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More "Unsteady" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... again, but the needle flashed like a thread of lightning in her unsteady fingers. She could not ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... the evening of the third day succeeding Isabel's visit, and while she and Avice were seated in the banquet-hall with the Governor and his family, the scene lit up by blazing pine torches, a single earthen lamp threw a dull and unsteady light over the silent bedchamber of the royal prisoner. The little Alianora was asleep in her cradle, and on the bed lay her mother, not asleep, but as still and silent as though she were. Near the cradle, on a settle, sat Maude Lyngern, trying ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... once she had to stop, to wait till her voice was less unsteady, but she went on to the very end—even to that strange burial in the waters. When all was told, there was a silence in the room; Father Paul had wet eyes, unseen in the dusk, and he did not care to speak; Lucia, whose ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... shelves are two, three, or four deep. But this is a mistake. The artificial heat required to maintain a temperature of 55 deg. in midwinter in a house built high above ground would be too parching and unsteady for the good of the mushrooms; besides, a second shelf is inconvenient enough, and when it comes to a third or a fourth the inconvenience would be too great, and overreach any advantage hoped for in economy of space. An unheated mushroom house must be regarded as a shed, and treated ...
— Mushrooms: how to grow them - a practical treatise on mushroom culture for profit and pleasure • William Falconer
... life. Enclosed in this letter were bills of a large amount, contracted at college, of whose existence the father was perfectly unconscious. No reference was made to these, save in the postscript, most incoherent in expression, and written evidently with an unsteady hand. He begged his father to forgive him for having forgotten—the word forgotten was partially erased, and neglected substituted in its place—ah! Louis, Louis, you should have said feared to present to ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... were folded up, and put away, owing to the house being unoccupied. So was the counterpane. Tommy Brock was covered with a blanket only.) Mr. Tod standing on the unsteady chair looked down upon him attentively; he really was a first ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... two; but then went on with his roundelay. In his countenance there was not the slightest appearance of ill humour. One of his sisters put him upon a board which was lying on the floor, and which was a little unsteady; as he walked cautiously along this board, his attention was occupied, and ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... apologized; his own tray was ready. He took that in his free hand. He gently pulled her tray from her unsteady grasp. "I'll carry it to ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... susceptible of such impressions. These effects the Quakers consider as particularly frightful, when they fall upon this sex. For an affectation of knowledge, or a forwardness of character, seems to be much more disgusting among women than among men. It may be observed also, that an unsteady or romantic spirit or a wonder-loving or flighty imagination, can never qualify a woman for domestic duties, or make her a sedate and prudent wife. Nor can a relaxed morality qualify her for the discharge of her duty as a parent in the ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... generally in a profuse perspiration. William turned us round, and made us slip out of bed upon our feet; then slightly loosing the lower part of our cerements so that we could walk with difficulty, he took us by the shoulders and guided our unsteady steps out of our chamber, along a little passage, into an apartment containing a plunge bath. The bath was about twelve feet square; its floor and sides covered with white encaustic tiles; the water, clear as crystal against that light background, was five ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... pain, and trembling with fear, lifts the cup and hurries away to perform her errand. She drops it twice from her unsteady hands ere she is able to convey it, filled with water, to her parent, who takes it with such a threatening look from his eyes, that the child shrinks away from him, and goes ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... man pointed to the translation with unsteady finger. "W-what on earth does that mean?" he demanded shakily. "Who is Edith Inwood? W-what on earth does that cryptogram mean on the window pane in the photograph? How did it come there? It isn't on ...
— The Tracer of Lost Persons • Robert W. Chambers
... Mrs. King saw it all, and how he had been weeping where her child had so long rested. Indeed, his face was swelled with crying, and his voice all unsteady. ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... calculated to arouse him had he been indeed dreaming. His first thought was that she had gone crazy, or else had been drinking wine to raise her spirits; for there was a flush of excitement on either cheek, and her eyes were bright and unsteady. In one hand she held, with a clasp that crumpled the leaves, a small scientific magazine, which he recognized as having been one of a bundle of periodicals that he had sent her. With her other hand, instead of taking the hand which ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... carry her in his arms; but trembling and unsteady, he had not strength to sustain her; yet not enduring to behold the helplessness he could not assist, he conjured them to be careful and gentle, and, committing her to their trust, ran out himself ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... an azalea-leaf towards her, "let us see—whom shall we have? The Fireflies, of course; everybody wants them, they are so brilliant,—a little unsteady, to be sure, but ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... simply great. There are four lights in Mr. Scalper's room. Mild, balmy weather with prospects of an earthquake, which may be held in check by walking with extreme caution. Two Chinamen have just passed—mandarins, I presume. Their walk was unsteady, but their faces so ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... With rather an unsteady gait he left the apartment, and, under the guidance of two lovely, blushing, tittering damsels, sought the nuptial chamber. At the door of that sacred retreat, his fair guides left him. He entered—and the black-hearted ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... king himself, with a flushed countenance and a very unsteady step, appeared on the stage. It was glaringly evident to all who were not in the same condition themselves, that the King of Judah was altogether incompetent for that important branch of business which, in despite of the kind remonstrances of his personal friends, ...
— The Young Captives - A Story of Judah and Babylon • Erasmus W. Jones
... time or school has outlived its usefulness; and morality, because it is hard or tiresome, must give way to the freedom and romance of no morality. Such blind and irresponsible agitation is a perpetual menace to the balance of impressionable and unsteady minds, if not indeed to ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... the door open and the gambler, burly and unsteady on his legs, almost fell in. He was in evening dress, his collar and tie rumpled, his hair unkempt. His face was flushed, his eyes bloodshot. Reeling in, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... tumult of shrieks from all these people, a silent frightened mortal, into some profound retreat as in the age of Cavern men. Suddenly everybody got up, and he hastened to rise too, finding himself out of breath and quite unsteady ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... thing that I remember— The narrow house in the long narrow street, Dark rooms within and darkness out of doors Where grasses in the garden lift in the wind, Long grasses clinging round unsteady feet. The sunlight through one narrow passage pours, As through the keyhole into a dusty room, Striking with a golden rod the greening gloom. The tall, tall timber-stacks have yet been kind, Letting the sun fling his rod clear between, Lest there should be no gold upon ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... But I knew only too well; she wouldn't desert her champion. It was probably too late now. Blenheim, much congested as to countenance, seemed on the point of springing; his battered aids were struggling up in menacing, if unsteady, fashion; and Mr. Schwartzmann, at length provided with the light he wanted, was aiming at me with ominous deliberation from his coign ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... He shall take from all their beauty and enjoy their glory. Hence it is that a flower is to me so much more than stalk and petals. When I look in the glass I see that every line in my face means pessimism; but in spite of my face—that is my experience—I remain an optimist. Time with an unsteady hand has etched thin crooked lines, and, deepening the hollows, has cast the original expression into shadow. Pain and sorrow flow over us with little ceasing, as the sea-hoofs beat on the beach. Let us not look at ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... moment, and then requested that after we took our places the audience should preserve absolute silence, and refrain from even the slightest movement until the feat was over. The merest trifle might distract the attention of the performers and render their eyes and hold unsteady, he said. He left the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... boot came down with a thump that made everything ring. There was a titter from some of the clerks. Mr. Ludolph, who was following his daughter, exclaimed, "What's the matter, Fleet? You seem rather unsteady, this morning, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the girl, rising quickly and turning to the door. "I am afraid he—" Just then the young ruffian entered. His red face and unsteady walk showed that he had ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... little sitting-room where Courtier took his meals. The rest of the house was but stone-floored bar with a long wooden bench against the back wall, whence nightly a stream of talk would issue, all harsh a's, and sudden soft u's; whence too a figure, a little unsteady, would now and again emerge, to a chorus of 'Gude naights,' stand still under the ash-trees to light his pipe, then ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... one blue and one yellow feather. He was the Hishtanyi Chayan, the principal medicine-man of the tribe. Next to him was the Shkuy Chayan, or great shaman for the hunt, equally tall, slender, and with a thin face and quick, unsteady glance. The third, or Shikama Chayan, was an individual of ordinary looks and coarse features, who was decorated by a single upright feather. The leaders of the societies of the Koshare and Cuirana had squatted among the central group, while a projection that ran around ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... when they were all three together, Marianne began voluntarily to speak of him again; but that it was not without an effort, the restless, unquiet thoughtfulness in which she had been for some time previously sitting, her rising colour, as she spoke, and her unsteady voice, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... have it," and immediately gave it him. But this is, perhaps with reason enough, assigned more to caprice than conscience; for he was under the power of every humour and passion that possessed him for the present; which made him obstinate in his resolves, and unsteady ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... under the fragile and unsteady roof of his oiled hood, while the water poured down its shining slopes, and holding his empty mess-tin out for the rain to clean it, Volpatte snarled, "I'm not daft—not a bit of it—and I know very well there've got to be these individuals at the rear. Let ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... hand in the hand of Marius, to his almost surprised joy, winning him now to an absolutely self-forgetful devotion. There was a new sort of pleading in the misty eyes, just because they took such unsteady note of him, which made Marius feel as if guilty; anticipating thus a form of self-reproach with which even the tenderest ministrant may be sometimes surprised, when, at death, affectionate labour suddenly ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... and placed in more advantageous situations. The enemy's army was both more numerous, and composed of very superior men; for they were Macedonians, Thracians, and Illyrians,—all nations of the fiercest spirit; your present opponents are Syrians, and Asiatic Greeks, the most unsteady of men, and born for slavery. The commander, there, was a king of extraordinary warlike abilities, improved by practice from his early youth, in wars against his neighbours, the Thracians and Illyrians, and ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... you let your lamp dance about too much to find it useful. Your footstep is unsteady, and but now the stairs creaked heavily beneath you. You must proceed with more caution, or we shall be overheard. These are sleepless times, and this youth, who appears to trouble you more than man ever troubled you before, may be just as much awake as ourselves. If you are ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... spoke in his sternest tones, and Mr. Peveril bowed. Robert Grame had listened in surprise. He wondered what it all meant—for nobody had ever told him of this phase of the past. The table clapped its unsteady hands and gave a cheer for the chimes, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... an easy matter to come to close quarters, nor had they missive weapons with which to fight at a distance,) when there was nothing now to protect them whilst standing and exposed to the blows, some even giving way, and the whole line wavering and unsteady the spearmen and the first rank, renewing the shout, rush on them with drawn swords. This attack the Etrurians could not withstand, but, facing about, fled precipitately towards their camp; when the Roman cavalry, getting before them by galloping obliquely across the plain, ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... against its recurrence, especially as the obstacles which had confronted him nearly two years back were now more hope-baffling than ever. For the intervening months had not brought the desirable "thrifle more wit" to his unsteady brother Thady, who, on the contrary, was developing into one of those people whose good-for-nothingness is taken as a matter of course even by themselves; and a bolt was thus, so to speak, drawn ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... none at our house," whined the sun-bonnet, droopingly, moving off slowly on its legs, which, indeed, seemed borrowed, so unsteady, and loath to go ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... after a while he got up and walked down to the edge of the brook with all the dignity that unsteady legs permitted. ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... firing from the Isham store, he was struck by a ball and badly wounded. He walked slowly across the alley and sat down on a pile of stones, but like his brother Grattan, he kept his rifle going, though mortally shot. He fired once at Kloehr, but was unsteady and missed him. Rising to his feet he walked a few paces and leaned against the corner of a barn, firing two more shots. He was then killed by Kloehr, who shot him ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... watched our compasses carefully, and perceived that they were affected at the distance of three hundred yards, both on the approach to and departure from the rock: on decreasing the distance, they became gradually more and more unsteady, and on landing they were rendered quite useless; and it was evident that the general magnetic influence was totally overpowered by the local attraction of the ore. When Kater's compass was held near to the ground on the ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... from uptown came in with her husband and two other men. A good-looking lad, much flushed and a little unsteady, stopped by her chair. ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... and worked. The hour soon glided by to him; not so to the poor prisoner. At two in the morning Mr. Eden came softly back to the dark cell to see whether Robinson was asleep. He scratched the door with a key. A loud, unsteady voice ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... distress you, Miss Crown?" he inquired anxiously. His voice was husky and a trifle unsteady. "Can't you tell ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... unbounded. "All the world" came to see. Roziers was again lifted up in the balloon, to the height of eighty feet; but so strong was the wind, and the strain on the ropes was so great, that the balloon was somewhat unsteady, and the exhibition was not on the whole such a splendid success as that of the ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... unsteady glances, for each was somewhat the worse for liquor. "There ain't no woman here," answered ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... long would the course of the raft converge toward that of the stranger. He was concerned, however, to notice later on that not only was the weather thickening overhead, necessitating a frequent changing of the star by which he was following his course, but also that the wind was becoming unsteady; sometimes falling away to such an extent as to cause the raft's sail to flap heavily as she rolled over the ridges of the swell, and anon breezing up quite fresh again, but with a change of perhaps a couple of points ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... be supposed that a journal supported in the manner above described would be unsteady and liable to injurious vibrations. This is not the case, and it is easy to see why not. When the journal is truly in the middle of the socket, that is to say when there is an equal distance between it and the wall of the socket on ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... I could stand. I flung the door open, and, dirty, dishevelled, with unsteady steps, advanced ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... as you will, but never use a whip; else, whenever you raise your gun to fire, he will feel a dread that it may be the whip, and will be unsteady. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... noon sun. The long procession ended at last in a straggling group of old peasants with fine tremulous mouths, a-tremble with pride and with feeling; for here they were walking in full sight of their town, in their holiday coats, with their knees treacherously unsteady from the thrill of the organ's thunder and the sweetness of the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... is too weighty For shoulders of eighty— She could not sustain such a trophy: Her hand, too, already Has grown so unsteady, She can't hold a sceptre: So Providence kept her Away—poor ...
— The Maidens' Lodge - None of Self and All of Thee, (In the Reign of Queen Anne) • Emily Sarah Holt
... the pillion as I had done hundreds of times before, but she did not see me. Instead, I was almost pushed away by the rush of Sir John and young Butler to her side, both eager to assist. It was the knight, flushed and a little unsteady with wine, who won the privilege, and held Daisy's foot. I climbed into my saddle moodily, getting offence out of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... hand was unsteady, held out his season card of admission to the Casino. "I suppose you know who I ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... months, and I know it will be a hard struggle for mother to go; but in a little while she will be glad she went. It's only for her sake I am doing it; it ain't an easy or a pleasant thing for me to do, either——" As Tilly stopped her voice was unsteady, and the rare tears shone in ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... older man looked down at the wine-soiled cloth, traced the outline of the crimson stain with unsteady ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... passing through the two lands of my country, for my heart wished to look upon what I had made, when I was bitten by a serpent which I did not see; behold, is it fire? Behold, is it water? I am colder than water, I am hotter than fire, all my members sweat, I myself quake, mine eye is unsteady. I cannot look at the heavens, and water forceth itself on my face as in the time of the Inundation."[FN70] And Isis said unto Ra, "O my divine father, tell me thy name, for he who is able to pronounce his name liveth." [And Ra said], "I am the maker ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... homes,—the aged, the helpless, the women, and the warriors, "few and faint, yet fearless still." The ashes are cold on their native hearths. The smoke no longed curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or dispatch; but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers They shed no tears; they utter no cries; they heave ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... and in spite of the unsteady position of the topmost Goats, and the uncomfortable shaking of the lower ones, the wooden bars were at length sawn through, and the glass carefully gathered together by the Lieutenant ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... I could only get one!" said Charley, looking up eagerly at the screaming birds, at which he had been staring so long, in their varying and crossing flight, that his sight had become hopelessly unsteady. ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... mountains, and) following the course of their range. The way was difficult and rugged, (running along) a bank exceedingly precipitous, which rose up there, a hill-like wall of rock, 10,000 cubits from the base. When one approaches the edge of it, his eyes become unsteady; and if he wished to go forward in the same direction, there was no place on which he could place his foot; and beneath where the waters of the river called the Indus.(1) In former times men had chiselled ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... story that she never noticed how the time was flying. Instead of bringing sleep to her eyes, it seemed to drive it farther and farther away. The candle burned lower and lower, but she never noticed it, and read on by its unsteady light until she heard the hall clock strike four. The candle was flickering in its socket, and the June dawn was beginning to streak the sky. Her eyes smarted and burned, and ached with a ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... few moments, gazing on the fires, and on the extraordinary effect which the light produced upon the objects around. It was a singular scene. Flashing and crackling flames rose high from the heaps which were on fire, and shed a strong but unsteady light on the trees, the ground, and the banks of the brook, and penetrated deep into the forest on every side. Rollo called upon James and Lucy to look at his father and mother, who were across the brook; they stood there under the trees, almost invisible before, ...
— Rollo at Play - Safe Amusements • Jacob Abbott
... which cannot challenge the world's attention—like that of John Sterling—which perhaps does not even modestly solicit it, yet one which no less certainly will be found to reward the critic of literary history and pathology. A complex, weak, unsteady life enough, and no one did more than Boswell himself to bring into glaring prominence the faults that lie on the surface, by that frank, open, and ostentatious peculiarity which he avowed, and which he compared ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... in a slow, unsteady line. Molo led. Behind Snap and me came the girls, ignoring us; and at the rear, the brown-shelled ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... of water held out to him; and, leaning his arms on the table, rested his forehead on one hand and tried to collect his thoughts. The colonel sat watching him keenly, noting with experienced eyes the unsteady hands and lips, the hair dripping with water, the dim gaze that told of physical prostration ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... doubtless, of tobacco and stimulants. Verily, Ouida knows what she is writing about when she invariably adds "essences" to the toilet of her dissipated men. Evadne would wake with a start in the gray of the dawn sometimes, and hearing Colonel Colquhoun pass her door with unsteady step on his way to his own room, would shudder to think what his wife must have suffered. And it was not as if the sacrifice of herself would have made any difference to him either. If she could have done any good in that way she might have tried; but his habits were ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... money if possible, and to send more or less loving greetings to their sweethearts. Numberless young clerks grew pale; numberless mothers knit strong stockings through their tears, and providently made lint for their poor sons; numberless fathers spoke with an unsteady voice of the duty of fighting for king and country, and braced themselves up by remembering the damage they had in their day done ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... and we'll catch the first train back. Mrs. Bawdrey, my best respects. Captain, all good luck to you," said Cleek—and swung out into the darkness and the moist, warm fragrance of the night; his mental poise a bit unsteady, his nerves raw. It was not in him to have stopped longer, to have remained under the same roof with a monster like young Bawdrey and keep his temper ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... adroitly twisted the subject of lightning into a compliment. As the dinner drew to a somewhat loud conclusion, Copplestone's face grew flushed, and his hands unsteady. The manager's voice and stories thickened, and the thoughts of the Russian danseuse became fixed on Aberdeen. Tranter and Monsieur Dupont were abstemious guests. But the Frenchman seemed to be enjoying ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... and pointed with a very unsteady forefinger to the purse which Anne still held in ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... in a moment: a little scuffle at the bar opposite, as a heavy, fair-bearded man disengaged himself from the crowd about him, a little flutter of interest as he made an unsteady way across the waxed floor, a little smothered scream from the girl as he lurched up to the table and paused, gazing at her with ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Jous," Christina had said to her groom; and when the Dutch envoy, Van Beunigen, came out to join the hunting-party, too much flattered by the invitation to remember that he was a poor horseman, Jous, the groom, held black Hannibal in unsteady check, while the big horse champed and fretted, and the hunting-party awaited ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... about thirty years old. Dr. Benda was being shown a number of successful casts of a figure entitled "The Fountain of Virtue." It was quite a little while before the caster turned to Daniel and asked him what he wanted. In a somewhat rude voice and with an unsteady gesture, Daniel made it clear to him that he wished to buy the mask. The caster removed it from the door, laid it on the counter, and named his price. He looked at the shabby clothing of the newly arrived customer, concluded ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... rolls and writhes along the shadowy air, Taking a thousand strange, fantastic forms; And every form is lit with burning eyes, Which pierce me through and through like fiery arrows! The dim walls grow unsteady, and I seem To stand upon a reeling deck! Hold, hold! A hundred crags are toppling overhead. I faint, I sink—now, let me clutch that limb— Oh, devil! It breaks to ashes in my grasp! What ghost is that which beckons ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Breslau, but only in quest of ducats and divorce: the latter of which Maimon conceded after a legal rigmarole. But he took no advantage of his freedom. A home of his own he never possessed, save an occasional garret where he worked at an unsteady table—one leg usually supported by a folio volume—surrounded by the cats and dogs whom he had taken to solacing himself with. And even if lodged in a nobleman's palace, his surroundings were no cleaner. In Amsterdam he drove the Dutch to despair: even ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... at Her Majesty, now. She returned them stare for stare, her back stiff and straight and her white hair enhaloed in the room's light. "Sir Kenneth," she said—and her voice was only the least bit unsteady—"they all think ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... extremes? Rather do we learn that the spirits of all go thither, not only of the faithful and of the wicked, but of the wavering and uncertain also, of those who were weak and fell, of those who, with unsteady and tottering steps, sometimes rising, often falling, now obeying, now rebelling, now believing, now doubting, now walking in the light, now plunged in darkness, at one time treading firmly the ground of the narrow ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... please, and would not suit me. I had consented to take a man's name and part; as to his dress—halte la! No. I would keep my own dress, come what might. M. Paul might storm, might rage: I would keep my own dress. I said so, with a voice as resolute in intent, as it was low, and perhaps unsteady in utterance. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... it possible that they might have enjoyed a nearer relation had Victoria lived," said Ransom Vane in an unsteady voice. ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... was driven into the leathery, pulpy body of the monster, but with no other effect than the sudden snapping of the inch line like thread. It was subsequent to this that, as the diver stayed his steps in the unsteady current, his staff was seized below. The water was murky with the river-silt above the salt brine, and he could see nothing, but after an effort the staff was rescued or released. Curious to know what it was, he probed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... and beautiful. We had now been confined thirty-six days in a narrow boat, so unsteady that it would have been overset by any person rising imprudently from his seat, without warning the rowers. We had suffered severely from the sting of insects, but we had withstood the insalubrity of the climate; we had passed ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... surgeons have we here, Again to heal us ready; With God's help, then, be of good cheer, The Pagans grow unsteady: Let not thy courage sink before A foe already flying; Revenge itself shall give thee more, And hearten it, if dying. Drom, Drari, Drom, Kyrie eleison! Strike, thrust,—for we Must victors be; Let none fall out, Keep order stout; Close to my side, Comrade, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... dawn, the party was about to disperse; and at the moment a ragpicker, with a gray beard, was wandering up and down before the restaurant, raking with his hook in the refuse that awaited the public sweepers. In closing his purse, with an unsteady hand, Camors let fall a shining louis d'or, which rolled into the mud on the sidewalk. The ragpicker looked ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... tell master about the dream I had. It was last night. I thought I was standing out in the yard and saw a giant coming across the hraun. He walked with long, unsteady strides (she takes a few steps forward; her voice sounds distant and threatening), and seemed to grope as if he were blind. Then I saw him standing right by the house— with arms stretched out; he bent down over the farm and stood there like a stone ...
— Modern Icelandic Plays - Eyvind of the Hills; The Hraun Farm • Jhann Sigurjnsson
... these things than the world doth, because the Spirit hath revealed them unto you. It is true that your minds are yet much darkened in their apprehension of spiritual things, they are not so willing to receive them, nor so ready to retain them as you desire, they are very unsettled and unsteady in the meditations of spiritual things, and there are innumerable thoughts of other things that pass through your hearts like common inns, uncontrolled at their pleasure; all this is true, but I am sure it is the grief of your souls that your hearts are not ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... stop Injin when him go wigwam," commenced Ronayne, rising at the same time and imitating the action of one unsteady from intoxication. ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... the door at the bottom of the staircase giving on the yard, and they stood in the sunlight, looking at the scrawl of the two unsteady childish hands two or three steps up the staircase. There was something in this simple memento of a blighted childhood, and in the tenderness of Mrs Boffin, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... last, slowly, loving it, and in our thoughts we still possess it. As it dropped astern I pulled in my oars and stood up to take its picture—no easy task, with the boat mounting and plunging among the swells. But I have my picture, its horizon line at a noticeable slant, reminiscent of my unsteady balance. It means little to other people, but to us it means the sweetness of sunshine and wind and water, the sweetness of grass and bird-notes, all breathed over by the spirit ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... witnessed a Manbo dance at night by the flare of fire and torch will not forget the scene. Squatted around in the semidarkness are the russet figures of the merry, primitive spectators, lit up by the flickering glare of the unsteady light, the children usually naked, and the men having frequently bared the upper parts of their bodies. In the center circles the dancer with his wealth of ornaments, advancing, retreating, and posturing. The drum booms, the gong clangs, and the dancer pounds the floor in rhythm. ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... voice that to the listening mountaineer seemed inexpressibly sweet and caressing, in spite of the determination which made it a bit unsteady. Still no answer. The silence was ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... her full right in his feelings, and found comfort in return; but, as Goethe said of him, gifted but unsteady as he was, 'He did not know how to restrain himself, and so his life ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... other, smiling bitterly—"unhappy indeed; for they are the same as my own. I rest a little upon omens and prefigurations; and am superstitious; as those must ever be who have lived upon the sea, and have risked their all upon the faith of its unsteady waves. It will mortify you (my young friend) to confess, (but it is true) that much as storm, sun, passion, and hardships, may have tanned and disfeatured my face, nevertheless it is still like thy gentle woman's face, with its fair complexion ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... over the colonel, and finally got the man on his feet. His position was so unsteady, however, that he had to support him with one hand while he dusted off ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... Behind his unsteady steps pranced and yelled the doctors with more prodigious a noise than ever before as they scourged the King's legs and arms with cords of fibre. Through the listening village panted the King. As he gasped slowly up the hill the thrashing was redoubled. But ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... moment Jenny was silent,—for one moment the world seemed unsteady beneath her,—then she stood up, and, taking the hand of her lover between her palms, gazed into his face with one long, earnest, steadfast gaze. "You have asked me already, Hobert," she said, "a thousand times, and I have consented as often. You may go away, but you will not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... you're not going blind," said the oculist kindly. "All you need is"—I heard nothing more. I had never had any idea before of how swift and deep relief could be. On the street outside I heard it not only in his unsteady laugh but in my own as well. We celebrated long that night, and very late he took me to his favorite place down on the lower quay of the river, where with the lights and the sounds of the city far off it felt like some old ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... alarmingly. The incoming rollers at times swept her along with a rush, and Yeo had his hands full. Her bowsprit yawned, rose and fell hurriedly, the Judy's unsteady dexter pointing in nervous excitement at what was ahead of her. But Yeo held her to it, though those heavy following seas so demoralized the Judy that it was clear it was all Yeo could do to keep her ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... remonstrated the deacon, waving his hands in the air. "Raise not your voices in harsh words and brawling. I don't think any one tripped you, Eben. I've noticed myself that the ground is rather unsteady. I think we're feeling a few left-over tremors from the ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... described him as closely as possible. They took some time in the conversation. "He ought to be in the company of officers of the Bodyguard," added he. The beggar by that time was becoming unsteady with rapid libations. ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... hones' man, a man, the man you knew, himself, could you—would you—" He was trying to speak firmly; yet, as he gazed upon her splendid beauty, he choked slightly, and fumbled in the lace at his throat with unsteady fingers.—"Would you—have let me ride by your side in the autumn moonlight?" Her glance passed by him as it might have passed by a footman or a piece of furniture. He was dressed magnificently, a multitude of orders glittering on his breast. ...
— Monsieur Beaucaire • Booth Tarkington
... blood in his veins, he was a Senator of Poland, he might even become a king. His dearest hopes were in Stanislaus, his second son. Paul, the eldest, was wild and unsteady. And though there were two other sons and a daughter, none gave such promise as Stanislaus. So that the Lord John looked chiefly to him to carry on the great name and make it more glorious ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... Willie's letter before we left the parlor, with a significant word and smile, and was piqued to see that she did not blush,—in fact, became excessively white as she glanced at the writing, and with an unsteady hand put it into her pocket. After lunch she made no motion to look at it, and as I had my own reasons for desiring her to peruse it, I said, 'Miss Francesca, will you not read your letter? that I may know if there is any later news from ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... 1519 an (p. 151) anonymous Frenchman wrote that Francis had destroyed his own people, emptied his kingdom of money, and that the Emperor or some other would soon have a cheap bargain of the kingdom, for he was more unsteady on his throne than people thought.[420] Even the treason of Bourbon, which contributed so much to the French King's fall, was rumoured three years before it occurred, and in 1520 he was known to be "playing the malcontent".[421] At the Field ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... appear to hear him. Attempting to balance himself by his arms, with a slow and unsteady step he began to make his way along the ...
— False Friends, and The Sailor's Resolve • Unknown
... train himself to make use of his limbs, first by swinging his arms and legs, second by creeping, third by walking. Note a child feeding itself, how unsteady he is in getting his food to his mouth; sometimes his spoon misses his mouth and the food is spilled, for which he usually receives a slap, although he has displayed all his energy in getting his ...
— ABC's of Science • Charles Oliver
... two long, heavy guns each. These gun-vessels had no quarters, and suffered under all the other disadvantages which make a merchant vessel inferior to a regularly constructed man-of-war. The chief trouble was that in a heavy sea they had a strong tendency to capsize, and were so unsteady that the guns could not be aimed when any wind was blowing. Now, if a few of these schooners, mounting long 32's, encountered a couple of man-of-war brigs, armed with carronades, which side was ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the man on his feet, and guided his steps to the road. As he walked along, the inebriate, whose gait was at first unsteady, recovered his ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... presumptuous, but I can give the year and date of starting, arrival, and delivery of over one hundred herds of cattle which I drove over the trail as a common hand, foreman, or owner. Yet the warnings of years—the unsteady step, easily embarrassed, love of home and dread of leaving it—bid me hasten these memoirs. Even my old wounds act as a barometer in foretelling the coming of storms, as well as the change of season, from both of which I am comfortably sheltered. But as I look into the inquiring eyes ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... but unsteady step she makes her way to the little graveyard; she had gone there often, and there were those who said wantonly that she went to say her prayers before the little cross upon the tombstone she had placed over the grave of Madame Arles. Now she threw herself prone upon the little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... a bird of about the same size as the little blue, but with an air of daintiness and lightness that is quite its own, and quite indescribable. When it rose upon the wing, indeed, it seemed almost too light, almost unsteady, as if it lacked ballast, like a butterfly. It was the most numerous bird of its tribe along the river, I think, and, with one exception, the most approachable. That exception was the green heron, which frequented the flats along the village front, and might well have been mistaken ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... and rode back, shooting blindly at the place, but the shadow yawned silently before them and gave no sign. Then the Silent One, observing that the marshal was getting upon a pair of very unsteady legs, again assumed the leadership, and fairly forced Rowdy and Pink into ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... contortions, may affect the extremities in a similar manner, the hands and arms cannot be kept quiet, the gait may be unsteady, and one foot is merely dragged after the other. If one limb be forcibly held, to keep it quiet, some other limb will involuntarily move. Strange as it may appear, these contractions, which cannot be controlled by the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... he said in an unsteady voice, "I don't mind saying to you that 'Mars' Pendleton spent his last dollar in the world a week ago. We will accept this money, Uncle Mose, since, in a way, it is a sort of payment, as well as a token of the loyalty and devotion of the old regime. ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... followed by a monkey, who went in and came out from the wall, each time so near his face that Coupeau started back in disgust. All this vanished in the twinkling of an eye. He apparently thought the walls were unsteady and about to fall, for he uttered ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... criticised. Therefore she was dissatisfied with herself. Though, if she had known it, the man looked upon her with the same solicitude and tenderness, as you or I would look upon the babe, who, in its first efforts to get from table to chair, pulls the table-cloth about its unsteady little feet. ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... stretched its tiny arms towards the girl. But in vain, the distance was too great. Another laugh of intense youthful enjoyment followed the failure, and a new insecurity was added to the situation by the unsteady hands and shoulders of the relieving party who were apparently shaking with laughter. Then the extended figure was seen to detach what looked like a small black rope from its shoulders and throw it to the girl. There was another little ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... more?" she asked in an unsteady voice, as she took the paper in her hand, and, recognizing Guy's handwriting, knew almost to a ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... fatigue (and arrack) while performing the war-dance, as he was still in full war costume. He, however, quickly recovered himself, and arousing forty or fifty of his companions, led us off to see the chief or head-man of the tribe. Preceded by these youths, whose unsteady gait and sleepy faces afforded our Malay guides no small amusement, we cautiously crept along the ruai, passing at every ten paces or so enormous holes in the bamboo flooring occasioned by rot, and a fall through which would have ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt
... the clock and groans to see five minutes gone. Gosse, too, groans as his man steps forward once more, unsteady and amazed at what had befallen him. "Hit low!" ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... thousand thoughts came rushing through his mind; and he felt he would have given worlds, were they his, for the existence of even half an hour, with a friend by, to receive his dying requests. To add to his despair, he felt himself fast growing weaker and weaker; and with an unsteady vision, as his last hope, he turned his eye in the direction of the cottage, to note if any assistance were at hand; but he saw none; and nature failing to support him longer in his position, he sunk back ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... the upward slope, where the road climbs through a rocky gorge, the fugitive gained ground. Out on the open road again, within sight of Cauro, the count's horse showed signs of distress, but gained visibly. The count was unsteady in the saddle, riding heedlessly. In an instant de Vasselot saw the danger. His father was dropping with fatigue, and might at any moment fall from ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... try. I know him. Don't try," advised the master, and, bending again over his desk, his staring bloodshot eyes close to the paper, he would go on tracing laboriously with his thick fingers the slim unsteady letters of his correspondence, while Willems waited respectfully for his further good pleasure before ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... strange revulsion came upon him. The new man that seemed to have so suddenly sprung to life within him, the Wilbur who was the mate of the "Bertha Millner," the Wilbur who belonged to Moran, believed that he could see nothing to be desired in city life. For him was the unsteady deck of a schooner, and the great winds and the tremendous wheel of the ocean's rim, and the horizon that ever fled before his following prow; so he told himself, so he believed. What attractions could the city offer him? What amusements? what excitements? He had been flung off the smoothly spinning ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... up; he was unsteady on his legs, dazed and giddy, and saying: "I shall see you again later on," he went out, holding onto the wall, for the floor seemed to roll, like a ship. George had been carried out by his nurse, whilst Henriette and Limousin went into the drawing-room, and as soon as the door was shut, he said: ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... walk uprightly much as a child learns the same thing. At first he crawls on all fours, then he clambers, laying hold of whatever he can; and lastly he stands upright alone and walks, but for a long time with an unsteady step. So when the human race was in its gorilla-hood it generally carried a stick; from carrying a stick for many million years it became accustomed and modified to an upright position. The stick wherewith ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... there with her, was suddenly become only a dreary, lonely lodging-room. Cheeps and Bartholomew were there, chirping and purring, the sun was shining in; the things were all hers, for Aunt Blin had written one broad, straggling, unsteady line upon a sheet of paper the last day she lived, when the fever and confusion had ebbed away out of her brain as life ebbed slowly back, beaten from its outworks by disease, toward her heart, and she ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... asked Edna in an unsteady voice, wiping her face with her handkerchief. She seemed ill at ease on the piano stool, and he begged her to take the chair by ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... way there might be a vista open leading to success, still he had fancied that he had seen that success was impossible. He did not know how to begin,—and men were afraid of him, thinking that he was unsteady, arrogant, and prone to failure. He had not seen his way to the possibility of ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... wide shoulders and deep chest, with arms to match his legs, were so huge as to appear almost grotesque; his round head, with its tumbled thatch of sandy hair, was set on a thick bull-neck; while all over the big bones of him the hard muscles lay in visible knots and bunches. The unsteady poise, the red, unshaven, sweating face, and the angry, blood-shot eyes, revealed the reason for his sleep under such uncomfortable circumstances. The silent driver gazed at his fearsome passenger with calm eyes that seemed to hold in their dark depths the mystery ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... to forget that I am accountable only to my own master," said the General, and retired in good order, though with as much haste as was compatible with a very unsteady walk. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... he got away from them; but he found himself alone, and hastened with unsteady steps into the wood. Here he sought out the thickest, loneliest spot, and threw himself down on a grassy knoll, no longer keeping back the bursting stream of his tears. 'I am sick of life,' he sobbed; 'I cannot be glad and happy, I will not. Make haste and receive me, thou dear kind ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... febrile symptoms are sometimes so unsteady, that I have known them mistaken for the symptoms of an intermittent, and the cure ...
— An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical Uses - With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases • William Withering
... the others to see if he might safely follow this direction, Hannibal disappeared in the thick woods behind him. He walked with an unsteady step. There was a strange lightness in his brain. Some distance away he found the boat in which he had come, and entered it, staggeringly. Pushing from the shore with a feeble touch on his paddle he ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... her, Freckles knew that from somewhere he would muster the strength to kill him. He mentally measured the distance to where his club lay and set his muscles for a spring. But no—by the splendor of God! The big fellow was baring his head with a hand that was unsteady. The Angel pulled one of the long silver pins from her hat and fastened ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... strayed from the direct line; they had merely halted and dropped almost within their tracks. Just beyond was the spot where the man had remounted, where the flight began anew; and again a tale lay written on the surface of the snow. The prints of the horse's feet were now unsteady and irregular. Within a few rods there was on the right a red splash of blood; then others, a drop at a time. Very hard it had been to put life into the beast at starting; deep the rowels of the great spur had been dug. Ben Blair lightly touched the ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... for a moment, fixing his unsteady eyes straight upon his adversary's cards. Then he suddenly sprang up with a wild laugh, and left the ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... a niche on the hewn timber over my head. Just this moment I saw her snap up a flying "miller" in the orchard a few rods away. She was compelled to swoop four times before she intercepted that little moth in its unsteady, zigzagging flight. She is an expert at this sort of thing; it is her business to take her game on the wing; but the moths are experts in zigzag flying, and Ph[oe]be missed her mark three times. I heard the snap of her beak at each swoop. It is almost ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... from the Cowgate with a motley assortment of pallbearers. There was a good-tempered Irish laborer from a near-by brewery; a decayed gentleman, unsteady of gait and blear-eyed, in greasy frock-coat and broken hat; a flashily dressed bartender who found the task distasteful; a stout, bent-backed fagot-carrier; a drunken fisherman from New Haven, suddenly sobered by this uncanny duty, and a furtive, gaol-bleached thief ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... smile illumined his face and his fingers were unsteady as he tore open the envelope, saying, "She and her husband went to Alaska two years ago. I haven't heard anything from them for six months. You see, when winter begins up there, the river freezes solid, so no boats or ...
— Prince Jan, St. Bernard • Forrestine C. Hooker
... were not in its nature inevitably droll enough, there lay, on the top of the stairs, a wooden figure on a crucifix, resting on a sort of great iron saucer: so rickety and unsteady, that whenever an enthusiastic person kissed the figure, with more than usual devotion, or threw a coin into the saucer, with more than common readiness (for it served in this respect as a second or ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... received your letter," he wrote, in a blurred and unsteady handwriting. Then he stopped. He stared at the paper, pushed it away from him, and got up. He could not write the truth. He went to the window and looked out into the dark night. Here and there he saw faint lights. But Stamboul was ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... terrible brute dashed in head foremost, and tumbled in the room with Boone and the fragments of the door. The two foes rose and stared at each other; Boone had nothing left but his knife, but Bruin was tottering and unsteady, and Boone felt that the match was more equal: ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... in the darkness and Pat rolled over to me. His greeting was a bit unsteady, but his natural politeness and good-fellowship did ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... coat and to gather together his hat and gloves and walking-cane. Then he made a movement to go, but half-way to the door stopped irresolutely. I thought he was about to speak again, but after a pause of a second or two he went on, opened the door with an unsteady hand, and went out without closing it behind him. The man I had told to wait outside must have been upon the watch, for I heard his voice at the very instant at which Brunow set foot ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... Burlington House, and his name—shall we ever again dare to speak it?—is on the lips of casual people in train and 'bus and tram. How shall I write on such a painful subject? You see that my hand is unsteady. Don't blame yourself too much. The man capable of becoming rich will become so, whatever the noble influences which endeavour to restrain him. I suspect—I feel all but convinced—that N. F. could not help himself; the misfortune is that his fatal turn for moneymaking did ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... dark figures and a machine in a dark road,—the road, to be explicit, from Roehampton to Putney Hill,—and with this vision is the sound of a heel spurning the gravel, a gasping and grunting, a shouting of "Steer, man, steer!" a wavering unsteady flight, a spasmodic turning of the missile edifice of man and machine, and a collapse. Then you descry dimly through the dusk the central figure of this story sitting by the roadside and rubbing his leg at some new place, and his friend, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... man's unsteady poise he felt as though he could have picked him up in his two strong hands and shaken sober senses ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... meet such assailants the Tyrians had let down huge blocks of stone into the sea, which prevented the approach of the ships, and hindered those on board from using the battering ram. These blocks the Macedonians endeavoured to weigh up and remove by means of cranes; but their vessels were too unsteady for the purpose, whereupon they proceeded to anchor them. The Tyrians went out in boats well protected, and passing under the stems and sterns of the vessels, cut the cables, whereupon the Macedonians kept an armed watch upon the cables in boats of their own, which the Tyrians did not venture to ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... she replies good-naturedly, 'but I'll see you again some time. I ain't ever going home again. I hate it down there.' And off she swims in an unsteady manner in the direction of the Gold Fish Arms. She was singing and shouting ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... and thought that this strange book might interest him, giving, as it did, details of those powers of the air in which almost all fully believed. Unconscious of this attention, Felix fell asleep, angry and bitter against her. When, half an hour afterwards, Oliver blundered into the room, a little unsteady on his legs, notwithstanding his mighty strength, he picked up the roll, glanced at it, flung it down with contempt, and without a minute's delay ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... as she spoke, and it seemed to Kendal that her step was unsteady and that she was deadly white. He planted himself before her in the descending path, and held out a hand to her to help her. She gave him her own, and he carried it impetuously to ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... irritating fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow which has crushed and maimed the nature just when it was expanding into plenteous beauty; and the trivial, erring life, which we visit with our harsh blame, may be but as the unsteady motion of a man whose best limb is withered. The dear old Vicar had been sketched out by nature as a noble tree. The heart of him was sound, the grain was of the finest, and in the gray-haired ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... with a large stomach, who breathed loudly through his nose; the book agent with his oval boxes of dried figs and endless thread of talk; a woman with a little boy who wore spectacles and who was continually making unsteady raids upon the water-cooler, and the brakeman and train conductor laughing and chatting in the ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... himself, since she is not only a Queen, and above all his controlling, but also a lady of many lovers, roaming like a bee, from flower to flower, as she will, and yet leaving each in the lurch almost as soon as it is tasted, being as unsteady as the flame of a lamp in the wind, and as deep and as crooked as a river, amusing herself as if she were a female trinamani[31] by watching the irresistible effect of her own attraction on the straws that she finds and throws away, as soon as she ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... writing about when she invariably adds "essences" to the toilet of her dissipated men. Evadne would wake with a start in the gray of the dawn sometimes, and hearing Colonel Colquhoun pass her door with unsteady step on his way to his own room, would shudder to think what his wife must have suffered. And it was not as if the sacrifice of herself would have made any difference to him either. If she could have done any good in that way she might have tried; but his habits ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... their love-feasts, he said, their chief object was to squeeze money from the poor. At some of their services they played the bass viol, and at others they did not, which plainly showed that they were unsteady in their minds. And, therefore, they were a danger ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... street, ages ago. We have dim impressions, scarcely amounting to a belief, that it was over a dyer's shop. We know that you went up steps to it; that you frequently grazed your knees in doing so; that you generally got your leg over the scraper, in trying to scrape the mud off a very unsteady little shoe. The mistress of the Establishment holds no place in our memory; but, rampant on one eternal door-mat, in an eternal entry long and narrow, is a puffy pug-dog, with a personal animosity towards us, who triumphs over Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating way he ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... he thought, as Klutz without speaking went down the avenue into the darkness with unsteady steps, "poor young devil—the highest possible opinion of himself, and the smallest possible quantity of brains; a weak will and strong instincts; much unwholesome study of the Old Testament in Hebrew with Manske; a body twenty years old, and the finest ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... he spoke to her, his voice oddly unsteady, very deep. "You're driving me mad, Daphne. Do you ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... movement, crouched and leaped. His right fist shot forward to Tamarack Spicer's chattering lips, and they abruptly ceased to chatter as the teeth were driven into their flesh. Spicer's head snapped back, and he staggered against the onlookers, where he stood rocking on his unsteady legs. His hand swept instinctively to the shirt -concealed holster, but, before it had connected, both of Samson's fists were playing a terrific tattoo on his face. The inglorious master of the show dropped, and ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... turns restlessly in all directions. Her hollow cheeks are flushed with a morbid coppery glow; one of her eyes is immovable, for it is of glass, but her other eye shines with a feverish brilliancy, and a strange and almost awful smile hovers constantly about her thin lips. This woman moves with an unsteady quick step, and whenever her black mantilla is flung back by the violence of her movements, a small rope of hair with a crucifix at the end is plainly seen to bind her waist. This ungainly woman is the quondam authoress, Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn, who has turned a Catholic, and ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... air-space thus provided gave her some relief, and in that instant the sailor seemed to recognize her. He was not remotely capable of a definite idea. Just as he vaguely realized the identity of the woman in his arms the unsteady support on which he rested toppled over. Again he renewed the unequal contest. A strong resolute man and a ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... very top a crucifix was sketched with an unsteady hand, and below it the words: "Pray for us! Everything shall belong ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the change which had come over this unfortunate girl. Stout to repulsiveness, shabby of attire, fiery of face, unsteady of pose, with one bright beautiful eye burning with the supernatural fire of absinthe, the other ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... put aside the stalks of a canebrake, and looked out cautiously in the direction which Yates had taken. Fearful that they had seen him step aside, he determined to fire upon them, and trust to his heels for safety, but so unsteady was his hand, that in raising his gun to his shoulder, she went off before he had taken aim. He lost no time in following her example, and after having run fifty yards, he met Yates, who, alarmed at the report, was hastily retracing his steps. It was not necessary ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... emotional by liquor have conceived an extravagant fondness for their wives. We have not read about liquor floating the matrimonial bark over the shallows of domestic discord; yet men who have fared homeward with unsteady footsteps under the blinking stars, know that in such moments they are much more humane than in sober daylight; they are appalled by their own unworthiness, and thinking of their wives moves them almost to tears—quite, not infrequently. They ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... closed-in beds. The flooring is not steady, and here and there holes have been eaten into the planks. You can scarcely stand upright beneath the decaying ceiling. Worn boards and ragged walls, and the rusty ribs fallen from the fireplace, are all that meet your eyes, but I see a round, unsteady, waxcloth-covered table, with four books lying at equal distances on it. There are six prim chairs, two of them not to be sat upon, backed against the walls, and between the window and the fireplace a chest of drawers, with a snowy coverlet. On the drawers stands a board ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... had not been knocked unconscious. He was only stunned. He staggered to his feet, brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired. He was too unsteady to aim carefully, however, ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... make such sacrifices, as are only made for our country. They exhibit to us the emperor everywhere, but the republic hitherto nowhere. You have held out no object to set us in motion, and you complain of our being unsteady. Persons whom we do not respect as our countrymen, you set over us as our chiefs. Notwithstanding our entreaties, Wilna remains separated from Warsaw; disunited as we thus are, you require of us ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... water in front of a marine view with the moon rising, yellow and big, out of a silver sea. A man-of-war, with lights burning aloft, labors under a rocky coast. Groggy sailormen, on shore leave, make unsteady attempts upon the dancing balls. One mistakes the moon for the target, but is discovered in season. "Don't shoot that," says the man who loads the guns; "there's a lamp behind it." Three scared birds in the window recess try vainly to snatch a moment's sleep between shots and the trains that go ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Punch gave a new though temporary fillip to the entertainments of the evening. For after leading to some noisy proceedings, which were not intelligible, it ended in the unsteady departure of the two gentlemen of the world, and the slumber of Mr Jonas upon ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... she was to come over at opening time in the morning and start the machinery. She was a proud and eager woman when she crossed the bridge and started down the street toward the gate. From the opposite direction came George, so unsteady that he was running into tree boxes, then lifting his hat and apologizing to them for his awkwardness. Kate saw at a glance that he might fall any instant. Her only thought was to help him from the street, to where children ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... miles. As Cary's journal puts it: "We arrived at our camp to find boat and stores burnt and the fire still smoking and spreading. Cole arrives first, and as I come thrashing through the bushes he sits on a rock munching some burnt flour. He announces with an unsteady voice: 'Well, she's gone.' We say not much, nothing that indicates poor courage, but go about to find what we can in the wreck, and pack up for a tramp down river. In an hour we have picked out everything useful, including my money, nails, thread and damaged provisions, ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... if they had some occupation which would expose them less to bad company and unsteady habits; but a news-boy can be honest, virtuous, and temperate, as well as any other boy,—if he will take the right way ...
— The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories • Various
... Sanctum was only too evidently an intellectualised bedroom, and a cheap wallpaper of silvery roses peeped coquettishly from among her draped furniture. Her particular glories were the writing-desk in the middle and the microscope on the unsteady octagonal table under the window. There were bookshelves of workmanship patently feminine in their facile decoration and structural instability, and on them an array of glittering poets, Shelley, Rossetti, Keats, ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... natural voice; and such was the vast relief of the other two that they were in no way startled by the sound. Instantly all three drew long breaths; the tension was relaxed; and Van Emmon's curiosity found a harsh and unsteady voice. ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... win all that, or part of it, by being loyal to the people," Blake replied doggedly, but in a rather unsteady tone. ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... my son,' said he, 'that yon desolate spot, called to this day the Gold Spring, is the deadliest spot on earth to those who bear your name. Far as the wood extends on either side, extended formerly the turf-pit. The deep moor is covered now by an unsteady earth-crust, overgrown with pale red sedge, and from its centre, as from a grotto, the beautiful rivulet ripples forth that irrigates and renders fruitful all your land. I doubt not that this grotto, with its golden vault of granite, is the very spring into which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... that way! Don't say 'twas pride. Oh no! but I had to behave proper, and how should I keep up acquaintance when they said you went on—unsteady—' ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... room at the top of the house with a window capable of being completely darkened by a shutter and curtains opposite the door. A small light table with two flaps and four legs, unsteady and easily moved, occupied the middle of the room, leaving not much more than enough space for the chairs at the sides. There was a chair at each end, two chairs on the fireplace side, and one on the other. Mr. X (the medium) was seated in the chair at the door ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... quoth he, in voice low and unsteady. Speaking not, she pointed with slender finger down into the placid, stream. Wondering, he bent to look and thus from the stilly water his mirrored image looked back at him; now as he stooped so stooped she, and in this watery ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... folly of women who leave the home to engage in fierce industrial struggle."... At about this point the expressmen set the trunk down, put their hands on their hips, cocked their hats at a new angle and waited in gloomy ennui for the conversation to stop. Cousin Emelene flowed on, her voice unsteady with ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... has been premised in the plainest terms I could think of. Take here an abstract of what has been said:—There are spiritual substances, minds, or human souls, which will or excite ideas in themselves at pleasure; but these are faint, weak, and unsteady in respect of others they perceive by sense—which, being impressed upon them according to certain rules or laws of nature, speak themselves the effects of a mind more powerful and wise than human spirits. These latter are said to have more REALITY in them than the former:—by which is meant that ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... know that they are all deluded by Satan, who is the father of division. Their illiterate priests are called Bramins, being the same with the Brachmanni of the ancients; and, for aught I could learn, are so sottishly ignorant and unsteady, that they know not what they believe. They have little round-built temples, which they call pagodas, in which are images in most monstrous shapes, which they worship. Some of them dream, of Elysian fields, to which their souls pass over a Styx or Acheron, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... mustn't be angry, dearie," she continued excitedly to her doll. "It's the worst error to be angry, because it means hating. You treat me, Anna Belle, and I'll treat you," she went on, unfastening her clothes with unsteady hands. ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... Yet his terrors did not so compleatly master his recollection, as to prevent his taking the precautions necessary for his safety. He replaced the pillow upon the bed, gathered up his garments, and with the fatal Talisman in his hand, bent his unsteady steps towards the door. Bewildered by fear, He fancied that his flight was opposed by Legions of Phantoms; Whereever He turned, the disfigured Corse seemed to lie in his passage, and it was long before He succeeded in reaching the door. The enchanted ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... burst in upon him. He was accustomed to O'Reilly's high head of steam and disapproved of it, but he had never seen the fellow so surcharged as now. He was positively jumpy; his voice was sharp; his hands were unsteady; his eyes were ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... straggling group of old peasants with fine tremulous mouths, a-tremble with pride and with feeling; for here they were walking in full sight of their town, in their holiday coats, with their knees treacherously unsteady from the thrill of the organ's thunder and the ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... writing materials and some labels on my return," he said, as he left the room with a somewhat unsteady step. ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... answered, his voice still unsteady, and his mustache quivering; "but I can eat nothing. I'll go down and have the boat ready. ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... was gained by a measure which broke up the unity of the state; which subjected the magistrates to a controlling authority unsteady in its action and dependent on all the passions of the moment; which in the hour of peril might have brought the administration to a dead-lock at the bidding of any one of the opposition chiefs elevated to the rival throne; and which, by investing all the magistrates with ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... sign he dismissed the slave, and they remained all alone. And again the sculptor started speaking, but it was as if, together with the setting sun, life had left his words; and they grew pale and hollow, as if they staggered on unsteady feet, as if they slipped and fell down, drunk with the heavy lees of weariness and despair. And black chasms grew up between the words—like far-off hints of the great ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... say of the personal habits you must form if you wish for success? Temperance is first upon the list. Intemperance in a physician partakes of the guilt of homicide, for the muddled brain may easily make a fatal blunder in a prescription and the unsteady hand transfix an artery in an operation. Tippling doctors have been too common in the history of medicine. Paracelsus was a sot, Radcliffe was much too fond of his glass, and Dr. James Hurlbut of Wethersfield, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... sinking heart and an unsteady hand that he pulled the visitors' bell at the Futvoyes' house that afternoon, for he neither knew in what state he should find that afflicted family, nor how they would regard his intrusion at such ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... his new friend, Pierre left the gate with unsteady steps and returning to his room lay down on the sofa ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... failure of the womb to contract on itself after parturition, or with eversion of the womb (casting the withers), and congestion or laceration. If the blood accumulates in the flaccid womb, the condition may be suspected only by reason of the rapidly advancing weakness, swaying, unsteady gait, hanging head, paleness of the eyes and other mucous membranes, and weak, small, failing pulse. The hand introduced into the womb detects the presence of the blood partly clotted. If the blood escapes by the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... tray, but upset some of the coffee. Seeing that excitement had not usually the effect of making her hand unsteady, it is possible accident had not much to do with it. However, it happened; she carefully wiped it up, and the two chemists, paying no more attention to her than if she had been a cat, went on speaking of the explosive. It was the explosive; their talk told her that before ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... more over her father's things, putting them together with unsteady fingers. So this was the answer to the riddle—the secret of his choice for her! ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... much more real, lasting, and better-warranted her happiness seems than ever ——'s did. I think so much of it is in herself, and her own serene, pure, trusting, religious nature. ——'s always gives me the idea of a vacillating, unsteady rapture, entirely dependent on circumstances with all their fluctuations. If Mary lives to be a mother, you will then ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... alive. You won't mind if I turn out the gas while I slip out, do you, and you won't mind either if I ask you to sit still here. Somebody might see you—' and he shook my hand and started for the window. As his hand neared the latch I could see in the dim light that his movements were unsteady. Once he stumbled and clutched ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... these birds is slow, unsteady, and affords but little amusement to the sportsman. From the disproportionately small, convex, thin-quilled, wing,—so thin, that a vacant space, half as broad as a quill appears between each,—the flight may be said to be a sort of fluttering more than any thing else: the bird giving two or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 550, June 2, 1832 • Various
... farther than the landing when a sound of unsteady footsteps on the stairs caused her to stop. As she lifted the lamp and looked up, she saw a strange woman descending toward her, holding the balustrade, and moving as though with pains in her limbs. This woman, whose black hair fell nearly ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... the achievement of an objective beauty and should demand of the artist perfect self-control and self-repression. For such an art personal emotion was proclaimed a hindrance, as it might dim the artist's vision or make his hand unsteady. Those who viewed art in this way, while they turned frankly away from the earlier Romanticists, yet agreed with them in their concern for form, and applied themselves to carrying still farther the technical mastery over it which they had achieved. Their standpoint greatly ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... say now. You are not his wife now. You have never been anything but a bad wife." She gathered up her work with unsteady hands and turned away. ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... the man, and thereupon the sufferers who had remained in the carriage became greatly interested and began to look. Marie, to whom Sister Saint-Francois had given the bowl of broth, was holding it with such an unsteady hand that Pierre had to take it from her, and endeavour to make her drink; but she could not swallow, and she left the broth scarce tasted, fixing her eyes upon the man waiting to see what would happen like one whose own existence is ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... speckled throat and breast, would ever take him for anything but a diminutive thrush; or, studying him from some distance through the opera-glasses as he runs in and out of the little waves along the brook or river shore, would not name him a baby sandpiper? The rather unsteady motion of his legs, balancing of the tail, and sudden jerking of the head suggest an aquatic bird rather than a bird of the woods. But to really know either man or beast, you must follow him to his home, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... Coralie; keep it all," the old tradesman said at last, in a faint, unsteady voice that came from his heart; "I don't want anything back. There is the worth of sixty thousand francs here in the furniture; but I could not bear to think of my Coralie in want. And yet, it will not be long before you come to want. However great this gentleman's ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... horseshoes clinking on the stones, a stillness that was a distinct sensation brooded upon the hollow. Daphne sighed as if she were in pain. She had taken off her veil, and now she was peeling the gloves from her white wrists and warm, unsteady hands. Her face, exposed, hardly sustained the promise of the veiled suggestion; but no man was ever known to find fault with it so long as he had hopes; afterwards—but even then it was a matter of temperament. There were those who remembered it all ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... it did, details of those powers of the air in which almost all fully believed. Unconscious of this attention, Felix fell asleep, angry and bitter against her. When, half an hour afterwards, Oliver blundered into the room, a little unsteady on his legs, notwithstanding his mighty strength, he picked up the roll, glanced at it, flung it down with contempt, and without a minute's delay ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... recompense for my labours, he hesitates not to expose me to the disgrace of an irreparable insult. I am nothing but a vile slave in his eyes. Thinks he that my daughter is obliged to share his unsteady attachment? You yourselves will not be safe from this dishonour; your wives and daughters will not be spared. His torrent of iniquity will discharge itself on you, if we endeavour not to ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... hesitated. He was brave enough, but the terror of the negroes was catching. He would not have admitted to being afraid, but there was a lump in his throat and his legs felt unsteady. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and lit their pipes. Bill's hand was a little unsteady. Antony noticed it and gave him ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... man. Again David felt that mighty but gentle strength of his arms as he helped him to his feet. He was a trifle unsteady for a moment. Then, with the half-breed close at his side, ready to catch him if his legs gave way, he walked to one of the windows and looked out. Across the river, fully half a mile away, he ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... for arboreal habits, and displaying among the branches amazing activity, the Gibbons are not so awkward or embarrassed on a level surface as might be imagined. They walk erect, with a waddling or unsteady gait, but at a quick pace; the equilibrium of the body requiring to be kept up, either by touching the ground with the knuckles, first on one side then on the other, or by uplifting the arms so as to poise it. As with the Chimpanzee, the whole of the narrow, long sole of the foot is placed upon ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... uniformly soothing and cajoling; and whenever he said "I don't care what happens to me," a thing he did continually, she replied, "But I do very much!" The closing hour came, and they were compelled to turn out; whereupon Arabella put her arm round his waist, and guided his unsteady footsteps. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... human factor always plays its part in battle. Troops lacking in discipline are liable to panic in face of a sudden disaster, and even the best troops are liable to become unsteady if ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... anything else; and he gave them his help, that each might enjoy reputation according to his deserts; and he always acted conformably to the institutions of his country, without showing any affectation of doing so. Further, he was not fond of change nor unsteady, but he loved to stay in the same places, and to employ himself about the same things; and after his paroxysms of headache he came immediately fresh and vigorous to his usual occupations. His secrets were not many, but very few and very rare, and these only about public ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... confidentially, and pointed with a very unsteady forefinger to the purse which Anne still ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... captain and D'Effernay in the evening, and the latter challenged his visitors to a game of billiards, Edward glanced from time to time at his host in a scrutinizing manner, and could not but feel that the restless discontent which was visible in his countenance, and the unsteady glare of his eyes, which shunned the fixed look of others, only fitted too well into the shape of the dark thoughts which were crossing his own mind. Late in the evening, after supper, they played whist in Emily's boudoir. On the morrow, if ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... only child," Mrs. Owen went on, and her voice was unsteady. "She owned the big house we used to live in, and every summer they came to it, so that your father and your Uncle William and I played together when we were children. When your father became a doctor and married me and settled down here, she gave us ...
— Peggy in Her Blue Frock • Eliza Orne White
... half knocking me down as he did so, and dropped to his knees; and the next instant gave an unsteady cry of joy: ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... beast had strayed from the direct line; they had merely halted and dropped almost within their tracks. Just beyond was the spot where the man had remounted, where the flight began anew; and again a tale lay written on the surface of the snow. The prints of the horse's feet were now unsteady and irregular. Within a few rods there was on the right a red splash of blood; then others, a drop at a time. Very hard it had been to put life into the beast at starting; deep the rowels of the great spur had been dug. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... morning of the 12th we were once more favoured with a breeze from the eastward, but so light and unsteady that our progress was vexatiously slow; and on the 13th, when within seven leagues of Cape York, we had the mortification to perceive the sea ahead of us covered with young ice, the thermometer having, for two days past, ranged only from 18 ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... played pluckily and hard at quarter-back, and shirked nothing; but he could not kick, and his short runs were consequently of little use. Callonby, of course, did good work, but Loman, the half-back, was woefully unsteady. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... to feel the ground. He found the young man very much devoted to the two ladies, but exceedingly astonished at the idea of a marriage between Therese and himself. Laurent added, in an unsteady tone of voice, that he loved the widow of his poor friend as a sister, and that it would seem to him a perfect sacrilege to marry her. The former commissary of police insisted, giving numerous good reasons ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... talking like a drunken man, too fast and in an unsteady voice. His wife tried to make him sit ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... joke, Bill," she said, in an unsteady voice. "I did a horrid, hateful thing, and Patty is so angelic and forgiving she makes me feel too ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... sudden impulse, Chivers leaned forward, and, albeit with somewhat unsteady hands and an embarrassed will, untied the cords that held Collinson in his chair. As the freed man stretched himself to his full height, he looked gravely down into the bleared eyes of his captor, and held ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... the picture and then at the book; at least, I suppose he did, for I went outside the hut for a while—to observe the sunrise. In a few minutes he called me, and when the door was shut, said in an unsteady voice: ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... now seething underneath all the forms of this Government, revolutions still more striking than any one of us have yet witnessed. Beneath all these methods and appliances of administrations and controls among men, I believe there is under our very feet a heaving, unsteady ocean of aroused questioning in which many modes now practiced will sink to rise no more, and out of which other adaptations will emerge that will render far more perfect the reflection of the will of the people; that will perhaps represent minorities as well as majorities; that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... came in which she was to leave this dear house, Clotilde looked around with unsteady gaze; then she threw herself on Pascal's breast, she held him for an instant ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... middle of the street at the head of a ragged and most indecorous column of twos, in the centre of a circle of light cast by a pine-knot which Joe Handy held, was Mr. Nicholas Temple. His bearing, if a trifle unsteady, was proud, and—if I could believe my eyes—around his neck was slung the thing which I prized above all my possessions,—the drum which I had carried to Kaskaskia and Vincennes! He had taken it from ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... appearance of maturity already in the shape of her features; but their expression still remained girlish, unformed, unsettled. The fire in her large dark eyes, when she spoke, was latent. Their languor, when she was silent—that voluptuous languor of black eyes—was still fugitive and unsteady. The smile about her full lips (to other eyes, they might have looked too full) struggled to be eloquent, yet dared not. Among women, there always seems something left incomplete—a moral creation to be superinduced on the physical—which love alone can ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... hot during the day, but the nights are cloudless and cool, and the moonlight singularly agreeable. Rain is rare, and when it occurs it falls in dashes, succeeded by damp and sultry calms. The wind is unsteady and shifts from north-east to north-west, sometimes failing entirely between noon and twilight. The quantity of rain is less than in January, and the difference of temperature between day and night is frequently as great as 15 ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... pack-mule is much better fitted. In ancient warfare, before the invention of gunpowder, elephants carrying archers or javelin-men upon their backs were greatly valued for the effect of their charge against an enemy and for the fright with which they inspired horses. Against the unsteady ranks of Oriental armies they were often most efficient in breaking a line of battle. Even the Roman troops, when they first encountered them and before they knew how to meet their charges, found them very ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... did not think of rearing or catching any one by the feet. With an unsteady gait he approached the egress of the ravine, gazed for a while over the precipice, at the bottom of which water was seething; afterwards he turned to the wall close to the waterfall, directed his trunk towards it, and, having immersed it as best ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... draperies on the couches had become tattered rags and the cushions were scattered all about the floor; debris of crystal vases littered the table and bunches of dying flowers were tossed about by unsteady hands. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... was saying. Through the singing of the blood in his ears the answering words came as an unintelligible mutter. With an unsteady hand he hung up the receiver, his breath beating in loud gasps on the stillness that had so suddenly fallen on the small, walled-in place. For a space he sat crouched in the chair, trying to subdue the pounding of his heart, the shaking of his limbs. Then, stealthily, like a guilty thing, he opened ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... took his meals. The rest of the house was but stone-floored bar with a long wooden bench against the back wall, whence nightly a stream of talk would issue, all harsh a's, and sudden soft u's; whence too a figure, a little unsteady, would now and again emerge, to a chorus of 'Gude naights,' stand still under the ash-trees to light his pipe, then ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... affected by the solemnity of the moment which was coming. In fact, after midnight, the princess took Danusia by the hand and conducted her to Zbyszko's room, where Father Wyszoniek was waiting for them. In the room there was a great blaze in the fireplace, and by its abundant but unsteady light, Zbyszko perceived Danusia; she looked a little pale on account of sleepless nights; she was dressed in a long, stiff, white dress, with a wreath of immortelles on her brow. On account of emotion, she closed ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... our troops move forward to attack, in order to draw away from them the fire of the enemy's batteries, or, at least, to render it unsteady, ...
— A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry • Francis J. Lippitt
... imaginary bonds, and dashing into her chamber, slammed and locked the door. Colonel Starbottle, although no coward, stood in superstitious fear of an angry woman, and, recoiling as she swept by, lost his unsteady foothold and rolled helplessly on the sofa. Here, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to regain his foothold, he remained, uttering from time to time profane but not entirely coherent or intelligible protests, until at last he succumbed ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... meters, so that at a range of 100 to 150 meters, I could fill his fuselage with shots. He made work easy for me by flying in a straight line. Besides, I had along ammunition by means of which I could determine the path of my shots. My opponent commenced to get unsteady, but I could not follow him till he fell. Not until evening did I learn from a staff officer that the infantry at L'homme mort had reported the fall of the machine. In the evening, I went out again, without any particular objective, ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... You are shockingly unsteady on your feet, and feel very dazed and feeble; but you are also hungrier than ever now, with the keen morning air whetting your appetite, and the immediate business ahead of you is to find food. So you turn to the bank at your side and begin ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... more, he could only stand there trembling from head to foot, fearful lest his mocking senses were making sport of him. Surely, it was some beautiful vision he had come upon. With one unsteady hand he touched the girl's sleeve; he pressed her warm red cheeks with his fingers, and with that touch his manhood ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... but Andrews dropped to the ground, darted to the fence, and was over before he could be prevented. John Wollam followed, and even while suspended in the air by the blankets, was fired upon. Fortunately, the hands of the guards were too unsteady to inflict any injury, and he, too, succeeded in getting out of the yard ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... retired to their cabins, took a drink of whiskey, reloaded their revolvers, and again renewed the combat. This strange duel had been going on for several hours when I arrived, but, fortunately for them, the whiskey had such an effect on their nerves that their aim was very unsteady, and none of the shots had as yet ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... break stones at Belfront," was the rejoinder; and in silence, and with some difficulty, they groped their unsteady way. At last they emerged from a thick overgrown copse, in which the accident had happened, and, after sundry narrow escapes from sprained ankles and broken arms, they reached the gate. It was an immense wooden barrier, supported at each end by little round buildings—like ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... marvelled what should so much discompose the girl. And Christina was conscious of his gaze - saw it, perhaps, with the dainty plaything of an ear that peeped among her ringlets; she was conscious of changing colour, conscious of her unsteady breath. Like a creature tracked, run down, surrounded, she sought in a dozen ways to give herself a countenance. She used her handkerchief - it was a really fine one - then she desisted in a panic: "He would only ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an unsteady hand until it ran over, and propping his body against the table as he stood up, replied, "A toast for Ville Marie! and our friends in need!—The blue caps of the Richelieu!" This was in allusion to a recent ordinance of the Intendant, authorizing ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... phrases again; yet there is no life in them, because when love is dead she thinks of herself, and instead, it was only of him she thought in the good days when her heart used to beat at the sound of his footfall, and the light grew dim and unsteady as she felt his kiss. But the love of these two was not born to tire; and because he was so young, and knew the world little, save at his sword's point, he was ashamed that he could not speak of love as ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... her, was suddenly become only a dreary, lonely lodging-room. Cheeps and Bartholomew were there, chirping and purring, the sun was shining in; the things were all hers, for Aunt Blin had written one broad, straggling, unsteady line upon a sheet of paper the last day she lived, when the fever and confusion had ebbed away out of her brain as life ebbed slowly back, beaten from its outworks by disease, toward her heart, and she lay ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the boys lifted the inverted tub over their heads, and resumed their march. When they came near enough, it could be seen that their breeches and stockings were not only dripping wet, but streaked with black swamp-mud. This accounted for the unsteady, hesitating course of the tub, which at times seemed inclined to approach the house, and then tacked away towards the corner of the barn-yard wall. A few vigorous calls, however, appeared to convince ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... to compose herself, but not altogether successfully. She got out her paper and blotting-book, intending, as she said to herself, to write to Fanny, knowing, however, that the letter when written would be destroyed; but she was not able even to form a word. Her hand was unsteady and her eyes were dim and her thoughts were incapable of being fixed. She could only sit, and think, and wonder and hope; occasionally wiping the tears from her eyes, and asking herself why her present frame of mind was so painful to her? During the last two ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
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