"Ladder" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to such a height would, by its long angle with the floor, seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the architect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and finished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side ladder, like those used in mounting .. a ship from a boat at sea. The wife of a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of red worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely headed, and stained with a mahogany color, the whole contrivance, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... interior of the place and for a moment did not see Cap'n Ira at all. The ghostly face of the Queen of Sheba appeared at the opening over her manger. Tunis was about to call when he saw the old man straining upon the lower rungs of the ladder to reach the loft to pitch down a bunch of fodder. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... snow. But there is time for the snow. I must establish premises. Climb out of the abyss on a ladder of premises. What did I say about logic? Oh, yes, the persuasive repetition. One flake remains invisible. A thousand flakes are of no account. It is only when the flakes repeat themselves too endlessly for my eye to distinguish that I finally ignore them and walk contentedly in a storm. ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... enthusiasts. They received their condemnation to death "as if it had been an invitation to a marriage feast." They encouraged the friends who crowded their path to the scaffold with exhortations to remain true in the Reformed faith. La Grange, standing upon the ladder, proclaimed with a loud voice, that he was slain for having preached the pure word of God to a Christian people in a Christian land. De Bray, under the same gibbet; testified stoutly that he, too, had committed ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... instantly in the direction of the kitchen. Five minutes later—an alleged five minutes—the children began their search. But they never found him. They hunted high and low, from attic to cellar, in gun- room, scullery, and pantry, even climbing up the ladder from the box- room to the roof, but without result. Colonel Stumper had disappeared. He ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the emperor would reward my zeal with money, honors, and orders, and he would henceforward repose the most implicit confidence in my fidelity. Well, I shall think of it; the idea is a good one, and worthy of being matured. I shall form a scheme to make the good and munificent Archduke John the ladder by which I shall rise. I must conquer, and if I can do it only by pulling down others, it is the duty of self-preservation for me not to shrink from the task. I will now go to the chancery and wait there for the emperor's return. Ah, ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Lord has made you both out of the same material. There ain't no reason why she should be always gettin' nearer heaven and you goin' back to earth. She has difficulties and worriments, same as you have, but if she can make every trial into a new rung for the ladder on which she is mountin' up to God, there ain't no reason why you should make a gravestone out of yours to bury yourself under; and so I start on with a new courage, an' when we get to the end of the journey, I'll not be the only one who'll have ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... always hold themselves in readiness to dash to the protection of their legation if anything goes wrong. They tell one that it is quite safe, that nothing can go wrong, that the Boxer troubles can never be repeated; but all the same, they always appear to have a bag packed and a ladder leaning against the compound walls in case of emergency. Which gives life in Peking a delightful flavor ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... come out to play, The moon doth shine as bright as day; Leave your supper and leave your sleep, And come with your playfellows into the street. Come with a whoop, come with a call, Come with a good will or not at all. Up the ladder and down the wall, A halfpenny roll will serve us all. You find milk, and I'll find flour, And we'll have a pudding in ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... of Abelard: "There was a certain wisdom that seemed such to them that knew not the true wisdom. The world found it and began to be puffed up, thinking itself great in this. Confiding in its wisdom it became presumptuous and boasted it would attain the highest wisdom. And it made itself a ladder of the face of creation. ... Then those things which were seen were known and there were other things which were not known; and through those which were manifest they expected to reach those that were hidden. And they stumbled and fell into the falsehoods of their own imagining ...
— Historia Calamitatum • Peter Abelard
... these conditions, Mitosin with all its appurtenances, was to go to the public treasury. Had the pious lady ever seen the interior of this church, she would not have left this legacy, which was of no use whatever; for while there was a bell in the tower, there was no rope; and there was neither ladder, stairs, nor any other way of reaching the bell. And even if it had been rung by the hour, no honest Christian would have entered the church, on account of the altar picture. Whoever made that had not taken into ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... Hamilton at the bar was unrivalled. I heard his great effort in the case of People versus Croswell, for a libel upon Jefferson. There was a curious changing of sides in the position of the advocates. Spencer, the Attorney-General, who had long been climbing the ladder of democracy, managed the cause for the people; and Hamilton, esteemed an old-school Federalist, appeared as the champion of a free press. Of course, it afforded the better opportunity of witnessing the professional skill and rhetorical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... chimney to the wall, thus inclosing a space of six by four feet. The panel in the ceiling of the closet was twenty inches square. This panel was "doctored" and could be displaced, leaving an aperture large enough for the "spooks" to get through with perfect ease. A light ladder which reached within three feet of the floor of the cabinet was hooked fast above and furnished the means of getting down and up again. There were eight persons connected with the seance described by Mr. Smith, seven upstairs and the medium in the cabinet. ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... the coming of winter and talked of woman's affairs. On the streets of the towns on fair days lawyers, doctors, the officials of the county courts, and the merchants walked about in their shirt sleeves. The house painter went along with his ladder on his shoulder. In the stillness there could be heard the hammers of the carpenters building a new house for the son of a merchant who had married the daughter of a blacksmith. A sense of quiet growth awoke ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... time comes for the ascent to be resumed, Dante notices that Beatrice smiles no longer. On the threshold, as she explains, of the seventh heaven, the lustre of her smile would be more than his eyes could endure. Here, in Saturn, a ladder is seen, reaching to the next sphere. We learn that this is identical with the ladder seen by Jacob in his vision; and down it are descending the spirits of such as in this world had lived the contemplative life in full perfection. The chanting which has been audible in the other spheres ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... sky? I had need of a ladder to climb so high! But what, and the ladder slip? Then I am deceived yet, And if I fall, I catch a queck; I may fortune to break my neck, And that joint is ill to ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... from the little pleasance where the fountain was, and Joy, as she ran, had a vision of a tree which Philip did climb with a ladder, and which he was quite capable of making Angela climb, too. The drop from his favorite limb ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... eating chamber Foy followed Martin across the courtyard to the walled-in stables, and up a ladder to the room where the serving man slept. It was a queer place, and filled with an extraordinary collection of odds and ends; the skins of birds, otters, and wolves; weapons of different makes, notably a very large two-handed sword, plain and ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... remaining parts are still more fragmentary, only prefaces and scattered contributions having been reduced to writing. The third part was to have been formed by a description of the world or natural history, Historia Naturalis, and the last,—introduced by a Scala Intellectus (ladder of knowledge, illustrations of the method by examples), and by Prodromi (preliminary results of his own inquiries),—by natural science, Philosophia Secunda. The best edition of Bacon's works is the London one of Spedding, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... the Old Squire had set the ladder, and climbing up, sawed off the bough a little back of the point where the bees were clinging to it. All this time Gram was drumming vigorously without cessation; and Theodora having fetched a broad bit of board which she placed on the ground under the tree, Addison slowly lowered the bough ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... Kut-le left Rhoda to the others and climbed one of the ladders. He returned with a blanketed figure that gazed on Rhoda non-committally. At a sign, Kut-le lifted Rhoda, and the little group moved noiselessly toward the dwelling, clambered up a ladder, and disappeared. ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... bitter sarcasm, and tender memories. He has swept into the pages of his poem the experience of thirty years of a life so crowded with vitality that our sense of the plethora of power which it exhibits makes us ready to condone its lapses. Byron, it has been said, balances himself on a ladder like other acrobats; but alone, like the Japanese master of the art, he all the while bears on his shoulders the weight of a man. Much of Don Juan is as obnoxious to criticism in detail as his earlier work; it has every mark of being written in hot ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... descent which have led up to them and which are comparable to the branches and limbs arising from the trunk of a tree. Thus the major and minor divisions of animals do not follow in the order of the rungs of a ladder, even though they must be assigned to different levels according to the complexity of their construction. The summary given above, namely, that the occurrence of lower and higher levels reveals an order of evolution, is amplified and not contradicted by the statement that the species of animals ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... and game this man mounted by a short, rude ladder to firmer footing on the platform, a negro, who sat fishing for his breakfast on the bank a few yards up the stream, where it bent from the north and west, slowly lifted his eyes, noted that the other was a white ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... Many of these pockets are filled with water. In one of these holes or wells, 20 feet deep, I find a tree growing. The excavation is so narrow that I can step from its brink to a limb on the tree and descend to the bottom of the well down a growing ladder. Many of these pockets are potholes, being found in the courses of little rills or brooks that run during the rains which occasionally fall in this region; and often a few harder rocks, which evidently assisted in ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... to the catwalk. It seemed that the central bulkhead was breaking. There were fallen figures on the deck beneath me. I stumbled against the body of a man who had tangled himself in the stays of the ladder ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... face was blackened in a great patch and there was a large blue swelling, like a bruise, in the centre. There was a good deal of blood on the face which obscured the hole made by the entrance of the bullet. The eyes were half-closed. A big camera, pointed downwards, was mounted on a high double ladder straddling the body and was operated by a young man in a bowler hat who went on with his work without taking the slightest notice of ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... while yet a girl in her teens, in a little Western town ("Oh!" thought Missy), that Miss Carson mounted the first rung of the ladder she has climbed to such enviable heights. She had just graduated from the local high school ("Oh! oh!" thought Missy) and, already prodded by ambition, persuaded the editor of the weekly paper ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... is the middle rung of a long ladder which we climb in the dark. Though we cannot see the steps below, or above, ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... resulted from the insertion of a large brass chandelier into each of their abaci, each chandelier carrying a sublime wax candle two inches thick, fastened with wire to the wall above. The due arrangement of these appendages, previous to festal days, can only be effected from a ladder set against the angle of the abacus; and ten minutes before I wrote this sentence, I had the privilege of watching the candlelighter at his work, knocking his ladder about the heads of the capitals as if they had given him personal offence. He at ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... else, obtain a sombre reflection from other facts which precede them, and thenceforth cannot be passed over in silence. The historian is obliged to collect and note them, as showing the logical development of this degraded being: he unites them in sequence, and counts the successive steps of the ladder mounted by ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... view the proposal which he had made to me could not be entertained. I felt the personal misfortune and public inconvenience of being thrown out of party connection; but a man at the bottom of the well must not try to get out, however disagreeable his position, until a rope or a ladder is put down to him. In this case my clear opinion was that by joining the government I should shock the public sentiment and should make no essential, no important, ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... lay on the carpet. Tony had evidently been roughly dressed. His collar, necktie and cap lay on the bureau and his stockings on the floor. That he had been carried out of the window and to the ground was certain. The two ends of the ladder had left their imprint in the snow in the sill and on the ground. The ladder itself had been thrown among ...
— Radio Boys Loyalty - Bill Brown Listens In • Wayne Whipple
... idea that had already struck him. Well, it would be easy enough from above to sweep the ladder with a swift rifle fire and drive the dacoits ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... benefit the retailer and advertise the business by brighter windows, cleaner shops, less faded goods, and healthier financial conditions must contribute to the general prosperity of the trade, from the bottom step to the top rung of the ladder. ...
— The Candy Maker's Guide - A Collection of Choice Recipes for Sugar Boiling • Fletcher Manufacturing Company
... people. The block-house was a building made of very large timbers, hewed square, laid close upon each other and notched to an exact fit at the ends. It had but one entrance, and that was near the top. This could be reached only by a ladder, and should the Indians gain access to the fort, the whites would retire, fighting, to this building, and when all were in, the ladder would be drawn in after them. From the port-holes of the block-house a fierce fire ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... tiptoe. Alexina followed in the same stealthy fashion, feeling no older at the moment than her niece. The verandah did not extend as far as the music room, which had been built a generation later, and the windows were some eight feet from the ground. A ladder, however, abridged the distance, and Alexina, obeying a gesture from Joan, climbed as hastily as her narrow skirt would permit and peered through the outside shutters, which ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... the vapors of anger—as dense as any Alpine fog—Dante, who has caught glimpses of famous victims of anger, such as Haman and Lavinia, emerges with Virgil, only to be dazzled by the glorious light of the sun. Then, climbing the ladder the angel points out, Dante feels him brush away the third obnoxious P., while chanting, "Blessed are the peacemakers." They now reach the fourth ledge, where the sin of indifference or sloth is punished, and, as they trudge along it, Virgil explains that all indifference ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... as the margin has it "a new creation" (II Cor. v: 17). Such vain philosophies have only one logical result which is to put yourself in the place of God, and then what have you to lean upon in the hour of trial? It is like trying to climb up a ladder that is resting against nothing. Therefore, says the Apostle Paul, "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of man, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." (Col. II: 8.) The ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... locked, he imagined it could not be forced without noise enough to rouse him. Again the shadow flickered across the trap-door; then ensued a complete eclipse of the scant glimmer of light. There was a step upon the ladder which served as stairway—a ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... way hurriedly to the top flat of the mansion, and thence, by ladder and trap, to a certain leaded platform, sheltered at one end by a great stalk of chimneys and occupying the actual summit of the roof. On both sides, it bordered, without parapet or rail, on the incline of slates; and, northward above all, commanded an extensive ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... I deluded him back; I went on board, and he sat on the steps of the accommodation-ladder, with his feet in the water. I handed him a wineglass of brandy, and screened him from the burning sun. He was in a sullen mood, but after a time resumed his usual tone. Nothing could induce him to be landed in the schooner's boat, though I protested I ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... all the Locrians mightiest, Fierce-souled Alcimedon, trusting in his prince And his own might and valour of his youth, All battle-eager on a ladder set Swift feet, to pave for friends a death-strewn path Into the town. Above his head ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... 'Saiah's got," said Sennacherib. "He can see a hole through a ladder when somebody's polished his glasses. Rachel Blythe was the wench's name. Her was a little slip of a creator', no higher than a well-grown gell o' twelve, but pretty in ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... painter," exclaimed Simpson, tossing a rope's-end to a couple of men who peered down from the Minerva's bulwarks upon the catamaran and her crew with mingled astonishment and dismay; and at the same moment Leslie and Nicholls made a spring for the barque's side-ladder, and, shinning up it, tumbled in on deck to the further discomfiture of the two men aforesaid, leaving Simpson to follow, which he promptly did. The whole thing was done so smartly that the only two visible ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... any note struck, if not in striking it. The ear is cultivated sooner than the voice, and they may be taught to name the octave as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and their imaginations impressed by drawing a ladder of eight rounds on the blackboard, to signify that the voice rises by regular gradation. This will fix their attention, and their interest will not flag, if ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... out. The streets were crowded. Workmen were everywhere employed in the childish operation of removing all insignia, and obliterating all names that showed where an Empire had existed. One greasy citizen, mounted on a ladder, was effacing the words "Boulevard Haussman," and substituting for Haussman, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... soul. Yet pray Lest ye grow proud in such exalted worth. Let no man reckon he excels. I say The laws of compensation compass earth, And no man gains without some equal loss: Each ladder round of fame becomes a rod, And he who lives must die upon a cross. The stars are far, but flowers bless the sod, And he who has the least of man has most ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... overboard and go to work as a cowboy if they would give him a job. That was nearer the sphere of his intended future activities; that was getting down to the root and foundation of a business which had a ladder in it whose rungs were not made of any general ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... arguments of Vieux par-Chemins, and said that he was a man of good parts. Then he made his memorable decree, that if, as this beggar declared, he had need of such gratification at his age he gave permission to prove it at the foot of the ladder which he would have to mount to be hanged, according to the sentence already passed on him by the provost; that if then, the rope being round his neck, between the priest and the hangman, a like desire seized him he should have ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... refuge thou shalt owe to the courtesy of the great Lombard, who bears the Ladder charged with the Holy Bird.[21] So benignly shall he regard thee, that in the matter of asking and receiving, the customary order of things shall be reversed between you two, and the gift anticipate the request. With him thou shalt behold the mortal, born under so strong an influence ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... shout at the door gladdened our hearts; our beds and that ever-welcome basket were handed in, and Dhemetri was soon deeply engaged in preparing supper. Meanwhile, a fire had been built in the upper room, and we went up by a ladder. But here we were worse off than below. Roof, floor, walls, and (wooden) windows, all were amply provided with cracks and knot-holes, through which the wind roved at its will. A wretched fire was smoldering on the hearth, and a candle ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... said, so I used my spade as a ladder and climbed out of the ditch. Being very thirsty, I walked down through the marshy valley to the clump of alders which grows along the creek. I followed a cow-path through the thicket and came to the creek side, where I knelt on a log and took a good long drink. Then ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... Jess. We'll get round to it all in due time," laughed Peggy from her perch upon a small step-ladder where she was fastening up some hat-bands of the Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Olympia and the ships which had comprised the summer practice squadron, the girls all gathered about her asking forty questions to the minute and wild with curiosity and excitement. ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... down the stairway that led to the steerage department, and for a few moments sat among the steerage passengers. Then he climbed up another ladder, and got to the very front of the ship. Here he sat down on a coil of rope, and thought over the situation. Thinking, however, did him very little good. He realized that, even if he got hold of the paper Miss Brewster ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... blindness of those youths who cursed life because of a failure, and were capable of giving their health, their vigor, in exchange for the sorry glory of a picture, less lasting even than the frail canvas. Every medal was a rung on the ladder; they measured the importance of these awards, giving them a meaning like that of a soldier's stripes. And he too had been young! He too had embittered the best years of his life in these combats, like amoebae ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... a curtain with his fatal Christmas-candle. Now he raved and shouted in vain: no one would venture up the ladder. ...
— Fairy Book • Sophie May
... step-ladder ready, and with a celerity decidedly pleasing, soon placed the pictures safely on the floor, so that she could still see them and judge of their character. Though his dexterous manner and careful handling of the pictures were gratifying, it must be confessed that ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Lord Chancellor Campbell. He had risen from the lowest drudgery to the highest eminence of the legal profession. By the prolific arts of perseverance and industry, he had scaled each successive round in the ladder of promotion, until now, in his declining years, with accumulated honor and respect, he had thus reached the summit, taking precedence after the Archbishop of Canterbury, holding the great seal, and presiding over ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the car awaiting them. As they descended the ladder to the launch, a yelp sounded from the deck, and a bull-terrier came charging after. Florence regarded the dog ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... decorations of her last Christmas tree, and she and Harry hung sparkling balls, and golden stars, and silver fishes, and red and blue paper angels, and candy swans, and sugar pears, and glittering things of all sorts, shapes, and sizes upon the boughs. Harry had a step-ladder, and Dick Ford and five colored boys held it firmly while he stood on it and tied on the ornaments. Very soon the neighbors began to send in their contributions. Mrs. Loudon gave a stout woollen dress, which was draped over ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... Before the leaves are out in April the female begins her nest, concealing it as much as she can in a tree-crotch, or placing it under a shed or porch, or even under an overhanging bank upon the ground. One spring a robin built her nest upon the ladder that was hung up beneath the eaves of the wagon-shed. Having occasion to use the ladder, we placed the nest on a box that stood beneath it. The robin was disturbed at first, but soon went on with her incubating in the new and more exposed position. The same spring one built her nest upon ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... shelf at the foot of the hills, and the kindled fire has set a great carbuncle in the standing pool. A spring branch oozes out of the rocky turf, and flows down to meet a shallow river fretting over shoals. The road we have followed hangs like a rope-ladder from the top of the hills, sagging down in the irregularities till it reaches the river-bed, where it flies apart in strands of sand. The twilight leans upon the opposite ridge, painting its undulations in inconceivably delicate shades of subdued ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... not a good man? My countrymen, no one has said that. He was a brave soldier. He is a self-made man; the son of good, plain people. He is self-educated. By integrity and toil he mounted, step by step, on the ladder of fame. Nearly every man who has arisen to prominence in our country has arisen from the ranks by toil. Such a man is ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... them in a hierarchy with knowing or reason at the head. Knowing—that is, receiving and recognizing a stimulus from without—would seem to come first; we must be acted on before we can re-act; but priority confers no supremacy. We can look at it another way. Perceiving is the first rung on the ladder that leads to action, feeling is the second, action is the topmost rung, the primary goal, as it were, of all the climbing. For the purpose of our discussion this is perhaps the simplest way of looking ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... "Whitechapel" with which she won the hearts of her first employers. It is courageous of Mr. HOWARD to place on record his apparent belief that a total absence of the three "R's" and any number of "h's" cannot debar a strong-minded daughter of the slums from the higher rungs of the histrionic ladder. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... in front helped those following them, or were themselves hoisted up by the men behind. At last, panting and breathless, they stood on the summit of the rock, on a narrow ledge, with the castle wall rising in front of them. They had, with enormous difficulty, brought up a light ladder with them. This was placed against the wall. Francus was the first to mount, and was followed by Sir Andrew Grey, whom Randolph had invited to be of the party, by Archie Forbes, and by the earl. Just as the latter stepped on to the battlements the sentries ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... leaves and stalks in teacups are considered sure indications of past or coming events, even by the large and enlightened public who pass their lives on dry land. There are few things more comical than to see the nautical person studiously avoid passing under a shore ladder. The penalty of it has a terror for him; and yet his whole life is spent in passing to and fro under rope ladders aboard ship without any suspicion of evil consequences. But the landsman's belief in mystic tokens and flighty safeguards is faint indeed compared ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... must go hout!" Some vital fact imparted itself to the ship's command and seemed to penetrate to the ship's heart; she stopped, as if with a sort of majestic relenting. A tug panted to her side, and lifted a ladder to it; the bareheaded man, and a woman gripping a baby in her arms, sprawled safely down its rungs to the deck of the tug, and the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Winchell, and so on. And currants, too, acres of them set under and between the rows of grapes, and Bartlett pears, and peaches. As I write, a picture comes to mind of Father up in a peach tree, on a high step-ladder, picking peaches, and of some girls with cameras taking his picture and all laughing and the girls exclaiming; "At the mercy of the Kodakers"— and Father enjoying the joke and picking out soft peaches for them. He liked to pick peaches. The big ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Up the ladder of the ages Clomb the patriarchal sages, Solving nature's secret pages, Kings of thought's supremest glory; Eagle-winged, and sight far reaching— Are we wiser for their teaching?— Wrangling creeds for gentle preaching! ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... but I do affirm that the ambition for worldly gains and worldly honors is sluicing the very heart of God's Church, and drawing out to-day much of the Church's best blood in their greedy outlets. And I fearlessly declare that when the most splendid talent has reached the loftiest round on the ladder of promotion, that round is many rungs lower than a pulpit in which a consecrated tongue proclaims a living Christianity to a dying world. What Lord Eldon from the bar, what Webster from the Senate-chamber, what Sir Walter Scott from the realms of romance, what ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... noble and penetrating than was ever before attempted. In his essay on the "Genius of Woman" he enters on a new and important field of investigation, a virgin soil as yet untried. In "Unity," the greatest of his essays, he boldly climbs the Jacob's ladder of philosophy and walks serene among the stars, grappling even with Infinity. He had achieved unity for himself; the one complete cosmopolitan mind of his time. In his highest flights he is never cold or inexorable, but always human, tender, and sympathetic. He loved the ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... infantry battalion, and Captain Barber and Lieutenant Boon, Second Missouri Mounted Volunteers, charged the northern wall. As soon as the troops above mentioned had established themselves under the western wall of the church, axes were used in the attempt to breach it, and a temporary ladder having been made, the roof was fired. About this time, Captain Burgwin, at the head of a small party, left the cover afforded by the flank of the church, and penetrating into the corral in front of that building, endeavoured to force the door. In this exposed situation, Captain Burgwin received ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... the large olive plantations of Rama, we gazed up at the long and steep ladder of the precipice by which ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... contemplating the way in which this regime engendered, brought forth, nourished, installed and stimulated them we cannot avoid considering its history as one long suicide, like that of a man who, having mounted to the top of an immense ladder, cuts away from under his feet the support which has kept him up.—In a case of this kind good intentions are not sufficient; to be liberal and even generous, to enter upon a few semi-reforms, is of no avail. On the contrary, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... brother, Barrie, began to be troublesome about this time, and to evince an unwholesome interest in the pigeons. The ladder, which was placed against the stable under their house, at first seemed to him too high to climb, but seeing the multitude of delighted spectators who went up and down without accident, he resolved to try it, too, and so successfully ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... not part of Hamdi's plan to leave the young girl there and close the obliterating stone. Scarcely had the waters met above her head than he was flinging down a rope ladder whose upper ends were fastened to rings in the floor and descending this with swift agility until the waters reached ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... uncertainty of disposition strengthened and increased with her temporal prosperity; and divers wise men and matrons, on friendly terms with the locksmith and his family, even went so far as to assert, that a tumble down some half-dozen rounds in the world's ladder—such as the breaking of the bank in which her husband kept his money, or some little fall of that kind—would be the making of her, and could hardly fail to render her one of the most agreeable companions in existence. Whether they were right or wrong ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... Mademoiselle Irma! You were reared upon lemons. The split hair of your mural crown is not thinner than that voice of yours. It is a mockery to hear you; but you are good enough for the people, my dear, and you do work, running up and down that ladder of wires between your throat and your head;—you work, it is true, you puss! sleek as a puss, bony as a puss, musical as a puss. But you are good enough for the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... mountain. It is surrounded by a broad ditch, and had a wall within the ditch. Several of its towers are still standing. A very solid bridge, which crosses the winter torrent, Wady el Kyd, leads to the entrance of the castle, over which is an Arabic inscription; but for want of a ladder, I could make out nothing of it but the date "600 and ... years (.... [Arabic])," taking the era of ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... circuits this act had brought Miss Rosalie Ray, for each of two years. She did other things during her twelve minutes—a song and dance, imitations of two or three actors who are but imitations of themselves, and a balancing feat with a step-ladder and feather-duster; but when the blossom-decked swing was let down from the flies, and Miss Rosalie sprang smiling into the seat, with the golden circlet conspicuous in the place whence it was soon ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... tribute for the king. This village, as well as the rest, was found to consist of houses excavated in the ground (as the Armenian villages are at the present day), spacious within, but with a narrow mouth like a well, entered by a descending ladder. A separate entrance was dug for conveniently admitting the cattle. All of them were found amply stocked with live cattle of every kind, wintered upon hay; as well as with wheat, barley, vegetables, and a sort of barley-wine or beer in tubs, with the grains of barley ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... mind misgave her, and the hymeneal guests were quite alarmed: the servants declared that they had seen their master and the gentleman walk into the garden, from whence they were not returned. Now, a high brick wall, in which there was no outlet, and over which no person could climb except by a ladder, enclosed the garden, which, when searched, was empty, whilst, at the same time, Mr. Terry and his friend, "the gentleman," could not have walked out at the hall-door without being, from its situation, seen and heard by the servants in the kitchen. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 281, November 3, 1827 • Various
... chiefs fight in advance, and enact almost as much as the knights of romance. The siege of Troy was as little like a modern siege as a captain in the guards is like Achilles. There is no mention of a ditch or any other line or work round the town, and the wall itself was accessible without a ladder. It was probably a vast mound of earth with a declivity outwards. Patroclus thrice mounts it in armour. The Trojans are in no respects blockaded, and receive assistance from their allies to ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... climber, gratified. 'Friend', says I, in a hurry, 'have ambitions but don't kick a rung out of your ladder. When you use me as a stepping stone to salute the police you spoil my appetite on the grounds that I may be degraded and ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... Where the tranced pilgrim lies, with eyelids sealed, His calm face flushed with comfortable sleep, His weary limbs relaxed, his heavy head Pillowed upon the stone. Oh, blessed dream That visits his rapt sense, of airy forms, Mounting, descending on the shining ladder, With messages of peace. I will be true Unto my lineage divine, and breathe The passion of just pride that overfills ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... Johnson iron-gray, the strand of Garrick gleaming gold. Through long years Johnson hid in dingy courts and alleys, ill-clothed, ill-fed, an uncouth Apollo in the service of Admetus Cave and his kind, while the marvellous actor was climbing daily higher and higher on the ladder of an actor's fame, the friend of the wealthy, the favored of the great, the admired, the applauded, the well-beloved. Garrick deserved his fame and his fortune, his splendid successes and {43} his shining rewards; but the grand, rough writer of books did not deserve ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... stimulate us less than those whom we recognize as the peers of our ideal selves—of ourselves as we strive and intend to become. The man on the ladder just ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... time they were at the house door. They passed in and ascended the stairs to the second story, then climbed a narrow, ladder-like flight to the garret. Involuntarily they had paused to listen at the foot of the stairs, but it was very quiet, not a sound of movement, not so much as the sigh of a man breathing. The wife turned pale and put both her shaking hands on ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... fact, that he, commander In chief, in proper person deigned to drill The awkward squad, and could afford to squander His time, a corporal's duty to fulfil; Just as you'd break a sucking salamander To swallow flame, and never take it ill:[hr] He showed them how to mount a ladder (which Was not like Jacob's) ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... dollars thus at the mercy of the rest was so great, that Peleg was not minded, and he crept away and came on board the schooner. We saw that he was bleeding profusely, but we asked no questions, and he went down the ladder forward. ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... said, "if we can climb to it; otherwise we must come again with something we can fit together like a ladder." ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... interpretation—in the words "Give a portion to seven, and also to eight"? Was it because the waters of the Deluge rose fifteen cubits above the mountains?—or because they lasted fifteen decades of days? Was it because Ezekiel's temple had fifteen steps? Was it because Jacob's ladder has been supposed to have had fifteen steps? Was it because fifteen years were added to the life of Hezekiah? Was it because the feast of unleavened bread was on the fifteenth day of the month? Was it ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... sometimes formed of a group of smaller masts planted at a slight distance from each other, but united at the top by strong ligatures and strengthened at intervals by crosspieces which made it look like a ladder; its single sail was bent sometimes to one yard, sometimes to two; while its complement consisted of some fifty men, oarsmen, sailors, pilots, and passengers. Such were the vessels for cruising or pleasure; the merchant ships resembled them, but they were of heavier ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... lover by Bartolo with the aid of the unfortunate letter. Out of this dilemma Almaviva extricates himself by confessing his identity, and the pair are about to steal away when the discovery is made that the ladder to the balcony has been carried away. As they are tiptoeing toward the window, the three sing a trio in which there is such obvious use of a melodic phrase which belongs to Haydn that every writer on "Il Barbiere" ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... monument of the past has been suffered to go to decay; it was only eighty years ago that the walls of the last remaining salon fell in. The only room left is an upper chamber, reached by climbing a ladder. The place where the hearth was is still discernible, as is also the paneled ceiling found in so many of the buildings of the early Renaissance. The ends of the rafters are supported by beautifully carved consoles. All the woodwork is stained dark brown, and here and there ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... utterly delightful experience with the witchery of a Zoorph, pressed burning lips to my own, caressed my cheek with her fingertips, gave my hand a quite American squeeze. Then I watched her slender legs swing up and out of sight as she went up her improvised ladder hand over hand. She was ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... said Penn, "that Stackridge and his friends escaped. This leaning tree with its low branches forms a sort of ladder to the limbs of that larger one; and by these it is ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... looked at the Romans as they attacked the city. Said Kynan to his brother, "We will try to attack the city more expertly than this." So they measured by night the height of the wall, and they sent their carpenters to the wood, and a ladder was made for every four men of their number. Now when these were ready, every day at mid-day the emperors went to meat, and they ceased to fight on both sides till all had finished eating. And in the morning the men of Britain took their food and they ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest
... place before the eyes of us well-to-do and so-called cultivated people, all the poverty and oppression which is lurking in every corner of Moscow. Two thousand of our brothers, who stand on the highest rung of the ladder, will come face to face with thousands of people who stand on the lowest round of society. Let us not miss this opportunity of communion. Let us, through these two thousand men, preserve this communion, and let us make use of it to free ourselves from the ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... to Dr. Trescott's. The whole town flowed towards one point. Chippeway Hose Company Number One toiled desperately up Bridge Street Hill even as the Tuscaroras came in an impetuous sweep down Niagara Avenue. Meanwhile the machine of the hook-and-ladder experts from across the creek was spinning on its way. The chief of the fire department had been playing poker in the rear room of Whiteley's cigar-store, but at the first breath of the alarm he sprang through the door like a man ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... never seen a more dreary interior. My father's old chaise was yet standing there, with both wheels off. The mouldy harness was dropping to pieces on the walls. The beams were festooned with cobwebs. The very ladder leading to the loft above was so rotten that I scarcely dared trust ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... in this condition for more than half an hour, then returned to the house, and getting a ladder, climbed in at his bedroom window out of sheer exhilaration. Then, remembering that the study window was open, he went down and shut it, first removing the ladder, so as to obliterate all traces of his feeling. The thing ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... blocked up, a mass of ruins. I could not get in, and feared you were crushed, until I heard Hero bark from the inside and followed the sound, which brought me to the window, whence he jumped out to meet me. At last when you answered my call, I was obliged to go back for a ladder. Here, darling, at God's altar, let us thank ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... a horseman's leg at a single blow, his body falling over on the other side. Their bridle-bits and spurs were of bronze, as were generally their spear heads and short swords. Of siege implements, beyond the torch and the scaling-ladder, they seem to have had no knowledge, and to have desired none. The Dano-Irish alone were accustomed to fortify and defend their towns, on the general principles, which then composed the sum of what was known in Christendom of military engineering. Quick to acquire in almost every department ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... office first he showed his face; Then to the work-yard: thus his father he beguiled. Spite of his slender mien, he worked and always smiled. He was as deft as workmen twain; he dressed The stones, and in the mortar then he pressed The heavy blocks; the workmen found him cheerful. Mounting the ladder like a bird: He skipped across the rafters fearful. He smiled as he ascended, smiled as he descended— The very masons trembled at his hardiness: But he was working for his father—in his gladness, His life was full of happiness; His brave companions ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... the Perrero. "A gallant in a red cape and sword mounts by a rope ladder; at the window a nun is waiting for him. It seems something like the Don Juan Tenorio that they represent at All Saints'. Further on, you see those two in bed, and people knocking at the door. They must be the ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez |
