"Laggard" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the laggard now in Tom, Dick and Harry—no suspicion of "staleness" in their keen pride in their work; Irish and Rover, ever fleet and responsive, needed no urging; Jack McMillan gave his stupendous energy, his superb intelligence with loyal abandon; ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... was no laggard in her hammock on the day after Royson's departure from the camp, but, early riser though she was, Irene was up and dressed when the older woman came to her tent and asked if she might have a word with ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Much as we had needed him, we had had no time to hunt for him. Places had to be filled by those at hand in the dreadful necessity before us. We could count on O'mie, of course. He was no coward, nor laggard; but where could he ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... borne tempestuously in upon the shivering city. Chill and keen out of the northeast came the air that hinted not at all of spring, but urgently of winter. The people in the streets walked briskly, with no laggard steps; they were accustomed to this sort of untimely treatment from the New England climate, and they had no intention of being betrayed thereby into pondering over southern lands or sunny vineclad hillsides where summer always ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... for brake, and he stopp'd not for stone, He swam the Eske River where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented, the gallant came late; For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... There are adequate penalties in the law, but I am now asking the cooperation that comes from opinion and from conscience. These are the only instruments we shall use in this great summer offensive against unemployment. But we shall use them to the limit to protect the willing from the laggard and ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... This laggard has not yet learned that it is his business and duty to cultivate the earth, and not exhaust it; to get two blades of grass this year where but one blade grew before; to gather thirty bushels of corn from the acre which produced but twenty bushels last year; to shear three ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... goodness into question, to throw doubt on His revelation, and to make it the laughing stock of the irreligious, than thus to clip the wings of faith, to throw her into a dungeon, to keep her from the light of day, to make her read through. Hebrew spectacles, and to force her to be a laggard and dullard, instead of a bright and volatile spirit, forward and foremost in ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... winds, in order to set up, what? in its place. A foul, decaying object—a slave oligarchy, which, do what it will, is, at each decennial census, seen to fall steadily farther and farther into the rear even of the most laggard of the Free States, in all that goes to make up our American civilization.[1] And all this because it sees that the life of the republic is the death of slavery, and free labor ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... well as prevent them smelling unusual objects or being approached by strangers. Large sums were wagered on these Dogs, and a cunningly placed tack, a piece of doctored meat, yes, an artfully compounded smell, has been known to turn a superb young runner into a lifeless laggard, and to the owner this might spell ruin. The Dogs entered in each class are paired off, as each contest is supposed to be a duel; the winners in the first series are then paired again. In each trial, a Jack is driven from the Starting-pen; ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... half hour was up they came together at the forks of the road, just out of Centerville. Frank was first on hand, as usual, but even laggard Will showed up ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... laggard this morning, Monsieur de Lesperon." And, with a half laugh, she turned aside to break a rose ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... Young Doctor. Yet his feet were laggard, for he was not so sure that there would be another home for Jean Jacques with his grandchild as its star. He was thinking of Norah, to whom a waif of the prairie had made home what home should be for herself and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... came the heavy feet of a laggard, her head bent over her book, her thick lips vainly conning the unlearned task, unaware of the presence of the young lady, till Lucilla touched her, saying, 'What, Martha, ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Fawzi and his wife, and Lynne. And there was Senta herself, fat and dumpy, in one of her preposterous red-and-purple dresses, bustling about, bubbling happily one moment and screaming invective at some laggard waiter ...
— Graveyard of Dreams • Henry Beam Piper
... were full of dramatic action, that had little or no description, and a good deal of dialogue. The stories were strongly contrasted, and there was no attempt at literary or artistic finish. I used a great many gestures and moved about on the platform frequently; it is the quickest way of focusing laggard attention. To be absolutely honest, I had to come very close to the level of the moving picture show, and the ten-cent vaudeville, ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... are many things in this world worth far more than money, one of which is that sense of having done our neighbour's share as well as our own. It will be enough for us to watch when, bewildered by the lusty life and growth and the maze of new-made streets of the future city, the laggard stands debating with that other self, that genius that has kept him what he is. Fancy his striking attitude, thumbs in arm-pits and eyes rolling up to some tall spire, crying out to his other self, 'Thou canst not say I helped do this! Shake not thy towseled ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... they should have been directing others. Above all was their inefficiency marked in their inability to keep their men in the ranks. Absenteeism grew under them to a monstrous evil, and every poltroon and laggard found a way of escape. Hence the frequent phenomenon that regiments, which on the books of the commissary appeared as consumers of 500 or 1000 rations, were reported as carrying into action 250 or 300 bayonets."* (* Dabney volume ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... how impressively impersonal the Far East is. Now if individuality be the natural measure of the height of civilization which a nation has reached, impersonality should betoken a relatively laggard position in the race. We ought, therefore, to find among these people certain other characteristics corroborative of a less advanced state of development. In the first place, if imagination be the impulse of which increase in individuality is the resulting motion, ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... patriotism is the effort to extend our foreign commerce. To this end our merchant marine should be improved and enlarged. We should do our full share of the carrying trade of the world. We do not do it now. We should be the laggard no longer. The inferiority of our merchant marine is justly humiliating to the national pride. The Government by every proper constitutional means, should aid in making our ships familiar visitors at every commercial port of the world, thus opening up new and valuable markets to the surplus ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... to them overnight, and so now they know what to do, undiverted by any doubt. There is a brief glimpse of a downcast face looking as though it had just chanted the Dies Irae through the mouthfuls of a hurried breakfast; and once more this laggard is passed in the day's race towards the higher peak. The reproof goes home. It justly humiliates. But the weather is only a little west of south for one of the last fair days of the year; and the gloom of the yew in the churchyard—which ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... himself with a long pole to which a sharp knife-blade had been bound, would watch his opportunity to cut the thong that secured the blind-cloth about the animal's eyes. Woe now to him who was dull of eye or laggard ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... laggard line, The colonel's horse we spied— Bay Billy, with his trappings on, His nostrils swelling wide, As though still on his gallant ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... skyward beam Has tilted from the Ocean stream. Light the Indies, laggard sun: Happy bridegroom, day is done, And the star from OEta's steep Calls to bed but ...
— Last Poems • A. E. Housman
... came the hunters; Stopped in darkness in the court.— "Ho! this way, ye laggard hunters. To the hall! What ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... Abraham Lincoln, that he was able, by his sympathetic insight, to perceive the change in public sentiment without waiting for it to be formulated in any legislative action; to keep pace with it, to lead and direct it, to quicken laggard spirits, to hold in the too ardent, too impetuous, and too hasty ones, and thus, when he signed the emancipation proclamation, to make his signature, not the act of an individual man, the edict of a military imperator, but the representative act of a great nation. He was the greatest ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... a laggard, left far behind in the race of the journey by his swift desire, which kept pace with the telegram announcing his departure from Solaris and the probable time of his arrival in Washington. At length his heart was made glad by a distant glimpse of the dome of the Capitol, ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... France! shepherdess, peasant girl! trodden under foot by all around thee, how I honour thy flashing intellect, quick as God's lightning, and true as God's lightning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood! Is it not scandalous, is it not humiliating to civilization, that, even at this day, France exhibits the horrid spectacle of judges examining ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... moveless and attentive Unto his notes; and lo! the grave old man, Exclaiming: "What is this, ye laggard spirits? ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... briskly at first, but with a more laggard step as he plunged into the shelter of the great rocks, for he had had nothing to eat since the night before, and was beginning to be conscious of his weakness. But he strode on, doggedly enough, for more than an hour, until he found himself at a part of the coast he had not ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... taste, the ingenuity, and the solidity of their workmanship. Where so many regions have but recently been peopled, there is, it need hardly be said, much to be done, and it is most satisfactory to see how each city and town is bending itself to the task to prove that there is no laggard in the patriotic competition. I have gladly attended several of these shows, and it is a feature peculiar to this country that the industrial exhibition so generally accompanies the agricultural show. Whether this shall always be the case as in the gathering inaugurated ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... gossiped too long. I am a laggard this morning; but before starting work, I have a few ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... are somewhat laggard, as they bring us news of victory. By my troth, were it not utterly impossible, I could deem ye had been worsted in the strife," continued the impatient Lancaster, while the cooler and more sagacious ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the light marks out a shining way, And swift the shepherds are the path to take. I long to go! O laggard feet, why stay? Alas! the vision fades, ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... has always been the standard of reformation when Christianity has become recreant or laggard or corrupt. A man named John Wilkes started a political movement in England in the eighteenth century, and around him sprang up a party who called themselves Wilkites. These followers of Wilkes, however, went to extremes so wild and perilous that poor John Wilkes himself had ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... familiarity with the Slav language. The Greek, it was evident, heard of the murders at the earliest possible moment; Julius too was singularly well informed, though his interest in Kosnovian affairs had long seemed dormant; even the fiery Stampoff was no laggard once the news was bruited. Alec went so far as to fix the exact time at which Julius appeared in the Rue Boissiere. He knew something of the ways of newspapers, and was well aware that no private person could hope to obtain such important intelligence ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... no longer play madman. He had to take leave of his beloved wife Penelope and set out to join the heroes, little dreaming that he was not to return for twenty years. Once embarked, however, he set himself to work in the common cause of the heroes, and was soon as ingenious as Palamedes in rousing laggard warriors. ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... the H. B. C.," he laughed from his seat against a towering maple, "have your laggard ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... yonder, going with the beasts. Of whom two have got clear (one bitten by the mouse- coloured hound), and this one remains speechless. And who the others were, whether flesh and blood or wind and breath, I cannot tell you; but if this laggard is not Isoult, whom we call La Desirous, Matt-o'- the-Moor's daughter, I am no fit servant for ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... the hunters; Stopped in darkness in the court. 'Ho, this way, ye laggard hunters! To the hall! What ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... from his habitation, a small prairie of circular form, that is now generally known in that region of the country by the name of Prairie Round. Three hours were necessary to reach it, and this so much the more, because Margery's shorter steps were to be considered. Margery, however, was no laggard on a path. Young, active, light of foot, and trained in exertions of this nature, her presence did not probably retard the ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... shut off the direct light of the moonbeams and left the abyss again in dense darkness long before the coming of the laggard dawn. Blake slept on, storing up strength for the renewal of the battle. Yet even he could not outsleep the reluctant lingering of night. He awoke while the tiny flame of the watchfire still flickered bright against the inky darkness of ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... hid her heart behind a mask, And held him to his manly course; One hour in love she bade him bask, And then she drove, with playful force, The laggard ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... female portion of the Sidi community. She has no place in the chain of dancing fanatics but stands in the centre near the drummers, now breaking into a "pas seul" on her own account, now urging a laggard with all the force of a powerful vocabulary, beating time the while upon the ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... not for [v]brake, and he stopped not for stone, He swam the Esk river where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate The bride had consented, the gallant came late: For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war Was to wed the ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... but I was not. I was merely sent stumbling and drooping back to the sidelines to recover while he tortured some one else. But the names he called me! The comments on my none too smoothly articulated bones—and my alleged mind! As in my schooldays when, a laggard in the fierce and seemingly malevolent atmosphere in which I was taught my ABC's, I crept shamefacedly and beaten from ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... those on deck showed that Green was right, and the Tornado stood away after the stranger. The latter was no laggard, and it was soon evident that the Tornado must do her best if she was to come up with her. The chase, though a vessel of some size, showed no inclination to come to ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... e'er forget?— How, in the coiled perplexities of youth, In our wild climate, in our scowling town, We gloomed and shivered, sorrowed, sobbed and feared? The belching winter wind, the missile rain, The rare and welcome silence of the snows, The laggard morn, the haggard day, the night, The grimy spell of the nocturnal town, Do you remember?—Ah, could one forget! As when the fevered sick that all night long Listed the wind intone, and hear at last The ever-welcome voice of chanticleer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lights of the city, that one by one seem to fade away and be absorbed in her superior lustre. The distant Mission hills are outlined against the sky, but through one gap the outlying fog which has stealthily invested us seems to have effected a breach, and only waits the co-operation of the laggard sea-breezes to sweep down and take the beleaguered city by assault. An ineffable calm sinks over the landscape. In the magical moonlight the shot-tower loses its angular outline and practical relations, and becomes a minaret ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... a strange and beautiful thing to see that king of horses—sweep back around the slowest of his mustangs, shake his head at the barking guns, and then circle forward again as though he would show the laggard what running should be. The cowpunchers could have shot him as he veered back; they could have salted him with lead as he flashed broadside, but the orders of their chief restrained them. Lew Hervey's lightest word ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... to see him in a new independent capacity, though perhaps far from an improved one. Teufelsdroeckh is now a man without Profession. Quitting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, he desperately steers-off, on a course of his own, by sextant and compass of his own. Unhappy Teufelsdroeckh! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor Commodores pleased thee, still was it not a Fleet, sailing in prescribed track, for fixed ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... the woodland where Spring Comes as a laggard, the breeze Whispers the pines that the King, Fallen, has yielded the keys To his White Palace and flees Northward o'er mountain and dale. Speed then the hour that frees! Ho, for the pack and ...
— A line-o'-verse or two • Bert Leston Taylor
... laggard steps through the long night; Louis seemed to realize it all so plainly, and my heart was in my throat. I tried to hope, and when at last I fell asleep I wandered in dreams to a wondrous fountain, whose silvery spray fell before me as ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... darkness, but that the river showed in muddy grayness just over the gunwale. She saw Runnion more clearly, too, and made out his hateful outlines, though for all else she beheld they might have been miles out upon a placid sea, and so imperceptible was the laggard day's approach that she could not measure the growing light. It was a desolate dawn, and showed no glorious gleams of color. There was no rose-pink glow, no merging of a thousand tints, no final burst of gleaming gold; the night merely ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... little attention to wind or weather, this was an ideal night, and we were laggard in seeking our blankets. Yarn followed yarn; for nearly every one of us, either from observation or from practical experience, had a slight acquaintance with the great mastering passion. But the poetical had not been developed in us to an appreciative degree, so we discussed the topic under ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... in mountain piles, And gluts the laggard forges; But gold-flakes gleam in dim defiles ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... hands that idly fold, And lips that woo the reed's accord, When laggard Time the hour has tolled For true with false and new with old To fight the battles of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Lady Dundee, something wrong with me, and maybe worse with you. I have come quicker than I intended, and have had a somewhat cold reception at Dundee, but I grant you that was not your blame, you had doubtless prepared a warmer. Livingstone was the laggard." ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... that makes up what we call civilization, yet not all men then living. Since some souls are slower than others, all are not ready to pass into the second race, when the time for that race has come. Hence fragments of old races survive, kept up for a time by the incarnation of the laggard souls whose progress has been too slow. Thus, we are told, although the first and second root-races have now entirely disappeared, there still remain relics of the third and fourth. The proper seat of this ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... and awe-stricken amid this manifestation of the insignificance of man, the sun blazed forth from behind a laggard cloud. The effect was theatrical. It was like throwing the limelight on the scene which marks the climax of some tense situation. Instinctively we lifted our arms ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... season of apple bloom, and the early part of September. It passes northward with an almost scornful rapidity. Audubon mentions having seen it in Maine at the end of October, but this specimen surely must have been an exceptional laggard. ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... Slowly the laggard hours slipped away in silence. The rain fell in monotonous showers. The darkness hung like a ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... people about you are carrying on their business or their benevolence at a pace which drains the life out of you, resolutely take a slower pace; be called a laggard, make less money, accomplish less work than they, but be what you were meant to be and can be. You have your natural limit of power as much as an engine,—ten-horse power, or twenty, or a hundred. You are fit to do certain kinds of work, and you need a certain kind and amount of ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... was gradual and by no means sudden.[131] The traditions of the Delaware Indians show their advance from their early home in central Canada southward to the Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay to have been a slow zigzag movement, interrupted by frequent long halts, leaving behind one laggard group here and sending out an offshoot there, who formed new tribes and thereby diversified the stock.[132] It was an aimless wandering, without destination and purpose other than to find a pleasanter habitat. The Vandals appear first ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... came and the settlement had increased by one or two families, and laggard capital had been hurried up to relieve the still beleaguered and locked-up wealth of Burnt Ridge, the needs of the community and the claims of the widow of John Baker were so well told in political quarters that the post-office of Laurel Run was created expressly for her. Every man participated ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... last, a laggard at the end of the hurrying procession. She passed close by him. He stood motionless, seeing no one else, thinking of no one but this slim, adorable girl who had no eyes for him. At her side strode a tall, good-looking fellow whose manner toward ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... this great captain's hardest tasks had been to conciliate the jealous, vain-glorious Spaniard, to stimulate the laggard suspicious Portuguese, to enlighten the invincible ignorance of Regency and Juntas, in order to draw out and combine the resources of both countries with the scanty means afforded him by his own blundering government. He was required ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... stay'd not for brake and he stopt not for stone; He swam the Eske river where ford there was none; But ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented; the gallant came late; For a laggard in love and a dastard in war, Was to wed the ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... the hope that I may prevail upon you to quit Scotland and your attachment to a king, whose fortunes prosper not, nor can prosper. Cynthia is pining, and if you tarry longer from Castle Marleigh she must perforce think you but a laggard lover. Than this I have no more powerful argument wherewith to draw you from Perth to Sheringham, but this I think should prevail where others have failed me. We await you then, and whilst we wait we daily drink your health. Cynthia commends herself to your memory as doth ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... heroic men With Freedom's sword, or Truth's supernal pen, To shape the worn-out mould of nobleness again. And she has need of Poets who can string Their harps with steel to catch the lightning's fire, And pour her thunders from the clanging wire, To cheer the hero, mingling with his cheer, Arouse the laggard in the battle's rear, Daunt the stern wicked, and from discord wring Prevailing harmony, while the humblest soul Who keeps the tune the warder angels sing In golden choirs above, And only wears, for crown and aureole, The glow-worm light of lowliest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... "Laggard!" one exclaimed, "what excuse have you to make for coming so late? I noted not that De Jouvaux's wine had mounted into your head last night, and surely the duke cannot have had need of ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... So it had seemed to him, as alone afar he lay, With the Nile to watch for laggard friends, fierce foes to hold at bay; Though the tired red lines toiled onward up the Cataracts, and we Dreamed of the shout of the rescuing host ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... body, she had stayed in the city, going out not at all, seeing of all her friends only Blake, trying with all her pride, with all her strength, to adjust herself to the new order of things. It had been a weary winter—a winter that dragged along on laggard feet, loitering, waiting. ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... spin, to cut, to sew, because I do them and do them well? It is not the thing I love, Will—it is in the victory I find the joy. I would conquer them to feel my power. Conquer your book, Will, stride ahead of your class, then play your fill till they arrive abreast of you again. But a laggard, a stupid, or a middling! And, in faith, the ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... that it must be delivered only by my own hands, or hands which I could trust as my own, to Charlotte Oliver. We glanced back in search of Charlotte. She and Ferry were well in the rear of the procession, moving with laggard steps, she lighting his page with a borrowed candle, and he evidently reading not his orders, but the Federal surgeon's letter. "Oh, don't speak yet," murmured ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... flowers. His is a silent, secret, patient toil— While others sleep, he burns the midnight oil— Pores o'er his books—thence inspiration draws, And waste's his life to merit your applause! O ye, who come the laggard hours to while, And with the laugh-provoking muse to smile, Remember this: the mirth that cheers you so, Shows but the surface—not the depths below! Then judge not lightly of the actor's art, Who smiles to please you, with ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... see the bridegroom there, 'dangling his bonnet and plume' (though how he was to have got ahead of us, unless he came by electric telegraph, does not appear). What sport it would have been! I should have liked so to have seen the 'laggard in ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... moral? Who rides may read. When the night is thick and the tracks are blind A friend at a pinch is a friend indeed, But a fool to wait for the laggard behind. Down to Gehenna or up to the Throne, He travels the ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... bird, tree and herb and flower. And stoutly did Sir Richard bear himself during this weary time, plodding on hour after hour until for very shame I would call a halt, and he, albeit ready to swoon for weariness, would find breath to berate me for a laggard and protest himself able to go on, until, taking him in my arms, I would lay him in some sheltered nook and find him sound asleep before ever I could prepare ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... Nor did those laggard hours pass less bitterly for M. de Camors. He tried to take no rest, but walked up and down his apartment until daylight in a sort of frenzy. The distress of this poor child wounded him to the heart. The souvenirs ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... Just then before the laggard line The colonel's horse we spied— Bay Billy, with his trappings on, His nostrils swelling wide, As though still on his gallant ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... Laggard day came, with a dusky sky, obscured by heavy clouds and the rain still pouring. It was several hours after sunrise before it ceased and the sky began to clear. Then the others awoke and ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Marvel, heartily, as he bowed to the Fool-Killer. "I have often heard your name mentioned, but 'tis said in the world that you are a laggard in ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... once, lazy laggard, and ask no questions. A stranger, who has lost his way among the mountains, seeks shelter from the storm which is coming. Open the gate without delay, or I will break it down ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... a low, dreamy air, which stole into his heart and riveted his laggard feet still more to the ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... makes a music at once human and rural, and discourses pleasant reflections on the destiny of man. The spiry habitable city, ships, the divided fields, and browsing herds, and the straight highways, tell visibly of man's active and comfortable ways; and you may be never so laggard and never so unimpressionable, but there is something in the view that spirits up your blood and puts you in the vein ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I cried harshly, "when will that laggard burst through this agelong silence? Here's dust enough for all to see. And all this ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... violin he felt that he was made of different clay from other "niggahs." During the day he indulged in moods by the divine right and impulse of genius, imitating his gifted brothers unconsciously. In waiting on the table, washing dishes, and hoeing the garden, he was as great a laggard as Pegasus would have been if compelled to the labors of a cart- horse; but when night came, and uncongenial toil was over, his soul expanded. His corrugated brow unwrinkled itself; his great black fingers flew ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... harsh, unjustly portioning the captured prey— These, and cold or laggard leaders make ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... thing. It must be intelligence seeing the higher. But to be human was to love life, to hate death, to faint under loss, to throb and pant with heavy sighs, to lie sleepless in the long dark night, to shrink with unutterable sadness at the wan light of dawn, to follow duty with a laggard sense, to feel the slow ebb of vitality and not to care, to ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... radiant, were dulled now, as if by many tears; the rich scarlet of the lips' curves was bent downward mournfully. She stood just within the doorway for a brief space, watching intently the man who was so busy over his scrawled figures. At last, she ventured forward, walking in a laggard, rhythmic step, as do church dignitaries and choir-boys in a processional. By such slow stages, she came to a place opposite her husband. There, she remained, upright, mute, waiting. The magnetism of her presence penetrated to him by subtle degrees.... He looked up at her, with no recognition ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... take much thought to decide Ernestine, that she was much abused, and though her usually laggard conscience insisted on being touched, she solaced it by putting the tip in her hat, and seeing how becoming it was, and by trying on the gloves, which were a perfect fit. Then putting them away, she stole off to the garret, to carry out a plan, made in secrecy—that of rummaging the packed ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... ears sought for two sounds with agonizing acuteness—the firm, rapid step of Jonah mounting the stairs winding from the shop, or the nonchalant, laggard footfall of Ray ascending from the stairs at the rear. Would Cassidy send the bottle and trust her for the other eighteen pence? Would Jonah hurry back to meet Miss Grimes? Presently her ear distinguished the light, uncertain step of Ray. Every nerve in her body leapt ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... to me," said De Lacy, taking the low stool at her feet, "that I have a sure quarrel with your memory, either because it is laggard or ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... officers would probably endeavour to forward the information they were conveying by some other vessel. She was, as I have said, very fast, and she was now carrying every stitch of canvas she could set. The Liffy was no laggard, and we pressed after her. The chase was as exciting as it could well be. Scarcely any of the officers left the deck, except to take a hurried breakfast, and every glass on board was in requisition. Now, when the breeze freshened, we appeared to be gaining on her; now, when it fell, she seemed ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... on History in an easy chair, Still rivalling the wild hordes by whom 'twas writ! Sure, this beseems a race of laggard wit, Unwarned by those plain letters scrawled on air. If more than hands' and armsful be our share, Snatch we for substance we see vapours flit. Have we not heard derision infinite When old men play the youth to chase the snare? Let us be belted athletes, matched for foes, Or stand ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the Holloman Gate, which swung across the trail near the west end of the mountain. Tall poplars and spruce made an ample shade, but a glance toward the sun showed it at the zenith. She was prompt to the rendezvous; it was the lover who was laggard. She wondered a little at that, but with no lightening of her mood. She was sure that he would come all too speedily. She stood waiting in misery, leaning listlessly against the fence, her gaze downcast. The ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... yourself, their child, whereon they journey equal side by side) has for years kept, and yet keeps, a still disparting pace; and, oh, Amanda, excuse these tears, for well I know your mother, and pity her, having many a time listened to her fruitless complaints; but until your father, who is the laggard one of this most misappointed pair, shall, either underneath the whip of a castigating conscience, or prompted by the spur of your poor mother's sharp appeals, come up abreast, and fill a certain chasm of omission by an indemnifying deed, which has been by him most selfishly left ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... enough that she would enjoy the expedition; for would not Bridgie O'Shaughnessy be her companion, and did she not appear sweeter and more attractive with every moment that passed? Nearly an hour had elapsed since breakfast began, and still she sat behind the urn, smiling brilliantly at each fresh laggard, and looking as unruffled as if she had nothing to do but attend to his demands! It was the quaintest meal Mademoiselle had ever known, and seemed as if it would never come to an end, for just as she was expecting a general rise the Major ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... cuttings. It bears seed, strange to say, only (so far as is known) in the Andaman Islands, where, stranger still, it springs up as a second growth wherever the forests are cleared. Go to the palm-house, find the Musa sapientum, magnify it ten times, glorify it immeasurably, and you will have a laggard idea of ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... a laggard," she said. She was burning to see the arrival of her whom we had formed the habit of calling "the little ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... like you, gifted with courage, skill, and health,—the state demands some activity at your hands; 'tis ill to be a laggard." ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... the threshing-floors with the shout of battle, and swept away the year's harvest. The banished man resolved to strike a blow at the ancestral foes. Perhaps one reason may have been the wish to show that, outlaw as he was, he, and not the morbid laggard at Gibeah, who was only stirred to action by mad jealousy, was the sword of Israel. The little band bursts from the hills on the spoil-encumbered Philistines, recaptures the cattle which like moss troopers they were driving homewards from the ruined farmsteads, and routs them with great slaughter. ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... the first time, Dol Farrar of Manchester regarded his education as complete. He was prouder of this forest accomplishment, picked up in the wilds, than of all triumphs over problems and 'ologies at his English school. He had not been a laggard in study, either. ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... a monumental marble. There are armed men and cannon in the citadel overhead; you may see the troops marshaled on the high parade; and at night after the early winter even-fall, and in the morning before the laggard winter dawn, the wind carries abroad over Edinburgh the sound of drums and bugles. Grave judges sit bewigged in what was once the scene of imperial deliberations. Close by, in the High Street perhaps, the trumpets may sound about the stroke of noon; and you see a troop of citizens ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... enough let the laggard persist, Let the weak be suppressed since he can not resist, And, proceeding by logic which none may dispute, Can't we safely infer there's an end to ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... encountering adventures—not in the least understanding, in spite of their bright wits, what the burdens, fortunes, adventures might mean. The two sisters' enthusiasm was just kept within bounds by two drags on its quicksilver quality. These laggard spirits, Dora and May, weighed upon their more enterprising companions. Neither could Annie and Rose quite shut their eyes to the increase of wrinkles on their father's face, and to their mother's red eyes when she came ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... however stern the estrangement be, However time with laggard lapse may fret, That haunt of our fond friendship I shall hold As loved this hour as when elate I see Its draperies, dark with absence and regret, Slide softly back ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... the while You further and yet further look, Learn that a laggard few would fain Preserve your nook? . ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... standing, had tacitly allowed the discipline of his family to devolve upon Rupert. Remembering this, the master could only say, "Very well," and good-naturedly dismiss the pupil to his seat and the subject from his mind. The last laggard had just slipped in, the master had glanced over the occupied benches with his hand upon his warning bell, when there was a quick step on the gravel, a flutter of skirts like the sound of alighting birds, and ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... though not yet past. All front the horror and are none aghast; Brag of their full-blown rights and liberties, Nor once surmise When each man gets his due the Nation dies; Nay, still shout 'Progress!' as if seven plagues Should take the laggard who would stretch his legs. Forward! glad rush of Gergesenian swine; You've gain'd the hill-top, but there's yet the brine. Forward! to meet the welcome of the waves That mount to 'whelm the freedom which enslaves. Forward! bad corpses turn into good dung, To feed ...
— The Unknown Eros • Coventry Patmore
... the death-cry of your race! look back! Ulysses comes, and Pylian Nestor grey; See! Salaminian Teucer on your track, And Sthenelus, in the fray Versed, or with whip and rein, should need require, No laggard. Merion too your eyes shall know From far. Tydides, fiercer than his sire, Pursues you, all aglow; Him, as the stag forgets to graze for fright, Seeing the wolf at distance in the glade, And flies, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... hold: and the Tomtit flew, in consequence, as if she was going to give up the sea altogether, and take to the sky for a change. Our homeward run was the most perfect contrast to our outward voyage. No tacking, no need to study the charts, no laggard luxurious dining on the cabin hatch. It was too rough for anything but picnicking in the cockpit, jammed into a corner, with our plates on our knees. I had to make the grog with one hand, and clutch at the nearest rope with the other—Mr. Migott holding the bowl while I mixed, ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... passed without any news of Maganga. Accordingly, Shaw and Bombay were sent to hurry him up by all means. On the fourth morning Shaw and Bombay returned, followed by the procrastinating Maganga and his laggard people. Questions only elicited an excuse that his men had been too sick, and he had feared to tax their strength before they were quite equal to stand the fatigue. Moreover he suggested that as they would be compelled to stay one day more at the camp, I might push on to Kingaru and camp there, ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... will be far more merciful to us than we are to one another; and I say decidedly that the Christian's death is the glorious one, as is his life. You can never find a good man who is not a worker; he is no laggard in the race of life. Three, two, or one score years of life have been to him a season of labour in his appointed sphere; and as the work of the hands earns for us sweet rest by night, so does the ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... challenge of drums; loud music struck upon the air. Starting instantly to go to Julia, Noble's left leg first received the electric impulse and crossed his laggard right; but he was no pacer, and thus stumbled upon himself and plunged. Still convulsive, he came headlong before her, and was the only person near who remained unaware that his dispersal of an intervening group had the ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... interest and distress, whom I had lain awake to dream of like a lover, and now his hand was on the door; now we were to meet; now I was to learn at last the mystery of the substituted crew. The sun went down over the plain of the Angelus, and as the hour approached my courage lessened. I let the laggard peasants pass me on the homeward way. The lamps were lit, the soup was served, the company were all at table, and the room sounded already with multitudinous talk before I entered. I took my place and found I was opposite to Madden. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
