop has been added, where possibility allowed. Civil-list and Privy-purse were from of old well cared for. King's Constitutional Guard, Eighteen hundred loyal men from the Eighty-three Departments, under a loyal Duke de ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... performance, honour that As won, which aye love worketh at! It is but as the pedigree Of perfectness which is to be That our best good can honour claim; Yet honour to deny were shame And robbery: for it is the mould Wherein to beauty runs the gold Of good intention, and the prop That lifts to the sun the earth-drawn crop Of human sensibilities. Such honour, with a conduct wise In common things, as, not to steep The lofty mind of love in sleep Of over much familiarness; Not to degrade its kind caress, As those do that can feel no more, So give themselves to pleasures o'er; ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... liquid fire at her questioner? Shade looked sidewise sometimes at his companion as he asked the news of their mutual friends, and she answered. Yet when he got, along with her mild responses, one of those glances, he was himself strangely subdued by it, and fain to prop his leaning prejudices by contrasting her scant print gown, her slat sunbonnet, and cowhide shoes with the apparel of the humblest in the village which ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... nothing for her?" As much to prop an opinion of human nature that was already too low for comfort as in Andrea's interest, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... I replied. "He might prop a little, certainly; but it's only playfulness." So I swung into the deep seat of the stolen saddle, and lightly touched the lotus-loving ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... once again second thoughts showed him that he was as far away from that desired end as ever. He had been trying to find accomplices in the murder of Coburn, and by a curious perversity, instead of finding them he had bit by bit solved the mystery of the Pit-Prop Syndicate. He had shown, firstly, that they were smuggling brandy, and, secondly, how they were doing it. For that he would no doubt get a reward, but such was not his aim. What he wanted was to complete his own case and get the approval of his own superiors and bring promotion nearer. And ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... deeply, then drew off a small, worn, gold ring which had lost its "set," and laid it in the man's hand, saying, "That's all the prop'ty I've got except eight hens which I gave Gail for those I poisoned. It had a ruby in it once, but the old rooster picked it out and et it. I used to have two bunnies, too, but last Christmas the German kids ate Winkum and Blinkum ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
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