"Foothold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... situation compelled him to the course he pursued. Having effected a lodgment upon the impaled loaf, he would of course cling to it when the others jumped so as not to be dislodged, thereby, willy nilly, helping them to secure a foothold. The cooperation was inevitable, and ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... firmly-knitted tribe. It was in Canaan, however, that the shepherd people hailing from Arabia showed the first signs of approaching disintegration. Various tribal groups, like Moab and Ammon, consolidated themselves. They took permanent foothold in the land, and submitted with more or less readiness to the influences exerted by the indigenous peoples. The guardianship of the sublime traditions of the tribe remained with one group alone, the "sons of Jacob" or the "sons of Israel," so named from the third Patriarch ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... these islands. The defeat of our common enemies imposes on us the sacred duty of feeding ourselves once more. 'There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to——Oh!" For in his desire to stir his audience, Mr. Lavender had reached out too far, and losing foothold on his polished bedroom floor, was slipping down into the lilac-bush. He was arrested by a jerk from behind; where Blink, moved by this sudden elopement of her master, had seized him by the nightshirt tails, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... perhaps hereafter have occasion to note how Descartes, having thus secured one firm foothold and solid resting-place, outwent the farthest stretch of Archimedean ambition by using it, not as a fulcrum from whence to move the world, but as a site for logical foundations whereon he might, if he had persevered, ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... pressed within the besieged city, and Hasdrubal would not surrender. An attack, led by Laelius, on the market-place, gave the Romans a foothold within the city, and a great quantity of spoil. One thousand talents were taken from the temple of Apollo. Preparations were then made for the attack of the citadel, and for six days there was a hand-to-hand fight between the combatants amid the narrow streets which led to the Byrsa. ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... walked out of it five years before. He had gone out a stern, unforgiving, young ascetic, accepting no compromise, demanding perfection of himself and of his fellow-men. The very sublimity of his dream doomed it to failure. Out of the crumbling ideals of his boyhood he had struggled to a foothold on life that had never been his in the old days. His marriage to Birdie Smelts had been the fiery furnace in which his soul had been softened to receive the final ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... that she did not talk. Listening in unsuspected places, she heard much that was said about her mother and herself, and the pathetic part of this experience was that she had never known enough of kindness to be wounded. She was only made to feel more fully how precarious was her foothold in her transient abiding place, and therefore was rendered more furtive, sly, and distant in order to secure toleration by keeping out of everyone's way. In her prowlings, however, she managed to learn and understand all that ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... This terrible precipice takes one entirely by surprise. Kaluna, who rode first, disappeared so suddenly that I thought he had gone over. It is merely a dangerous broken ledge, and besides that it looks as if there were only foothold for a goat, one is dizzied by the sight of the foaming ocean immediately below, and, when we actually reached the bottom, there was only a narrow strip of shingle between the stupendous cliff and the resounding surges, which came up as if bent on destruction. The path by which ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... moment those who stayed behind could distinguish the rays of their pocket flash-lights as they picked out their slimy foothold. Then the whirling night ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... decided me. It was a matter of history that famine, neither wide-spread nor local, ever gained a foothold where "Satsuma Emo" flourished. This year they were fatter and cheaper than ever before. I knew dozens of ways to fix them, natural and disguised; so I bought an extra supply and made up my ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... place has since been called, proved available, the horses finding foothold, while the ammunition was taken from the caissons and carried across by the horsemen. This done, the guns and empty caissons were pulled across by ropes, and soon all was in readiness to take up the ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... there remained in them none of the vital quality of illusion which would make them wonder or speculate, else a religion might have grown up around these mysterious visitations. But the men of Fish were beyond all religion—the barest and most savage tenets of even Christianity could gain no foothold on that barren rock—so there was no altar, no priest, no sacrifice; only each night at seven the silent concourse by the shanty depot, a congregation who lifted up a prayer of ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... did its awful work. Some houses were bowled over like ninepins. Some floated to the surface and started with the flood; others stood their ground and were submerged inch by inch, the occupants climbing from story to story, from the top story to the roof, only to be swept away from their foothold sooner ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... her by her hair and her skirt, and gripped her tight, but it was not easy. Patty was a dead weight, and she had to keep her own foothold or both would have been carried away as the wave receded. Millie felt desperate. She could not raise Patty, heavy as she was in her water-soaked clothes, and Patty, still unconscious, could ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... his triumphal entry into Dublin, and was received with a pomp and homage equal to his dignity. But James did not go to Ireland merely to enjoy the homage and plaudits of the Irish people, but to defend the last foothold which he retained as King of England, trusting that success in Ireland would eventually restore to him the throne of his ancestors. And he was cordially, but not powerfully, supported by the French king, who was at war with England, and who justly regarded Ireland ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... between the flesh and the spirit is being decided for the universe, not only to win the battle ourselves but also to win it for others! To help a brother up the mountain while you yourself are only just able to keep your foothold, to struggle through the mist together—that surely is better than to stand at the summit and beckon. You will have a hard time of it, I know; and I would like to make it smoother and to 'let you ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... news come in, confused to sure, but still one finds something like a foothold. I am thunderstruck, annihilated. I listened to Hooker's best friends but can hardly help crying. Hooker is a failure as a commander of a large army. Hooker is good for a corps or two, but not for the whole command and responsibility. ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... Jewish people. As we look back through history and allow our thoughts to run down the highway of the ages, we perceive the effects such struggles have had upon the Jew. We think of the time when ancient Babylonia stretched out its arm from the East to gain a foothold on the Mediterranean and to grasp the power of the world. What was the effect upon the Jews? The Babylonian captivity. Many hundreds of years after, Rome—the Babylonia of the West—lunged out toward the East in the same search ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... workmen with scaling ladders in the van. The moats they crossed in spite of the gaps that had been made in the ice to stop them, but the garrison had poured water over the walls that froze as it ran, until they were like slippery icebergs. A bird could have found no foothold on them. Showers of rocks and junk and clubs fell upon the laddermen. Three times Karl Gustav hurled his columns against them; as often they were driven back, broken and beaten. A few gained a foothold on the walls only to be dashed down to death. The burghers ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... was able to help himself. Although he crashed once against the side of the bluff and set a bushel of gravel rattling down, in a moment he gained foothold on a ledge. There he stood, wavering until she paid off a little of the line. Then he dropped down to get ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... danger. A man could walk up it without often using his hands, and a man could go down it slowly without any direct fall, though here and there he would have to turn round at each dip or step and hold with his hands and feel a little for his foothold. I suppose the general slope, down, down, to where the green began was not sixty degrees, but have you ever tried looking down five thousand feet at sixty degrees? It drags the mind after it, and I could not bear ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... there is a Council of Ministers, comprising the heads of nine executive departments established by the sovereign. Nominally the ministers are appointed and dismissed by the crown at will, but actually the parliamentary system has acquired sufficient foothold to impose upon the sovereign a considerable measure of restriction at this point. All decrees and orders must be countersigned by the head of one of the ministerial departments; and it is expressly stipulated that responsibility for all royal ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... with small foothold on Musandam Peninsula adjacent to Strait of Hormuz, a vital transit ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... great-grandsons—granting, of course, that the pusillanimous prig is not too epicene to provide himself with posterity. Day by day it becomes more evident that the purse-proud snobocracy of New York's old rat- catchers and sprat peddlers is fast getting a foothold in the West, that the social gulf between the House of Have and that of Have-Not, is steadily widening and deepening—that we have reached that point in national decay where gold suffices to "gild the straitened forehead of the fool," where WEALTH instead ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... monkeys and other animals dared not attempt to scale them. But he took his courage in his hands, climbed the steep slope, and by sheer energy reached the summit. Having cut the bamboos, he tried to descend, but the rocks rose like a wall in sharp points all round him, and he could not find a foothold anywhere. Then, though laden with the bamboos, he threw himself into the air, and was borne on the wings of the wind. He came to earth safe and sound at the foot of the mountain, and ran with the bamboos to his master. On account of this feat he was considered advanced enough ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... raised my head, with open mouth, and the most of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a leak now I had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that the bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and precipitous rocks. I never was so scared before and survived it. But we got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand in front of the laced and frothy and seething world of descending water, and look at it. When I saw how much of it there ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... hope of your abolitionists, not our fear, that I am rehearsing. Should your armies obtain a foothold on our soil, we know that you will put knives and guns into the hands of our slaves, and incite them to emulate the deeds of their race in San Domingo. You will parcel out our lands and wealth to your victorious soldiery, not so much as a reward for their past services, but to seal the bond ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... my brief. We recognise in you The mind judicial, the untroubled view; The critic who, without pedantic pose, Takes his firm foothold on the thing he knows; Who, free alike from passion or pretence, Holds the good rule of calm and common sense; And be the subject or perplexed or plain,— Clear or confusing,—is throughout urbane, Patient, persuasive, logical, precise, And only ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... sure hold of a ladder of rope, and, creeping down backward, she set her foot in the bateau. It was a large and steady open boat. Some of the men were standing. She had entered the bow, and as Colonel Fraser dropped in they cast off, and she sat down, finding a bench as she had found foothold. The Highland officer was beside her. They could not see each other's faces. She was not sure he had detected her. The hardihood which had taken her beyond the French lines in search of on whom she felt under her protection was no longer in ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... tempted. You should have helped!" Yes, God help me! it is true. I am more to blame than they. I should have helped and did not. What would I not give that I could unsay that now! Two of them died by their own hand, the third in Bloomingdale. I had been making several attempts to get a foothold on one of the metropolitan newspapers, but always without success. That fall I tried the Tribune, the city editor of which, Mr. Shanks, was one of my neighbors, but was told, with more frankness than flattery, that I was "too green." Very likely ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... difficulty about the descent for the first eight or ten feet. Then the shrubs that had afforded foothold for his feet suddenly ceased, and the foot that he had thrust down for another perch touched nothing but the slippery side of the pit. Clinging firmly with his left hand to the network of vegetation which grew above his head, Colwyn flashed his ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... rate of growth of these Coral Reefs? We cannot, perhaps, estimate it with absolute accuracy, since they are now so nearly completed; but Coral growth is constantly springing up wherever it can find a foothold, and it is not difficult to ascertain approximately the rate of growth of the different kinds. Even this, however, would give us far too high a standard; for the rise of the Coral Reef is not in proportion to the height of the living Corals, but to their solid parts which never decompose. Add ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... enviable time of it. Their foothold in the hive is very precarious. They look like the giants, the lords of the swarm, but they are really the tools. Their loud, threatening hum has no sting to back it up, and their size and noise make them only the more conspicuous ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... the advantage of a preferential tariff agreement and excellent shipping facilities. In Canada and Australia our cotton goods are popular but the tariff duties are in favor of Great Britain. In the Dutch East Indies there is at present a good opportunity for getting a foothold in the white goods trade. Argentina has lately been our best market for cotton goods, and as the imports of cotton products into that country amounted to $65,000,000 in 1916, this trade is worth the intensive efforts which are now being ...
— The Fabric of Civilization - A Short Survey of the Cotton Industry in the United States • Anonymous
... death. Four foot out, broadwise, along the side of the Spit, there's a shelf of rock, about half fathom down under the sand. My question is—why didn't she strike that? If she slipped, by accident, from off the Spit, she fell in where there's foothold at the bottom, at a depth that would barely cover her to the waist. She must have waded out, or jumped out, into the Deeps beyond—or she wouldn't be missing now. No accident, sir! The Deeps of the Quicksand have got her. And they have got her by ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... to hesitate. The Pawnee had caught the signals from the other side of the stream, and hurried forward to intercept the enemy making his way in that direction. He advanced far enough from the spreading base of the tree to render his foothold firm, when he braced himself with drawn knife, to receive the youth. He had flung his blanket and rifle aside, before stepping on the trunk, so as not to ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... him to his studies for the bar. Scott was an excellent friend to him at that time; and so strong and prophetic was Wilson's admiration of his patron, that he publicly gave him the name of "The Great Magician" before the first "Waverley Novel" was published. Within ten years from his getting a foothold on Windermere banks, he had raised periodical literature to a height unknown before in our time, by his contributions to "Blackwood's Magazine"; and he seemed to step naturally into the Moral Philosophy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... up the incline, catching at rocks to steady their course, and often struggling for a foothold. Once Menard ordered a halt at a large rock, and ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... had developed round a medical school. It was the first of the universities, and, in connection with its medical school, feminine education obtained a strong foothold. It is not surprising, then, that with the further development of universities in Italy, feminine education came to be the rule. This rule has maintained itself all down the centuries in Italy, so that there has not been a single century since the twelfth in which ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... to obey, with as few words as possible; so she mustered all her strength, made a violent effort, and scrambled up to the end of the board, striking it with a force which sent it swinging far to the left. For one instant she balanced herself upon her slippery foothold; then she fell backward with a suddenness that carried her rescuer with her, and they both plunged head foremost down into the gray pool below, just as Grant and Ned came out at the chapel door, to look ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... of thinking and feeling, and the sure sequences on which we have depended vanish in a night. It is experiences like these which make the soul cry out with the psalmist, in bewilderment and fear,—"My foot slippeth!" His customary foothold had given way. The ground was shaking beneath him. The ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... way, up the winding staircase of the turret. The high, dark silhouette of Manette headed the procession; then followed the justice, carefully choosing his foothold on the well-worn stairs, the asthmatic old bailiff, breathing short and hard, the notary, beating his foot impatiently every time that Seurrot stopped to take breath, and finally ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... theoretical reason why alternations of the type fot: fet and mus: mis might not have become established as a productive type of number distinction in the noun. As a matter of fact, it did not so become established. The fot: fet type of plural secured but a momentary foothold. It was swept into being by one of the surface drifts of the language, to be swept aside in the Middle English period by the more powerful drift toward the use of simple distinctive forms. It was too late in the day for ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... the impact Stent wheeled from the abyss, then staggered back under the powerful shove from Von Glahn's nervous arm. Swaying, fighting frantically for foothold, there on the chasm's awful edge, he balanced for an instant; fought for equilibrium. Von Glahn, rigid, watched him. Then, deathly white, his young eyes looking straight into the eyes of his old classmate—Stent lost the fight, fell outward, wider, dropping back ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... Tennyson and Browning in poetry divide themselves into three separate schools. Nearest to them in temper is the school of Matthew Arnold and Clough; they have the same quick sensitiveness to the intellectual tendencies of the age, but their foothold in a time of shifting and dissolving creeds is a stoical resignation very different from the buoyant optimism of Browning, or Tennyson's mixture of science and doubt and faith. Very remote from them on the other hand is the backward-gazing mediaevalism of Rossetti and his circle, who ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... came; it was now only a matter of a few feet; Harry gave a cry of joy, and immediately afterward I heard his low gasp of terror and the sound of his wild scrambling to regain a foothold. In his excitement he had forgotten caution and had slipped to the edge of ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... government upon the fiercest and most unruly population in Asia; he availed himself of European inventions for strengthening his armament, while he sternly set his face against all innovations which, like railways and telegraphs, might give Europeans a foothold within his country. His adventurous life, his forcible character, the position of his state as a barrier between the Indian and the Russian empires, and the skill with which he held the balance in dealing with them, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... talking. Among the best speakers of the city was the orator De-mos'the-nes, a very clear-sighted man, who suspected Philip's designs. He therefore warmly advised the Athenians to do all they could to oppose the Macedonian king, so as to prevent his ever getting a foothold in Greece. Indeed, he spoke so eloquently and severely against Philip, and told the people so plainly that the king was already plotting to harm them, that violent speeches directed against any one have ever since been called "Philippics," ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber
... is easy to imagine the contempt with which John Allan would have perused it. Not so John Kennedy. Busy lawyer and successful man of letters and of the world though he was, he had gone out of his way to stretch a hand to the gifted starveling he had discovered struggling for a foothold on the bottommost rung of the ladder of literary fame, and had not only helped him up the ladder but had drawn him, in his weakness and his strength, into the circle of his friendship, and now he had no idea of letting him go. Mr. Kennedy was a great lawyer with a great ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... His real work, his essential labor in that untilled field, was no farther advanced. He made about the same progress as a missionary that he made as a cook. In so far as Lone Moose was concerned he accomplished nothing because, like Archimedes, he lacked a foothold from which to apply his leverage. He had the intelligence to perceive that these people had no pressing wants which they looked to him to supply, that they were apparently impervious to any message he could deliver. His power to deliver a message ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... for a time on that memorable Thursday afternoon, when all the laboratory force made high holiday and scrambled for foothold on the locomotive for a trip; but the friction gearing was not equal to the sudden strain put upon it during one run and went to pieces. Some years later, also, Daft again tried friction gear in his historical experiments ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... further shore. He considered himself an athlete and wished to show "young England how they do things in Yankeeland," and with a shout he darted forward. Headlong he came to the spot above the water where no foothold was—a space too wide for even his long legs to cover, and all the watchers ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... floundering into pools, breaking through bushes, and finally scrambled up the steep embankment. How to board the train seemed a problem which was insuperable, if the cars were moving at any speed. There was little foothold by the side of the track, and undoubtedly the train was moving quickly, for now the noise of it was a dull roar, and he, who was not wholly unacquainted with certain unauthorized forms of travel, could judge to within a mile an hour the rate ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... minutes the LADY ALICE had been settling rapidly by the bow. Already her stern loomed high in the air, and foothold on the deck was of the most precarious nature. She carried four boats, and these were all filled and lowered away in safety. As they pulled rapidly from the stricken little vessel Jane Porter turned to have one last look at her. Just then there came a loud crash and ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... life is easily seen, but there are many other sides or phases that are not as readily comprehended. We are here as a protest to the unnatural life of our crowded cities. We are here to build society anew on juster principles, believing that if we once get a fair foothold, the institution will be self-supporting, and so attractive that we shall have no need to seek for true, earnest workers; they will seek us, rather than we seek them, and we shall be able to choose of the best material for an eternal city where all will be rich in the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... among the leaves and found the thick vine. A moment later he was silently scaling the wall of the house, feeling his way carefully, testing every precarious foothold, dragging himself painfully upwards by means of the most ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... you are right there," he agreed. "But you must allow for it. He's very uncertain of his foothold, and that's his ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... after awhile the urgent demands for the timber and other productions of these regions will cause roads to be constructed for their transportation to markets. We should not be backward in our efforts to secure permanent foothold for the truth as we hold and practice it. Many here cannot read for themselves; and it pains my heart to find how poorly they have been instructed in the things pertaining to the way of salvation. The small amount of preaching they hear is not often of an instructive ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... working independently. An added complication was the prejudice created by the efforts of the "militant" suffrage organization, then called the Congressional Union, to organize, this being the only center in the State in which they had secured a foothold. The large women's clubs of Philadelphia took no part in the constructive work of the campaign. Wilmer Atkinson of this city, editor and owner of the Farm Journal, was president of the Men's League for Woman Suffrage and gave unstintingly of his strength and means to secure victory. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... no protest. Indeed, she displayed a caution in lowering herself that surprised him. Every foothold she tested carefully with her weight. Once she asked him to place her shoe in the crevice for her. He had never seen her take so much time in making sure or be so fussy about ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... the interior of this vast cave, finding everywhere the walls rising sheer from the silent, dark waters, not a ledge or a crevice where one might gain foothold. Indeed, in some places there was a considerable overhang from above, as if a great dome whose top was invisible sprang from some level below the water. We pushed ahead until the tiny semi-circle of light through which we had entered was only faintly visible; ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... the gradual geographical development of that country out of the unlimited 'Terra Florida' of Juan Ponce de Leon, through the French planting and the Spanish rooting out of the Huguenot colony down to the successful foothold of the English in Wingandacoa under Raleigh's patent, I little suspected either the extent of the research I was drifting into, or the success that awaited ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... long ladders, through a fiery, burning rain To reach a pallid face that glares behind a crackling pane; Sometimes he feels his foothold shake with giddy swing and sway, And barely leaps to safety as the crashing roof gives way; Sometimes, penned in and stifling fast, he waits, with courage grim, And hears the willing axes ply that strive to rescue him; But sometime, somewhere, somehow, help may come a ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... otherwise there could be no reason why he should go on living. He applied himself doggedly to this attempt; but whenever he thought he had found a reason that his mind could rest in, it gave way under him, and the old struggle for a foothold began again. His two objects in life were his boy and his book. The boy was incomparably the stronger argument, yet the less serviceable in filling the void. Ralph felt his son all the while, and all through his other feelings; but he could not think about him actively and continuously, could ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... you will find posts driven into the mountain side, upon which branches of trees and earth are spread. This forms a trembling foothold for the traveler. 8. In the Andes, in South America, the sure-footed mule is used to carry travelers. Quite often a chasm must be crossed that is many feet wide and hundreds of feet deep. The mule will leap across this chasm, but not until it is ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the Goths who were engaged in garrison duty in Gaul he was unable to summon, through fear of the Franks. These Franks were called "Germani" in ancient times. And the manner in which they first got a foothold in Gaul, and where they had lived before that, and how they became hostile to the Goths, I shall now proceed ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... boarding nettings, and began hacking and slashing at them with their cutlasses, only to be thrust back, dead or dying, by our valiant crew, and the now blood-maddened natives. Nine or ten of them did succeed in gaining a foothold on the deck, by clambering up the bobstay on to the bowsprit, and led by a mere boy of sixteen, made a determined charge; a native armed with a club sprang at the youth and dashed out his brains, though at the same moment a Frenchman thrust him through the body with his ...
— "Old Mary" - 1901 • Louis Becke
... non-partisan and with one exception did so, but thousands of women rallied to the standard of the new party. As most of them were disfranchised they brought little voting strength but the other parties were forced to admit them and for the first time they gained a foothold in politics. The division in Republican ranks resulted in putting into power the Democratic party, with an unfavorable record on woman suffrage and a President who was opposed to it, but "votes for women" was now a national ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... slipped from under Teddy's feet, and, with the heavy burden bearing down upon him, he was unable to get sufficient foothold to save himself. ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... gun is just booming over the African hills as the steamer drops anchor off the wonderful city where the French have gained a foothold ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... sing. Ah! what a day was here, had the hope of the boy been still swelling in his bosom! But the decree had gone forth! no doubt remained! no refuge of uncertainty was left! The house must follow the land! Castle Warlock and the last foothold of soil must go, that wrong should not follow ruin! Were those divine women to spend money, time, and labour, that he and his father should hold what they had no longer any right to hold? Or in beggary, were they to hide themselves in the yet lower ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... again started and, after travelling several miles, entered a narrow valley with very steep sides, with trees and brushwood growing wherever they could get a foothold. He now adopted a careless and indifferent carriage and, although he kept a sharp lookout, no one who saw him would have supposed that he had any particular ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... established at a time when Deism and Naturalism were rampant in England, and it secured a foothold in most of the continental countries in an age noted for its hostility to supernatural religion. In the first article of the /Old Charges/ (1723) it is laid down that, "A mason is obliged by his tenure to obey the moral law, and if he really understands the art he will ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... lawyer, watchful, worried, careful; then for a couple of days he was a ragged young Mexican and the lover of Catalina—a different man. He was the product of a transition, and two beings warred in him. In town he was dominated by the desire to be like the Americans, and to gain a foothold in their life of law, greed and respectability; in the mountains he relapsed unconsciously into the easy barbarous ways of his fathers. Incidentally, this periodical change of personality was refreshing and a ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... next floating log. Turner beckoned him on. It was difficult to make the foreman hear above the noise of the water and the continual grinding of the logs, but Rafe yelled some warning and pointed toward the timber now almost upon Turner's foothold. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... however, had been shamming, and as soon as Peleg released his hold he quickly regained his foothold and in turn forced Peleg under the water. In the struggle which followed both contestants were carried into the current of the stream beyond their depth, and were compelled to let go their hold ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... Georgia will be within a few miles of us, the long-suffering and long-coveted East Tennessee on our left, Central Alabama to our front and right. A great struggle will undoubtedly soon take place, for it is not possible that the rebels will give us a foothold south of the Tennessee ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... destroy, miss, give up; — pie, to lose one's footing (or foothold); — de vista, to lose sight of; refl., to be lost; to disappear, vanish; ...
— Legends, Tales and Poems • Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
... as successor to McClellan (who had been recalled to Washington for very high command) and with General Jacob D. Cox leading the force against Gauley. The Confederates did all they could to keep their precarious foothold. They sent political chiefs, like Henry A. Wise, ex-Governor of Virginia, and John B. Floyd, the late Federal Secretary of War, both of whom were now Confederate brigadiers. They even sent Lee himself in general commend. But, confronted by superior forces in a difficult ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... means of reaching Quill's Window save from the top of the rock. These niches or "hand-holds" were about two feet apart. He examined the lower ones. They were deeply chiselled, affording a substantial foothold as well as a grip for a strong, resolute climber. Most of them were packed with dirty, wind blown leaves from the trees nearby,—so tightly packed by the furious rains that beat against the rock that he had difficulty in removing the substance. Higher up they ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... property, the unfortunate victims of a shipwreck struggling to reach the shore? The very idea of such cruelty sickens the imagination. The proprietor, like Robinson Crusoe on his island, wards off with pike and musket the proletaire washed overboard by the wave of civilization, and seeking to gain a foothold upon the rocks of property. "Give me work!" cries he with all his might to the proprietor: "don't drive me away, I will work for you at any price." "I do not need your services," replies the proprietor, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... reinforcements of arms to said Islands for this purpose. If in this war, which I consider to be the last, we secure our independence, and with the opposition of our brothers in that region, with yourself at their head, we are successful in preventing the enemy from gaining a foothold, the grateful country will always render a tribute of homage and gratitude ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... offered of themselves little impediment to the traveller; at other times, it followed the course of a mountain stream that flowed round the base of some beetling cliff, leaving small space for the foothold; at others, again, where the sierra was so precipitous that it seemed to preclude all further progress, the road, accommodated to the natural sinuosities of the ground, wound round the heights which it would have been impossible to ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... just what make-up the grip germs will put on to break into the human system, but once they get a foothold in the epiglottis nothing can remove them except inward applications ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... across, pulling the roofed carts! That is strange," the Adjutant repeated. "It is, past any doubt, a new breed of bullock. Some day it will not be able to keep its foothold up yonder, and will fall as the men did. The old Mugger will then ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... Quebec that fated morning, I heard Fraser's Highlanders had climbed the cliffs, swinging from foothold to foothold like the wild cats of their native mountains, I said to myself, 'This is, indeed, my venture, and it is fitting my own people should carry it out.' But how odd it is that two Highland threads should come together in such a fashion, only we Celts ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... does possess some "secret virtue," for if the plant be immersed in glycerine the preservative takes the hue of the flower. Nature having ordained that the plants should be elusive, they appear in remote spots and unlikely situations with foothold among loose and gritty fragments of rock, and with cessation of the sustaining rains disappear, each having borne but a single leaf and produced but a solitary flower. The leaf does not seem to be attractive to insects, nor is ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... sight it was—now the one, now the other uppermost, both too intent for any noise beyond a low growl, a whimpered cry, or a snarl of hate—followed by a quicker scrambling of claws, as each, worrying and pushing and dragging, struggled for foothold on the pavement! The spotted leopardess was larger than the white, and I was anxious for my friend; but I soon saw that, though neither stronger nor more active, the white leopardess had the greater endurance. Not once did she lose her hold on the neck of the other. From ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... the coast of Spain Carthage also proved too obstinate a rival for the Greeks to gain much of a foothold. The city of Massilia (Marseilles), at the mouth of the Rhone, was their chief settlement in ancient Gaul. Two colonies on the southern shore of the Mediterranean were Cyrene, west of Egypt, and ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... squealed, and began to kick on his own account. Hiram was trying to get the noose over a bind foot. After several attempts he succeeded, and then threw the rope over the lowest branch. I gave a wild Indian yell of triumph. The next instant, before I could find a foothold, the branch to which I was hanging snapped like a pistol-shot, and I plunged down with a crash. I struck the bear and the lower branch, and then the ground. The fall half stunned me. I thought every ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... look as if the dust of documents had injured their health. The moustaches and beards on the lips of each, gave them also a manly appearance. They were all joyously ready to sacrifice themselves and their property for a great spiritual prize, yet looked as if they had a firm foothold in the midst of life; their hale, sensible faces showed no traces of enthusiasm; only the young Seigneur of Warmond's eyes sparkled with a touch of this feeling, while Janus Dousa's glance often seemed turned within, to seek things hidden ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the situation, I turned my back to the stream and commenced climbing the steep side of the gorge, choosing a spot where it was well wooded, for the sake of the foothold. For some distance the ground was green with moss and wood-sorrel; but the tug-of-war came when the vast banks of loose stones—hot, bare, and shale-like—were reached. On gaining the plateau, I threw myself down upon the heather and looked at the scene below. The mingling of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... coaches had been brought by barge across the Dovey from Ynyslas—there lay a still more formidable barrier to rapid progress. For the cliffs hereabouts, which, with their steep declivity down to the rock-strewn shore, left scarcely a foothold for the wandering mountain sheep, were enough to daunt the heart of any but the most courageous and determined engineer. Here, again, the problem rose as to whether they should be tunnelled or the line carried along their ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... cut perpendicularly on this side looked like a wall of granite in which there was no foothold; but above this inflexible wall was a crown of trees, the roots of which hung down it, mostly pines clinging to the rock with their forked feet like ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... man of delicate physique, had died prematurely, worn out by the struggle to find new foothold for himself and others; but something in his personality, and in the nature of his effort—some brilliant, tender note—had kept his memory alive in many hearts. There were many now, however, who thrilled ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said he, "that's my case, too; and I seemed to feel it in my bones that we was to be a pair; only, you know, I had to get a foothold first. I couldn't come to you with empty hands—though, faith! there's not much to speak of ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... to climb the elm, stimulated by memories of how I had entered Friar's Park. It afforded little foothold for the first six feet and proved an even tougher job than I had anticipated, but at last I reached a projecting limb, the bulk of which had been sawn off. Gatton's agility was not so great as mine, but at the moment that I half staggered and half fell into the room, I heard him ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... affirmed his accusation. "The wall was not very high—I kicked a foothold into it half-way up, and Tommy gave me ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... to the possession of North America.] In the year 1600 Spain was the only European nation which had obtained a foothold upon the part of North America now comprised within the United States. Spain claimed the whole continent on the strength of the bulls of 1493 and 1494, in which Pope Alexander VI. granted her all countries to be discovered to the west of a certain meridian which, happens ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... upon Huxley by the University of Oxford. The Universities of the sister kingdoms had been the first thus to recognise his work; and after Aberdeen and Dublin, Cambridge, where natural science had earlier established a firm foothold, showed the way to Oxford. Indeed, it was not until his regular scientific career was at an end, that the University of Oxford opened its portals to him. So, as he wrote to Professor Bartholomew ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... different materials is proposed by some, while one proposes to glaze the bottoms so that barnacles and grass would find a slippery foothold. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... intrenched enemy whom they could not see generally and who could always see them. Behind them was only a strip of beach, the sea, and the more or less uncertain support of their ships. So narrow was their foothold that even if they had had more men, they could scarce find place to ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... already," answered Shep. "Let us pull those branches away. They might give him some sort of a foothold." ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... that once this earth was entirely submerged in water, and during this period for many days a busy little muskrat swam about vainly looking for a foothold of earth wherein to build his house. In his search he encountered a turtle also leisurely swimming, so they had speech together, and the muskrat complained of weariness; he could find no foothold; he was tired of incessant ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... visited by Mr. Worcester in 1906. The Spanish Government never having succeeded in gaining a foothold in it. "During the insurrection Lieutenant Gilmore, of the United States Navy, and his fellow-captives were taken into the southern part of it and there abandoned." "So far as is known, no white man had ever penetrated the southern and central portions of Apayao until" Mr. Worcester, suitably ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... whirling first to one side, and then to the other, in a way to prove how much its headlong impetuosity was broken and checked by the land. It is not easy to describe the relief we felt at these happy chances. It was like giving foothold to some wretch who thought a descent ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... India!—how many Prussian sergeant-majors we shall want! Donnerwetter! Do you think we Germans will long be satisfied with this miserable section of East Africa that was all the English left to us on this coast? We use this for a foothold, that is all! We use this to gain time and get ready! You think perhaps I do not know, eh? I am only feldwebel—non-commissioned officer, you call it. Well and good. I tell you our officers talk all the time of nothing else! And they don't ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... Austrians charged the trenches in the Montenegrin center. Three times they were driven back with terrible losses. The Montenegrins, in the shelter of their trenches, fought stubbornly and tenaciously. Once the first line of Austrians succeeded in obtaining a foothold in the first ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... With such experience on our part, after two years of constant efforts to invade our territories successfully met and more than merely repelled, it would be evidence of gross inefficiency and weakness in us, to permit the enemy to gain even a temporary foothold in any one of the loyal States, or even to attempt it, without the complete overthrow and destruction of the invading force. Our manifest policy is to attack them in their own country, and to hold them there, until we can annihilate their military power. We have successfully ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... English considered that their claim to its rule was pre-eminent. The French had established a line of military fortified posts from Canada to the southern part of the Mississippi, and they were fast securing a foothold in the beautiful ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... structure built of undressed blocks of red Island sandstone, with a little peaked roof out of which peered two dormer windows, with quaint wooden hoods over them, and two great chimneys. The whole house was covered with a luxuriant growth of ivy, finding easy foothold on the rough stonework and turned by autumn frosts to most beautiful bronze and ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
