"Totter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many cases false religions have been also false sciences. The prayer to the fetish for rain is as contrary to true religion as it is contrary to true science. Many false religions are most easily overthrown by scientific instruction. Many false sciences begin to totter when the believers in them are taught true religion. The ordinary superstitions which have so strong a hold on weak characters and uninstructed minds, are as inconsistent with true faith in God as with reasonable knowledge ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... Francesca Ziani. It is now her turn. Her cruel parents remain unsubdued and unsoftened by her deep and touching sorrows. She is made to rise, to totter forward to the altar, scarcely conscious of any thing, except, perhaps, that the worthless, but wealthy, Ulric Barberigo is at her side. Once more the mournful spectacle restores to the spectators all their better feelings. They perceive, they feel the cruelty ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... the situation without comment. She neither congratulated nor demurred, but went on with her household duties with the same method and precision as before. Men may come and go, hearts may be won and lost, republics may totter and empires may fall, but the grand scheme of sweeping, dusting, bed-making, and cooking knows no interruption. If I did not understand I at least commended this housewifely prudence, and often when the domestic battle was at its height I would spirit away ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... is, I own, but slight To these proud visions which my soul inflate. This is the sort of thing: In abject fright I totter down the steps and through the gate; Somehow I reach the pitch and bleat, "Umpire, Is that one leg?" What boots it to inquire? The impatient bowler takes one grim survey, Speeds to the crease and whirls—a lightning ray? No, a fast yorker. Bang! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 14, 1919 • Various
... Scythia and wild Armenia had been yok'd, And they of Nilus' mouth, if there live any. 20 Rome, if thou take delight in impious war, First conquer all the earth, then turn thy force Against thyself: as yet thou wants not foes. That now the walls of houses half-reared totter, That, rampires fallen down, huge heaps of stone Lie in our towns, that houses are abandon'd, And few live that behold their ancient seats; Italy many years hath lien untill'd And chok'd with thorns; that greedy earth wants hinds;— Fierce ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... his trouble in being received so affectionately by his lovely niece, which was indeed more than he deserved. He simpered and pursed up his lips so that his moustache was all of a totter, and groaned and whined, not with pain, but simply and solely with ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Anderson my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither; And mony a canty day, John, [jolly] We've had wi' ane anither: Now we maun totter down, John, [must] And hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, [together] John Anderson, ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... called, and they answered to these names. I remember Cree best as a battered old weaver, who bent forward as he walked, with his arms hanging limp as if ready to grasp the shafts of the barrow behind which it was his life to totter uphill and downhill, a rope of yarn suspended round his shaking neck, and fastened to the shafts, assisting him to bear the yoke and slowly strangling him. By and by there came a time when the barrow ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... appears on the Stage [entering by the Right Side-door, as from the immediate neighborhood]: it is headed by the father and mother of Admetus, both of whom have reached the furthest verge of old age, and who with difficulty totter along, while attendants follow them bearing sumptuous drapery and other funeral gifts. The scene settles down into the 'Forensic Contest,' a fixed feature of every Greek Tragedy, in which the 'case' of the hero and the opposition to it are brought out with ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... probable that his sudden weight jolted the plank out of its position. For hardly was he safe on the turf again when he heard a sharp cry. Throwing a look behind, he saw his pursuer totter, clutch at the slipping timber, and, still clutching at it, turn a somersault ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Paris, all of which we do not clearly trace in history. We well know how the Mountain became powerful from that day; that from that day Marat ceased to shun the light, and Danton to curb the licence of his tongue that then, patriotism in France began to totter, and that, from that time, Paris ceased to be a fitting abode for aught that was virtuous, innocent, or high-minded; but the steady march of history cannot stop to let us see the various lights in which the inhabitants of ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... danger, there would be brave hearts come from both places to die for the truth. No! let us have done with this wish to have all the same. It will become monotony. Go down into the Jordan and fetch your stone! Aye, aye, and one will pick the heaviest, one that will make his knees totter; and another will choose the squarest, and yet another the smoothest, but each man lays his in the heap, ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... of ours is a tortuous and shifting impulse. It brings Age back from years of wandering to totter in the hamlet of its birth; and it scatters armies of ripe manhood to bleach ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... and confusion at seeing herself vanquished. But as there were to be two heats to the race, she fell to planning how to be revenged for this affront; and going home, she put a charm into a ring of such power that if any one had it upon his finger his legs would totter so that he would not be able to walk, much less run; then she sent it as a present to Lightning, begging him to wear it on his finger for love ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... see what kind of weather it was for the market, and with a sudden pang, she remembered her old father, and how, on such a day, he would totter to the open door, and there sit in the sunshine, grateful for the same warmth for which his old dog was grateful. When she came home from the market, she would make a wreath of white holly to put on the grave ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... day to day, till one morning Jan must note that it was again the grandmother and no longer the girl who was following his cart. She must be very weak from a long sickness—I was not sure whether to have it the grippe or not, but I decided upon that provisionally and she must totter after Janssen, so that he must get down after a while to speak to her under pretence of arranging the tail-board of his cart, or something of that kind; I did not care for the detail. They should get into talk in the broken English which ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither, And mony a canty day, John, We've had wi' ane anither: Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... whatsoever else the sack contains. As the bear approaches take these articles, one by one, and say to him, 'This is my dead brother's paint,' and so on with all the articles, throwing each of them as far from you as you can. The virtue contained in the things will cause him to totter. Then, to complete his destruction, you must take my head and cast it as far off as you can, crying aloud, 'See, this is my dead brother's head!' He will then fall senseless. While this is taking place the young men will have eaten, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... controversies about religion, and to give it a basis of its own: "As, then, the grave subject of the existence of Deity is a matter of dispute, it is evidently of deep importance to society that morality should not be dragged into this battlefield, to stand or totter with the various theories of the Divine nature which human thought creates and destroys. If we can found morality on a basis apart from theology, we shall do humanity a service which can scarcely be overestimated." A study of the facts of nature, of the consequences ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... His eyes had gone beyond Morrison to the man sitting beside him and at the sight of that loved figure the old man began to tremble. His voice lowered to a whisper and he began to totter forward. ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... thy miry court But pens the lazy steer and sheep, 210 Thy turrets rude, and totter'd Keep, Have been the minstrel's loved resort. Oft have I traced, within thy fort, Of mouldering shields the mystic sense, Scutcheons of honour, or pretence, 215 Quarter'd in old armorial sort, Remains of rude magnificence. Nor ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... have air!" Mr. Marrapit staggered to the window. "I reel before this sudden assault. For nine years at ruinous cost I have supported you. Must I sell my house? Am I never to be free? Must I totter always through life with you upon my bowed ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... a day was that of the ruin: It is not very ancient, perhaps of the sixth century, and the year of the terrible earthquake told of by Gregory of Tours. If a man could without perishing have seen the summits split, totter and fall, the two seas of rock come bounding into the gorge, meet one another and grind each other amidst a shower of sparks, he would have looked upon the grandest spectacle ever seen ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... exercise, for, excepting on Sunday, she was scarcely ever known to leave her own premises. There also her little great-grandson Peter first learned to walk, and as she slowly passed from one alcove to the other, resting in each when she reached it, he would take hold of her high staff and totter beside her, always bestowing on her as much as he could of his company, and early showing a preference for her over his aunt and ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... lent thee her unfathomable coil."—Tupper's Thoughts, p. 170. "Whether nature or art contribute most to form an orator, is a trifling inquiry."—Blair's Rhet., p. 338. "Year after year steals something from us; till the decaying fabric totter of itself, and crumble at length into dust."—Murray's Key, 8vo, p. 225. "If spiritual pride have not entirely vanquished humility."—West's Letters, p. 184. "Whether he have gored a son, or have gored ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... language of thought; but one could play with the toys of childhood, including Ming porcelain, salons of painting, operas and theatres, beaux-arts and Gothic architecture, theology and anarchy, in any jumble of time; or totter about with Joe Stickney, talking Greek philosophy or recent poetry, or studying "Louise" at the Opera Comique, or discussing the charm of youth and the Seine with Bay Lodge and his exquisite young wife. Paris remained Parisian in spite of change, mistress of herself though China fell. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... crowed feebly in the village. Then at a rippling splash of the drums and the sudden screaming of the wizards, they began to push the idol. The base had already been loosened in the earth by the slaves. The idol began to totter. Louder screeched the magicians; faster fled the drums. Slowly the idol leaned and subsided on to the shoulders of Kawa Kendi. Grasping the mass firmly upon his bent back, he bore the burden out of the enclosure ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... half-way to him. As soon as the bear got out to that part where the limb of the tree was weaker, "Ha!" says he to us, "now you see me teachee the bear dance:" so he began jumping and shaking the bough, at which the bear began to totter, but stood still, and began to look behind him, to see how he should get back; then, indeed, we did laugh heartily. But Friday had not done with him by a great deal; when seeing him stand still, he called out to him again, as if he had supposed the bear could speak English, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... shuddered and seemed to totter in space, as if something, some mighty force, had struck the ship a terrific blow. The needle swung swiftly backward, reached one mile a second, dipped to half ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... the silvery reaches of the Thames, where George III. and Queen Charlotte, with their large family and household, were wont to promenade on Sunday afternoons for the benefit of their Majesties' loyal subjects, where the blind old King used to totter along supported by two of his faithful Princesses; the green alleys and glades of the ancient forest, with the great boles of the venerable oaks—Queen Elizabeth's among them; Virginia Water sparkling in the sunshine or glimmering in the moonlight, all make up such a kingly ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... the Calabrian Bacchus has a wild-eyed beaute du diable which appeals to one's expansive moods, he already begins to totter, at seven years of age, in sour, decrepit eld. To pounce upon him at the psychological moment, to discover in whose cool and cobwebby cellar he is dreaming out his golden summer of manhood—that is what a foreigner can never, never hope to achieve, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... nor unsettledly, but with a staid, modest, pleasant Air in your Countenance, and a bashful Look fix'd upon the Person who speaks to you; your Feet set close one by t'other; your Hands without Action: Don't stand titter, totter, first standing upon one Foot, and then upon another, nor playing with your Fingers, biting your Lip, scratching your Head, or picking your Ears: Let your Cloaths be put on tight and neat, that ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... would derive a certain enjoyment from watching a posse of citizens in wrathful pursuit of one of those theatrical managers who are big brothers to the trembling crones that totter up to you on the Boulevard des Italiens and try to sell you a few obscene postal-cards. But most American playwrights would feel a genuine apprehension lest such a posse, confused in its values and its ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... has nurtured in her own bosom are rising up to sting her! Her canons are brought into contempt, her tests trampled on, and her dignitaries daily insulted! The hierarchy is in danger! The bishops totter on their bench! We are ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... watching him. The drums grew noisier and noisier and the chant louder and wilder. The man himself had become maudlin, his tongue hung from his mouth, and now and then he ejaculated a sound like the inarticulate cry of an animal. He could only totter to the fire, out of which he snatched the balled instrument already described, which he thereupon thrust with a vicious stab into the pit of his stomach, where it was left to hang. A moment after he pulled it out again, and, ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... it," said an old hag, who was just placing on her crooked shoulders her bag of pickings, and who was turning to totter off, "that Betsy Jennings desarves it—was she ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... clasped her other arm, a big form leaned over behind her, far across the back of her horse. She heard the hiss of something cutting the air, the crash as of splitting wood, a scream, of agony and the Indian's ruthless grasp was loosened. Her horse stumbled and seemed to totter beneath her, but again that arm from aloft exerted itself and it seemed as if she were being lifted to the tree tops. Almost before she could realise it she was upon another horse, clasped in the arm of its rider, and they ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... murmur, but in the dry with no voice but a rattle prophetic of winter. I hope Dr. Holmes lived to repent his grin. At any rate he lived to refute the notion that youthful fire and white hairs exclude each other. If we must totter, what ground we have to totter over, with two generations and more behind us! The ground is ours. We only have looked into the faces of the great actors, and have taken part in the epoch-making events. As I unroll my panorama I may totter, but I hope ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... of execution. There is now only wanting, to accomplish the whole declaration before mentioned, a sedition-bill, which we shall certainly soon see proposed. The object of that, is the suppression of the whig presses. Bache's has been particularly named. That paper and also Carey's totter for want of subscriptions. We should really exert ourselves to procure them, for if these papers fall, republicanism will be entirely brow-beaten. Carey's paper comes out three times a week, at five dollars. The meeting of the people which was called at New York, did nothing. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... is the same, if wee suppose the earth to moue, as if wee beleeue it to stand still. The riseing of the Sunne and Starres, the motions of all the Planets, will keepe Correspondence that now. Nor neede wee feare logging, or that steples and towers would totter downe, for the motion is regular, and steady without rubbes, and knocks. As if you turne a globe about, it will goe steadyly, and a fly will set fast vpon it, though you moue it apace. Besides the whole body the ayre is carryed about with the whirlinge ...
— A Briefe Introduction to Geography • William Pemble
... of Amiens was a poor wind-shield. It blew down, and the chessmen began to totter. One George of England, noted for his frugal table and his quarrelsome disposition, who had previously fought with France, began to call the Man names. The Man called George names, and sat down to think quickly. George could not be said to be on the best of terms with his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... return to Arbor Croche, he became quite an orator, and consequently he was appointed as the head speaker in the council of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. He continued to hold this office until his frame was beginning to totter with age, his memory became disconnected and inactive, and he therefore gave up his office to his own messenger, whose name was Joseph As-saw-gon, who died during the late rebellion in the United States while ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... of high rank had joined her communion; Henry Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough, and James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury. But Peterborough, who had been an active soldier, courtier, and negotiator, was now broken down by years and infirmities; and those who saw him totter about the galleries of Whitehall, leaning on a stick and swathed up in flannels and plasters, comforted themselves for his defection by remarking that he had not changed his religion till he had outlived his faculties. [226] ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Feeling myself insulted at their refusal to be frightened, I swung my hat, shouted, and made a show of running toward them; at this they crowded together and galloped off, leaving their dead and wounded upon the field. As I moved toward the camp I saw the last survivor totter and fall dead. My speed in returning was wonderfully quickened by the reflection that the Pawnees were abroad, and that I was defenseless in case of meeting with an enemy. I saw no living thing, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... place has been an eventful one to the nation. South Carolina, driven on by a few infatuated men, has made a bold effort to shake off the bonds of Union and Federal Law, and, to the minds of some in whom you and I repose the utmost confidence, a happy government seems to totter on the brink of dissolution. It is a long story, and the papers will tell you all. God grant that the impending evil may be averted, and that the moral and religious improvement of this government may not be retarded by civil war." ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... ambition of those who would drag us into foreign broils; when patriotic men, North and South, ceased to come forward for the safety of a confederation, then will sectionalism wage its angry wars against a noble edifice, whose foundation history tells us must totter ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... same thing. They did not know that should the great Cardinal withdraw his hand for a single moment there would not be any more throne. When the human hornets around him became annoying he was accustomed to pretend to withdraw his sustaining hand, then the throne would tremble and totter, but he always came to the rescue; indeed, there was no other man who could rescue it. Cabals, plots, and conspiracies became so thick around Ninon at one period that she was frightened. Scarron's house became a rendezvous ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... as he had need at all hours of his best intelligence. Let it not be understood that he was tipsy. He was a man whom wine did not often affect after that fashion. But it made him, who was arrogant before, tower in his arrogance till he was almost sure to totter. It was probably at some moment after dinner that Lord Alfred decided upon buying the cutting whip of which he had spoken. Melmotte went with his wife and daughter to the India Office, and soon left them far in the background with a request,—we may say ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... been brought along, and Dale used one while Peleg Snuggers wielded the other. Soon the cedar commenced to totter. ...
— The Mystery at Putnam Hall - The School Chums' Strange Discovery • Arthur M. Winfield
... entertainment who drifts about saying, 'Yes, madam,' and all that sort of thing? Well, then that's just the thing. Topping! I knew I could rely on you, old bird. I'll get Lucille to ship her round to your address when she arrives. I fancy she's due to totter in somewhere in the next few days. Well, I ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... of using the mind of Christ is that the Moral Nature—the Law of Laws—is not explored as the fountain of the established teaching in society. "Men have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead."—"The soul is not preached. The church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct.—The stationariness of religion; the assumption that the age of inspiration is past; that the Bible is closed; the fear of degrading the character of Jesus ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... stinging horror of some ordinary object in a new and awful guise possessed her. She was almost paralyzed at the sudden glimpse of something on the divan across the room. It was a long time before she could possibly totter to investigate, and ascertain it was one of her own gloves. But it did not strike her as at all funny. There was still something frightful to her about the glove. She went back to the window, and soon she distinctly heard a noise up-stairs, and then a shadow crossed the ceiling. A new horror seized ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the long revel reel and totter along the galleries of the castle; the bridegroom hastens to his bride with the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... neighbors of their thought. Forthwith, it is as if an earthquake rumbled through the town, making its vibrations felt at every hearthstone, and especially causing the spire of the meeting-house to totter. The Quakers have come. We are in peril! See! they trample upon our wise and well- established laws in the person of our chief magistrate; for Governor Endicott is passing, now an aged man, and dignified with long habits ...
— Main Street - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... noticing that her audience had fled, and as Wiley went on about his business she raised her voice to a scream. The rest of the Kenoites, and some of the workmen, were out staking the nearby hills; but whenever she stopped she thought of some fresh duplicity which made reason totter on its throne. He had refused half the mine from Blount as a gift and then turned around and bought it all. He had refused to buy her shares, time and again, when he knew they were worth a million; and then, to cap the climax, ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... sitting-room opened upon a balcony. He lifted the sash, and stepped out into the chill night air. He saw the figure of a woman moving a way from the pavement before the hotel very slowly, with a languid, uncertain step. Presently he saw her totter and pause, as if scarcely able to proceed. Then she moved unsteadily onwards for a few paces, and at last sank down upon a door-step, with the helpless motion of ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... King's voice drowned Norfolk's morning greeting. He veered upon the Duke with such violence that his enormous red bulk seemed about to totter over upon the tall and bent figure. A searing pain had shot up his side, and, as he gripped it, he appeared to be furiously plucking at his dagger. He had imagined Chapuys and Marillac, the Ambassadors, coming upon guards with broken heads and sending to Paris letters ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... couldn't see that he was right. I had had a disappointment, you know," she went on, her kind, mild eyes watering. Genevieve, who had been gazing in some astonishment at the once hot-headed, rebellious girl, sighed sympathetically. Every one knew about the Reverend Mr. Totter's death. ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... could be strong enough to heave up solid rocks, and to make the firm ground upon which we tread, and upon which the houses are built, waver to and fro like the restless sea, so that the strongest buildings begin to totter and fall, and the bravest ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... lips quivered, striving again to refuse. But the words would not come. Her powers of resistance had begun to totter. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... witness. Tell my father that his cruelty is more sure to rob him of his daughter than her seeming transgression. Already I know not what I should believe, the past escapes my memory, my confidence begins to totter. If it is too much to ask for justice, then I beg for mercy. My destiny seeks to try me, but my heart ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Lands," will see that the work of the Syria Mission from 1820 to 1872 has been one of conflict with principalities and powers, and with spiritual wickedness in high and low places, but that at length the hoary fortresses are beginning to totter and fall, and there is a call for a general advance in every department of the work, and in every part ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... resounded on the outer gates, and made me realise with a start that this was no place for abstract morality. Strayed so far from safety, we had taken our lives into our own hands; at any moment we might have to fight once more desperately against superior numbers. Perhaps in the end we would totter over in the same way as the unfortunate who had strayed across our path.... Indeed, it was ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Winter die? Who, peering through the window-pane At nightfall, under sleet and rain Saw the old graybeard totter by? Who listened to his parting sigh, The sobbing of his feeble breath, His whispered colloquy with Death, And when his all of life was done Stood near to bid a last good-bye? Of all his former friends not one Saw ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... of the weather, I shall for once make a forecast for Darwinism, namely: Increasing cloudiness with heavy precipitations, indications of a violent storm, which threatens to cause the props of the structure to totter, and to ...
— At the Deathbed of Darwinism - A Series of Papers • Eberhard Dennert
... eloquently for those nations, who, groaning in their self-forged chains, bow to the great Moloch of superstition and idolatry, as to "draw tears of blood," as it were, from the eyes of her rapt and devoted listeners, hast ever marked a pale, trembling child of want totter to the door, and ask for the "crumbs that fall" from this humane society's tea-table, and heard the answer, "Begone! this is a benevolent association for the purpose of evangelizing the heathen, not to feed lazy beggars ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... wise statesmanship might have averted the evils from which the world now suffers. One hundred years ago a gigantic effort, of all the good men of the world, might have saved society. Now the fire pours through every door, and window and crevice; the roof crackles; the walls totter; the heat of hell rages within the edifice; it is doomed; there is no power on earth that can save it; it must go down into ashes. What can you or I do? What will it avail the world if we rush into the flames and perish? No; we ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... Charlie, still very weak and feeble, was able to totter from his room to that in which Hossein was lying. He himself knew nothing of what had passed after he fell. The conflict had, to him, been little more than a dream. Awakened from sleep by the sound of his assailants, ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... he felt his seat totter, and fell backward; Jacques, thus freed from him, sprang toward the door, when it opened, and his head struck against the cold, pale face ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... this young man, with death at the bottom of his bright and sunken eyes. He was of the type which is all muscle and no constitution; athletes one year, dead men the next; but until this moment the athlete had been to me a mere and incredible tradition. In the afternoon I had seen his lean knees totter under the captain's fire. Now, at midnight—the exact time by my watch—it was as if his shrunken limbs had expanded in his clothes; he seemed hardly to know his own flushed face, as he caught sight of ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... leaped, but too hurriedly. If he had gone quietly to work it would have been different; as it was, he cleared the gulf and landed on the other side, but without throwing himself forward sufficiently to recover himself, and Ned uttered a cry of horror as he saw the lad apparently about to totter backward into ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... those ladies ask me again? No, no; they will forget poor old Twoshoes." Goody! For shame of yourself! Do not be cynical. Do not mistrust your fellow-creatures. What? Has the Christmas morning dawned upon thee ninety times? For four-score and ten years has it been thy lot to totter on this earth, hungry and obscure? Peace and good-will to thee, let us say at this Christmas season. Come, drink, eat, rest awhile at our hearth, thou poor old pilgrim! And of the bread which God's bounty gives us, I pray, brother reader, we may not forget to ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Professor,—a man who has lived long enough to have plucked the flowers of life and come to the berries,—which are not always sad-colored, but sometimes golden-hued as the crocus of April, or rosy-cheeked as the damask of June; a man who staggered against books as a baby, and will totter against them, if he lives to decrepitude; with a brain as full of tingling thoughts, such as they are, as a limb which we call "asleep," because it is so particularly awake, is of pricking points; presenting a key-board of nerve-pulps, not as yet tanned or ossified, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... had been borne from the place where it rested. The mourners, in regular gradation, according to their rank or their relationship to the deceased, had filed from the cottage, while the younger male children were led along to totter after the bier of their brother, and to view with wonder a ceremonial which they could hardly comprehend. The female gossips next rose to depart, and, with consideration for the situation of the parents, carried along with them the girls of the family, to give the unhappy pair ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... shivering seized his limbs, his coat stood on end, his lofty frame began to totter, and at the seventeenth discharge from the deadly grooved bore, like a falling minaret bowing his graceful head from the skies, his proud form was prostrate in the dust. Never shall I forget the intoxicating excitement ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... not that an awful dream For one who single is and snug— With Pussy in the elbow chair, And Tray reposing on the rug?— If I must totter down the hill, 'Tis safest done without a clog— What d'ye think of that, my cat? What d'ye ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Akers sailed away in high hope from Port Colborne, they probably built the fairy air castles which were doomed to totter and fall before night. It did not seem to occur to them that Col. Peacocke's sanction to, and co-operation in, their change of plan would be necessary to ensure success. Therefore their disappointment must have been great ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... began to moan, and groan, and roll his eyes, and reel and totter about; and when the stranger was close at hand, down he sprawled before him, with a shriek, and began to writhe and wallow in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... resting place, where virtuous old age may throw down his pains and aches, wipe off his old scores, and begin anew on an innocent and happy state that shall last for ever. What weakness to wish to live to such ghastly dotage, as to frighten the children, and make even the dogs to bark at us as we totter along the streets. Most certainly then, there is a time when, to a good man, death is a great mercy even to his body; and as to his soul, why should he tremble about that? Who can doubt that God created ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... flourished; and a general prosperity appeared to testify to the blessings of the peace which had so lately been bestowed upon it. An external repose deceived the eye, for within raged all the elements of discord. If the foundations of religion totter in a country they totter not alone; the audacity which begins with things sacred ends with things profane. The successful attack upon the hierarchy had awakened a spirit of boldness, and a desire to assail authority in general, and to test laws as well as dogmas—duties as well as opinions. The ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... supplied by parents, otherwise it would perish. Immediately after birth a colt or calf can walk or run almost as fast as its mother; the chick just out of its shell can run about and peck at its food. The child at one year of age can barely totter around and all of its needs must be looked after by others. Moreover, the infant at birth is practically blind and deaf and the senses of taste and smell and touch just sufficiently developed to enable it ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... go down Swirled in the crazy stound, and mariners' prayers Go up in noisome bubbles—such to them;— Or when they tramp about the central fires, Bending the strata with aeonian tread Till steeples totter, and all ways are lost,— Deem they of wife or child, or home or friend, Doing these things as the long years lead on Only to other years that mean no more, That cure no ill, nor make for use or proof— Destroying ever, though to ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... and Benjamin by name, who defended him from Charity, and expended much time upon his education. They were both of them retired servants of former generations of the Browns. Noah Crooke was a keen, dry old man of almost ninety, but still able to totter about. He talked to Tom quite as if he were one of his own family, and indeed had long completely identified the Browns with himself. In some remote age he had been the attendant of a Miss Brown, and had conveyed her about the country on a pillion. He had a little ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... if I live, there may visit me from the blue as I totter among the flower-beds an aeroplane of so scandalous a crudity and immaturity that all the countryside, long since weary of the sight and sound of flying machines, then so common that every cottager will have one, ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas
... well as energy of character. He lent a willing ear to the application of the Spanish government, and made no hesitation in granting what cost him nothing, while it recognized the assumption of powers, which had already begun to totter ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... in their age and infirmity, seem waiting here, to be buried themselves, are members of a curious body, called the Royal Hospital, who are the official attendants at funerals. Two of these old spectres totter away, with lighted tapers, to show the caverns of death—as unconcerned as if they were immortal. They were used as burying-places for three hundred years; and, in one part, is a large pit full of skulls ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... may totter, empires crumble, All their glories cease to be; While she, Christ-like, crowns the humble, And from bondage ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... "I can just totter around and that's about all." She arose quickly, shook out her plumage, took his arm, and in less than a minute was waltzing again. "Lucky it is a waltz," she thought; "I don't want to ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... with the infinitely modulated rhythms of natural prose produce a resultant which is complicated to the last degree and which almost precludes orderly exposition. No system has been devised to express it. The simpler ones fail through omission of important difficulties, the more elaborate totter under their own weight. And thus the Gentle Reader is either beguiled by false prophets—looks up and is not fed—or loses heart and saves himself by flight. There is, to be sure, an arcanum of prosodic theory which is the province of specialists. It has ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... Son? thou lyest; I never got a Parasite, a Coward. I seeke the Prince or bend in base submission! Ile seeke my grave first. Yf I needes must fall And that the fatall howre is cast of Barnavelt, Just like a strong demolishd Tower ile totter And fright the neighbour Cuntries with my murmour. My ruyns shall reach all: the valiant Soldier, Whose eies are unacquainted but with anger, Shall weep for me because I fedd and noursd him; Princes shall mourne my losse, and this unthanckfull, Forgetful Cuntry, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... ear of the unfortunate Agnes, as she was stooping to recover the dropped knife, came Mistress Winter's hand, with sufficient heaviness to make her grow white and totter ere she ...
— For the Master's Sake - A Story of the Days of Queen Mary • Emily Sarah Holt
... sprang to his feet. "The last allusion," said he, "is unworthy of a gentleman. Totter, sir, I totter! Though some twenty years older than the gentleman, I can yet stand firm, and am yet able to correct his errors. I could take a view of the gentleman's course, which would show how consistent ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... events." For the benefit of Sir Edwin and many other wealthy and cultured palace-car passengers who amuse themselves with theories; who infer that because human slavery is abolished in the Occident and the thrones of the Orient are beginning to totter before the might of democracy; because science is marching on to triumph after triumph, and no Spanish Inquisition or English Court of High Commission longer casts its upas-shadow athwart the hearts of men, the great world is "growing nobler and better," I hereby tender my services to ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... I should live to say it," said Berry, "but, after what I've gone through this morning, if Planchet were to totter in this afternoon, laden with at once cheap and pretentious goods, I should fall upon ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... time. Then, when that clever surgeon, Time, has effaced all scars—and when not only tranquillity is yours but, perhaps, a deeper happiness is in sight, write and tell me so. And the great god Kelly, nodding before his easel, will rouse up from his Olympian revery and totter away to find a sheaf of blessings to bestow upon the finest, truest, and loveliest ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... thread of sympathy that tied My heart to man is sundered, and I go To hold communion with the shades that glide, Wherever forests wave, or waters flow. And when my fluttering heart shall faint and fail, These limbs shall totter to some hollow cave, Where the poor Dreamer's dream shall cease. The gale Shall gather music from the wood and wave, And pour it in my dying ear; the wing Of busy zephyrs to the flowers shall go, ...
— Poems • Sam G. Goodrich
... chopped sausages, or a slice of agnello, and enjoy the delicious air that breathes from the mountains. The old cardinals descend from their gilded carriages, and, accompanied by one of their household and followed by their ever-present lackeys in harlequin liveries, totter along on foot with swollen ankles, lifting their broad red hats to the passers-by who salute them, and pausing constantly in their discourse to enforce a phrase or take a pinch of snuff. Files of scholars from the Propaganda ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... bend, Wherever the darkey may go; A few more days, and the trouble all will end, In the field where the sugar-canes grow. A few more days for to tote the weary load,— No matter, 'twill never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road:— Then ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... few more days for to tote the weary load, No matter, 'twill never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road— Then, my old ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... Company of the Republic were now blocks in length; and every hour one heard of runs upon new institutions. There were women wringing their hands and crying in nervous excitement; there were old people, scarcely able to totter; there were people who had risen from sick-beds, and who stood all through the day and night, shivering in the ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... watched she heard a sound behind her. She turned in time to see the door pushed open, and Herman Brudenell—pale, wild, haggard, with matted hair, and blood-shot eyes, and shuddering frame—totter ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... of women is the most formidable power ever loosed upon earth," he declared one evening. "Thrones totter before it. Captains of industry forget their millions in its presence. Cherchez la femme! This terrible power is possessed by every dark-eyed siren in a Second Avenue boarding house, by every languishing, red-lipped blonde earning eighteen dollars a week in a department store. And she knows ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... here. The faithful instrument, whose responsive sympathy had failed him, jarringly snapped a string! A sting of anguish pricked through Manetho's every nerve. His fictitious buoyancy evaporated like steam,—he barely made shift to totter to a chair. Laying the violin with tremling hands on the table, his head dropped on his arms beside it; and there was a long, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... Bath, Fine as the Burmese jewell'd Rath,{2} Pray totter o'er your Bond-street path, A respite ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... the boat upset. Fritz did his best to save the unfortunate one, but 'e could not swim. You can imagine my sensations? I was in a summer-'ouse, trembling with fright. Thunder, lightning, rain, storm, all round! Suddenly I see Fritz, pale as death, wet through, totter up the path from the lake. 'Where is Sasha?' I shriek out to 'im. And 'e shake 'is 'ead despairingly—Sasha ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... direction of her gaze; what he saw made his brain reel, made him almost totter backward into ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... unconquerable! Dost thou content thee with a space so narrow, And the wide domains of France once could not Stay the striving of thy giant spirit?— Now for the first time, Sire, I call you King: The crown but totter'd on your head, so long As in ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... are dashed together, the giantesses totter; men tread the path of Hel, and heaven is cloven. The sun darkens, earth in ocean sinks, fall from heaven the bright stars, fire's breath assails the all-nourishing tree, towering ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... closely. The hill that loses itself among the rocks on the sea-shore is capped and patched with just such refuse as this, but how happily the rust-colour of dying things is broken by the grey of the loose stone walls—"hedges," they call them in Cornwall—that seem to totter up the hill like old men! The mist of rain that leaves each individual plant bedraggled seems to make the red and green and grey pattern of the patched hill only more beautiful and mysterious. The truth is, winter ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... moment? The Black Bear, to which her lover had directed her, was so spoken of that she did not dare to ask to be directed thither. When a compassionate railway porter pressed her to say whither she would go, she could only totter to a seat against the wall, and there lay herself down and sob. She had no friends, she said; no home; no protector except him who had just been carried away to prison. The porter asked her whether the man were her husband, and then again she was nearly choked ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... moat, but which was now in some parts dry, and in others contained a little muddy and stagnated water. Within the enclosure of this moat, I could only discover a pile of ruins, and several walls, the upper part of which seemed to overhang their foundations, and to totter to their ruin. After having entered however with my conductor through an archway, and passed along a winding passage that was perfectly dark, ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... been touched by an old man and his wife who for four days have met every train to tell their only son good-bye. They are so feeble that they have to be helped up and down the steps and as each train comes and goes and their boy is not on board, they totter hand in hand back to the street corner to wait more ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... get a supply of those eggs we found the other day." He tried, as he spoke, to rise. With some exertion he got on his feet, but felt scarcely able to walk. Taking his stick, however, he managed to totter out of the cave. The fresh air of the early morning somewhat revived him, and, followed by Neptune, he made his way towards the curious mound in which he had found the eggs. He felt very giddy, and could scarcely drag his legs along. The necessity of obtaining food, however, compelled ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... plunged his spurs into his horse, which sprang forward, just clearing the boar's snout, as the rider leant well out and speared the pig through the heart. Then with a wild, exultant whoop the subaltern swung round in the saddle and saw the animal totter forward and collapse on the sand. Only a sportsman could realise his feeling of triumph at the ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... the blood left Rustum's cheeks; And his knees totter'd, and he smote his hand, Against his breast, his heavy mailed hand, 660 That the hard iron corslet clank'd aloud; And to his heart he press'd the other hand, And in a hollow voice he ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... developed. Going into the minute details, she simply told the whole story, while Mrs. Gray attentively listened without an interruption. There were indications that the hitherto impregnable fortress of this untutored woman's heart was beginning to totter. But is there after all in this great world a heart so loveless, so blackened by sin, or so narrowed by its own selfish domain, as to be entirely invincible? Cannot the love emanating from Christ Himself, flowing through the channel ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... Mexico bordering on that stream. This soon led to a request from France that we should withdraw our troops from the Rio Grande and to negotiations for the withdrawal of theirs. Finally Bazaine was withdrawn from Mexico by order of the French Government. From that day the empire began to totter. Mexico was then able to maintain her independence without ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... both picturesque and imposing, for from every vessel flags were flying, and ever and anon the great battleship of the Admiral made signals which were repeated by all the other vessels, each in turn. Lying still on those calm blue waters was a force which one day might cause nations to totter, the overwhelming force which upheld Britain's ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... genius the idol of the implicit multitude: works that lean upon such fickle props, that stand upon such a false foundation, will not be long able to support themselves against the injuries of time. Such buildings begin to totter almost as soon as their ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... emperor; he would investigate, and investigation meant the downfall of the structure of falsehood that had been erected with such skill and painstaking by the subtile architect. The maker had pride in his work, and, to see it totter and tumble, was a misfortune he would avert with his ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... enough to admit of my rising from my bed and donning my clothes for an hour or two. I was now practically myself again, save that I was so weak as to need support whenever I attempted to stand; but, with Lotta on one side, and Mammy on the other, I was soon able, not only to totter from one room to another, but even to get into the garden for a few minutes, and sit there in a comfortable basket chair, drinking in renewed health and strength with every breath of the soft, warm, deliciously ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... and gave them promissory notes payable by the claim at an indefinite period. When a man ceases work and begins to live on his "rainy day" money, or on the storekeeper, it does not take very long before he accumulates a burden greater than he can carry. When he begins to totter he tries to pass some of the load over to others, and it is usually the storekeepers who are willing to assist him to the limit if his assets are in good retrospect. And what could be a greater security than a whole mountain full of gold? So the storekeepers assumed a large ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... thousand witnesses in this house untortured, unsuborned. I tell you, the guilt of innocent blood will lie on you, great Duke—on you counsellors of evil things, if you condemn this maid. Your throne, Duke Otho, shall totter and fall, and your life's sun shall set in a ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... this mode of debate. William of Champeaux was then the head of the cathedral school of Notre Dame and the leading teacher of logic in France. "Within a few months Abelard made his authority totter, and set his reputation on the wane. In six or seven years he drove him in shame and humiliation from his chair, after a contest which filled Christendom with its echoes." By overcoming William in debate he established his own reputation as a teacher. At various times between 1108 and ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... "this boy has made three phrases. If you don't lock him up he will certainly become a poet. He will set your precious world of sanity ablaze with the fire of his mother, the moon. Your palaces will totter, Taylor, and your kingdoms become as dust. I ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... peer. Nor at the first Divine Alcides put forth all his strength, By lengthy struggle wearing out his foe, Till chilly drops stood on Antaeas' limbs, And toppled to its fall the stately throat, And smitten by the hero's blows, the legs Began to totter. Breast to breast they strive To gain the vantage, till the victor's arms Gird in the giant's yielding back and sides, And squeeze his middle part: next 'twixt the thighs He puts his feet, and forcing ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... purposes which in due time the long-headed townsmen carried into effect. An asylum was built upon the moor; it is called 'Betty Lamb's Home for the Young and the Aged.' The old Abbey also was walled in; lawns and flower beds were spread about the broken stones, and where the walls might totter they were supported. The honour of this change too is ascribed to the famous son of Betty Lamb, who had ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... with Lieutenant Barclay," the colonel of the staff said. "Ride slowly, and keep close beside him; so as to catch him, if you see him totter. You will find the surgeons ready at the ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... he has to totter along on two sticks," Jerry said. "Besides, he has a stately, professorish sort of style. Do you suppose he really does want us to ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... just strength left to push open the gate, totter across the lawn and knock at the door; then he sank in ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... way, dear. By constant striving against our failing, and by constant prayer. We cannot succeed by ourselves, we should only meet with certain failure. But if we place our hand in God's hand we know that though we may stumble and totter many times, ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... was only twenty yards away. There, all the people were in a turmoil. While endeavoring to regain their feet, some were violently thrown upon the wooden platform. Others, holding to the side of the building, felt with stupefaction the boards totter beneath their touch. Was judgment at hand? Had the end of the world come? The terror of a nameless danger unmanned the stoutest heart. Women shrieked and prayed. ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... hero came in for another sitting, looking extremely worn, his skin drawn tight over his face, his eyes watery and aged, his head slightly nodding. 'How altered from the fresh old man after Saturday's hunting,' says Haydon. 'It affected me. He looked like an aged eagle beginning to totter from its perch.' A second sitting in the afternoon concluded the business, and early next morning Haydon left for town. 'It is curious,' he comments, 'to have known thus the two great heads of the two great parties, the Duke and Lord Grey. I prefer ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... O Wolfings, from the garth your fathers built, And the House where sorrow dieth, and all unloosed is guilt? Turn back, turn back, and behold it! lest your feet be over slow When your shields are heavy-burdened with the arrows of the foe; How ye totter, how ye stumble on the rough and corpse-strewn way! And lo, how the eve is eating the afternoon of day! O why are ye abiding till the sun is sunk in night And the forest trees are ruddy with the battle-kindled ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... I go?" said Maria Vittoria, rebelliously. "Say what you have said to me to her! Speak to her of the ignominy which will befall the King! Tell her how his cause will totter! Why talk of this to me? If she loves the King, your words will persuade her. For on my life ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... invested the eternal city. Hitherto, the Romans, encouraged by the Pope, had made an heroic resistance, and the besiegers had suffered incredibly from their desperate sallies, as well as from the diseases that decimated them. But the fidelity of the citizens was beginning to totter beneath the protracted warfare, and many sighed for a period to their calamities. Henry failed not to profit by these dispositions, and poured in thirty thousand golden florins to ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... my trade to meet objections. But it may create tiresome delays, of which there have been too many, from various causes, already. Lady Coxon got very bad, then she got much better. Then Mr. Anvoy suddenly began to totter, and now he seems quite on his back. I'm afraid he's really in for some big reverse. Lady Coxon's worse again, awfully upset by the news from America, and she sends me word that she MUST have Ruth. How can I supply her with Ruth? I haven't got ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... stadium. Even as he cried it, all saw his form draw upward as might Prometheus's unchained. They saw the fingers of the Spartan unclasp. They saw his bloody face upturned and torn with helpless agony. They saw his great form totter, topple, fall. The last dust cloud, and into it the ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... that, should the torch of the political incendiary ever be applied to the sublime fabric of our system, and those institutions which were laid in our father's struggles and cemented with their blood, should totter and crumble, I, for one, will be found going down with the ship, and waving the glorious flag of our country above the smouldering ruins of that ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... shall totter to the waiting dust, The might of love no more attending, And by the blessing of a common tongue, The visioned peace that countless bards have sung Shall live in truth; the flashing sword shall rust, No lust of ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 4 • Various
... mind to being comes Along with body, with body grows and ages. For just as children totter round about With frames infirm and tender, so there follows A weakling wisdom in their minds; and then, Where years have ripened into robust powers, Counsel is also greater, more increased The power of mind; ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... caught sight of the council-fire, the stern faces surrounding it, and the grave air of his captors, his guilty heart sank within him, and, trembling in every joint, he was hardly able to totter to the place assigned him. The Indians noted his condition with scornful eyes, and Eagle Claw, advancing from the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... be our aristocracy," he went on, looking at Eve as he spoke. "If you totter, you shall have my arm to steady you. If you have reason to complain of the treachery of others, you will find a refuge in our hearts, the love there will never change. And influence and favor and the goodwill of others might fail us if we were two; we should stand in each ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... horse! Get away with the paper!" this fellow choked; and as Hiram sprang upon him he saw the other rise and totter toward a horse. ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... Wherever the darkey may go; A few more days, and the trouble all will end, In the field where the sugar-canes grow. A few more days for to tote the weary load,— No matter, 'twill never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road,— Then ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... approval of this action. For nearly three years they prevented the opening of the Austrian Parliament which would have been to their prejudice. Only after the Russian Revolution, when Austria began to totter and her rulers were apprehensive lest events in Russia should have a repercussion in the Dual Monarchy, did the Czechs decide to speak out and exerted pressure to bring about the opening of the Reichsrat, where they boldly declared their programme, revealed Austria's ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... have been discharged, to find out the doctor's private address and call, it generally means they have come to beg. Lincott, remembering how Helling's simple courtesies had impressed him, experienced an actual disappointment. He felt his theories about the seafaring man begin to totter. However, Helling was shown into the consulting-room, and at the sight of him Lincott's disappointment vanished. He did not start up, since manifestations of surprise are amongst those things with which doctors find it advisable ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... without a word. I passed; and as I turned, I saw him slyly laugh, shaking his keys. When he perceived that I was looking at him, he smiled at me, making signs of friendship. He must have some secret project, and we are in the hands of a master whose reason begins to totter.... To-morrow we shall be far away.... Yonder there are wonderful countries that resemble thine.... Astolaine has already provided for our ...
— Pelleas and Melisande • Maurice Maeterlinck
... shivers chasing one another up and down her back. The boy was coming toward them, coolly puffing a cigar. He did not seem to totter quite so much as before, but he was glad to sink into an ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... his father, at one time, to possess several. His search availed him nothing—the chests were empty—there was not an atom of money left. As if this were not misery enough, he perceived, with inexpressible grief, that the rafters of the house, the wainscoting of the rooms, were beginning to totter and crack so fearful, that it would be impossible to reside much longer beneath them. And oh, sorrow upon sorrow! those unpleasant gentlemen, the lawyers, were daily asking payment, and threatening an execution. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... into a pretty puddle with another as soon as he got here. By George, it's in the bone and it is obliged to come out in the blood. A Gay will go on ogling the sex, I suppose, as long as he is able to totter back from the edge ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... busts in glass cases of the children, Louise and Alexandre Brogniart, and 1034, 1035, the original busts in plaster of Mme. Houdon and Sabine Houdon, will also be noted. Like Caffieri, Houdon was an habitue of the Francais, and in his old age would totter to the theatre supported by his servant, to calmly sleep the performance out. A favourite exponent of the suave and languishing style that appealed to the decadent tastes of the age was Antoine Pajou ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... I fear He would not find much of His teaching in any of the creeds founded on His name! If He came again, then indeed might the churches tremble, totter ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... crashing, groaning, and even screaming of the trees in the glen whose boughs were tormented by the gale. Within the house, windows clattered, and doors clapped, and the walls, though sufficiently substantial for a building of the kind, seemed to me to totter in the tempest. ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... credit of muscular Christianity, one must say that it was not her weight, but the tumult in his own inner man, which made her bearer totter. Nevertheless, if one is wholly unused to the exercise, the carrying of a healthy young English girl weighing a good eight stone, is as much as ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... shall do to-morrow. There needs but a passing event, a thought that uses, a duty to ourselves that takes definite form, an unexpected responsibility that is suddenly made clear, for the whole organisation of our inward justice to totter and be transformed. Slow as our advance may have been, we still should find it impossible to begin life over again in the midst of many a sorrow whereof we were the involuntary cause, many a discouragement to which we ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... placed in position, while a strong body of archers prevented the defenders showing themselves above the parapet. The wall was of far less strength than that which the Romans had before encountered, and soon began to totter before the blows of the battering ram. The Jews, indeed, were indifferent as to its fall; for they knew that the possession of the inner town was of slight importance to them, and that its fall would not greatly facilitate the attack upon what was the natural line of ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... of beauty; that this quality, where it is highest, in the female sex, almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imperfection. Women are very sensible of this; for which reason they learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sickness. In all this they are guided by nature. Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty. Blushing has little less power; and modesty in general, which is a tacit allowance of imperfection, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the monument of a thousand ages crumbles to dust; at whose embrace empires totter to ruin, and at whose breath cities rise and sink like bursting bubbles in a pool, rolled on his car ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... long, unkempt gray hair comes through. But all the air is full of warmth and of peace; and, beyond his village church, there is, at last, light indeed. His horses lag in the furrow, and his own limbs totter and fail: but one comes to help him. 'It is a long field,' says Death; 'but we'll get to the end ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... loose on them, and no signs up to warn people at the crossings. It's pathetic to see the foot-passengers saving themselves, especially the poor, pretty, high-heeled women, looking this way and that in their fright, and then tottering over as fast as they can totter." ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... hundred and fifty women, and several children, were made prisoners, and sent on board different vessels. They were unable to escape with the men, owing to that abominable practice of cramping their feet: several of them were not able to move without assistance, in fact, they might all be said to totter, rather than walk. Twenty of these poor women were sent on board the vessel I was in; they were hauled on board by the hair, and treated in ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... moment, and all black the next. A torrent springing at its head, and dashing with inaudible fury along the bottom, seemed to gleam placidly amongst the rounded forms of inky bushes and pale boulders below our path. Enormous eddies of wind from above made us stop short and totter ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... endeavours to conceal the situation of his thoughts were so violent, that his constitution could not endure the shock; the sweat ran down his forehead in a stream, the colour vanished from his cheeks, his knees began to totter, and his eyesight to fail; so that he must have fallen at his full length upon the floor, had not he retired very abruptly into another room, where he threw himself upon a ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... at the manual of arms for about 20 minutes. Large beads of perspiration rolled down his face—he began to totter on his feet—and I gave the command "rest". He had not taken his ...
— Company 'A', corps of engineers, U.S.A., 1846-'48, in the Mexican war • Gustavus Woodson Smith
... not if thine eye Be on them; who, in love and truth Where no misgiving is, rely Upon the genial sense of youth: Glad hearts! without reproach or blot, Who do thy work, and know it not; Long may the kindly impulse last! But thou, if they should totter, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman |
