"Precarious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentlemen devoted to such pleasures as Richard Swiveller, are extremely precarious. The spiritual excitement of the last fortnight, working upon a system affected in no slight degree by the spirituous excitement of some years, proved a little too much for him. That very night, Mr Richard was seized with an alarming illness, and in twenty-four ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... productive as possible for all the interests which it serves. But if he fails he may not at once incur the penalty, or be conscious of it if he does; he may only forfeit an increase of power, or render his position precarious. On the other hand, to the constituent interest which is sacrificed, this same failure may mean loss of bread or even loss of life. Hence the latter is more sure to move in the matter. Justice is more urgently needed ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... bird or beast does not have to be instructed in her maternal duties: they are instinctive with her; it is of vital importance to the continuance of the species that they should be. If it were a matter of instruction or acquired knowledge, how precarious ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... The huddle of lava-pinnacles became a core of flaming destruction. Half-molten rock showered Denver's precarious refuge. He ducked, unhurt, then thrust head and ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... league against the whites by their own internal dissensions—the Chickasaws and Kickapoos being engaged in a desperate war. [Footnote: Do., Muehlenberg's Letter.] The Wabash Indians were always threatening hostilities. The Shawnees for some time observed a precarious peace, and even, in accordance with their agreement, brought in and surrendered a few white prisoners; and among the Delawares and Wyandots there was also a strong friendly party; but in all three tribes the turbulent element was never under real control, and ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... grimaced, like pitted boxers or wrestlers; but what had abode with him later on, none the less, was just the cherished memory of his not having so lost presence of mind as to fail of feeding on his impression. It was precious and precarious, that was perhaps all there would be of it; and his subsequent consciousness was quite to cherish this queer view of the silence, neither awkward nor empty nor harsh, but on the contrary quite charged and brimming, that represented for him his use, his unforgettable enjoyment in ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... that I have scarcely said anything about this great and famous capital, which in my opinion is built on somewhat precarious foundations. No one but Peter could have thus given the lie to Nature by building his immense palaces of marble and granite on mud and shifting sand. They tell me that the town is now in its manhood, to the honour of the great Catherine; but in the year 1765 it was still ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... Country, where they were unknown, in order to hide themselves from the World; when, to support their Independency, the Father laboured as well as he could at Husbandry, and the Mother and Daughter sometimes got spinning and knitting Work, to help to furnish the Means of Subsistence; which however was so precarious and uncertain, that they often, for many Weeks together, lived on nothing but Cabbage and Bread boiled in Water. But God never forsaketh the Righteous, nor suffereth those to perish who put their Trust in him. At this Time a Lady, who was just come to England, sent to take a pleasant Seat ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... against Tillotson of dangerous and heretical opinion there was yet another item which attracted far more general attention than the rest. 'This new doctrine,' says Leslie, 'of making hell precarious doth totally overthrow the doctrine of the satisfaction of Christ.'[256] Of this particular inference, which would legitimately follow only upon a very restricted view of the meaning of atonement, there is no need of speaking. But the opinion itself, as stated in Tillotson's ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... field. All will admit that woman has a right to herself, to her own powers of locomotion, to her own earnings, but how few are prepared to admit her right to the ballot. But all rights are held by a precarious tenure, if this one be denied. When women are the constituents of men who make and administer the laws, they will pay due consideration to their interests and not before. The right of suffrage is the great ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... traitor. Already the courts and every vacant space was crowded. A sea of human heads was alone visible, nay, the very buttresses and some pinnacles of the castle, which admitted any footing, although of the most precarious kind, had been appropriated. The youth, the extraordinary beauty, and daring conduct of the prisoner had excited an unusual sensation in the town, and the desire to mark how such a spirit would meet his fate became irresistibly intense. Already it seemed as if there could be no space for more, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... edition of Kingsley's novels, briefly describes his school-days and literary career, but is almost wholly silent concerning the eventful years spent in the colonies. There is a single reference to the period which succeeded his gold-digging days, when want forced him to seek a less precarious occupation. For a time, it seems, he was a mounted policeman in New South Wales, until, 'compelled by duty to attend an execution, he was so much affected that he threw up the appointment in disgust.' Then, like many another unlucky digger, he was obliged to travel ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... odd sum now and then by a "Sunday story." He has always been an anonymous writer. He has never had sufficient intellectual character to do anything well. The downward side of middle age finds him afflicted with various physical ailments, entirely dependent upon a precarious position at a moderate salary, without influential friends, completely disillusioned, with a mediocre mind now much fagged, devoid of high ambition, and with a most unstimulating prospect before him. His attitude toward ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... habits, religion, and life than any white person in the West. Both tribes were friendly and peaceable, but there were bad Indians, half-breeds, and outlaws that made the trading-post a venture Withers had long considered precarious, and he wanted to move and intended to some day. His nearest neighbors in New Mexico and Colorado were a hundred miles distant and at some seasons the roads were impassable. To the north, however, ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... institutions irksome. The danger consists in this: that under such circumstances the rewards of business and professional life are for the most part so much more certain and satisfactory than those which come from the precarious pursuit of politics, that public interests have a tendency to suffer from being in weak hands, while private interests have a tendency to assert themselves unduly, from being in the hands of men of superior force. Thus it happens that it is often difficult ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... certainly been no growth in the functions exercised by religion. Its function as law-giver in the physical world is now definitely abandoned, and all it asks is that science will let it alone. In ethics and sociology it still maintains a precarious kind of an existence, but it no longer claims supreme power. It is content to urge its utility as a source of inspiration, to rank as one among a number of other forces that are frankly secular in nature. Finally ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... he had begun to live. Compelled to support an unsuitable wife and an increasing family, Churchill followed his father's example and his father's injudicious counsel and took Holy Orders. Men took Orders in those days with a light heart. It afforded the needy a livelihood, precarious indeed for the most part, but still preferable to famine. Men took Orders with no thought of the sanctity of their calling, of the solemn service it exacted, of its awful duties and its inexorable ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... reality of hell-fire. 'You know the Black Country, my friends,' he had declaimed,' you have seen it, at night, flaring with a thousand furnaces, in the lurid incandescence of which myriads of unhappy beings, our fellow-creatures (God forbid!), snatch a precarious existence—you have seen them silhouetted against the yellow glare, running hither and thither, as it seemed from afar, in the very jaws of the awful fire. Have you realised that the burdens with which they thus run hither and thither are molten ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... helped the fame of so many a wandering actress, while its bullet somehow never hits anything but the wall. All this she might have done, and obtained a notoriety beyond doubt. Instead of this, she has preferred to prowl about, picking up a precarious publicity by giving lectures to willing lyceums, writing books for eager publishers, organizing schools, setting up hospitals, and achieving for her sex something like equal rights before the law. Either she has shown herself, as a seeker after notoriety, to be a most foolish or ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... October 1, 1801, the Peace of Amiens itself on March 27, 1802, but in July, 1803, hostilities between the two countries were again renewed. All this meant that communications between the colony and the motherland were very precarious. Nominally a mail-packet sailed from Jamaica once a month, but the seas were swarming with swift-sailing French and Spanish privateers, hanging about the trade-routes on the chance of capturing West Indiamen with their rich cargoes, so the mail-packets had to wait till ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... reason, when it takes the form of an inference from induction. For the last step of the inductive process, the creation of its supposed universal, is, when compared with the real standard of universality acknowledged by reason, an incomplete and more or less precarious process; "it gets out of facts something more than what they actually contain"; and it can give no reason for itself but what the common faith derived from experience can give, the anticipation of uniform recurrence. ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... luck would have it, it was at the very edge of the shelf that he collapsed. Disengaging his victorious antlers, the conqueror thrust viciously and evisceratingly at the victim's exposed flank. The latter was just struggling to rise, with precarious foothold on the loose-turfed brink of the steep. As he writhed away wildly from the goring points, the bushes and turf crumbled away, and he fell backwards, rolling and crashing till he brought up, battered but whole, in a sturdy thicket of young firs. Regaining ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... accumulation of gigs and chaises in the yard, and a great bustle going forward in the coffee-room and about the doors of the inn. At these evidences of so much travel on the road I was seized with a misgiving lest it should be impossible to get horses, and I should be detained in the precarious neighbourhood of my cousin. Hungry as I was, I made my way first of all to the postmaster, where he stood—a big, athletic, horsey-looking man, blowing into a key in the corner of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and of your age, I quite understand that you have no need of insurance for yourself; but, Monsieur, you might induce others to insure, either because of their inherent qualities which need development, or for the protection of their families against a precarious future. Now, if you will subscribe to the 'Globe,' and give me your personal assistance in this district on behalf of insurance, especially life-annuity,—for the provinces are much attached to annuities—Well, if you will do this, then we can come to an understanding about the wine. Will ...
— The Illustrious Gaudissart • Honore de Balzac
... was nothing to detain either of us in Moorshedabad after the treaty had been confirmed, and every hour that passed rendered our situation more precarious, it was further arranged that Mr. Watts should take his departure at once, leaving me to follow during the night. Accordingly he gave out that he was going on a visit to Cossimbuzar on business connected with the Company's investment, and set out ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... of the runaway, trusting to his strength to do what a woman's could not. But when he came up alongside, he saw that the saddle had turned so far that the rider could not keep her seat ten seconds longer. So he dropped his reins, bent over, and putting his arms about the woman lifted her off the precarious seat, and put her in front of him. He held her there with one arm, and reached for his reins. But Mutineer had tossed ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... growing together on a rise of ground near an old barn foundation. The ground is rich and they love it. Each bush is individual and distinctive as are their nuts—some tucked far in the husk, some bulging out in a precarious fashion, some fat and round, others long and narrow. They're interesting. I can let the butternuts, bitternuts and hickories pass, the heartnuts, chestnuts, and pecans can wait until I am sure they will bear ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting • Various
... thoughtful ecclesiastical designs. Hundreds of boys and girls are taught "freehand drawing," and having copied some casts and lithographs and drawn some flower-pieces, without any particular aim, find a precarious living by designing frightful wall-papers for the million. These poor creatures, from whose lives all ambition and originality have been ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... 105,728, and the poor-law expenditure 30,820 l., or 5 s. 9 d. a head. In the counties in which the poor-law expenditure was large, the industry and skill of the labourers were passing away, the connection between the master and servant had become precarious, the unmarried were defrauded of their fair earnings, and riots and incendiarism prevailed. In the counties where the expenditure was comparatively small, there was scarcely any instance of disorder; mutual ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... triple brass, did not recoil before twenty-seven individual cups of tea. As courage and intelligence are the two qualities best worth a good man's cultivation, so it is the first part of intelligence to recognise our precarious estate in life, and the first part of courage to be not at all abashed before the fact. A frank and somewhat headlong carriage, not looking too anxiously before, not dallying in maudlin regret over the past, stamps the man who is well armoured ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... During May and June they were near the Forks, and with the approach of danger, Washington's spirit and recklessness increased. In a slight skirmish, M. de Jumonville, the French commander, was killed. Fry died of disease and Washington took his place as commander. Perceiving that his own position was precarious, and expecting an attack by a large force of the enemy, he entrenched himself near Great Meadows in a hastily built fort, which he called Fort Necessity, and thought it possible to defend, even with his own small force, against five hundred French ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... flirting, all precarious engagements, all unhappy Carriages, and presuppose a sweet, lovable woman, contentedly married to a real man—a man who truly loves, even if he has not completely mastered the gentle art of love-making. No skeleton in the closet; no wishing the marriage undone; ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... terror is the spirit of philosophical unbelief. Similar views are perpetually repeated in the eloquent but declamatory pages of "The System of Nature." But the remedy proposed seems to be subject to grave suspicion, as one that may be utterly powerless, or at the best, exceedingly precarious; for, first of all, the fears which are supposed to have generated Religion must have been anterior to it, and must have arisen from some natural cause, which will continue to operate even after Religion has been disowned. They spring, in fact, necessarily out ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... has tended to retard the prosperity of the colony by separating the actual settlers, and rendering it so much more difficult, and in some cases impossible, for them to make the necessary roads. It has also made the markets more distant and more precarious. To such an extent have these difficulties been experienced as to occasion the abandonment of settlements which had been formed. I may mention, as an instance of this, the township of Rama, where after a trial of three years, the settlers were compelled to abandon their improvements. ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... rather relieved than otherwise. He had received many a beating from his father, in his fits of drunken fury, and had been obliged to forage for himself for the most part, getting a meal from one neighbor, a basket of provision from another, and so managed to eke out a precarious subsistence in the tumble-down shanty which he and ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... serving a fellow-jester. Fools had oft intruded themselves in great events ere this, but not those who wore the motley; heretofore had the latter been content with the posts of entertainers, leaving to others the more precarious offices of intrigant. ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... and all the opening-up country beyond; so it is more profitable to drive a wagon than to till a farm. Every beast with four legs is wanted to drag building materials or provisions. The supply of beef becomes daily more precarious and costly, for the oxen are all "treking," and one hears of nothing but diseases among animals—"horse sickness," pleuro-pneumonia, fowl sickness (I feel it an impertinence for the poultry to presume to be ill), and even dogs set up a peculiar ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... seen how precarious and nominal has been Spanish rule on most of the islands of this vast archipelago. In the interior of the great island of Mindanao there is no system of control, no pretence even of maintaining order. It is a land of terror, ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... flesh-and-blood Ailsee, he declared, had been dead many years. Her father, Coot Harris, was a rough customer who took up his abode in the marsh—'mash,' Uncle Tucker called it—at the close of the Civil War. Here he gained a precarious livelihood by 'pot-hunting'; for Harris and others of his ilk paid but little attention to the poorly enforced game laws of the section. Coot Harris, the marshman, had a daughter, who, as Uncle Ashby contemptuously remarked, 'was peart enuff, as ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... their way, having resolved to return to the more safe and quiet homes they had left at the east. But beholding the enterprise of Mr. Morris, and the business and thrift that prevailed here on every side, they inferred that their situation could not be so very precarious, and wisely concluded to return and carry forward the improvements ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... inside there—a place like a football stadium only there aren't any seats," explained Bud, breathlessly. By this time he was surrounded by the others, all maintaining a precarious foothold in the shifting shale. And what they saw caused them all to join with Bud in ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... on over the uneven ground, still dizzy and weak from the bludgeoning he had undergone, unable to help his precarious balance by the use of his arms, doubly bound now by the rope about his middle which the Texans had drawn in running noose. It was Morgan's hope in the first few rods of this frightful journey that a brakeman might appear on top of the train, whose attention he might ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... then it is said that the fishing is it more precarious trade, and extends only over it period of the year in Shetland. Does that not counterbalance any advantage which the fisherman derives from having a croft?-It is true that the fishing is a precarious trade, but we have always found that whenever the weather permits, energetic ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... and pleasures of this life, the higher interests of another existence. Deeming themselves privileged to disregard, if not to ridicule religion, by virtue of their age, rank, or talents; and living as though they held their present being by no precarious tenure, they trifle away their time in criminal indulgences, and "lose their own souls" by a guilty procrastination. To persons of this class, Solomon suggests a most important truth, in the form of a sarcastic appeal—"Rejoice, O ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... democracy. Thus the Saturday Review, in a passage already quoted, solemnly, openly and unforgettably declares the secret wishes of the militarists; and we may be surprised to consider how many safeguards of democracy, how many rights of free thought and free speech, how many of the precarious limitations of sweating and child-labour and wage-slavery have been quietly suppressed since the beginning of the war. But if war is ultimately unprofitable for the nation as a whole, it might be argued that Trade itself must ultimately be involved in the national ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... position, his intimacies, to a doubt, and he gave them all up without a murmur. He might have been an idol, and he broke his own pedestal to attack the idolatry which he saw all about him. He gave up a comparatively easy life for a toilsome and trying one; he accepted a precarious employment, which hardly kept him above poverty, rather than wear the golden padlock on his lips which has held fast the conscience of so many pulpit Chrysostoms. Instead of a volume or two of sermons, bridled with a text and harnessed with a confession of faith, he bequeathed us a long ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... circumstances of the people which adopts it. However the functions of the executive power may be restricted, it must always exercise a great influence upon the foreign policy of the country, for a negotiation cannot be opened or successfully carried on otherwise than by a single agent. The more precarious and the more perilous the position of a people becomes, the more absolute is the want of a fixed and consistent external policy, and the more dangerous does the elective system of the chief magistrate become. The policy of the Americans in relation to the whole world ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... Greece were of a nature to make the chances of Crete more precarious than they need have been. The policy of Crete for Greece, rather than Crete for her own good, made confusion and jealousy in the conduct of the war much greater than they need have been. What the Cretans wanted was a good leader, arms, and bread. Greece sent them rival chiefs without ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... was one of those precarious ladies who make uncertain incomes by writing full-bodied storyettes. In the most dismal circumstances she enjoyed a buoyancy bordering on the indecent; which always amused old Heythorp's cynicism. But of his grandchildren Phyllis and Jock (wild as colts) he had become ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... plain to the practised eye!—and there is the poor wife, the doting mother, who has never suspected anything, or at least has clung always to the hope which you are just going to wrench away from her!—I must tell Iris that I think her poor friend is in a precarious state. She seems nearer ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... curious animal alertness of it held her interest. His eyes were wide and restless, and a hardness marked the corners of his rather loose mouth. She wondered if that hardness were natural, or whether it had been acquired in the precarious life that ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... superstitions. The inquisition, that chef d'ouvre of sacerdotal guilt, was speedily introduced into their domestic arrangements, and, as was naturally to be supposed, caused a sudden revulsion, on which account the missionaries thenceforth maintained only a precarious and even a perilous position. They were much reproached, it appears, for the rough and violent methods employed to effect their pious purposes, and although they treat the accusation as most unjust, some of the proceedings, of which they boast with the greatest satisfaction, tend not ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... render wings not only unnecessary, but cumbersome; while the male is not exposed to the danger of being eaten by his cannibal spouse, as among spiders, nor to be set upon and assassinated by infuriated spinsters, as among bees, but drags out a precarious existence for a few days, and then either dies or is devoured by insectivorous insects. There is reason to believe that some females are fertilized before leaving the nest. I have observed flights of the common Formica rufa, in which the females flew ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... conscientious men is not so exhilarating. A different style of thought, like that which prevailed among the French missionaries to the Indies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is more acceptable to colonial susceptibility. A South-side religion is a favorable exposure for delicate and precarious products like indigo, sugar, coffee, and cotton. Las Casas had not learned to wield his enthusiastic pen in defence of the negro; but when the islands became well stocked with slaves, later Catholics eagerly reproduced the arguments of the Spanish encomiendas, and vindicated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... new triumph, every new capitulation of a fortress, caused the emperor to render his demands more rigorous; and he dares now to offer a treaty, which would reduce the kingdom of Prussia to a single province—which could not but render the king's position even more precarious, and would be the depth of humiliation, without offering the least prospect of a speedy and lasting recovery from our past disasters. If Prussia should accept this utterly illusory compact, she would thereby deliver herself completely ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... year round. Work in the railway camps had always left him high and dry at the freeze-up—dry, particularly, and a few nights in Calgary or Edmonton saw the end of his season's earnings. Then came a precarious existence for Tompkins until the scrapers were back on the dump the following spring. A steady job, cooking on a ranch like the Y.D.; if Tompkins had written the Apocalypse that would have been his picture of heaven. So he had left nothing undone, even to despatching a ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... sell one lot in a week. It isn't like a regular business. It is precarious. Still, take the year through and I make a pretty good income. Come in here. We can get a good lunch here," and he led the way into a modest restaurant, not far from the site of the old post office, which will be remembered by those whose residence in New York dates ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... from the land-wash. Plans for the rescue of Flora Lockhart were taking shape in his mind. Beyond a doubt the rescue would have to be made by water; and so he studied every sheltered haven and surf-footed cape as he worked his heroic way southward, now plunging in his precarious saddle, now plunging with his own ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... In the precarious hand-to-mouth existence she had led with her father since she was old enough to understand his visionary, happy-go-lucky temperament, he had regarded her and taught her to regard herself as a flower of the field. He had petted her, praised her beauty, and had managed to pay their board spasmodically ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... the Time I speak of. As Duelling was made a Fashion, the Point of Honour became, of Course, a common Topick of Discourse among the best bred Men: By this Means the Rules for Quarrelling and Ponctilio in Behaviour, which at first were very uncertain and precarious, came to be better understood, and refin'd upon from Time to Time, till, in the Beginning of the last Century, the Sence of Honour was arrived to such a Degree of Nicety all over Europe, especially in France, that barely looking upon a Man ...
— An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War • Bernard Mandeville
... the present situation. Our scattered and comparatively small population, even in our cities, the extreme difficulty of securing and keeping managers and editors suited for this work, the indifference and spirit of commercialism which characterize Western Canada: all these factors tend to render precarious the life of a Catholic paper. And still the crying need is there; how ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... determined majority in the House of Commons. He was the idol of Society, of the Clubs, and of the London Press. He was, in short, as nearly a dictator as the forms of our constitution permit; and the genius, which for forty years had been hampered and trammelled by the exigencies of a precarious struggle, could now for the first time display its true character and significance. Liberals who had been bored and provoked by the incessant blunders of the Liberal ministry in its last years, and, like Matthew Arnold, had welcomed a change of government, soon began to see that they had exchanged ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... imperil the interests of peace, order, and tolerable life in the lands immediately to the south of us. Even if the usurper had succeeded in his purposes, in despite of the constitution of the Republic and the rights of its people, he would have set up nothing but a precarious and hateful power, which could have lasted but a little while, and whose eventual downfall would have left the country in a more deplorable condition than ever. But he has not succeeded. He has forfeited the respect and the moral support even of those who were at one time willing to see ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... situation. They did not foresee the crisis to which their policy was conducting, and when that crisis arrived they lost their heads and blundered in trying to deal with it. They did not perceive the whirlpool toward which they were heading. They thought that they could safely expose what was precarious to a strain, and secure the substance of a real victory without having to overcome actual resistance. Had they put an extreme ambition for their country aside, and been careful in their language to others, ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane
... Blacklock, who scoffs at the idea that he is in sore straits financially, though in his secret heart he knows that his position is indeed precarious. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... (or more properly Gwenwynwen, though we retain the briefer appellative,) a British prince who continued exercising a precarious sovereignty over such parts of Powys-Land as had not been subjugated by the Mortimers, Guarines, Latimers, FitzAlans, and other Norman nobles, who, under various pretexts, and sometimes contemning all other save the open avowal of superior ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... assured her, that she was wrong informed, and that it was criminal to listen to, or to love, any other than our husbands. "Your husbands are great fools," she replied smiling, "to be content with so precarious a fidelity. "Your necks, your eyes, your hands, your conversation are all for the "public, and what do you pretend to reserve for them? Pardon me, "my pretty sultana," she added, embracing me, "I have a strong ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... artificial society, and in all times. We found, or we thought we found, an inconvenience in having every man the judge of his own cause. Therefore judges were set up, at first, with discretionary powers. But it was soon found a miserable slavery to have our lives and properties precarious, and hanging upon the arbitrary determination of any one man, or set of men. We fled to laws as a remedy for this evil. By these we persuaded ourselves we might know with some certainty upon what ground we stood. But ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the swollen river making successful retreat impossible, with the ground between almost impassable with mud and slush. French reserves had improvised a pontoon bridge across the Aisne at Missy, in the rear of their now precarious position. This bridge was just strong enough to carry the men and ammunition; but not the heavy guns. The retreat turned into a rout—a general stampede ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Nature. This is one of the remnants of ignorance certain religions have left: but it's odd that men who don't believe in Easter should still believe this. For the facts are of course this is a hard and precarious world, where every mistake and infirmity must be paid ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... necessity for strict economy with our scanty store of food, I knew how important it was to keep the men cheerful, and that the depression occasioned by our surroundings and our precarious position could to some extent be alleviated by increasing the rations, at least until we were more accustomed to our new mode of life. That this was successful is shown in ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... Republic of internal tranquillity and successful foreign war. At its conclusion, Italy was organised under Roman control. Greece, Macedonia, Spain, and Africa had become subject provinces; a Roman protectorate was established in Egypt, and the Asiatic provinces of the Macedonian Empire only preserved a precarious and partial independence. During this century, Latin literature had firmly established itself in a broad and vigorous growth. Dramatic and epic poetry, based on diligent study of the best Greek models, formed ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... is the uncertainty of it. Short as its utmost limits are, it is far from being assured of reaching those limits. The next day, the next hour, the next moment, may be the end of our course. Now of what value is so uncertain, so precarious a station? This consideration, indeed, however lightly it is passed over in our conception, doth, in a great measure, level all fortunes and conditions, and gives no man a right to triumph in the happiest state, ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... then served as valet, could read and write, had read—so much I could discover—some few trashy books, and existed now, as many do exist in Russia, without a farthing of ready money; without any regular occupation; fed by manna from heaven, or something hardly less precarious. He expressed himself with extraordinary elegance, and obviously plumed himself on his manners; he must have been devoted to the fair sex too, and in all probability popular with them: Russian girls love fine talking. Among other things, he gave me to understand that he sometimes ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... appreciative look into the pleasant, whiskered countenance, whose owner was holding her so securely on her precarious perch, she pressed her little hand gently against his waistcoat, and gravely remarked, "Nice-a ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... it seemed fit and expedient that the Sabbath should be the last day of the week, but the Early Fathers of the Church held other views. So great is the sanctity of the day that even where the Lord holds a doubtful and precarious jurisdiction over those who go down to (and down into) the sea it is reverently recognized, as is manifest in the following deep-water version of the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... our experience with the usurer. As an outcast he offers his support to other outcasts, and is in turn supported by them. The pawnbroker and the pickpocket are closely allied: without the pawnshop, pocketpicking would offer but a precarious living; without the picking of pockets, many pawnshops would find it impossible to meet expenses. The salary loan shark often works hand in glove with the professional gambler; each procures victims for the other. The "hole-in-the-wall" ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... the first founders, who discerned in the transplantation of the churches of the terra firma, and their familiar pastors to the islands the most persuasive reconcilement of the fugitives to a hard and precarious lot; and after all the intervening years it was the elders of the Church who once more stepped forward and delivered their views on the best plan for healing discord, and making life in the lagoons tolerable for all. They sought some system of rule, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... reached out a hand to grasp the reins which were handed to her. Someone boosted her on. Goodness! She was going right over on the other side! But no! She found herself sitting up on the broad back of "Dolly"; it was a very precarious position. How did one keep one's balance? She just knew she couldn't stay on. There was nothing to hang ...
— The 1926 Tatler • Various
... chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that is I will exult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it succeeds in baffling them or in bitting them to its service, will imagine that it is godlike. It is good ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... large fish," shouted the schoolmaster, wildly excited and rising to his feet. The fish pulled hard up stream till the whole extent of line and rod combined was out at arm's length. Eager to secure the prey, and thinking nothing of the precarious foundation on which he stood, he placed a foot upon the gunwale in order ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... appointments, but each answer was only a fresh disappointment for him and for Ernest. In the end, he was fain to advise his peccant under-master, since nothing else remained for it, that he had better go up to London for the present, take lodgings, and engage in the precarious occupation known as 'looking about for something to turn up.' On the morning when Edie and he were to leave the town, Dr. Greatrex saw Ernest privately in his ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious. ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... looks sad in his absence, but wags its tail and barks when he returns. That the dog behaves in this way is matter of observation, but that it "knows" or "remembers" anything is an inference, and in fact a very doubtful one. The more such inferences are examined, the more precarious they are seen to be. Hence the study of animal behaviour has been gradually led to abandon all attempt at mental interpretation. And it can hardly be doubted that, in many cases of complicated behaviour very ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... dangerous in the extreme: for what with the high wind, the burning ships, the rolling of the deep, the helter-skelter flight of the Armada and the pursuit of the English their position was, to say the least, precarious. ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison
... found cast on a desert shore, from the storm of winds and waves which I was too weak to resist—and raised, and tended, and saved." Often did such thoughts as these pass through his mind while watching by her bed; alternated, checked, and sometimes destroyed, by the fears which attended her precarious condition, but returning with every apparent betterment or ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald
... every day. Thus, in addition to the loss of one of their children, Mr and Mrs Campbell were threatened with being deprived of two more; for their nieces were regarded as such, and Alfred was in a very precarious state. The wounds had assumed such an angry appearance, that Mr Campbell was fearful of mortification. This accumulated distress had, however, one good effect upon them. The danger of losing Emma ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... hundred men, and obliged them to take refuge in the citadel. Pressed with an impetuosity the French were not accustomed to find in their enemies, and seeing that the scaling ladders were already in position against the ramparts, the captain Boucret wished to come to terms; but his position was too precarious for him to obtain any conditions from his savage conquerors, and he and his soldiers were made ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... that he could not return by the way he had come. There he clung to the side of the immense glacier, ready, should he miss his hold, to be plunged hundreds of feet into a deep chasm. The situation flashed over him, and he knew now it was, indeed, a struggle for dear life. With a precarious foothold, he clung to the glacier with one hand, while with his pocket knife he cut a safer foothold with the other. Resting a little, he cut another foothold lower down in the hard snow, and so worked his way after a severe struggle of several hours amid constant ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... revolutions which have at different times disturbed the city of Geneva; and shall only remark, that it was formerly annexed to the German empire, and that its bishops, like those of Lausanne, having taken advantage of the precarious authority of some of the emperors, succeeded in uniting to the spiritual jurisdiction most of the temporal authority of the state, and lost both together at the introduction of the reformation in 1585. The citizens, to defend themselves ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... may be thought, perhaps with justice, too ludicrous in this place, but, in my opinion, they contribute to show the precarious and uncertain nature of the evidence so ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... the garden, they went in to see Madame Hebert and Therese, who was making lace. Then M. Destournier preferred his request that they would take Rose for a while. He did not hint at any disagreement. Madame Destournier's health was precarious, and she had little idea of what was necessary for a girl, having been convent-trained herself. Now that Madame de Champlain had gone there was no real companionship for Rose, who was surely ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... so many was not wanton, because the village that had to be supplied with food was large, and, just previous to the hunt, they had been living on somewhat reduced allowance. Even the blackbirds shot by the brown-bodied urchins before mentioned had been thankfully put into the pot. Thus precarious is the supply of food among the Red-men, who on one day are starving, and the next ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... for the moment, to refute him. And, in fact, I suppose none of us would seriously maintain that there is no form of activity which men feel to be good for its own sake, though the Good of course may be partial and precarious." ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... the population upon the banks of the Ohio, then inconsiderable, as one man. Their confidence in Washington scarcely restrained them from rushing to the seizure of New Orleans, when the treaty of San Lorenzo El Real, in 1795, stipulated for them a precarious right of navigating the noble river to the sea, with a right of deposit at New Orleans. This subject was for years the turning-point of the politics of the West; and it was perfectly well understood that, sooner or later, she would be content ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... the open sky, with gales ready to sweep down every flower-pot into smithereens, the kind or wicked sky, immediately above. Moreover, as regards legal claim to soil, leasehold, freehold, or copyhold, why, simply none, the earth having been carried up to that precarious ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... voyagers to parts unknown, On shore, not far from naked, thrown By furious waves,—a merchant, now undone, A noble, shepherd, and a monarch's son,— Brought to the lot of Belisarius,[26] Their wants supplied on alms precarious. To tell what fates, and winds, and weather, Had brought these mortals all together, Though from far distant points abscinded, Would make my tale long-winded. Suffice to say, that, by a fountain ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... procured, these slaves were allowed to make a voyage to a Northern port, but as their value yearly augmented, and the risk of their suddenly disappearing, not again to visit 'Dixie,' increased in a corresponding ratio, they gradually retired to other duties where their services were less precarious. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... weight of the flood must either sweep all before it, or flow roaring over the top of the jam in a new cataract that would sweep the island bare. He sprang to his feet, grasped his stick, and scanned the tumbled, precarious surface, choosing his path. Then he turned and looked at the bear, wondering if that animal's woodcraft were subtler than his own to distinguish when the jam was secure. He found that the bear was eyeing him anxiously, and not looking at the ice at all; so he chuckled, told ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... him his literary secretary and librarian, first at a salary of one hundred and fifty pounds, and afterwards of two hundred pounds, a year. Unfortunately the Earl died in 1741, and Oldys was obliged to earn a precarious livelihood by working for booksellers, and was soon involved in pecuniary difficulties. He was confined in the Fleet prison from 1751 to 1753, when he was released by the kindness of the Duke of Norfolk, who not only paid his debts, but in 1755 procured for him the office ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... they will take turns," say I, relapsing into dejection, as I think of the precarious nature of the society on which I depend; "sometimes one, sometimes another, whichever can get ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... the hard envelope of the chrysalis, which accordingly prepares to take its chance for a precarious metamorphosis—into the wings of the butterfly or into the bosom of the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... to modern Scilly was certainly the arrival of Mr. Augustus Smith in 1834. The isles at that time were in a bad way; the kelp industry had failed, fishing was poor and precarious, smuggling could not longer be depended on for a living. Previous "lords of the isles" had been absentees, taking little interest in the welfare of the inhabitants; and the population had become too large to support itself. But when Mr. Smith, ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... buildings of the Conjoint Board the knowledge which before they had so pat. They remain year after year, objects of good-humoured scorn to younger men: some of them crawl through the examination of the Apothecaries Hall; others become non-qualified assistants, a precarious position in which they are at the mercy of their employer; their lot is poverty, drunkenness, and Heaven only knows their end. But for the most part medical students are industrious young men of the middle-class with ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... the mother country was precarious and uncertain by reason of the war and the blockade of the Gulf by the English cruisers. Hence the good fortune and daring of the gallant Captain Martiniere in running his frigate, the Fleur-de-Lis, through the fleet of the enemy, enabling him among other things to replenish the wardrobes ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... coming in. The edge of the cloud was barely six inches from her hand. Our witch's mind overflowed with the thought of invasions and the coming in of tides. It seemed that all her life she had been living on a narrowing shore. She remembered all her dawns as precarious footholds of peace on a threatened rock, and all her evenings as golden sands sloping down into encroaching sleep. She realised Everything as a little hopeless garrison ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... playhouse, the 'Fortune' in Cripplegate), and the other in Surrey (the 'Globe' on the Bankside). The contemplated restriction would have deprived very many actors of employment, and driven others to seek a precarious livelihood in the provinces. Happily, disaster was averted by the failure of the municipal authorities and the magistrates of Surrey and Middlesex to make the order operative. All the London theatres that were already in existence went on their ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... labour created. The Ulster custom has done for Ulster, industrial as well as agricultural, more than is generally perceived. It gave in some degree recognition to efficiency. Tenure was there less precarious, less dependent on the landlord's pleasure; men were freer, work had more rights. There was less room for impulse, perhaps less appeal to affection; but when a business relation is based on impulse and affection, where rights are not ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... a precarious mode of obtaining a livelihood was better than a vicious one, and determined to try my fortune on the stage: so I ordered a hack, and drove to the office indicated. I felt a degree of comfort, when I discovered that my father was the advertising manager, although I was ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... although quite recently his material situation was presented in the gloomiest of lights, while it had really for some time ceased to be precarious, it is none the less true that during his whole life he has had to labour prodigiously in order to earn a little money to feed and rear his family, to the great detriment of his scientific inquiries; and we cannot but regret that he was not freed from all material cares at least twenty years ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... has been invented of so-called scientific systems, themselves based on the uncertain results of an uncertain science, which feels its way and deceives itself, and of which the means of observation are also fairly precarious in spite of what the learned say, M. Coue, on the other hand, suffices for everything, goes straight to the aim, attains it with certainty and in freeing his patient carries generosity and knowledge ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... after which who should come out of the house but our former hobo, Brother Lu. Say, he's actually wearing Mr. Hosmer's best suit, would you believe it, and he seems to like to pose as a sort of retired gentleman; it must be nice after getting such a precarious living walking the railway ties, and begging or stealing as he went, to drop down here in a snug nest where he has the best bed, is sure of three meals a day, wears his brother-in-law's only Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, and I guess smokes Andrew's little ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... in various parts, have made me altogether heavy and stupid. I have had the kindest letters and messages from various quarters when it became known, as it is always very soon, that my health was in a precarious state: one particularly from the Bishop of Lichfield (all companions in Old Court, King's, you know) which is very consoling. He says, If not for such as you, for whom did Christ die? I will not go on in such strains, for it is of no use. Only do not despair of me, my beloved ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... find heavy, monsieur, is the disgrace into which I seem likely to fall; not my fortune, which my refusal to obey you renders, I know, very precarious; but, no matter; I do what I ought to do, and no one, excepting the king, shall see this letter, but the person to whom ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... between places of business remotely situated from each other. Upon the railroad the regular progress of commercial intercourse is not interrupted by either high or low water, or freezing weather, which are the principal difficulties that render our future hopes of water communication precarious and uncertain. Yet, however desirable an object the construction of a railroad through our country may be; however high our imaginations may be heated at thoughts of it—there is always a heart appalling ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... am quite willing to tell you how things really are. I don't wish it to be spoken of, but it is a relief to trust some one. I saw Sir James Dawson when in town. He is the first oculist in England. He told me that my sight was in a precarious state, and that if matters turned out unfavorably it is possible, nay probable, that I may become quite blind. On the other hand, he gives me a prescription which he thinks and hopes will avert ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... is so much the more fortunate and singular as our Government is far from being content with the mutinous spirit (as Bonaparte calls it) of the Government of Naples, which, considering its precarious and enfeebled state, with a French army in the heart of the kingdom, has resisted our attempts and insults with a courage and ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of the drudge himself. A man of education, accustomed to easy means, would suffer tortures unspeakable if he were made to live in a single room of a populous and squalid tenement, and had to subsist upon a wage at once niggardly and precarious. He would be tormented with that memory of happier things, which we are told is a 'sorrow's crown of sorrow.' But the man who has known no other condition of life is unconscious of its misery. He has no standard of comparison. An environment which ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... had struck him in the hip and glanced off at a peculiar angle, rendering his recovery precarious and long delayed, and causing the old doctor to shake his head with the fear that he must pass the rest of his life a cripple. Still, normal youth is buoyant and vigorous and mocks at physicians' fears, and after a time, what with heart at rest, with ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... significant realization which the reading of astronomy imposes: that of the exceeding delicacy of the world's position; how, indeed, we are dependent for life, and all that now is, upon the small matter of the tilt of the poles; and that we, as men, are products, as it were, not only of earth's precarious position, but of her more precarious tilt."—W. L. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... not to laugh at Hippy, and, encouraged by the merriment, he cautiously climbed the steps of the porch and returned to his precarious perch ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... what you think, commander. You can forget it. It's wishful thinking and we cannot permit such daydreaming in our precarious condition. Face the facts as they exist in the present. After we kick the aliens out of our solar system, maybe we can go back to the old ideas again. Maybe. I'm not even very sure of that. But as for now, the characteristic ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... he seen his precarious situation than he started back, when Fret Offut flung a heavy slug at his feet. The effect was startling, for the concussion on the floor sent the menacing bar overhead downward with ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... always been precarious, became so bad in 1875 that he was obliged to abandon his trade and turn his attention to another occupation. Accordingly, two years later he became connected with The Cecil Whig, and for about three years ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... yet," asserted Mr. Parker. "I have been making some observations just now, and the island is in a very precarious state. It is, I believe, resting on only a slim foundation, and the least shock may break that off, and send it into the sea. That is ...
— Tom Swift and his Wireless Message • Victor Appleton
... frequently without any. What he earns, therefore, while he is employed, must not only maintain him while he is idle, but make him some compensation for those anxious and desponding moments which the thought of so precarious a situation must sometimes occasion. Where the computed earnings of the greater part of manufacturers, accordingly, are nearly upon a level with the day-wages of common labourers, those of masons and bricklayers are generally from one-half more to double those wages. Where ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... Mount Aracynthus, forms a rich agricultural country. The northern and eastern regions are broken by an extensive complex of chains and peaks, whose rugged limestone flanks are clad at most with stunted shrubs and barely leave room for a few precarious mule-tracks. These heights often rise in the frontierranges of Tymphrestus, Oxia and Corax to more than 7000 ft.; the snow-capped pinnacle of Krona attains to 8240 ft. A few defiles pass through this barrier to the other side of the north ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in which they regard others. In their own case, their habitual desire of right, and their habitual aversion to wrong, may have been enough to keep them from any open breach with conscience, or from putting it to an open shame. But its precarious position is revealed to them when they turn to others. Sin from which they recoil themselves they see committed in the life around them, and they find that it cannot excite the horror or disapproval, which from its supposed nature it should. They find themselves ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock
... grew older, and at length I determined to return to England. I have come here to find all my relatives dead, and you, the old friend of my boyhood, are the only survivor. One thing there is, however, that imbitters my situation now. My health is still very precarious, and I may at any moment leave my child unprotected. She is the one concern of my life. I said that I had come here to ask a favor of you. It was this, that you would allow me to nominate you as her guardian in case of my death, and assist me also in finding any other ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... In addition to the precarious track there were few or no unoccupied sidings, especially near the front. Moreover, there was no telegraph service which might suffice for the safe despatching of the special train. There might be entire sections over which ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... vine, and without pause climbed down again to the edge of the dry ditch beyond. To have looked back over the wall would have been useless, since from that point the tower would have been invisible. Nor indeed had I any desire to pause in my precarious journey. ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer |
