"Tottering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Faggus said, good-naturedly; for all were now gathered round me, as I rose from the ground, somewhat tottering, and miry, and crest-fallen, but otherwise none the worse (having fallen upon my head, which is of uncommon substance); "not at all bad work, my boy; we may teach you to ride by and by, I see; I thought not to see you ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... itself in beauty as a spirit in clay, and tempting wanderers to their graves: but no such beauty clothes the man whose daily vision beholds them; hard, clamorous, disputatious, with one hand he rends the rotten splendors of Rome from its tottering Image, and with the other plunges baby-souls to inevitable damnation; strong and fiercely rigid, full of burning and slaughter for the idolatries and harlotries of Popery, fired with lurid zeal, and bestriding one stringent idea, he rides on over dead and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... low wailing cry for help far back beyond the ripped-up boiler, and in what, with tottering wall and hanging roof, was a ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... two chums had been through this country in going to "Silver Ranch," but the charm of its mysterious gorges, its tottering cliffs, its deep canyons where the dashing waters flowed, and the generally rugged aspect of all nature, did not fail now to awe them. Wonota was not alone in gazing, enthralled, at the landscape which ...
— Ruth Fielding in the Great Northwest - Or, The Indian Girl Star of the Movies • Alice B. Emerson
... yellow flash lit up a scene most awe-inspiring. The spouting fountain of fire at the base of the great powder-rock was thick with flying missiles; and on high the very cliff itself was tottering and crumbling. So much I saw; then the Catawba sprang up to haul us afoot by main strength, and to rush us, with an arm for each, headlong through the wood ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... could see more than the river from her favorite window. It was a much-traveled road, the road that ran past the house on its way from Liberty Village to Milliken's Mills. A tottering old sign-board, on a verdant triangle of turf, directed you over Deacon Chute's hill to the "Flag Medder Road," and from thence to Liberty Centre; the little post-office and store, where the stage stopped twice a day, was quite within eyeshot; ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... France can be nothing but a funeral pile, in which the whole fabric is made, not for use, but for destruction; which man cannot inhabit, but which the first torch will set in a blaze from the base to the summit; and upon which, after all, corpses alone crown the whole hasty and tottering erection. But this I shall say, that Germany is at this moment on the verge of insurrection; and that the first French flag which waves on the right bank of the Rhine will be the signal of explosion. I say more; that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... "are changing, and customs and ideas change with them. Even Turkish women are adopting Frank articles of dress, worn beneath the external covering, and go about tottering on high-heeled shoes of latest Parisian style; and Armenian women appear in public with unveiled faces, attired like ladies of Europe. Thirteen newspapers—three of them dailies, three tri-weeklies, and seven weeklies (one of which issues a daily bulletin), for Armenians ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... sun glances between the boles of that clump of trees, beech, and ash, and aspen! and how sweet the hedgerows are with woodbine and wild scabious, or, as the country people call it, the gipsy-rose! Here is little Dolly Weston, the unconscious witness, with cheeks as red as a real rose, tottering up the path to meet her father. And here is the carroty-poled urchin, George Coper, returning from work, and singing 'Home! sweet Home!' at the top of his voice; and then, when the notes prove too high for him, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... indeed," replied her companion, looking out also. "When you come close to it, dear Emily, you will see that it requires the foot of a goat and the heart of a lion to climb up there over the rough, disjointed, tottering stones. Good Heaven, I ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... TOWNSEND, of Noah, Coffee County, Tenn., consulted us by letter. He was suffering from great nervous prostration; could not walk without tottering; was troubled greatly with inability to sleep; poor appetite; did not relish food; suffered much pain and stiffness in the joints; was overcome with neat working on a thresher, followed by persistent nausea, confusion of ideas, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... March before Sophia Jane was allowed to go down-stairs. She had been ill six long weeks, and even now she was very far from strong, and walked in a tottering manner like a little old lady. Susan, much excited and pleased, hovered round her, anxious to be useful and add to her comfort. She led her carefully to the large arm-chair which she had dragged near the window, put a cushion at her back and a footstool under her feet, and brought her a ...
— Susan - A Story for Children • Amy Walton
... earnestness in this affair, was determined that he should obtain success by no other means than by an application to him and by deserting his alliance with Francis, which had hitherto supported, against the superior force of Spain, the tottering state of the French monarchy. He willingly hearkened, therefore, to the applications of Catharine, his aunt; and promising her his utmost protection, exhorted her never to yield to the malice and persecutions of her enemies. The queen herself was naturally of a firm and resolute temper; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... shoe in possession of my foot," was the keen reply. "And see—I take it off. Beauvais is tottering, I tell you; tottering. It wants but a ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... without warning, its motion apparently being from east to west. At first the upheaval of the earth was gradual, but in a few seconds it increased in intensity. Chimneys began to fall and buildings to crack, tottering ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... courtiers. John of Gaunt sought her support as the best means of withdrawing the old king from the influence of the Prince of Wales, and the lay ministers were glad to maintain themselves in their tottering power by means of such powerful allies. Prominent among their party were courtier nobles—such as the chamberlain, Lord Latimer, and the steward of the household, Lord Neville of Raby,—and rich London financiers, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... her sinking frame Amid the ruins of that hour Lay like a pale and scorched flower Beneath the red volcano's shower. But, oh! the sights and sounds of dread That shockt her ere her senses fled! The yawning deck—the crowd that strove Upon the tottering planks above— The sail whose fragments, shivering o'er The stragglers' heads all dasht with gore Fluttered like bloody flags—the clash Of sabres and the lightning's flash Upon their blades, high tost about Like ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... One tottering marble, willow-spread, I well remember yet, With only this engraved thereon, "By Joseph ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... strength of the spirits he had drunk, Cucumber quite 'unbent,' as it is called. He began trying to cheer up the brigadier, who was still hurrying forward with a tottering motion as though he were on stilts. 'Why are you so downcast, sir, and hanging your head? Let me sing you a song. That'll cheer you up in a minute.' He turned to me: 'Our gentleman is very fond of a joke, mercy on us, yes! Yesterday, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Father! grant thy love divine To make these mystic temples thine! When wasting age and wearying strife Have sapped the leaning walls of life, When darkness gathers over all, And the last tottering pillars-fall, Take the poor dust thy mercy warms, And mould it into ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... of the prison, with its tottering weather beaten projections, apparently ready to fall from their resting places, presented an appearance still more gloomy and forbidding. Dampness, and mould of a hundred years growth had obliterated all traces of the fresco paintings that had formerly ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... had once formed part of a shack, and a few strands of fence wire, trailing from tottering posts, ran into the grass. The place appeared to have been a farm, whose owner had, no doubt, abandoned it after finding the soil too light, or after losing a crop by frost; but George was more curious to discover if there were any other ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... blow broke her down. I saw that she was tottering to a fall, and threw my arms round her just in time to prevent it. We laid her on the settee, insensible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... And with slow and tottering step he moved to the door; there he halted, turned back,—and the child was pointing at him in mimicry, while Godfroi, the Norman tutor, smiled as in pleasure. The prelate shook his head, and the group gained ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... consigned to private life,—Clay himself having as narrow an escape as any of them. And here we may note one point of superiority of the American government over others. In other countries it can sometimes be the interest of politicians to foment and declare war. A war strengthens a tottering dynasty, an imperial parvenu, an odious tyrant, a feeble ministry; and the glory won in battle on land and sea redounds to the credit of government, without raising up competitors for its high places. But let American politicians take note. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... fling out any passion in return; the terrible collapse of the illusion towards which all her hope had been strained was a stroke which had too thoroughly shaken her: her little world was in ruins, and she felt herself tottering in the midst as a lonely ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... at the tottering, tumbling age—a fair solid, which, like a loaded die, found its base with a constancy that warranted prediction. Tessa went to snatch her up, and when Babbo was paying due attention to the recent teeth and other marvels, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... felt a creep as of some live horror over her very soul. Her flesh prickled with cold, before an inflection of his voice. She rose, tottering on weak knees. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... took my arm and led me tottering out of the room, when I went to Mammy Crissobella, and laughed till I cried; but the punishment was not over. After remaining about ten minutes looking at each other, but neither speaking nor moving, in pursuance of Leila's direction, with the utmost despair in their countenances, they were gladdened ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... lack-lustre eyes, the heavy lip, the labored breath—read the consequences of his sin and crime in his shame-faced way, his shambling gait, his nerveless hands, his fluttering heart, his weakened muscles, and his tottering memory and mind. ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... eighty-five insurgents who had sworn that their eyes should never look upon that Prince again; and he cast this troop of blinded individuals upon the world, to wander up and down, holding each other by the hand, groping along, tottering, and begging their bread. The wretched boy who had played the dead-march on his fife at the murder of Helfenstein, was chained to a post, a fire was kindled around him, and the knights looked on, laughing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... inhabited the terrestrial globe. Without them we shall soon be everything which is the direct reverse. I predict the worst consequences from a half-starved, limping government, always moving upon crutches and tottering ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Benny, "he can't refuse to marry no man. Law won't let him." Such refusal, he intimates, might drive him to wild and riotous living. Remembering his last view of old Benny tottering down the village street in his white smock, his nut-cracker face like a withered rosy apple, his gnarled hand grasping the knotted staff his bent body leaned on, Mount Dunstan grinned a little. He did not smile when Penzance passed to the restoration of the ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... family, which is the cornerstone of society." Well, I am not much of an authority on matrimony but that sort of language sounds to me like a hysterical outcry from a person whose family is already tottering. It is at least certain that a great many of these cornerstones of society are tottering, and why? Because there dwell in them triviality and vacuity, which prepare the way of the devil. Who can think ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... she took her aunt into her confidence, and revealed everything—her dreams, her ambitious longings, and her disappointment. She confessed that now she loved—yes, loved—a man who was her ideal, whose name she knew not, and she begged to be defended against herself, for she felt tottering on the edge of an abyss. She was mistress of ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... cafe. A woman leads up to him a tottering being whom she introduces to him. "He's ill, Monsieur Fontan, because he hasn't ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... and tortured, worn into deep gorges by the rains, and flung up in great mounds. Stripped of the green magnolias and the cane, the banks of clay stood forth in hideous yellow nakedness, save for a lonely stunted growth, or a bare trunk that still stood tottering on the edge of a banks its pitiful withered roots reaching out below. The May weather was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... which may be said to have a historic interest, has been popularly designated the "Midwife's Curse." It appears that Colonel Stephen Payne, who took a foremost part in striving to uphold the tottering fortunes of the Stuarts, had wooed and won a fair wife amid the battles of the Rebellion. The Duke of York promised to stand as godfather to the first child if it should prove a boy; but when a daughter was born, the Colonel in his mortification, ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... was the deadly glare with which hers were turned on me. I saw that not only was she as certain of my identity as though she had guided me from my first tottering steps, but that in a flash she had grasped my motives, aims and purposes, and meant once for all to face, out-general and ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... tottering woman's arm and drew her out of the passage. The cold air had produced its natural effect upon Virginia, who now ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... solicitude and premonitory advice? You are ruined, you say! You have sacrificed your virtue to an abandoned, despicable profligate! And you live to acknowledge and bear your infamy!" "I do," said she; "but not long shall I support this burden. See you not, Julia, my decaying frame, my faded cheek, and tottering limbs? Soon shall I be insensible to censure and reproach. Soon shall I be sequestered in that mansion 'where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest.'" "Rest!" said I; "can you expect ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... humble skater indeed! I answered that it would be a great honor to me. He then stretched out his hands, and I took them very much as I would have taken any one else's hands, and we ambled forth, I supporting and upholding the tottering steps of the monarch of the French nation. I felt that the eye of the nation was on me, and, indeed, it was, as much of the nation as happened to be there; but, proud as I was, I wished that some one would relieve me of this responsibility. Suppose his Majesty should fall!... ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... his back to Philip, hunched over, as if bent in grief. For a moment he stood thus. There followed in that same moment the loud report of a pistol, and when Philip leaped to catch his tottering form the glaze of death was in ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... hence—the bitter humiliation through which the country has been passing between the opening of 1861 and the opening of 1863, will be almost entirely forgotten in after glory or after shame. A few will remember, but faintly and dimly, as the old veterans of the Revolution remembered in their tottering age the conflicts through which they had passed in youth, beside Washington or with Mad Anthony. A few will remember something of the truth, but only as veteran play-goers remember a performance at the Old Park in its palmy days—a Cooper or a Power prominent, but all the other actors ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... too cold an idea. God does not set us here as on a knife edge, with abysses on either side ready to swallow us if we stumble, while He stands apart watching for our halting, and unhelpful to our tottering feebleness. He compasses us with His love and its gifts, He draws us to Himself, and desires that we should stand. He offers all the help of His angels to hold us up. 'He will not suffer thy foot ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... personally, had helped some over the rail; in the darkness, slashed about by lightning, he had guessed that not one of them was unwounded, and in the midst of tottering shapes he wondered how on earth they had managed to reach the long-boat that had brought them off. He caught unceremoniously in his arms the smallest of these shapes and carried it into the cabin, then without looking at his light ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... prejudice. All errors in politics and ethics have sprung, he asserts, from false ideas which are closely connected with errors in physics and ignorance of the laws of nature. And in the new doctrine of Progress he sees an instrument of enlightenment which is to give "the last blow to the tottering ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... of as if he were the architect, but his death took place soon after the laying of the foundation stone, and the chapel was not finished for another sixteen years, long after Henry VIII.'s accession, when the monasteries were tottering to their fall. Abbot Islip supervised {93} the building, and it is more than likely that Sir Thomas Lovell, whose bust has lately been placed near Lady Margaret's tomb, had, as executor to both the King and his mother, a share in designing their monuments. In any case, ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... Hallbiorn's twain that were of worth. And never a word did Snbiorn say, Till Hallbiorn's foot he smote away. Then Hallbiorn cried: "Come, fellow of mine, To the southern bent where the sun doth shine." Tottering into the sun he went, And slew two more upon the bent. And on the bent where dead he lay Three howes do men behold to-day. And never a word spake Snbiorn yet, Till in his saddle he was set. Nor was there any heard his voice, So many times over comes summer again Till he came to his ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... enchanted many thousands before them, and for the space of two hours forgot themselves, their hopes and fears and expectations, while they followed the fortunes of the idle, lovable, unpractical Rip, up the mountain to his sleep of years, and down again, white-haired and tottering, to find himself forgotten by his kin and a stranger in his own home. People about them were weeping on relays of pocket-handkerchiefs, hanging them up one by one as they became soaked, and beginning on others. Imogen had but one handkerchief, but she cried with that till ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... Englishman, and rail at him if he figures as an Irishman. So the Union has never even applied English laws to Ireland, but only coercions and concessions both specially designed for Ireland. From Pitt's time to our own this tottering alternation has continued; from the time when the great O'Connell, with his monster meetings, forced our government to listen to Catholic Emancipation to the time when the great Parnell, with his obstruction, forced it to listen to Home Rule, our staggering equilibrium has been maintained ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... scolding, etc., as you would perdition itself. Many men tremble as they cross their threshold into the presence of scolding wives. Let husband and wife cultivate habits of sobriety, and specially avoid drunkenness in every form. What a dreadful spectacle it is to see a husband transformed into a demon, tottering homeward to a broken-hearted wife, whose noble, self-sacrificing devotion to him seems to partake more of the nature of heaven than of earth! Never part, even for a journey, without kind and endearing words; and as a kiss symbolizes union from interior affection, do not dispense with ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... Brangwyn and Colonel Klem Zareff approaching, the older man tottering on a silver-headed cane and the younger keeping pace with him. Neither of them had been born on Poictesme. Tom Brangwyn had always been reticent about where he came from, but Hathor was a good guess. There had been political trouble on Hathor twenty ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... the two nations to support a commercial conflict, it was said, "Great Britain, tottering under the weight of a king, a court, a nobility, a priesthood, armies, navies, debts, and all the complicated machinery of oppression which serves to increase the number of unproductive, and lessen the number of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... who hired her to a Mr. Reese, in Baltimore; in this situation her duties were general housework and nursing. With these labors, she was not, however, so much dissatisfied as she was with other circumstances of a more alarming nature: her old master was tottering on the verge of the grave, and his son, a trader in New Orleans. These facts kept Matilda in extreme anxiety. For two years prior to her escape, the young trader had been trying to influence his father to let him have her for the Southern market; but ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... fool, I admit, or I wouldn't have lugged your loads and done your work the way I have. But, you see, I'm strong and vigorous and I felt sorry for a tottering wreck like you—" ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... What is this? The ring breaks up, the shouting dies—[He looks around. The WHITE PILE has drawn away and backed against the hedge. A strange commotion agitates the crowd. CHANTECLER, exhausted, bleeding, tottering, does not understand, and murmurs.] What joke are they preparing against my end? [And suddenly.] Joy, ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand
... stir the leaves of the tall buttonwood tree before the door, or to lift the loose leaves of the copy book in the window; the sun has been diligently shining into those curtainless west windows ever since three o'clock, upon those blotted and mangled desks, and those decrepit and tottering benches, and that great arm chair, ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was renewed upon Thursday, and staggered fiercely on throughout the day. Then Friday followed, a roaring, tottering, crashing, smashing fellow of the two days gone before. Millionaires became beggars and beggars millionaires between breakfast ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... was a crackling in the underbrush, and some one rushed out at Flossie and Freddie, who were standing under the tree looking up at the tottering trunk which was ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... prepared for Stygian Jove, I purpose now to consummate, and pay The last sad rites, and ease me of my love, And burn the couch whereon the Dardan lay." She spake; the old dame tottering hastes away. Maddening stood Dido at the doom so dread, With bloodshot eyes and trembling with dismay, Her quivering cheeks flecked with the burning red, Pale with approaching death, but ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... daughter a very celebrated "catch." Her mother brought her to Paris when the French capital was brilliant beyond description, and yet was tottering to its fall. The rumblings of the Revolution could be heard by almost every ear; and yet society and the court, refusing to listen, plunged into the wildest revelry under the leadership ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... over Germany in different dialects, and is probably of a more ancient date. Degeneracy, however, soon crept in; crimes were everywhere committed; and there was no energetic man capable of directing the individual excitement to purer objects, even had an effectual resistance to the tottering Church been at that early period seasonable, and had it been possible to restrain the fanaticism. The Flagellants sometimes undertook to make trial of their power of working miracles; as in Strasburg, where they ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... have got nowadays and other like vicious innovations: they will see them all presently vanish and cried down. These are, 'tis true, but superficial errors; but they are of ill augury, and enough to inform us that the whole fabric is crazy and tottering, when we see the roughcast of our walls ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... this, On Nature thinking, full of bliss, When tow'rd him, from the other side He saw an aged woman glide; The name she bears, Historia, Mythologia, Fabula; With footstep tottering and unstable She dragg'd a large and wooden carved-table, Where, with wide sleeves and human mien, The Lord was catechizing seen; Adam, Eve, Eden, the Serpent's seduction, Gomorrah and Sodom's awful destruction, The twelve illustrious women, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... gay companions of her prime Sip, as they drift along the stream of time; At eve to hear beside their tranquil home The lifted latch, that speaks the lover come: That love matur'd, next playful on the knee To press the velvet lip of infancy; To stay the tottering step, the features trace;... ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield
... cried Arthur Dimmesdale, in whose eyes a fitful light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, "thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! I must die here! There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... guardhouse, they make a halt, for the forester's wife is the daughter of their good host at Barbizon. And so there they are hospitably received by the comely woman, with one child in her arms and another prattling and tottering at her gown, and drink some syrup of quince in the back parlour, with a map of the forest on the wall, and some prints of love-affairs and the great Napoleon hunting. As they draw near the Quadrilateral, and hear once more the report of the big guns, they take a by-road ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a Cheyenne to convey the idea of old man. He held his right hand forward, bent at elbow, fingers and thumb closed sidewise. This not conveying any sense, he found a long stick, bent his back, and supported his frame in a tottering step by the stick held, as was before only imagined. Here at once was decrepit age dependent on a staff. The principle of abbreviation or reduction may be illustrated by supposing a person, under circumstances forbidding the use of the voice, seeking to call attention ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... stone outside, but the ax bit through easily, and they were so light that we could easily carry enormous ones, which made us feel like giants, though, when I thought of them in their true botanical relationship, I dwarfed in imagination as quickly as Alice, to a pigmy tottering under a blade of grass. It was like a Brobdingnagian game of jack-straws, as the cutting or prying loose of a single stem often brought several others crashing to earth in unexpected places, keeping us running and dodging ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... picturesque as any in the world. Still, relatively to the pale history of the voyage, and his own pale face, there seemed something so incongruous in the Spaniard's apparel, as almost to suggest the image of an invalid courtier tottering about London streets in the ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... fitting, swayed widely with the motion, scarcely avoiding the hats of the two men who sat side by side on the front seat, and who, to a person watching their approach, would have appeared as dark figures in a tottering archway, against a background of ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... the Conscription Act was made more severe and exacting. Congress proceeded as if the war were still to continue for years. Nothing was neglected, nothing relaxed. But every one could see that the Confederacy was tottering to its fall. Sherman's magnificent march across Georgia, to which the President referred as in progress when he sent his message to Congress, had been completed with entire success, with an eclat indeed which startled Europe as well ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... not cold. The fever in her blood raged and she staggered forward again, slowly and tottering. A smile was playing about her lips and eyes. Her lips were parted, and her breast rose and fell like the heaving beat of an engine. But home beckoned and lured her onward, and the hope of a long dream filled her soul. Again a sharp ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... Marryat's Pirate anyhow; it is written in sand with a salt-spoon: arid, feeble, vain, tottering production. But then we're not always all there. He was all somewhere else that trip. It's damnable, Henley. I don't go much on The Sea Cook; but, Lord, it's a little fruitier than ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Russian empires until it won independence from notional British control in 1919. A brief experiment in democracy ended in a 1973 coup and a 1978 Communist counter-coup. The Soviet Union invaded in 1979 to support the tottering Afghan Communist regime, touching off a long and destructive war. The USSR withdrew in 1989 under relentless pressure by internationally supported anti-Communist mujahedin rebels. A series of subsequent civil wars saw Kabul finally fall in 1996 to the Taliban, a hardline Pakistani-sponsored movement ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... universally praised and quoted, and, as a natural consequence, parodied. There resided then (and long after) at Trinity College, Oxford, an extraordinarily old don called Short.[31] When I was an undergraduate he was still tottering about, and we looked at him with interest because he had been Newman's tutor. To his case the parodist of the period, in a moment of inspiration, adapted Burgon's ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... pride, so common to my sex, of being weak and ill. Delicacy and debility are sometimes fascinating when affected by a coquette, adorned with the freshness of health; but a pale, thin face; sunken, instead of languishing eyes; and a form, evidently tottering, not gracefully bending, never, I suspect, made, far less could they retain a conquest, or even please a friend. I therefore encourage spirits, try to appear well, and am rewarded. In a few days I shall ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... signifies that she no longer has faith in herself. The Catholic Church, which proclaims herself the channel of life, to-day chains and stifles all that lives youthfully within her, to-day seeks to prop all that is tottering and aged within her, To us these things mean death, distant, but inevitable death. The Catholic Church, claiming to wish to renew all things through Christ, is hostile to us, who strive to wrest the direction ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... peculiar phase, this of the humble who find themselves, without effort of their own, thrust up among the great and the so-called, who forget whence they came in the fierce contest for supremacy upon that tottering ledge called society. The cad and the snob are only infrequently well-born. Mrs. Harrigan was as yet far from being a snob, but it required some tact upon Nora's part to prevent ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... left him! It was terrible! I was frightened, more frightened than I had ever been. Everything seemed tottering around me. I thought—I must die; I dared trust nothing. Just then—some one told me—he loved me; and I—I had loved him. But I was more afraid of him than of any one in God's world. I thought I was going mad, and then—I went ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... reigning dynasty of China, then tottering to its fall, they were allowed to establish a factory on the S. W. coast of Formosa, where they erected a fort, which they named Fort Zealand. This settlement became quite flourishing, from the fact that the ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... the mother. They scampered across that bridge like little squirrels, the woman with the baby last. By that time the mill was roaring like a furnace behind them, and the bridge itself burst into flames at the mill end. She—the woman—must have felt it tottering, for she flung herself the last few feet—but she couldn't make it. She threw the baby, by some lucky accident, for she couldn't have known what she was doing, safe to the others, and caught at the rail, but the whole thing gave way ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... Shakspeare; and from these we may go down step by step among the mighty men of every age, securely and certainly observant of diminished lustre in every appearance of restlessness and effort, until the last trace of true inspiration vanishes in the tottering affectations or the tortured insanities of modern times. There is no art, no pursuit, whatsoever, but its results may be classed by this test alone; everything of evil is betrayed and winnowed away by it, glitter and confusion and glare of color, inconsistency or absence of thought, ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... expected nothing so much as that my next would inform you of its safe arrival;—therefore, where can it possibly be? I am not absolutely in despair about it, for the reasons that I mentioned last night; but to say the truth, I stand tottering upon the verge of it. I write, and have written these many years, upon a book of maps, which I now begin to find too low and too flat, though till I expected a better desk, I found no fault with them. See and observe how true it is, that by increasing the number ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... opportunity that now offered itself, which above all the rest prevailed with them so to do; for when they saw the Roman government in a great internal disorder, by the continual changes of its rulers, and understood that every part of the habitable earth under them was in an unsettled and tottering condition, they thought this was the best opportunity that could afford itself for themselves to make a sedition, when the state of the Romans was so ill. Classicus [6] also, and Vitellius, two of their commanders, puffed them up with such hopes. These had for a long time been openly ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... in a dress suit and an eyeglass, and the other in a large violet hat, a diamond necklace and a yellow satin skirt. The which customers, seemingly well used to the sight of drunken waiters tottering to and fro with towers of plates, sat down at a table and waited calmly for attention. The popular audience, with that quick mental grasp for which popular audiences are so renowned, soon perceived that the table was in close proximity ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... of breezy midnight pours 200 Long threads of silver through her gaping towers, O'er mouldering tombs, and tottering columns gleams, And frosts her deserts with diffusive beams), Sad o'er the mighty wreck in silence bends, Lifts her wet eyes, her tremulous hands extends.— 205 If from lone cliffs a bursting rill expands Its transient course, and sinks into the sands; O'er the moist rock ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... assassination, arson, and rapine of the Indians of North America. A king who would permit such cruel cuttings-up as these wicked animals were guilty of on the fair face of old England, should live in history only as an invertebrate, a royal failure, a decayed mollusk, and the dropsical head of a tottering dynasty. ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... again cried Magdalena, "as you cross the bridge to leave the town. The river is much swollen with the late rains, so much as to threaten destruction to the tottering fabric." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... True love is the love which endures after beauty has faded, and youth, and health, and all that seems to make life worth having is gone. Have we not seen ere now two old people, worn, crippled, diseased, yet living on together, helping each other, nursing each other, tottering on hand in hand to the grave, dying, perhaps, almost together,—because neither cared to live when the other is gone before, and loving all the while as truly and tenderly as in the days of youth? They know not why. No; but God knows ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... pale and distorted at the feet of her royal mistress; but Iras, tottering and half stupefied by the poison, was adjusting the diadem, which had slipped from its place. To keep from her beloved Queen everything that could detract from her beauty had been ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... fault of stage representation, sullied and turned from their very nature by being exposed to a large assembly! How can the profound sorrows of Hamlet be depicted by a gesticulating actor? So, to see Lear acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... circumstances were somewhat less embarrassed than his own, I was permitted to be at the expense of renting, and furnishing in a style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of our common temper, a time-eaten and grotesque mansion, long deserted through superstitions into which we did not inquire, and tottering to its fall in a retired and desolate portion ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... at the bottom of the river, except mud," responded Mr. Growther, effectually quenching all tragic and suicidal ideas by his prosaic statement of the facts. "Young man," he continued, tottering to his feet, "I s'pose you realize that you are in a pretty bad fix. I ain't much of a mother at comfortin'. When I feel most sorry for any one I'm most crabbed. It's one of my mean ways. If there's many screws loose in you, you will go under. If you are rash, or ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... as of marble; her arms fell by her side, as if their muscles had become flaccid; and she leant against a pillar, for her limbs refused to support her. As for me, with a livid face bathed as if in the dews of death, I bent my tottering steps towards the church door. The air seemed to stifle me, the vaulted roof settled on my shoulders, and on my head seemed to rest the whole crushing weight of the dome. As I was on the point of crossing the threshold a hand touched mine suddenly—a woman's ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... not rich in the modern improvements which render Pesth so noticeable. I found no difficulty in some of the nooks and corners of this quaint town in imagining myself back in the Middle Ages. Tottering churches, immensely tall houses overhanging yawning and precipitous alleys, markets set on little shelves in the mountain, hovels protesting against sliding down into the valley, whither they seemed inevitably doomed to go, succeeded one another in rapid panorama. Here were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... and rushing over the debris, of ruin and blood, penetrated the city. The Tartars met them with the fury of despair, appealing, in their turn, to Allah and Mohammed. Soon the Russian banner floated over tottering towers and blackened walls, though for many hours the battle raged with fierceness, which human ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... an amazing document. Plainly the German family has broken down. But no household can be built on free love in 1918, just as no stone building can be erected on hay, stubble or sand. The German family has gone, and German society is tottering towards its final ruin. ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... be the greatest of all. We have seen our bairns grow to manhood—we have seen the beauty of youth pass away—we have felt our backs become unable for the burthen, and our right hand forget its cunning.—Our eyes have become dim, and our heads grey—we are now tottering with short and feckless steps towards the grave; and some, that should have been here this day, are bed-rid, lying, as it were, at the gates of death, like Lazarus at the threshold of the rich man's door, full of ails and sores, and having no enjoyment but in the hope that is ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... face, but she could feel the passion in his voice and touch. Her cheek seemed to droop against his arm. He felt her tottering. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the grave. At this point the proceedings were interrupted by a large and powerful figure in clerical costume springing on the table and crying out to the company: "Now, gentlemen, do I look like a man tottering on the brink of the grave? My left leg gives me no sign of weakness, and as for the other, Mr. Auctioneer, if you repeat your remarks you will find it very much at your service." The living found ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... beyond discussion, and to-day decayed or decaying, of so many sources of authority that successive revolutions have destroyed, this power, which alone has arisen in their stead, seems soon destined to absorb the others. While all our ancient beliefs are tottering and disappearing, while the old pillars of society are giving way one by one, the power of the crowd is the only force that nothing menaces, and of which the prestige is continually on the increase. The age we are about to enter will in truth be ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... came. Pompey had seen the trunks and boxes safely stowed upon the ship in which Mr. and Mrs. Newville, Nathaniel Coffin, the king's receiver-general, and Thomas Flucker were to find passage. With a cane to steady his tottering steps, Mr. Newville took a last look of the home where his life had been passed; the house in which his eyes first saw the light; where a mother, many years in her grave, had caressed him; where a father had guided his toddling steps; ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... shoved on behind them. Then met steel and men; here and there an ash-stave broke; here and there a Dusky Felon rolled himself unhurt under the ash-staves, and hewed the knees of the Dalesmen, and a tall man came tottering down; but what men or wood-wights could endure the push of spears of those mighty husbandmen? The Dusky Ones shrunk back yelling, or turned their backs and rushed at their own folk with such fierce agony that they entered into the throng, till ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... thy very hairs—that all those leaping desires, luxurious hopes, beautiful aspirations, and proud confidences, of thy younger life, have long been buried (a funeral for the better part of thee) in that grave which must soon close over thy tottering limbs. Look back, then, through the long track of the past years. How has it been with thee? Are there bright beacons of happiness enjoy'd, and of good done by the way? Glimmer gentle rays of what was scatter'd from a holy heart? Have benevolence, and love, and undeviating ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... This tottering structure had become one of our favorite retreats; in the poetic mise-en-scene of the garden it played the part of Ruin. It was absurdly, ridiculously out of repair; its gaping beams and the sunken, dejected floor could only be due ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... would have flown to her rescue,—they, who for her would have chanced all accidents, ay, even life itself, were sleeping, and knew not of the loved one's danger. She was alone, and far enough from the house, to be driven to that tottering verge where sanity ends, and the dream of madness, with all its ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... with its yearning engage All vigorous passion that lives in the breast, While tearful remembrance of tottering age Finds halcyon harbors of comforting rest; Let silver of years with the ardor of youth Be going again through the temple of joy, While palms of amusement and laurels of truth Encircle the hearts of ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... was shortly after aroused anew, by observing a wretched old dog tottering under the weight of a large bundle, strapped upon his back, which he was conveying to the city. He came within a few feet of the bear, whom he knew slightly, and casting down his load, which he seemed to have brought from ...
— The Adventures of a Bear - And a Great Bear too • Alfred Elwes
... All their little pleasures, their minor griefs, youthful hopes, disappointments, are shared with each other. They move together through the opening years of their life. Sometimes old age finds them still together, tottering hand in hand to the grave. Of all her sisters, Bessie could least spare Hatty, and her death left a void in the girl's life that was very difficult to fill. From the first, Bessie had accepted the responsibility of Hatty. Hatty's ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... general, Douglas had hardly more reverence. With a positiveness which in such matters is sure proof of provincialism, he said, "Europe is antiquated, decrepit, tottering on the verge of dissolution. When you visit her, the objects which enlist your highest admiration are the relics of past greatness; the broken columns erected to departed power. It is one vast graveyard, where you find here a tomb indicating the burial ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... the foot-hills and mountains, fording icy torrents, winding around the crumbling brows of ragged peaks, creeping along the rocky flanges that overlooked awful precipices, crawling breathlessly over tottering bridges that ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... ready to spring upon me miserable. I even thought of adding a white beard,—you do use long graybeard words sometimes, and naturally I had associated them with your chin. You can imagine, then, my relief as I entered your office, with the last legs of my courage tottering, and beheld you, not in the least ferocious in appearance, and not even old! The revulsion from my fears and anxieties was so swift and complete that, you will remember, I gave both hands in salutation, and had I possessed a miraculous third, you ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... wrote her, making attractive offers for an engagement where showgirls were the ornamental caryatids which upheld the three tottering unities along Broadway. She also had chances to wear very wonderful model gowns for next season at the Countess of Severn's new dressmaking, drawing-rooms whither all snobdom crowded and shoved to get near the trade-marked coronet, and where bewildering young ladies strolled ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... oh! it was a sad sight to see them do it. The younger women ran actively, carrying the infants and leading the smaller children by the hands, and soon disappeared; but it was otherwise with the old people. These, men and women, bowed with age, and tottering as much from terror as decrepitude, hobbled along, panting as they went, and stumbling over every trifling obstruction in their path, being sometimes obliged to stop and rest, though death might be the consequence; and among these there were a ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... her, and forgave her father. She went downstairs to await his coming. How he must have suffered in this bare house! Fear filled her heart. Had his reason failed him? Should she see him enter—a tottering and enfeebled old man, broken by the sufferings which he had borne so proudly for science? As she waited, the past rose before her eyes—the long past of struggle against their enemy, the Absolute; the long past, when she was a child, and her mother had been now so joyous ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... had passed through a revolution. Then arose John Bright, reminding the working-men of the Midlands that their fathers "had shaken the citadel of Privilege to its base," and inciting them to give the tottering structure another push. A second revolution seemed to be drawing near. Dickens put on record, in chapter xxvi. of Little Dorrit, the alarms which agitated respectable and reactionary circles. The one point, as Dickens remarked, on which everyone ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... and the day came when, with the orderly's assistance, he was lifted to a chair. There was one brief moment in which he stood tottering on his feet. In that instant he had realised what a little thing she was, after all, and what a cruel advantage he had used for ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... whom he called to his assistance were "persons denounced very lately by the Secretary of State to the Governor-General as impracticable and disloyal";[17] but before the year was out he was able to boast that when so many thrones were tottering and the allegiance of so many people was waxing faint, there is less political disaffection in Canada than there ever had been before. From 1848 until the year of his recall, he remained in complete accord with his liberal administration, ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... growing since 1833), took a definitely national form in a Customs' Parliament which assembled in April 1868, thus unifying Germany for purposes of trade as well as those of war. This sharp rebuff came at a time when Napoleon's throne was tottering from the utter collapse of his Mexican expedition; when, too, he more than ever needed popular support in France for the beginnings of a more constitutional rule. Early in 1867 he sought to buy Luxemburg from Holland. This action aroused ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... water. I saw the billows roll across the smooth lagoon like a gigantic Eager. The Ducal Palace crumbled, and San Marco's domes went down. The Campanile rocked and shivered like a reed. And all along the Grand Canal the palaces swayed helpless, tottering to their fall, while boats piled high with men and women strove to stem the tide, and save themselves from those impending ruins. It was a mad dream, born of the sea's roar and Tintoretto's painting. But this afternoon no such visions are suggested. The sea sleeps, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... Jofre de Loaisa, and Villalobos. This monument is due to Senor Gutierrez de la Vega, who initiated a public subscription during the last years of the Spanish regime for a monument to the two discoverers. As it arrived at Manila where Spanish authority in the islands was tottering or ended, it was placed in position by the Americans. See "Espana y America," (Augustinian review), for April, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... came in sight. A little village girl, a red-faced chubby thing, stood up tottering in it, while her older brother tried to get as far from shore as with one oar he could. "Look!" cried Lenore, angrily, "the little wretches have actually taken our boat. Come back instantly to the shore." The children were startled, the boy dropped the oar, the little ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... cowered in a voiceless accession of terror; but John Woolfolk, lamp in hand, moved to the door. He was curious to see exactly what was happening. The bulk had risen; a broad back swayed like a pendulum, and a swollen hand gripped the stair rail. The form heaved itself up a step, paused, tottering, and then mounted again. Woolfolk saw at once that the other was going for the knife buried in the wall above. He watched with an impersonal interest the dragging ascent. At the seventh step it ceased; the figure crumpled, slid halfway back to ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... thousands of opium-smokers, but I never saw one to whom could be applied that description by Lay (of the British and Foreign Bible Society), so often quoted, of the typical opium-smoker in China "with his lank and shrivelled limbs, tottering gait, sallow visage, feeble voice, and death-boding glance of eye, proclaiming him the most forlorn creature that treads upon ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... Parson Polsue, with his sermon tucked under his arm, was tottering up the pulpit stairs, and Churchwarden Hancock standing underneath, as usual, to watch him arrive safe or to break his fall if he tumbled. And just as he reached the top and caught hold of the desk cushion to stay himself, ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... as she gave a quick look up at me, and then rose tottering on to her feet. And when I saw her face, how it was all shrunken from its former roundness, and the colour had gone from her cheeks, and the brightness from her eyes, as she stood there before me, with her dress all dishevelled, and her beautiful long hair ragged ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... The tottering Ministry attempted to strengthen its position by a junction with some of the leaders of the 'French' party; ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... shelves where gold and silver plate used to glitter in rich profusion, as was the mode in France. The handsome old chairs, with their high, carved backs and faded velvet cushions, that had been so firm and luxurious once, were tottering and insecure; but it mattered little, since no one ever came to sit in them now round the festive board, and they stood against the wall in prim order, under the rows ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... like the thought of it. My niece has talents. As her future lies at stake, she has a right to know, but it will be another shock to her. Poor Julius brought her up in luxury, and I expect has been far too mixed of late to know that he was tottering towards the verge of bankruptcy. A smart outside accountant would have soon scented trouble, but I don't quite blame my brother's cashier, who is a clerk and nothing more, for taking everything at its ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss |
