"Foothold" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Peter called, annoyed at the senseless risk she took when she placed her foot tentatively upon the curved side of a log. "There's no foothold there!" ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... have only such a foothold as theirs in this dear green world of ours?" she would ask herself, shiveringly. And the Sunday-evening's sermon could soothe her ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... proceeded, "nothing lasts so long in the recollection as a pleasant mystery. In other days, in other times.... Well, on my side I shall recall this night pleasantly. Without knowing it, you have given me a new foothold in life. I did not believe that there lived a single man who could keep to the letter of his bargain. Presently you will forget the chagrin. Good night! And do not lean out of any more ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... featured with ugliness and exhaling a noisome smell, meets the condemned soul, and cries, "I am thy evil spirit: bad myself, thy crimes have made me worse." Then the culprit staggers on his uncertain foothold, is hurled from the dizzy causeway, and precipitated into the gulf which yawns horribly below. A sufficient reason for believing these last details no late and foreign interpolation, is that the Vendidad itself contains all that is essential in them, Garotman, the heaven of Ormuzd, open to the pure, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Moreover, there was still that about him, notwithstanding his words, that made her afraid to yield a single inch of ground lest by some hidden means he should sweep her altogether from her precarious foothold. Even in the silence, she felt that he was doing battle with her, and she did not ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... cause by impracticable demands. Make no claim which could not be won in a reasonable time. Take one step at a time, get a good foothold in it and advance carefully. Suffrage in municipal elections for property holders who could read, and had never been connected with crime, was the place to strike for the ballot. Say nothing about suffrage elsewhere until it proved ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... jogging. Just as I was leaving, my heart felt kind a down-pressed to think what gorgeous territory he had spread out to a feller's eyes, without the slightest chance of making an operation for a small portion of it—say just enough to get a foothold. ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... who was vainly striving to find foothold below the edge of the shelf, let go with one hand and quick as thought flung it over the speaker so that he got hold tightly by the tunic, growling fiercely ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... best were barbarians; at their worst, slaves. The average intelligence among them was low; and the idea that they were such a wonderful people has gained a foothold simply because they are so far off. The miracle of it all is that such sublimely great men as Pericles, Phidias, Socrates and Anaxagoras should have sprung from such a barbaric folk. The men just named were as exceptional as was Shakespeare in the reign of Elizabeth. That the masses had small appreciation ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... the next floating log. Turner beckoned him on. It was difficult to make the foreman hear above the noise of the water and the continual grinding of the logs, but Rafe yelled some warning and pointed toward the timber now almost upon Turner's foothold. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... least enviable time of it. Their foothold in the hive is very precarious. They look like the giants, the lords of the swarm, but they are really the tools. Their loud, threatening hum has no sting to back it up, and their size and noise make them only the more conspicuous marks for the birds. They are all candidates for the favors of ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... a foothold in North America until the direful hour that witnessed its dissolution amid the shock of embattled arms, learning was the forbidden fruit that no Negro dared taste. Positive and explicit statutes everywhere, as fiery swords, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... this movement in the bud. Education is a dangerous matter to deal with; England is beginning to find this out for herself. For on the heels of education socialism ever treads. When at last education makes a foothold in Russia, that foothold will be on the very step of the autocratic throne. The Charity League had, as Steinmetz put it, the primary object of preparing the peasant for education, and thereafter placing education within his reach. Such proceedings were naturally held by those in high places ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... as they passed, the creek meandered between the hills, now turning almost upon itself around a mossy, grassy stretch of meadow-land, skirting a chestnut-grove, or slipping beneath great rocks that cropped out on the hillside, where moss had crept in a lovely carpet, and graceful hemlocks found a foothold and leaned over to dip in the water and brush the faces of those who passed. Up, up, and up, through the frantic little rapids that bubbled and fought and were conquered, into the stiller waters above, between banks all dark and green and quiet, most brilliantly and cunningly ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... whom the dog's baleful glance was fastened. There was now no ring of mastery in his voice, as there had been on the mail-boat, but the shiver of panic; and this, it may be, the dog detected, for he settled more alertly, pawing the floor with his forefeet, as though seeking firmer foothold from which to leap. As once before, I wished the beast well in the issue; indeed, I hoped 'twould be the throat and a fair grip! But Jagger caught a billet of wood from the box, and, with a hoarse, stifled cry—frightful to hear—drew back to throw. Then the doctor's light ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... saw at last that they had fallen behind the furious onset of the flood, but Roger was still swimming with it, desperately throwing up his head from time to time, and snorting the water from his nostrils. All his efforts to gain a foothold failed; his strength was nearly spent, and unless some help should come in a few minutes it would come in vain. And in the darkness, and the rapidity with which they were borne along, how ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... disloyalty should find no foothold to mar his military plans, or to disaffect the soldiery or citizens, General Jackson, on the day previous to his declaration of martial law, issued the following ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... bleached lighter through sun and wind, and covered with low, white-capped chimneys, it looked even more stark and chilly than the drifts which had climbed its low roadside fence, and yet seemed hopeless of gaining a foothold on the glancing walls, or slippery, wind-swept roof. The storm, which had already heaped the hollows of the road with snow, hurled its finely-granulated flakes against the building, but they were whirled along the gutters and ridges, and disappeared in smokelike puffs ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... said his battleships could not fight through without help, there was no foothold left for the ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... 'wickedest man in New York' and in a short time he was the most notorious character in the country. The aim of the article in question was evidently to shame John Allen into a change of life, and thus to obtain a foothold among his vile neighbors and companions in sin. The stroke was a bold one, but it utterly failed in its purpose to soften John's heart. The result, however, was that thousands of religious persons—clergymen ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... right there," he agreed. "But you must allow for it. He's very uncertain of his foothold, and that's his ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... manual training and domestic science were brought into our city schools, because these studies emphasize the fact that the schools must do something to train workers. And finally we have at present the idea gaining a strong foothold that the schools must train the child to fill its place in the world of men; to see all the relations of life; to be fitted to live in human society. This idea really embraces all of the other ideas. It implies that the schools ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... however, that the works must be stormed. Still Sweetheart had made no motion to resist, except that, still seated on the broad board of the swing, she had gradually pushed herself back as far as she could go without losing her foothold on the ground. ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... themselves and of themselves alone. Their resolve was inexorable not to allow the mother-country, or the whole outside world combined, to interfere with them. And it was equally inexorable not to suffer dissent or any discordant element to get foothold among them. Sir Christopher Gardner's rank and title could not save him: he was not of the sort they wanted, and they shipped him back. Roger Williams's virtues, learning, apostolic piety, could not save him; and they drove him into a wintry wilderness, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... less pleasant results of sexual abandonment, preventing the coarsening and destruction of the emotional life; in his Magda Sudermann has described a type of woman who, from the standpoint of strict morality, is open to condemnation, but in her art finds a foothold, the strength of which even ill-will must unwillingly recognize." In his Sex and Character, Weininger has developed in a more extreme and extravagant manner the conception of the prostitute as a fundamental and essential part of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... houses, laid out with streets, and thronging with inhabitants. Among the Spaniards wild enthusiasm prevailed. But it was quickly checked by the hostile demonstrations with which they were met, when they attempted to gain a foothold on the soil of the Incas. It was useless to make front against such numbers as opposed them. Divided counsels and a violent quarrel between the two captains ensued, and the expedition sailed back northward. Once ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... the plant be immersed in glycerine the preservative takes the hue of the flower. Nature having ordained that the plants should be elusive, they appear in remote spots and unlikely situations with foothold among loose and gritty fragments of rock, and with cessation of the sustaining rains disappear, each having borne but a single leaf and produced but a solitary flower. The leaf does not seem to be attractive ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... leaders—whom the people had been accustomed to obey and follow, and by whom they had been protected. It was equally important that the legislation should come from such sources, when we consider the effect upon the enemy, still having a foothold in the State. They might reasonably apprehend that the laws springing from such a body would be marked by a stern directness and decision of purpose which would leave nothing to be hoped by disaffection or hostility; and their ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... especially that, according to the apparently well-grounded assertions of Mueller-Beeck, the going of the Chinese to the Philippines was developed about the end of the fourteenth century, and chiefly after the Spaniards had gotten a foothold and were using the Mexican silver in trade. At any rate, the apprehension of Semper, which rests on somewhat superficial physiognomic ground, is not confirmed by searching investigations. So the head-hunting of the mountain tribes, so far as it hints at relations with ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... evident that no impression could be made upon the power of the rebellion in the West, until a firm foothold could be gained in Kentucky and Tennessee, and until the Mississippi could be wrested from the conspirators' control. It was clear that the whole seaboard might be regained, even to Florida, and yet the rebellion remain ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... pick-a-pack safely to the further shore. He considered himself an athlete and wished to show "young England how they do things in Yankeeland," and with a shout he darted forward. Headlong he came to the spot above the water where no foothold was—a space too wide for even his long legs to cover, and all the watchers shivered ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... based on the principle that might makes right, has in a measure excluded women from the profitable industries of the world, and where she has gained a foothold her labor is at a discount. Man occupies the ground and holds the key to the situation. As employer, he plays the cheap labor of a disfranchised class against the employe, thus in a measure undermining his independence, making wife and daughter ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... it is only a thin veneering just to give a secure and comfortable foothold," remarked the professor. He paused at what looked like a trap-door in the deck ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... had a sudden feeling of uncertainty as if he had kicked away a foothold upon which she had rashly attempted ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... surprise the worker in the course of her labours; when, with the rostrum buried deep in the acorn, her feet suddenly lose their hold. Then the unhappy creature, unable to free herself, finds herself suspended in the air, at right angles to her proboscis, far from any foothold or point of vantage, at the extremity of her disproportionately long pike, that "fatal ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... have invariably failed. Will Mr. Wells succeed any better? Is it not apparent in the foregoing discussion that, even if the word had no other demerits, it leads us into regions in which the mind can find no firm foothold? I have done my best to accept Mr. Wells's definitions, but I am sure he feels that I have constantly slipped from the strait and narrow path. Has he himself always kept to it? I think not. And, waiving ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... started and, after travelling several miles, entered a narrow valley with very steep sides, with trees and brushwood growing wherever they could get a foothold. He now adopted a careless and indifferent carriage and, although he kept a sharp lookout, no one who saw him would have supposed that he had ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... not covered with foliage. Many are rugged and bare. Some of these are too precipitous to sustain vegetation, others are masses of quartz and granite. On the hillsides most exposed to the wind, only grass and small shrubs are able to obtain a foothold. ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... seemed to her, she faced the facts of a woman's position in the world—the meagre realities of such freedom as it permitted her, the almost unavoidable obligation to some individual man under which she must labor for even a foothold in the world. She had flung away from her father's support with the finest assumption of personal independence. And here she was—in a mess because it had been impossible for her to avoid leaning ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... States the movement has not found a firm foothold because there has been no dominant, enslaving tradition to protest against. Not a few of the ideas, not a little of the spirit of the movement may be recognized in the work of individual architects and decorative artists in the United States, executed years before the movement took ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... worked himself up a little and at last got a foothold. But, scarcely had he done so, when his strength left him and he fell on the ground as one dead. But he soon revived. He opened his eyes and looked around. He saw above him the blue sky, and under him the solid brown earth, ...
— An American Robinson Crusoe • Samuel B. Allison
... best part of one's life in toiling for that first foothold which money could at once purchase. To have money is becoming of more and more importance in a literary career; principally because to have money is to have friends. Year by year, such influence grows of ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... have occasion to note how Descartes, having thus secured one firm foothold and solid resting-place, outwent the farthest stretch of Archimedean ambition by using it, not as a fulcrum from whence to move the world, but as a site for logical foundations whereon he might, if he had persevered, have raised the superstructure of an universe at once ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... of Juliers; in the neighborhood of Maestricht, by the 20th April. His force, infantry and cavalry, amounted to nearly three thousand men. The object of the enterprise was to, raise the country; and, if possible, to obtain a foothold by securing an important city. Roermonde was the first point of attack, but the attempts, both by stratagem and by force, to secure the town, were fruitless. The citizens were not ripe for revolt, and refused the army ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ask you fellows to go into this," said Chip, straightening from his stooping over the map and looking from one sober face to another, "just to help the outfit. But it'll be a good thing for you boys. It'll give you a foothold—something better than wages, if you stay with your claims and prove up. Of course, I can't say anything about us buying out your claims—that's fraud, according to Hoyle; but you ain't simple-minded—you ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... town beside. There all unbridled Mars we saw, the Danaans driving wide 440 Against the house; with shield-roofs' rush the doors thereof beset. The ladders cling unto the walls, men by the door-posts get Some foothold up; with shielded left they meet the weapons' rain, While on the battlements above grip with the right they gain. The Dardans on the other side pluck roof and pinnacle From off the house; with such-like shot they now, beholding well The end anigh, all death at hand, make ready for the play: And ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... not every creed too soon become a secure retreat to the spirit of man to which God has denied the repose of certainty. We crave knowledge which is withheld more earnestly than we desire faith or hope, and we eagerly make even its semblance a foothold. It appears to me, my friend, with whom I am grown bold, that you and I may find in our less material beliefs as false a haven as the pilgrim finds in ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... the edge of the orifice. As he hung there, Masin had held up the handle of a pickaxe as high as he could reach against the smooth wall, as a crossbar on which Malipieri had succeeded in getting a slight foothold, enough for a man who was not heavy and was extraordinarily active. A moment later he had drawn himself up and inward. At the imminent risk of his life, as he afterwards found, he had crawled on in total darkness ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... of musketry upon Boisot from the dyke, to which he responded with his cannon. The distance of the combatants, however, made the action unimportant; and the patriots retired down the river, after achieving a complete victory. The Grand Commander was farther than ever from obtaining that foothold on the sea, which as he had informed his sovereign, was the only means by which the Netherlands could ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... he leaned over the gunwale of the boat in a vain attempt to accomplish his malignant purpose. But in doing so, he lost his foothold, and was precipitated head foremost ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... nature:—With a mind at peace, and with a heart going out in love to all, go into the quiet of your own interior self, holding the thought, I am one with the Infinite Spirit of Life, the life of my life. I now open my body, in which disease has gotten a foothold, I open it fully to the inflowing tide of this infinite life, and it now, even now, is pouring in and coursing through my body, and the healing process is going on." "If you would find the highest, the fullest, and the richest ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... room in the attic had just one tiny window high up in the wall. The window was shut, but Angelita climbed up to open it in order to get a little air. The next afternoon she grew weary of the confinement of the little room, so she dug a foothold in the wall where she could stand and look out of the window. Her step-mother was leaning over the balcony all alone when two cavalheiros passed by. One said to the other, "Do you observe the beautiful woman in the balcony?" ...
— Tales of Giants from Brazil • Elsie Spicer Eells
... choke us undiluted; but to define when we have once well swallowed is to unsettle, rather than settle, our digestion. Definitions, again, are like steps cut in a steep slope of ice, or shells thrown on to a greasy pavement; they give us foothold, and enable us to advance, but when we are at our journey's end we want them no longer. Again, they are useful as mental fluxes, and as helping us to fuse new ideas with our older ones. They present us with some tags and ends of ideas that we have already mastered, ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... the young men went to church. Nothing in the way of heresy found foothold at Jefferson. It was wholly orthodox; although it was suspected that Wade and Ranney had notions of their own in religion; or rather the impression was that they had no religion of any kind. Not to have the one and true, was to have none according ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... military basis, but its very existence was perpetuated by military form. The Dorian conquest brought these people in from the north to settle in the Peloponnesus, and by degrees they obtained a foothold and conquered their surrounding neighbors. Having established themselves on a small portion of the land, the Dorians, or Spartans, possessed themselves of superior military skill in order to obtain the overlordship of the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... wrangle round a carcass. On Cornhill there probably dwelt petty kings who warred with the kings of Ludgate; and in Southwark there lurked or burrowed other chiefs who, perhaps by intrigue or force, struggled for centuries to get a foothold in Thames Street. But of such infusoria History (glorying only in offenders, criminals, and robbers on the largest scale) justly pays no heed. This alone we know, that the early rulers of London before the Christian era passed away like the wild beasts they fought ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... shooting, but that being impossible, she made her effort in another way. Gliding forward, she tried to seize the African; but he eluded her grasp, just missing, in doing so, falling into the mysterious hole. As he swayed back to firm foothold, he turned his own gun on her and shot. Instinctively Adam leaped at his assailant; clutching at each other, they tottered ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... promises he could not fulfill to Aguinaldo; did not assume to speak for the President or the army of the United States, but gave guns and ammunition to the insurgents, who aided him in maintaining a foothold on the shore. The insurgents did not win Dewey's victory, but aided to improve it. Without the aid of the American army Manila might have been destroyed, but could not have been captured intact. General Merritt settled the question ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... beyond the mountains would retain their connection with the United States, which would not touch the Mississippi River at any point. Vergennes held that this was all the Americans could reasonably demand, and he agreed with Aranda that they had as yet gained no foothold upon the eastern bank of the great river, unmindful of the fact that at that very moment the fortresses at Cahokia and Kaskaskia were ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... charter of 1670 was legally unassailable, the earl was now ready for his subsequent line of action. He had resolved to get a foothold in the company itself. To effect this object he brought his own capital into play, and sought at the same time the aid of his wife's relatives, the Wedderburn-Colviles, and of other personal friends. Shares in the company had depreciated in value, ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood
... flood, as the result of torrential rains, French forthwith led out two brigades with their batteries to make a reconnaissance. In forcing the stream both French and his A.A.G. very nearly lost their lives. Losing its foothold the General's horse took fright and fell, flinging him into the raging torrent. As the animal strove to recover, it upset Colonel (now Sir Douglas) Haig, who was coming to the rescue, dashing rider and horse into an over-hanging willow tree. Both French and Haig ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... the left, and you will find no footprints or other marks anywhere. Go round there to the left, and you will be satisfied that the most experienced mountaineer that ever lived could not make a descent, or even anywhere get over the edge of the cliff. There is no ledge or foothold within fifty feet." ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... weakened Spanish towns. They settled on the west and north-west coasts of Hispaniola, compelling any Spanish settlers whom they found to retire to the east and south. The French and English had now a firm foothold in the Indies. Without assistance from their respective Governments they had won the right to live there, "maugre the King of Spain's beard." In a few years' time, they had become so prosperous that the Governments ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... after Spain had lost her foothold on the American continent, and she still held her West Indian empire. She misgoverned the islands as she had misgoverned the continent; and in the islands, as once upon the continent, her own children became her deadliest ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... found a home at last, one in which she would have to work early and late to retain a foothold—but still a home, and the word rang in her ears like a soothing song, after the anguish of the last year. Her youth and beauty, she had long since discovered, were only barriers to the surroundings she sought. There ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... regions was to make all the mammals become black; the result would be that they would all be eliminated by selection, and that no mammals would be able to live there at all. But in most cases a certain percentage of animals resists these strong influences, and thus selection secures a foothold on which to work, eliminating the unfavourable variation, and establishing a useful colouring, consistent with what is required for ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... daughter," he said. I accepted bravely that life of suffering that I might not lose you, and I suffered joyfully, seeing that we were called to bear the same yoke—My God! I have been firm, faithful to my husband; I have given you no foothold, Felix, in your kingdom. The grandeur of my passion has reacted on my character; I have regarded the tortures Monsieur de Mortsauf has inflicted on me as expiations; I bore them proudly in condemnation of my faulty desires. Formerly ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... were filled with heaviest toil, for they were conquering a new country. They were renters of the land, or had bought with heavy mortgages, and so their ceaseless struggle was to gain a foothold. Little time or thought had they for the claims ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... now even with the window on the third floor, and he succeeded by clever work in getting a foothold on the sill; and, still clinging to the rope, he stood erect. Inside, Chester saw the figure of a man. Inadvertently, the lad's foot crashed against the window pane, shattering the glass. There was a crash, followed by a guttural exclamation from ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... woodland: 0% other: 93% Irrigated land: 410 km2 (1989 est.) Environment: summer winds often raise large sandstorms and duststorms in interior; sparse natural freshwater resources Note: strategic location with small foothold on Musandam Peninsula controlling Strait of Hormuz (17% of world's oil production transits this point going from Persian ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... beating against it drove him away, but he found footing at another, next adjoining the building on the north. To reach him from below, with the whole building ablaze, was impossible. Other escape there was none, save a cornice ledge extending halfway to his window; but it was too narrow to afford foothold. ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... the advancement man has made since the time when he was a cannibal cave dweller, shivering out of the glacial epoch, and contending with wild beasts for a foothold on the earth, till now that he enjoys the idealism of Berkeley, wields the quaternions of Hamilton, uses the lightnings for his red sandaled messengers, holds his spectroscope to a star and tells what elements compose it, or to an outskirting nebula and declares it a mass of incandescent ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... advance. The others followed his plan. All picked their way with anxious care. The traitorous rocks rolled from beneath the little man's feet and roared thunderously below him, lesser stone loosened by the men above him, hit him on the back. He gained seemingly firm foothold, and, turning halfway about, swore redly at his companions for dolts and careless fools. The pudgy man sat, puffing and perspiring, high in the rear of the procession. The fumes and smoke from four pine-knots were in his blood. Cinders and sparks lay thick in his eyes and hair. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... all persons to the tremendous spectacle that was about to be exhibited. The streets through which the procession was to pass were crowded with the populace. The windows, the roofs, every place that could admit a face or a foothold, were alive with spectators. In the great square, a spacious scaffolding, like an amphitheatre, was erected, where the sentences of the prisoners were to be read, and the sermon of faith to be preached; and close by were ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... afforded a foothold to those who followed, but these could make but little way, for as but one could advance at a time, each as he came on was slain by the pikes. Finding that two were well able to hold the door, Malcolm with the ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... of the ship part of another group of penguins were quarrelling for the possession of a small pressure block which offered only the most insecure foothold. The scrambling antics to secure the point of vantage, the ousting of the bird in possession, and the incontinent loss of balance and position as each bird reached the summit of his ambition was almost as entertaining as the episode of the skua. Truly these little creatures ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... Village of Peace entertained more redmen than ever before. Day by day the faith gained a stronger foothold. A kind of religious trance affected some of the converted Indians, and this greatly influenced the doubting ones. Many of them half believed the Great ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... in the first place, answer generally that the Japanese policy should, I think, be that of keeping Americans and Europeans as much as possible at arm's length. In presence of the more powerful races your position is one of chronic danger, and you should take every precaution to give as little foothold as ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... ground falls suddenly from our very feet. Sheep scamper nimbly down their convenient little tracks, but there are places where water that overflows from the pools among the bent and ling has made blue-grey seams and wrinkles in the steep places that give no foothold ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... I thought you were jesting. [He gets up and speaks confidentially and half-humorously.] Now, you don't mean to say you're really capable of undermining the ground here where a friend of yours has been fortunate enough to get a firm foothold? ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... saw that one of his men who had lost his foothold had slipped down to the very edge of the precipice and was now hanging half over it. One leg and arm were over, and with the other he clung frantically to the edge ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... steps of the house itself, men prominent in the life of the city called for "Vivas" for the new President, for Senora Rojas, for the Rojas revolution. Below them, those who had been wounded in the fight just over were lifted high on the shoulders of the mob, and in it, struggling for a foothold, were many women, their cheeks wet with tears, their cries of rejoicing more frantic even than those ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... understand that in the Women's Missionary Societies and the afternoon clubs the comparative riding qualities of the various tonneaus about the city have about driven out teething and styles as a subject of debate. For a while during the Wilson campaign, it looked as if politics was going to get a foothold in the town, but some enthusiast organized a flying squadron of automobiles to propagate Democratic gospel, and then it was all off. Everybody rushed into the squadron, and the trips around the district became reliability runs, ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... while the English considered that their claim to its rule was pre-eminent. The French had established a line of military fortified posts from Canada to the southern part of the Mississippi, and they were fast securing a foothold in the ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... us, when we were met by a sheet of flame, a storm of lead and smoke and fire. We were raised as it were in the air and held there gasping for breath, and then we were swept back down the hill, struggling desperately to gain a foothold to make ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... a matter for a sure-footed mountaineer like Nick to make his way down to the ledge as one might imagine, for in a certain place the face of the cliff presented a series of jagged edges and projections which afforded him foothold. As he went along, too, he kept a strong grasp upon overhanging vines and bushes that ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... and shouted to his companions to follow. Pierre scrambled up, but the ice was six feet out of the water, and Le Jeune's agility failed him. He saved himself by clutching the ankle of Mestigoit, by whose aid he gained a firm foothold at the top, and, for a moment, the three voyagers, aghast at the narrowness of their escape, stood gazing at each ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... Scott, "the whole team were sinking—two by two we lost sight of them, each pair struggling for foothold. Osman the leader exerted all his strength and kept a foothold—it was wonderful to see him. The sledge stopped and we leapt aside. The situation was clear in another moment. We had been actually travelling along the ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... difficulty about the descent for the first eight or ten feet. Then the shrubs that had afforded foothold for his feet suddenly ceased, and the foot that he had thrust down for another perch touched nothing but the slippery side of the pit. Clinging firmly with his left hand to the network of vegetation which grew above his head, Colwyn flashed his electric torch into the blackness of ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... Convulsively he sought foothold for the thirtieth time, but, except for tweaking the agony in his chest, the effort was vain. Desperately he blinked the sweat ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... came here. He's only a tramp, and you can't make anything else out of him. Some folks are never satisfied unless they are trying to make gentlemen out of gutter snipes. If we let such fellows get a foothold, there won't be any respectable society after a while; it will be ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... observance; and they were the keepers of the hearth-fire of the city, not the intermediaries between it and its gods. But the Vestals have no parallel in Greek life. Asiatic rites and devotions, it is true, from an early period obtained a foothold among the populace; but they were either discountenanced, or by being made part of the civic ritual were disarmed of their mystic or monastic elements. An epitaph in the Anthology commemorates two aged priestesses as having been happy in their ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... rocks, was a sheet of liquid porphyry, an arrow of dark-red water slightly flecked with foam. The walls of the canon, scarcely fifty yards apart and more stupendous than ever, rose in precipices without a landing-place or a foothold. So far as eye could pierce into the twilight of the sublime chasm, there was not a spot where the boat could be arrested in its flight, or where a swimmer could find a shelf ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... of vocal challenge and bedevilment from his ancestral syringa bush on the other, and all between is a gap filled with a vista of rose-bushes—not marshalled in a garden together, but scattered here, there, and everywhere that a good exposure and deep foothold could ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... enabled him to do this, he never could say. His foothold was none too secure, and the only available leverage was a narrow piece of masonry that jutted from the side. Yet, working inch by inch, he accomplished it, and when Trevannion had been brought sufficiently near the top, he made the rope fast to a ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... ever know maturity. We have only to do what Darwin did—count the plants that throng a foot of sod in spring, count them again in summer, and at the summer's end, to find how great the inexorable carnage in this unseen combat, how few its survivors. So hard here is the fight for a foothold, for daily bread, that the playfulness inborn in every healthy plant can peep out but timidly and seldom. But when strife is exchanged for peace, when a plant is once safely sheltered behind a garden fence, then the struggles of the battlefield give place to the diversions of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... on this side looked like a wall of granite in which there was no foothold; but above this inflexible wall was a crown of trees, the roots of which hung down it, mostly pines clinging to the rock with their forked feet like birds on ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... six hours' climb, to be at its best. After refreshment comes the hard work. To look at the face of the rock up which Joseph has swarmed; to say hopelessly, "I can't do it, I can't," and then gradually to find here a niche for one hand, here a foothold; to learn to cling to the rock, to use every bit of oneself, to work one's way up delicately as a cat so as not to send loose stones down on the climber below, until, panting, one lands on the ledge appointed by Joseph, there to ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... awakened, had swooped down upon that picturesque little Welsh watering-place, Lllgxtplll, and, despite desperate resistance on the part of an excursion of Evanses and Joneses from Cardiff, had obtained a secure foothold. While these things were happening in Wales, the army of Monaco had descended on Auchtermuchty, on the Firth of Clyde. Within two minutes of this disaster, by Greenwich time, a boisterous band of Young Turks ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... a plan to seize upon Manassas as the centre of railroads, the true defence of Washington, and the firm foothold in Virginia. Nobody, or only few enemies, were in Manassas. McDowell shows his genuine military insight. Scott, and, as I am told, the whole senile military council, opposed McDowell's plan as being too bold. Do these mummies intend to conduct a ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... in alarm, he clutched frantically at one of the hand-bars on the end of the coal car, caught it, and managed to draw himself up till he found foothold on the extension of the floor where he stood, hanging on for dear life, until the train stopped ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster
... whose value is, for the most part, estimated according to the development of their machine-like qualities. Beauty is not consulted here. In those places in or near the city, where Nature, reluctant to be driven utterly away, still tries to keep a foothold, she is parched and scorched by the feverish breath of forges and furnaces. Standing here, one may see the cloud of smoke, which waves in the wind like a pall over the city, slowly moving and settling down upon the land. One may almost hear the roar of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Sam-Chaong reached the borders of an immense lake, many miles in extent, spanned by a bridge of only a single foot in width. With fear and trembling, as men tremble on the brink of eternity, and often with terror in his eyes and a quivering in his heart as he looked at the narrow foothold on which he was treading, he finally crossed in safety, when he found to his astonishment that the pulsations of a new life had already begun to beat strongly within him. Beyond a narrow strip of land, which bounded ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... would ever come up or not. It was at this time that Tip O'Neill, a daring young buck of Freekirk Head, performed the highly dangerous feat of walking from her main to her forerigging along the weather run, which fact shows there was foothold on her uppermost side for a man crazy ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... mountaineer with caution. At any rate, most of our party dismounted, preferring to lead their mules around the point to having their heads turned in riding past it. Exposed to the full force of the winds, which are drawn through this river-valley as through a funnel, and with a foothold so narrow, it was easy to believe that neither man nor beast could pass here during the season of the northers, except at great risk of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... extremely delighted. I quite liked Pyecraft for the time. "Let me help you!" I said, and took his hand and pulled him down. He kicked about, trying to get foothold somewhere. It was very like holding a flag ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... she had been left scathless, it would not have been so bad: he was a man, who could have fought for his own hand, without being hindered by the obstacles which weigh so heavily on those of her own sex, who seek to win for themselves a foothold on the slippery inclines of life. She found herself hating him more for his prosperity than for the way in which he ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... overlooked a small courtyard, the latter being stoneflagged and surrounded by high walls. I could see that, even if I were able to squeeze my way out between the bars, I should be powerless to scale the walls. At a rough guess these were at least twelve feet high, and without a foothold of any sort or description. This being so I was completely at the mercy of the men in the house. Indeed, a rat caught in a trap, was never more firmly laid by the heels than I. At about half-past seven o'clock a small ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... thrust again and again through door and window; masses of argument had crashed from above; he had been on the alert day and night, repelling this, blindly, and denying that, endeavouring to keep his foothold on the slippery plane of the supernatural, sending up cry after cry to the Lord Who hid Himself. He had slept with his crucifix in his hand, he had awakened himself by kissing it; while he wrote, talked, ate, walked, and sat in cars, the ...
— Lord of the World • Robert Hugh Benson
... fire the saurian dived, and Jack saw the huge dark form dart at him under water. He felt his legs swept from under him at the next instant, and down he went. He had not been seized, he had simply been knocked from his foothold by the rush of the great brute, and he landed full on the alligator's back. He felt plainly with his hand its rough scaly covering like knobs of horn. He had kept his eyes open, and saw clearly the horrid brute below him, ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... foothold. Now the ground beneath lent its aid to his endeavor; he was no longer altogether at the mercy of the water. He bounded forward toward the shore in such a direction that he could approach it without opposing himself entirely ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... Harpeth, coiled itself into a huge black spiral of thunder and lightning and was driving down the valley upon Goodloets with a velocity that defied the eyes to follow. For a long second every man and woman stood rooted to his foothold on the earth and watched the tornado strike the edge of the Settlement, smash down the saddlery as if it were a house of cards, and churn the little tannery into the river. Then as it grasped the roof of the Last Chance and began twisting ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Illinois in 1836 to pledge her good name in favor of the Illinois and Michigan Canal made Chicago a city of four thousand people by the panic year of 1837. So absorbed were these Chicago folk in the building of their canal and in wresting from their lake firm foothold for a city (reclaiming four hundred feet of lake bed in two years) that the panic affected their town less than it did many a rival. Although the canal enterprise came to an ominous pause in 1842, after the expenditure of five millions, the pledge of the ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... and Browning in poetry divide themselves into three separate schools. Nearest to them in temper is the school of Matthew Arnold and Clough; they have the same quick sensitiveness to the intellectual tendencies of the age, but their foothold in a time of shifting and dissolving creeds is a stoical resignation very different from the buoyant optimism of Browning, or Tennyson's mixture of science and doubt and faith. Very remote from ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... very long, made of the finest knitted silk. When firmly tied to the handle of the walking stick, the floating end of the scarf was within reach of Donnington. With its help he even managed to secure a foothold on the narrow one-brick ledge which terminated the deep underwater wall ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... sure some unasy divil drooped the port; and the lantern and me we had no foothold at all at all, and the lantern went into the say, bad luck to ut; and I went afther to try ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the blow, and when I rallied my business was swept away, and the firm of Critchet was known only by its debts. I struggled for a time against the stream, but I could not gain a foothold, and at last yielded and gave up all thoughts of resuming business. My family was supported by a small settlement of one hundred pounds which had been left to my wife by an aunt, and by music lessons which my daughter was enabled to give, and thus we struggled along, until ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Princeton. Clinton, aware at last of his danger, sailed with every vessel he could scrape together, and approached the bay on October 24 with twenty-five sail-of-the-line and 7,000 men; but it was too late. He could only retreat to New York, where he remained in the sole British foothold ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... not!" Mrs. Salisbury agreed with a short laugh, "inasmuch as they CANNOT, if they ever hope to get any foothold at all!" ...
— The Treasure • Kathleen Norris
... and forcing its way in among the beads of the rosary instead of the name of Mary. But the worst thing of all was that his religion, like the outer world, seemed to be slipping away from him as the days went by. To this last foothold he clung with feverish tenacity, spending several hours of each day in prayer and meditation; but his thoughts wandered more and more often to Bolla, and the prayers ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich |
