"Prop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... black bumblebees floated in through the open windows. Mrs. Marston's black and white hens and the minorca cockerel pecked about the open door and came in inquiringly, upon which Martha, who sat near the door for that purpose, swept them softly out with the clothes-prop, which she manipulated ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb
... was the grim retort. "But anyway, whether or no, it is wonderful to have you so close at hand. I shall feel as if I had a great prop behind me." ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... causes it to see, hear, and decide. The government is convinced that it depends for its salvation wholly on them, that it is sustained because they uphold it, and that the day on which they cease to support it, it will fall like a manikin that has lost its prop. They intimidate the government with an uprising of the people and the people with the forces of the government, whence originates a simple game, very much like what happens to timid persons when they ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... I can only repeat that the truest kindness is only to refuse assistance. I assure you it is. The circumstances forbid it. Clearly, what you have to do is to call together your creditors, and arrive at an understanding. It is my principle never to try to prop up a hopeless concern such as yours evidently is. Good day to you, Mr. Humplebee; ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... train comes in; but after that, we will with pleasure." Mr. Tatt waits, and the train comes in, and then Witchem and me go off with him to the Hotel. Mr. Tatt he's got up quite regardless of expense, for the occasion; and in his shirt-front there's a beautiful diamond prop, cost him fifteen or twenty pound - a very handsome pin indeed. We drink our sherry at the bar, and have had our three or four glasses, when Witchem cries suddenly, "Look out, Mr. Wield! stand fast!" and a dash is made into the place by the Swell Mob - four of 'em - that have come ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... measures of domestic improvement, and more specially incompetent either to prepare for or prosecute a great war, has John done right, has he done what the welfare of the country requires, in lending himself so long as its indispensable prop? It is not incompetent from want of ability, but of unity.... He is considered by them to have wedded himself to them for better for worse more closely than ever by the withdrawal of Reform.... ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... individual in France that in reality possessed such an authority, not having availed himself at a crisis like the one in which he was called upon to act, rendered his conduct doubtful, and all his intended operations suspicious to both parties, whether his feelings were really inclined to prop up the fallen kingly authority, or his newly-acquired republican principles prompted him to become the head of the democratical party, for no one can see into the hearts of men; his popularity from that ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 7 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... conscience and the soul; it soon had kings and armies at its orders, and Constantine and Charlemagne bore it triumphant throughout Europe. Religion then laid down her arms of war. It laid open to all the principles of peace and order which it contained; it became the prop of Government, as it was the organizing element of society. Thus will it be with liberty. In 1793 it frightened people and sovereigns alike; then, having clothed itself in a milder garb, IT INSINUATED ITSELF EVERYWHERE IN THE TRAIN OF OUR BATTALIONS. In 1815 all parties adopted its flag, and armed ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... freedom instead of compulsion; that real nationality is a psychological state, a tribute of sympathy, a voluntary service to which the mind is drawn by affection. To some who lightly praised the idea, treating it as an admirable prop to war, the consequences and application will bring dismay. For here you have the pivot of a social revolution such as the world has never yet seen. It cannot only remain a question of Belgium, or Serbia, or Alsace-Lorraine. It will inevitably be ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... indeed, Mrs. Haller has relieved; but whether she has or could have given as much as would purchase liberty for the son, the prop ...
— The Stranger - A Drama, in Five Acts • August von Kotzebue
... looks, he was a fine-looking man to just below his hips, and there he had been razed, as he called it to Aleck Donne, while the most peculiar thing about him as he toddled along was what at first sight looked like a prop, which extended from just beneath his head nearly to the ground, as if to enable him to stand, tripod-fashion, steadily on a windy day. But it was nothing of the sort, being only his pigtail carefully bound with ribbon, and the ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... access of litigation in which the citizen Indian figures as a party defendant and in a more widespread disposition to levy local taxation upon his personalty, but in a decision of the United States Supreme Court which struck away the main prop on which has hitherto rested the Government's benevolent effort to protect him against the evils of intemperance. The court holds, in effect, that when an Indian becomes, by virtue of an allotment of land to him, a citizen ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... keen was their mental anguish! There was bereaved love; with all purity the strongest love had grown up around Christ; and now that He was gone, it seemed as if there was nothing more to live for. The prop had been rudely taken away, and the tendrils of their hearts' affection were torn and wrenched. Then there would come a rush of hot tears, indignant passion with those who had pursued Him, with such unrelenting torture, to ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... you can get hold of the general principle. You can make very good bread in a frying-pan. You must mix the dough up stiff so that when the pan is nearly upright it won't tumble out. You fix the pan up with a prop behind it so that the dough faces the fire, quite close, and you draw some more fire behind it so that the back is warmed as well. When it burns a good crust on ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... sunshine of their balconies, With a half-legend of a martyrdom And some weak wine and withered graces before them, Note by their foot the wheel of melody That catches and rolls on the sabbath dance. To drag the steady prop from failing age, Break the young stem that fondness twines around, Widen the solitude of lonely sighs, And scatter to the broad bleak wastes of day The ruins and the phantoms that ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... leaders: Autonomous Haitian Workers or CATH; Confederation of Haitian Workers or CTH; Federation of Workers Trade Unions or FOS; National Popular Assembly or APN; Papaye Peasants Movement or MPP; Popular Organizations Gathering Power or PROP; ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... amount to 123,249,600 Paris feet, as the French have found by mensuration. And now, if we imagine the moon, deprived of all motion, to be let go, so as to descend towards the earth with the impulse of all that force by which (by Cor. Prop. iii.) it is retained in its orb, it will in the space of one minute of time describe in its fall 15 1/12 Paris feet. For the versed sine of that arc which the moon, in the space of one minute of time, would by its mean motion describe at the distance of sixty semi-diameters ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Republican. The demonstration was a mistake. Public characters should not let their personal preferences betrumpeted: a diplomatic truism:—but I must add, least of all a cantatrice for a king. The famous Greek amateur—the prop of failing finances—is after her to arrest her for breach of engagement. You wished to discover an independent mind in a woman, my Carlo; did you not? One would suppose her your wife—or widow. She looked a superb thing the last night ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the lord of land—and is also, what he seems still more proud of, a lord of parliament; but I will front him in both capacities, and frankly tell him, that in the first he is a burthen to his own estate, and not a benefactor; and in the second, a peer but not a prop. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... don't!" she cried. "You may flout our beliefs,—but wouldn't you like to bolster up your report with an endorsement by the wife of a clergyman! It sounds so respectable and sane, doesn't it? No, sir! You can't prop up your wild-eyed theories against the good black of one minister's coat. Not by any means! I think myself that you have probably stumbled on the truth about Willem's mother; but that doesn't prove there's anything in all ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... fill the kingdom with clamour and confusion. But the greatest shock occasioned by his decease was undoubtedly among our allies and fellow-subjects in Germany, who saw themselves suddenly deprived of their sole prop and patron, at a time when they could not pretend of themselves to make head against the numerous enemies by whom they were surrounded. But all these doubts and apprehensions vanished like mists before the rising sun; and the people of Great Britain enjoyed the inexpressible ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... silent for a moment, and he saw her hand go up and prop her chin while she considered what ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... while she mourned a daughter and a son, She looked to heaven, and cried, "Thy will be done!" But, oh! the father no such solace found— Dark, cheerless anguish wrapt his spirit round; He was a stranger to the Christian's hope, And in bereavement's hour he sought a prop On which his pierced and stricken soul might lean; Yet, as he sought it, doubts would intervene— Doubts which for years had clouded o'er his soul— Doubts that, with prayers he struggled to control; For though a grounded faith ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... his voice. I learned that we were aground. I asked him if I could help. "Yes, if you can carry messages to the engineer and translate them into Spanish." I ran to and fro, stumbling up or down, forgetting every time I passed that a certain part of the ship had a raised ledge. The effort was to prop the boat with spars that it might not tip as it crunched and settled down upon the coral reefs. We could hardly wait until daylight to measure the predicament. When the light grew clear so that I saw the illuminated waters, there was a scene of new and wonderful beauty,—a garden of ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... Moll would be sure to follow them, in order to make an attempt to recover their captives. Several times before Joe had tried to kidnap an attractive smart child whom he could train to be a sort of golden prop upon which his laziness could lean, but hitherto he had always been balked in his purpose. He would be furiously angry, Bambo knew, when he discovered that, just when a life of ease and idleness such as he had longed for seemed certain in the near future, he was as far ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... exact form of the object on which they seize, is very remarkable. If the support is round, the ring is also round; but if they fix on a square lath, or other angular thing, the stem forms to it, so that when the prop is removed, the ring retains the exact form of that prop, every angle being as sharp and true, as if ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... but they seldom fight. O holy Alha! that I live to see Thy Granadines assist their enemy! You fight the christians' battles; every life You lavish thus, in this intestine strife, Does from our weak foundations take one prop, Which helped to hold ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... should reckon that 'ere brother of yourn wa'n't one that you had tamed down fit to be turned loose. But you tell him for me, the next time you see him, that I'll plug the end of that bridge against him if it takes ev'ry dum cent of the prop'ty I'm wuth—and that's thutty thousand dollars, if it's a cent. I ain't none of your two-cent chaps!" he roared, visiting his wrath vicariously on her as a representative of the family. "I've got money of my own. Your brother seems to have made door-mats out'n most ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... rushed to Fargo. They had wired ahead to ground the plane. They wanted to check it over before it flew again. When they arrived, only a matter of hours after the incident, they went over the airplane, from the prop spinner to the rudder trim tab, with a Geiger counter. A chart in the official report shows where every Geiger counter reading was taken. For comparison they took readings on a similar airplane that ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... "'Akakir" plur. of 'Akkar prop.aromatic roots; but applied to vulgar drugs or simples, as in the Tale of the Sage Duban, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... it were easier to count one, two, three, with folded hands, than to let fall the peas from one hand to the other, beneath thy scapulary. Howbeit, a method which would be but a pitfall to one, may prove a prop to another. So I give thee leave to continue to count with thy peas. Also the games in thy cell are harmless, and lead me to think, as already I have sometimes thought, that games with balls or rings, something in which eye guides the hand, and mind the eye, might be helpful ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... is the will of God. Now, Queequeg is my fellow man. And what do I wish that this Queequeg would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular Presbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him in his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped prop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with Queequeg; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that done, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... than three centuries there flowed from the mines of Mexico and Peru, millions and millions of silver and gold, which went to fill the needy coffers of Spain, to enrich a distant and callous or careless monarch, and to prop up a moribund nation. The appalling system of the mitad and the encomenderos, by which silver and gold were extracted with indecent haste, form such pages as can never be erased from the history of metallurgy in ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... as if I had lost a stay or prop," replied Mrs. Seagrave. "So accustomed have I been to look to him for advice since we have been on this island. Had he not been thus snatched from us - had he been spared to us a few years, and had we been permitted to surround his death-bed, ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... world's third largest cotton exporter, a major producer of gold and natural gas, and a regionally significant producer of chemicals and machinery. Following independence in December 1991, the government sought to prop up its Soviet-style command economy with subsidies and tight controls on production and prices. Faced with high rates of inflation, however, the government stepped up the pace of reform in mid-1994, by introducing tighter monetary policies, expanding privatization, slightly reducing ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of the car's owner, he slipped off his own sun-faded coat and rolled the sleeves of his flannel shirt above his elbows, and then, with shoulder thrusting up; and arms straining, he heaved the car high enough so that the flabby gentleman could set the prop under the axle. And when the gentleman began to dust his gloves and to search for spots on his gray immaculateness, Farr dug tools from the box and proceeded to the work ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... away—the younger partner taking leave of the older with a sneer for an outworn prop which no man could ever again have use for. Old and beaten—that was all Harrington now stood for in Quarrier's eyes. Never a thought of the past undaunted courage, never a memory of the old victories which had made the Quarrier fortune possible—only contempt for age, a sneer for the ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... a point at last where even the hauteur of her class would no longer suffice to cover the humiliations of her daily life. Now that the final climax had come, it found her quite denuded of all force, all strength, all hope. Her one raison d'etre was to be removed, her single prop drawn from her. Therefore she fell, quietly, with scarcely a word of protest, only an instant of tottering. This the metaphor. To speak plainly, so complete was her desolation that, outwardly, she betrayed nothing. Ivan was drawn to ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... been left a widow three years before this story opens. She was a fair, fragile little woman, still pretty, and pathetically helpless. She had been accustomed to lean upon her husband, and now, for lack of firmer support, she leaned upon Winona. Winona was young to act as prop, and though it flattered her sense of importance, it had put a row of wrinkles on her girlish forehead. At fifteen she seemed much older than Percy at sixteen. No one ever dreamt of taking Percy seriously; he was one of those jolly, easy-going, happy-go-lucky, unreliable people who saunter ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... seeking to distinguish definite outlines amid the darkness. My groping feet encountered numerous obstructions along the path—here a pile of loosened earth over which I plunged headlong, or a flat stone dropped by the rotting away of its supporting prop, or some sharp declivity, as though softer earth had yielded to rude implements; yet it became evident from the start that the tunnel level rapidly descended, boring deeper and deeper into the bosom of the earth. Finally, my fingers came into contact with ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... peace, and peaceful song, Look down with gracious eyes; And bless auld Coila, large and long, With multiplying joys: Lang may she stand to prop the land, The flow'r of ancient nations; And B[urns's] spring, her fame to sing, Thro' ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... about? you will ask. Apropos of everything, and of nothing; apropos of the Oudenarde tower, which was falling, and which some wished to pull down, and others to prop up; apropos of the police regulations issued by the council, which some obstinate citizens threatened to resist; apropos of the sweeping of the gutters, repairing the sewers, and so on. Nor did the enraged orators confine themselves to ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... hope himself; he dared not hope. Hope meant a prop to his old age; hope meant joy to Jane, who would welcome the prodigal; hope meant relief to the doctor, who could then claim his own; hope meant redemption for Lucy, a clean name for Archie, and honor to himself ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... reached him from the capital, and nothing would convince him that his wife was not cognizant of her son's doings. The poor Princess clung to her boy as to all that was left her of life, and tried to prop her failing strength with the hope of his speedy return. She was now too helpless to thwart his wishes in any way; but she dreaded, more than death, the terrible SOMETHING which would surely take place between father and son if her conjectures ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... would have understood all his subsequent reasoning. If a child attempts to push any thing heavier than himself, his feet slide away from it, and the object can be moved only at intervals, and by sudden starts; but if he be desired to prop his feet against the wall, he finds it easy to push what before eluded his little strength. Here the use of a fulcrum, or fixed point, by means of which bodies may be moved, is distinctly understood. If two boys lay a board across a narrow block of wood, or stone, and balance each other at the ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... iron chair, so that he can lean his elbows on the little table to prop his head as he sits. He soon recovers, and begins to unbutton his overcoat. Meanwhile Valentine ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... aweer as a fighter you're truly tip-top, Our party's pecooliar pride, and our cause's particular prop! You can "pop in a slommacking wunner," if ever a lad could, dear boy: But—well, there, you ain't scored this round; and yer foes is a-chortling with joy! 'Ow is it, my ARTHUR, 'ow is it! I've ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... Only after a moment he said, "If you take away one prop, old chap, you must provide another. A broken thing can't stand alone. But need we discuss it now? As I told you, she is coming out presently, and this glorious air is bound to make a difference to her. ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... no more!—one, one only comfort remains—one friend, one solace in adversity—one ray of light in the dark hour! Amidst universal desertion, RUTH has not forsaken her; but is become her joy in sorrow, her companion in solitude, her prop in decrepit age! Can we wonder that she wishes to discard a name which awakened such recollections, and only recalled the dream of happiness? "Call me not Naomi,—call me Mara; for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me. ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Spinoza has left unsolved must have occurred to him. "But some may object that if we understand God to be the cause of all things, we do for that very reason consider Him to be the cause of sorrow. But I reply that in so far as we understand the causes of sorrow, it ceases to be a passion (Prop. 3, pt. 5), that is to say (Prop. 59, pt. 3) it ceases to be a sorrow; and therefore in so far as we understand God to be the cause of sorrow do we rejoice." The third proposition of the fifth part which he quotes ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... the constable shall take my horse, and I will drive; and then I can look after you, and you can use me for a prop, if you feel weak; but before we start, I must insist on your taking a sip of ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... enough. The deputation broke up at once; but with how many lamentations over this unexpected reception, given by one whom they had reckoned upon as the chief stay and prop ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... by the law and custom of the country the avenger of his blood. For some time afterwards the war was carried on, the advantage being invariably on the side of David. At length Ishbaal lost the main prop of his tottering cause by remonstrating with Abner for marrying Rizpah, one of Saul's concubines, an alliance which, according to Oriental notions, implied pretensions to the throne (cp. 2 Sam. xvi. 21 sqq.; 1 Kings ii. 21 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... supporting outside prop of the thrust variety. Notably a distinguishing feature of mediaeval ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... creep upon the ground; for those qualities check its rise, and depress it in its ascent, and render it like a weak traveller, that often sits down and then goes on again. And therefore the ivy requires something to twine about, and needs a prop; for it is not able to sustain and direct its own branches, because it wants heat, which naturally tends upward. The snow is melted by the wetness of the leaf, for water destroys it easily, passing through the thin contexture, it being nothing but a congeries of small bubbles; and therefore in very ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the thoughts and aspirations of mankind to cherish. For by the time the adequacy of these theories of knowledge began to be questioned they had made an insistent appeal, and had come to be regarded as an essential prop to lend support to man's conviction of the reality of a life beyond the grave. A web of moral precept and the allurement of hope had been so woven around them that no force was able to strip away this ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... and Norrises; at the Flemings, old Mrs. Fleming, and Louie and Emmeline and Edith, and the disgraceful Maurice, all five of them useless pensioners on his brother's bounty; Maurice a thing of battered, sodden flesh hanging loose on brittle bone, a rickety prop for the irreproachable summer suit bought with Anthony's money. He scowled at the tables covered with fine white linen, and at the costly silver and old china, at the sandwiches and cakes and ices, and the piled-up fruits and the claret cup and champagne cup glowing ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... sitting posture, while Henri placed two pillows behind her to prop her up; and then, with the napkin spread before her and a plate on her knees, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... this soul-supporting truth in his hymn (116, verse 2):-"How can I sink with such a prop, As my eternal God, Who bears the earth's huge pillars up, And spreads ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... and contributed to President SOEHARTO's resignation on 21 May 1998. His successor, B.J. HABIBIE, improved cooperation with the IMF. The money supply—which expanded rapidly early in the year to prop up banks hit by deposit runs—was tightened within a few months, and by October, inflation—which reached a 77% annual rate—was significantly dampened. The government also announced a bank recapitalization program in late 1998, but by early 1999 the plan faced growing challenges over its reliance ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... his breath. He had ordered Lieutenant Tibbetts, his second-in-command, prop, stay, and aide-de-camp, to superintend the drill of some raw Kano recruits who had been sent from ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... overburdened by law Ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon it Assurance they give us of the certainty of their drugs At least, if they do no good, they will do no harm At the most, but patch you up, and prop you a little Attribute facility of belief to simplicity and ignorance Attribute to itself; all the happy successes that happen Authority of the number and antiquity of the witnesses Authority to be dissected by the vain fancies of men Authority which a graceful presence and a majestic mien ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Michel De Montaigne • Michel De Montaigne
... thin, fair young man shakily heaved himself into a hammock under the trees in that broad backyard wherein, as Valentine Corliss had yesterday noticed, the last iron monarch of the herd, with unabated arrogance, had entered domestic service as a clothes-prop. The young man, who was of delicate appearance and unhumanly pale, stretched himself at full length on his back, closed his eyes, moaned feebly, cursed the heat in a stricken whisper. Then, as a locust directly overhead ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... eyes. All the animation and defiance were gone from her face. She was so exhausted that she made no resistance to anything. She let them raise her, prop her up with a pillow, and nearly feed her with the dinner. Then she lay back, ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... recreations. He haunted the old Astor Library and the Metropolitan Museum, learned something about pictures and porcelains, took singing lessons, though he had a voice like a crow's. When he sat down to his baked apple and doughnut in a basement lunch-room, he would prop a book up before him and address his food with as much leisure and ceremony as if he were dining at his club. He held himself at a distance from his fellow-workmen and somehow always managed to impress them with his superiority. He had inordinate vanity, and there are many stories about ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... happened. The dainty roof was crushed in, and the poor little egg, for which such loving preparations had been made, lay pathetically on the ground outside the door. My comrade crept carefully up, raised the tiny roof to place, and with deft fingers put a twig under as a prop to hold it, then gently laid the pretty egg in the ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... spoiling the Strong-Man picture by so everlastingly posing at one end of the grand-piano! You know the way they do it, one pensive elbow on the piano-end and the delicately drooping palm holding up the weary brains, the same as you prop up a King-orange bough when it gets too heavy with fruit! And then he had a lovely bang and a voice like a maiden-lady from Maine. And take it from me, O lord and master, that man devoured all his raw beef and blood on his typewriter-ribbon. I dubbed him the King of the Eye-Socket school, and instead ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... a bed for the child. No, not that way. Upside down. He will not roll off into the hollow, and it is still very warm from the horse's back. Prop it up all around with the stones that you ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... and napkin; change his position sometimes and let him lie on his stomach for awhile. Of course this exercise cannot be taken after a meal and before the fourth month. Take a large clothes basket, put a blanket and some large pillows in it and prop baby up in a half sitting position for a little while each day, beginning with fifteen minutes, then one-half hour, and you can also at this time (fourth month) play with baby for a short time every day, but never just before bedtime, and the best time is just after his morning ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... running, At the tipsy-topsy Tunning Of Mistress Eleanor Rumming! How for poor Philip Sparrow Was murdered at Carow, How our hearts he does harrow Jest and grief mingle In this jangle-jingle, For he will not stop To sweep nor mop, To prune nor prop, To cut each phrase up Like beef when we sup, Nor sip at each line As at brandy-wine, Or port when we dine. But angrily, wittily, Tenderly, prettily, Laughingly, learnedly, Sadly, madly, Helter-skelter John Rhymes serenely on, As English ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... in a mystie morning if thou wilt Make pitfalls for the larke and pheldifare, Thy prop and sweake shall be both overguilt, With Cyparissus selfe thou shalt compare For gins and wyles, the oozels to beguile, Whilst thou under a bush shalt sit ...
— The Affectionate Shepherd • Richard Barnfield
... began the speaker, "behold all the tribes of our league assembled!"—and he named them one by one. "We are but a handful; you are the prop and stay of this nation. A thunderbolt has fallen from the sky, and rent a chasm in the earth. We shall fall into it, if you do not support us. Take pity on us. We are here, not so much to speak as to weep over our loss and ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... yeares his White Frands ofered 2 thousen Dollers to Redem him but they would not short three thousen. I am in Canada and it is a Dificult thing to get a letter to any of my Frands in Maryland so as to get prop per infermation abot it—if you can by any means get any in telligence from Baltimore City a bot this Event Plese do so and Rit word and all so all the inform mation that you think prop per as Regards the Evant ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... power, It triumphs in the dying hour; Christ is our life, our joy, our hope, Nor can we sink with such a prop." ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... of the guns, a sudden pause in the firing will cause them intense pain. Something of this feeling was experienced by Rufus Dawes. His faculties of hearing and thinking—both at their highest pitch—seemed to break down. It was as though some prop had been knocked from under him. No longer stimulated by outward sounds, his senses appeared to fail him. The blood rushed into his eyes and ears. He made a violent, vain effort to retain his consciousness, but with ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... and he made the most of them. Indeed, Marishka sat leaning forward looking at him appealingly, aware that after all here was the only prop she had to lean upon in this extremity. She did not speak. The wrong he had done her and Austria was great—unforgivable, but the merit of his service in this situation was unmistakable. Inimical as he might be to the sentiments in her heart, there was no disguising the relief his presence ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... minister to the male communicants alone, but we think that every baptized adult person who contributes to the maintenance, should have a vote in electing." [Footnote: History of Brattle St. Church, p. 25, Prop. 16.] ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... speaking. She heard footsteps. Her father entered. Hugh Tryon had done his task gently, but the old planter, selfish and hard as he was, loved his daughter; and the meeting was bitter for him. The prop of his pride seemed shaken beyond recovery. But the girl's calm comforted them all, and poignancy became dull pain. Before parting for the night Marie said to Hugh: "This is what I wish you to do for me to bring over two of your horses ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... overhearing some tragedy at the other end of the wire, where, in the nature of things, she was unable to arrest it. The gaze she fixed on her extravagant kinsman was of a kind to make him wonder how he contrived to remain, as he beautifully did, rigid. His prop was possibly the reflection that flashed on him that, if she abounded in attenuations, well, hang it all, so did he! It was simply a difference of plane. Readjust the "values," as painters say, and there you were! He was ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... Jope answered cheerily. "You come along o' me to Plymouth an' I'll put you into the very job. A cook's galley, it is, and so narra' that with a wooden leg in dirty weather you can prop yourself tight when she rolls, an' stir the ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... on the way home, at a shoemaker's, we saw Santa Anna's leg lying on the counter, and observed it with due respect, as the prop of a hero. With this leg, which is fitted with a very handsome boot, he reviews his troops next Sunday, putting his best foot foremost; for generally he merely wears an unadorned wooden leg. The shoemaker, a Spaniard, whom I can recommend to all customers as the most impertinent ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... us, permanently with us. She declares that she intends to be the prop of our declining years; she makes the statement often, and always as if it were humorous. Nevertheless I sometimes notice a spirit of inquiry, a note of investigation in her encounters with the opposite sex that suggests an ...
— The Pool in the Desert • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... give way at all it was just now when, for the moment, I was alone. I felt that all my hopes and prospects were dashed; still I could pray, and God was not far off. I was comforted. Man might fail me, but God would not. If anything, it was good to feel every earthly prop give way, and to cling alone to the ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... that when I visited it for the last time just before our removal to Iowa, I, too, was a little ashamed of it. Its disorder did not diminish my regard for the owner, but I wished he would clean out the stable and prop up ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a 'flighty' person who endeavours to 'prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation,' and whose 'mode of dealing with nature' is reprobated as 'utterly dishonourable to natural science.' And all this high and mighty talk, which would ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... his word; My soul each storm defies, while I have such a Lord. I trust his faithfulness and power, To save me in the trying hour. Though rocks and quicksands deep through all my passage lie, Yet Christ shall safely keep and guide me with his eye. How can I sink with such a prop, That bears the ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... prop during the years of agony and disaster, Lloyd George is, in the last analysis, merely an eloquent and spectacular politician with the genius of opportunism. One reason why he holds his post is that there is no one to take his place,—another ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... daring hands from seizing your crown. To whom—to whose party does your tutor belong? Who are his allies? What authority has he? What services can he do you? What weight do his words carry? Instead of finding a prop to sustain your power, you have cut the ground from under it. The Cardinal de Lorraine is a living threat to you; he plays the king; he keeps his hat on his head before the princes of the blood; it was urgently necessary ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... he, "nothing could be more agreeable to me and your mother than to have a snug cottage near you both, on the very spot which you say I pitched upon two years ago. This cabin that we now live in, after all I have tried to do to prop it up, and notwithstanding all Rose does to keep it neat and clean withinside, is but a crazy sort of a place. We are able now to have a better house, and I shall be glad to be out of the reach of Mr. Hopkins's persecution. Therefore, let ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... catastrophe, which seemed, in the opinion not only of the victors, but of the vanquished, to have given the finishing stroke to the American Revolution, Lee's force, augmented by the junction of the troops marching down to join him, was the sole prop and stay of the cause ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... sure I do; let me breathe it in. Prop me up in bed, Nora. They said I was to lie flat on my back, but, bedad! I won't now that you ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... till the trial comes. And in the weakness consequent on protracted suffering, she had begun to fancy that the loss of Phemy was a punishment upon them for deserting the conventicle. Also the schoolmaster was under an interdict, and that looked like a judgment too! She must find some prop for the faith that was now shaking like a reed in the wind. So to the ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... passion; but I was, also, dreadfully afraid of John Hinckman. This gentleman was a good friend of mine, but it would have required a bolder man than I was at that time to ask him for the gift of his niece, who was the head of his household, and, according to his own frequent statement, the main prop of his declining years. Had Madeline acquiesced in my general views on the subject, I might have felt encouraged to open the matter to Mr. Hinckman, but, as I said before, I had never asked her whether or not she would be mine. I thought ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various
... performers were being relaxed by eternal repetition, and it was now evident that I must trust to my own ability to pull the matter quickly through as I thought best. But it was not the fatigue due to this system that finally made Niemann, the main prop in my work, recoil from the task which at the start he had undertaken with an energy full of promise. He had been informed that there was a conspiracy to ruin my work. From this time forward he was a victim to a despondency to which, in his relations with me, he ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... husband whose life was ebbing away; for the son over whose heart she seemed to have so little control; for herself, soon to be left alone in the world, with only her daughter for her prop and stay. She was not a weak or helpless creature. She had been in her husband's confidence, and had been his helpmeet throughout their married life. She was well able to carry on single-handed the course of action he had pursued through his long rule at Gablehurst; ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... prisoners—five thousand—who cannot do so well, work the mud up into rude bricks, with which they build shelters that wash down at every hard rain. The remaining two thousand five hundred do not do even this, but lie around on the ground, on old blankets and overcoats, and in day-time prop these up on sticks, as shelter from the rain and wind. Let them be given not to exceed a pint of corn meal a day, and a piece of wood about the size of an ordinary stick for a cooking stove to cook it with. Then let such weather ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... by the imagination, are unavoidably sooner exhausted than the sentiments of the heart. Friendship is in general sincere at the commencement, and lasts whilst there is anything to support it; but as a mixture of novelty and vanity is the usual prop, no wonder if it fall with the slender stay. The fop in the play paid a greater compliment than he was aware of when he said to a person, whom he meant to flatter, "I like you almost as well as a new acquaintance." ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... 2. prop. 3 and 6. Dr. Smith, in his Harmonics, has an explanatory note upon this happy discovery, as he terms it, of Newton. Sect. 4. Art. 7. From this curious coincidence, it has been proposed to produce a luminous music, confiding of successions or combinations of colours, analogous to a tune in ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... from this particular prop of knighthood, we find here and there in Italy, for example at Ferrara, orders of courtiers whose members had a right ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... children, all the money I had earned and could earn by my night labor was consumed, till I found myself reduced to five dollars, and this I lost one day in going to the plantation. My light of hope now went out. My prop seemed to have given way from under me. Sunk in the very night of despair respecting my freedom, I discovered myself, as though I had never known it before, a husband, the father of two children, a family looking up to me for bread, and I a slave, penniless, and ...
— The Narrative of Lunsford Lane, Formerly of Raleigh, N.C. • Lunsford Lane
... it," he said, "in the classic woods of Hawthornden, when I did not expect always to have been a bachelorI would not have given it for an ocean of sealsO Hector! Hector!thy namesake was born to be the prop of Troy, and thou to ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... wreak swift vengeance could not be doubted. As soon as the murderous work was over, guides were with difficulty engaged. Having fitted up a sort of prop in which I could tie Hamilton to the saddle, I saw both Father Holland and Eric set out for ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... write for his composition all about a holiday which the boys had had given them, so he gave an account of how he had gone for a long day in the country with his father and his little sister. Of all the sights he saw that day, none delighted him so much as to see a robin perched upon a clothes'-prop in a garden—for this bird always likes a high perch—singing with all his might and "showing all his red." This boy had read about robins at school, and learnt verses about them; but when he actually saw one, and ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... prying, the cart might have been a prop to take up as soon as he came out. On the other hand, what could she in her technical ignorance ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner
... endeavoured to regain the channel of the Old Calabar river, but we found the tide stronger than the wind, and that it had carried us on a mud-flat off little Quay river, which, at about half ebb left the schooner aground, this obliged us to get some spars out, to prop her up on each side. At which time we were in the following situation: West point of Old Calabar river, W. by S. Fish Town point N. by W. 1/2 W. and the entrance of little Quay river N.N.E. At 5 in the afternoon we got the ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... production, in which one of the most exact of observers, most cautious of reasoners, and most candid of expositors, of this or any other age, is held up to scorn as a "flighty" person, who endeavours "to prop up his utterly rotten fabric of guess and speculation," and whose "mode of dealing with nature" is reprobated as "utterly dishonourable to Natural Science." And all this high and mighty talk, which would have been indecent in one of Mr. Darwin's equals, proceeds from a writer whose want ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... highway, groping in darkness, pleading for help? "Jesus stood still, and had compassion on them, and touched their eyes!" Was it the speechless pleadings of a widow's tears at the gate of Nain, when she followed her earthly pride and prop to the grave? "When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said, Weep not!" Even when He rebukes, the bow of compassion is seen in the cloud, or rather, that cloud, as it passes, dissolves in a rain-shower of mercy. He ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... I did notice them, seeing that I had to prop him up—me and Murcher between us. He was a long chap, with a red face, the lower part ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... being composed of two compound derived shadows, forms a compound shadow and not a simple one, as happens with other intersections of compound shadows. This occurs, according to the 2nd [diagram] of this [prop.] which says:—The intersection of derived shadows when produced by the intersection of columnar shadows caused by a single light does not produce a simple shadow. And this is the corollary of the 1st [prop.] which says:—The intersection of simple ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... into the car and laid him back on the cushions; the boys rolled up the rugs, and their coats to prop him up. Again he ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine
... but that, under the blessing of the Most High, those countries would amply repay the undertaking, and that you would end by obtaining the sovereignty of at least Palestine. That the present attempt to prop up the Turkish Empire as at present constituted is a miserable failure, we who see what is going on around us must at once acknowledge. What turn events will take no one can possibly tell, but of this I am perfectly certain ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... oxen, we drove on after our companions. We had not gone a mile, when the shoeing of one of the wheels—that had shrunk from the extreme dryness of the atmosphere— rolled off; and the felloes came very near flying asunder. We were luckily able to prevent this, by suddenly stopping, and setting a prop under the body of the wagon. This, as you may perceive, was a much more serious accident than the breaking of the tongue; and at first I thought of galloping forward, and asking some of our companions to come back to my ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... to a deeper dejection. Not only had she lost Franklin; she had lost herself. She embarked on the dangerous and often demoralising search for a definite, recognisable personality—something to lean on with security, a standard and a prop. With growing dismay she could find only a sorry little group of shivering hopes and shaken adages. What was she? Only a well-educated nonentity with, for all coherence and purpose in life, a knowledge of ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... word, from Dr. Wordsworth's[4] Theophilus Anglicanus, cap. vii. p. 219. A careful examination of the evidence adduced in support of the latter assertion, shows it to be of the most flimsy description, and refers it to its true basis, viz. hearsay: the reasoning and inferences which prop ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... Maitland house, was a huddle of wooden tenements. Some of them were built on piles, and seemed to stand on stilts, holding their draggled skirts out of the mud of their untidy yards: some sagged on rotting sills, leaning shoulder to shoulder as if to prop one another up. From each front door a shaky flight of steps ran down to the unpaved sidewalk, where pigs and children and hens, and the daily tramp of feet to and from the Maitland Works, had beaten the earth into a hard, black surface—or a soft, black surface, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... called Tories and who, in the condition of things then prevalent, could scarcely even be termed Loyalists. Writing in 1812, Charles Knight, the historian, described the fierce national struggle of the previous twenty years with Napoleon and expressed a longing wish for the prop of a sincere and spontaneous loyalty to the throne in the critical times that were to follow. But such a sentiment of loyalty was not then expressed, and could hardly have been publicly evoked by a ruler of the type of George IV., whether governing ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... fold, The stay that saves the ship, of lofty roof {870} Main column-prop, a father's only child, Land that beyond all hope the sailor sees, Morn of great brightness following after storm, Clear-flowing fount to ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... Hod made a clicking sound in his throat. Zani put one hand quickly in her pocket and opened her eyes. They had been closed. The book was a prop ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... ax had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery tips; Step and prop iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, 5 Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thorough-brace, bison skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died. That was the way he "put her through." 10 "There!" said ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... little one: no, not like that; upside-down, so he won't roll out; and it's still warm from the mare's back. Prop it up on each side with those stones you ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... more permanently fixed. The derrick, or upright spar used for carrying the tackle to raise the first beam, was placed in such a position as to become useful for supporting the upper end of it, which now became, in its turn, the prop of the tackle for raising the second beam. The whole difficulty of this operation was in the raising and propping of the first beam, which became a convenient derrick for raising the second, these again a pair of shears for lifting the third, and the shears a triangle for raising ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wrath on the head of the devoted George, saying things to him which he should not have said. But his retainer took it all in the day's work, and never bore malice, continuing in his own cadging pigheaded sort of way to labour early and late to prop up his master's broken fortunes. "Lord, sir," as he once said to Harold Quaritch when the Colonel condoled with him after a violent and unjust onslaught made by the Squire in his presence, "Lord, sir, that ain't nawthing, that ain't. I don't pay no manner of heed to that. Folk du say how ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... except the remark in a note that "the objections which have been urged against this narrative are not serious." [135:1] They have been considered so by men like Keim, Schuerer, Lipsius, and Holtzmann. The account has too much need to be propped up itself to be of much use as a prop for the Gospels. Dr. Lightfoot points out that an "idea of literal conformity to the life and Passion of Christ runs through the document," [135:2] and it is chiefly on the fact that "most of the incidents have their counterparts in the circumstances of the Passion, as ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... fell upon the pear-tree, and even in his preoccupation he was struck with the signs of its extraordinary age. Twisted out of all proportion, and knotted with excrescences, it was supported by iron bands and heavy stakes, as if to prop up its senile decay. He tried to interest himself in the various initials and symbols deeply carved in bark, now swollen and half obliterated. As he turned back to the summer-house, he for the first time noticed that the ground rose behind ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte
... last frail prop had been knocked from under her precarious foothold in the faith and favour of ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... be worn in the street; but what I object to is that the height should be given to the heel only, and not to the sole of the foot also. The modern high-heeled boot is, in fact, merely the clog of the time of Henry VI., with the front prop left out, and its inevitable effect is to throw the body forward, to shorten the steps, and consequently to produce that want of grace which ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... same way as I took yer that night, Master Nic, and then work your way up for a hour or so, and all under they tree-ferns you'll find pools and pools with lots o' fish in 'em; but I don't know how you're going to get on with that long thin clothes-prop of a thing. But, there, you're a gen'leman, and I s'pose you ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... my little flock, the loveliest and the last, 'Tis sweet to dream what thou may'st be, when long, long years have past; To think when time hath blanched my hair, and others leave my side, Thou may'st be still my prop and stay, ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... "if my Lord Protector were the only prop of the Gospel, it had fallen long ago. The prop of the Gospel is not my Lord or thy Lord, but the Lord of the whole earth. His strength is ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... they'd do badly without him," muttered Joshua. "He's the very prop and pillar of the place, is Peter; if a wall's strong enough to hold the roof up, you don't ask if it's made ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... literature: there is no more wholesome course for the mind. Not that I hold the literary productions of the ancients to be irreproachable; but I think that they have some especial merits, admirably calculated to counterbalance our peculiar defects. They are a prop on the side on which we are in most danger ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Orientalism, the corner-stone is frequently referred to as the appropriate symbol of a chief or prince who is the defence and bulwark of his people, and more particularly in Scripture, as denoting that promised Messiah who was to be the sure prop and support of all who should put their trust in his ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... offers with indignation; and the gold that could seduce a man high in the esteem and confidence of his country, who had the remembrance of his past exploits, the motives of present reputation and future glory to prop his integrity, had no charms for three simple peasants, leaning only on their virtue, and ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... one," said Richard, lifting the heavy cross-piece into its place and fastening it with a wooden pin. "Now I must go and prop up ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "Just you prop yourself up in the corner an' rest a while," advised the Texan, with forced cheerfulness, "I can handle it all right, now." Wearily, the girl obeyed. At the bow and stern of the square-ended boat, the bottom curved upward so that the water was not more than six or eight inches deep ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... Luka. We must make ourselves comfortable, for this storm may last for days for anything I know. We must prop this end of the boat up so that we can sit upright under it with something to spare. We must pile up some stones a couple of feet high under each gunwale." In a quarter of an hour this was done. The sail was then laid over ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... it was Dutchy! I know the Dutch come from Holland. I know something, if I am a poor, ignorant old 'oman, fallen from my high estate. And I know as I am descended from the Duke of England, and nobody shall take that prop from underneath of me! It has supported me in many a ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... with any mind so unstable, so utterly destitute of tone, so incapable of independent thought and earnest preference, so ready to take impressions and so ready to lose them. He resembled those creepers which must lean on something, and which, as soon as their prop is removed, fall down in utter helplessness. He could no more stand up, erect and self-supported, in any cause, than the ivy can rear itself like the oak, or the wild vine shoot to heaven like the cedar of Lebanon. It is barely possible that, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... hours the child sang, acted, and danced in the suffocating stable, lighted by two petroleum lamps. The next day I saw Mignon sitting on one of the shafts of the caravan and gnawing the 'drumstick' of a fowl. The child-actress was the prop of her mother and the donkey; her talent also kept the youth, who began to agitate the nerves of Beynac with his diabolical ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... for the Huguenots flew to arms, and Guise was murdered, Mary losing thus her principal prop abroad. And Lethington now pushed vigorously what seemed to be Scotland's only chance of safety—the marriage of Mary with the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... how my theme doth rise; Nor wonder, therefore, if more artfully I prop the structure. Nearer now we drew, Arrived whence, in that part where first a breach As of a wall appeared. I could descry A portal, and three steps beneath, that led For inlet there, of different color each; And one who watched, but ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... about; Pleas'd with the Treatment I did find, I took my leave of Oast so kind; Who to oblige me, did provide, His eldest son to be my Guide, And lent me Horses of his own, A skittish Colt, and aged Rhoan, The four-leg'd prop of his Wife Joan: Steering our Barks in Trot or Pace, We sail'd directly for a place In Mary-Land, of high renown, Known by the Name of Battle-Town. To view the Crowds did there resort, Which Justice made, and Law their sport, ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... of consequences, his brother Dominick arose and endeavoured to prop the weak part of the structure with an additional piece ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... death before she could get back to him. Instantly, as she said that, she knew that she did not believe that he was dead! She knew that she had hope. With hope, a single thought possessed her. She must take him down the mountain.... But how? She could not carry him;—she had managed to prop him up against her knee, his blond head lolling forward, awfully, on his breast—but she knew that to carry him would be impossible. And Lion was not there! "I couldn't have harnessed him if he ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... Center, which is not much of a center, Miss Dawes alighted from the buggy and entered a building bearing a sign with the words "Metropolitan Variety Store, Joshua Atwood, Prop'r, Groceries, Coal, Dry Goods, Insurance, Boots and Shoes, Garden Seeds, etc." A smaller sign beneath this was lettered "Justice of the Peace," and one ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... was never quite ready for sleep. Then, as ever, he would prop himself up in bed, light his pipe, and lose himself in English or French history until sleep conquered. His room-mate did not approve of this habit; it interfered with his own rest, and with his fiendish tendency to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... (Philander) was about eight, a gang of boys were playing about an old, tumbled-down building, and somehow knocked out the prop holding up its remains. Three others were hurt, Philander got that cut-scar, and his ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans |
