"Unsteadily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... feet, and then sank back upon the bench again unsteadily, and he came forward to her side. They both realized that they were alone here in the sunset—alone upon this summit ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... Snow," she said unsteadily. "It IS hard—sometimes; and maybe I DID need a little help about my own game. But, anyhow, now—" her eyes flashed with their old merriment—"if any time I think I can't play the game myself I can remember that I can still always be GLAD there are ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... so he once thought—of no shading nor explanation. The questioner was not the type to deal unsteadily with a problem, and Gaston had been too simple and direct to note fine points or shadings. Perhaps neither of them had understood. Life had been so fair until the terrible thing had loomed up. It had come like a cataclysm—how could they, young and inexperienced ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... things new and primarily our own. We have a wholesome instinct against infection, except, it seems, in the matter of ideas. An authorling will deliberately inoculate his copy with the inverted comma bacillus, till the page swims unsteadily, counting the fever a glow of pure literary healthiness. Yet this reproduction, rightly considered, is merely a proof that his appetite for books has run beyond his digestion. Or his industry may be to seek. You expect an ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... his corner and clapped his hands, but the others did not notice because the old man was up and swaying wildly over the woman. He seemed to be threatening the man who had struck her, and that one was evidently afraid of him, for he rose unsteadily and lifted the chair on which he had been sitting above his head to ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... that, would have cast himself at once upon his rude bed. Not being an animal, though his life and work were animal, he went with his friends to talk. Let none unjustly condemn him as a blackguard for that—no, not even though they had seen him at ten o'clock unsteadily walking to his shed, and guiding himself occasionally with his hands to save himself from stumbling. He blundered against the door, and the noise set the swallows on the beams twittering. He reached his ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... conventional beauty as he advanced in life, and the now apparently complete loss of his health had done little to mitigate the natural oddity of his person. Blighted and battered, but still responsive and still ironic, his face was like a lighted lantern patched with paper and unsteadily held; his thin whisker languished upon a lean cheek; the exorbitant curve of his nose defined itself more sharply. Lean he was altogether, lean and long and loose-jointed; an accidental cohesion of relaxed angles. His brown velvet jacket had become perennial; ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James
... He rose unsteadily, placing his hand on the edge of the table, and then fell forward upon his face, and lay still—his big, generous heart had ceased ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... in sight. He got off unsteadily, and for a moment his legs felt like wisps of cotton. He balanced his machine against the grassy edge of the path and sat down panting. His hands were gnarled with swollen veins and shaking palpably, his ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... of me?" she said unsteadily. "Because then I'd better go away. It's what I want—to go away! I—I can't bear it here any longer." Her fingers gripped the edge of the table tensely. She was struggling to keep down the rising sobs which threatened to choke her ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... reason, there lurked the thought that perhaps, with equal suddenness, Stephen would be restored. To come back one afternoon and to find him there! To find him lying there on his back in his cot looking up at the ceiling, to find him labouring unsteadily on his feet, clinging to the sides of his bed and shouting—to find him laughing at the jumping waves in the fire—to find him!... No, never to be found again—gone, hopelessly, cruelly, for no reason, for no one's good or benefit—simply for ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... "I'm trying not to faint," she said unsteadily. "When you told me he was from another world I ... thought you were crazy. But when he admitted it ... when he ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... but his strong arms held her until breath came unsteadily; then, as again she tried to free herself, he held her ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... her hand on his wrist and held it. Down the road the bell of Renton Church began tolling. He turned and looked at her unsteadily, his dark eyes ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... the moonlight on his cousin's steps, watched the young play actor as he walked somewhat unsteadily away between the two horses. He wished that he had seen the lad's face, and, curiously enough, it was this wish, and the young play actor himself, who filled the last thoughts in Cecil Lindley's brain before he fell asleep, in his cousin's house—the play actor ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... began again, then trailed out to a faint wail as the boys scuttled off round the barn to the orchard. Father smiled to himself unsteadily. ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... 'account rendered' a very heavy one," she said unsteadily. Then, on a note of increasing urgency: "Don't judge Ann—by me, Eliot. She's different ... the kind of woman God meant women to be. If you care for her, you won't make her pay—for what ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... night, apparently, which throws the modern reader into convulsions. It is always easy to arrange a scene of this sort. For example, taking the sample beginning that I gave above, The Man, whom I left sitting at the cabaret table, above, rises unsteadily —it is the recognised way of rising in a cabaret—and, settling the reckoning with the waiter, staggers into the street. For myself I never do a reckoning with the waiter. I just pay the bill as he adds it, and ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... had evidently been making his compact with the aid of strong liquor; he walked unsteadily, and in other ways betrayed imperfect command of himself. Presently, at the tea-table, he revealed to his daughter the great opportunity which lay before him, and spoke of the absence ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... rocked unsteadily. Suddenly, as a particularly vicious blast came whistling by, it canted as though it were going to fall. Eric, who was a few feet away from the cart, jumped forward to save it, but missed his footing and fell into the mush-ice twenty feet ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... is the intensity of that instinct, desire or purpose. In each of us there is a clash of wills, as the trends in our character oppose one another. The united self harmonizes its purposes and wills into as nearly one as possible; the disunited self is standing unsteadily astride two or more horses. We all know that it is easy for us to accomplish certain things and difficult to make up our minds to do others. Like and dislike, facility or difficulty are part of each purpose and enter into each will ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... himself together, and, gripping the stick, felt for the safety-pin, removal of which would allow explosion of the grenade once it came into contact with any body. Then, rising to his knees, and unsteadily to his feet, he stretched out his left hand to the wall, while with his right he swung the hand-grenade backwards and forwards. By then the firing-party had been halted in front of Jules, who, head in air and arms folded, stood ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... paces unsteadily. Obviously he was incapable of lucid thought, and the mere effort at sustained conversation was a torture. He turned through a yew arch into the Italian garden, and threw ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... sooner would I turn my back on him, like this"—and he turned it on me, amplifying the illustration by taking some more liquor—"than he was at it again. It was just this way: while I looked at him, SO"—regarding me rather unsteadily and with evident complexity of vision—"he was all right; but when I looked away, SO"—taking a long pull at the bottle—"he defied me. Then I'd gaze at him reproachfully, SO, and butter wouldn't have melted ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... you, I'll not come in," she smiled. "I only brought father, that's all. And—oh, I do hope he can do something," she faltered unsteadily. And Susan saw that her eyes were glistening with tears as she ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... 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 ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the story grimly as he stood guard in the Tube in the humid jungle night. Many-colored stars winked fitfully through the thatch of giant ferns overhead. The wind soughed unsteadily above the jungle. There were queer creakings, and once or twice there were distant cries, and when the wind died down there was a deep-toned croaking audible somewhere which sounded rather like the croaking of unthinkably, monstrous frogs. But it could not be that, of course. And ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... drunkenly—to the coach-house that evening after his supper, the little sheep-dog within was just finishing her supper. Finn conceived the notion of showing his foster-mother what he could do, and accordingly swaggered unsteadily into the coach-house, delivering loud barks as he advanced, all up and down the scale. The little sheep-dog (less than twice Finn's size now) raised her nose from the dish and barked angrily in good earnest. Finn ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... of the arbalestiers fell outright, his great shield clattering down on him, and moved no more; while three others were hit and were crawling to the rear. The rest had shouldered their bows and were aiming, but I thought unsteadily; and before the triggers were drawn again Will Green had nocked and loosed, and not a few others of our folk; then came the wooden hail of the bolts rattling through the boughs, but all overhead and no ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... Myra's shoulders down her arms to her hands, which he raised to his lips and then drew round his neck. Myra was trembling, and her breath was coming and going unsteadily, and she felt as if she had lost all powers of resistance, felt as if she had been drugged. She closed her eyes, and a gasping sigh broke from her lips as Don Carlos strained her close to his breast again, ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... crag, white curling columns of smoke from busy tugboats, and the great loom of the Brooklyn Bridge with its shuttles of clattering cable-cars. But what he saw was his son, alone in a strange land, struggling with an unknown man, a man intent on murder. With a hand that moved unsteadily the Light-house King lifted the desk telephone and summoned the third vice-president, and when Mr. Sam Caldwell had entered, silently ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... save that I always politely returned Ny Deen's salute when I passed him, I was returning to my quarters one evening, when—not at all an uncommon thing—I heard loud voices in front, and saw that three of our men were going unsteadily along, evidently after too long a stay at one of the wretched places where they were supplied with the poisonous arrack which was answerable for the miserable death of so many British soldiers. One of the men in particular was in that noisy, excited state when ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... told you there is nothing to know," she said, speaking unsteadily as if in pain. "Nothing of what you suppose. You don't understand me. This letter is ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... the railing. The Count and the Captain were alone, except for two knaves who sat asleep on their bench at the lower end of the hall. The Count lounged limply back in his great chair at the head of the table, unsteadily holding a glass of wine; and the Captain leaned forward on the board, narrowly regarding the Count. Both were well gone in wine, the Count apparently the more so. There was a look of mental torment on ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... saw articles of dress and other things out of their place. The old slave-woman came in yawning, her woolly grey hair hung in disorder about her face, and her eyes seemed fixed, her feet carried her unsteadily ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... name, but no one answered. At last, however, reaching the upper level, he saw by lamplight, through the open door, two figures struggling. Just before he entered, she tore herself free and went unsteadily across the room. Chantel, white and abject, turned as ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... fumbled in his raiment, drew forth a soiled card, and handed it to me. Upon it was written, in plain but unsteadily formed characters, the name ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... his Earthly husk but a note, which Lou finally found on the dresser, under a paperweight which was a treasured souvenir from the World's Fair of 2000. Unsteadily, ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut
... time the warder started to go on. Conrad raised himself unsteadily, and they moved slowly forward. They came to a white marble bust standing on a stone pillar ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... impulse which suddenly prompted him, and his face grew pallid as hers as he walked hastily across the smooth grass and came back to her. Her countenance was lifted toward the neighbouring hill, her thoughts evidently far away, when he paused before her, and said unsteadily— ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the other women gathered round the fire below, with their pipes and their drink, trying to drown sorrow. She, poor girl, knew where to seek a better consolation; she sought, and found it. At last her mother's step was again on the stairs; she came up unsteadily, and with flushed face approached the bed where her husband lay. She had a mug of spirits ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... moment he sniffed the pallet, which was none of the freshest, and, turning up his nose, he retreated a pace. He had no suspicion; the men did not come from the part of the house where the prisoners lay, and he stood aside to let them pass. In a moment, staggering, and going a little unsteadily, as if they scarcely saw their way, they had passed by him, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... she said unsteadily after a breath space of pause. "Many people believed so though great effort was made to silence the stories. But there were too many stories and they were so unspeakable that even those in high places were made furiously indignant. He was not received ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and the Sergeant-Major stumbled unsteadily downstairs ten minutes later their eyes bulged with the expression of those whose cup of suffering is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... the door, and took the step unsteadily. He stopped for a second, bracing his shoulders; then he walked firmly across the room. While his hand was on the handle, he heard Mr. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... you've got to know the truth, I'll tell you," growled the man, staring unsteadily at the boys. "It's in ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... powerful and condensed, no doubt, to steady his nerves in battle. Wainwright had ever been noted for his cowardice. His breath was heavy with it. How could a man want to meet death in such a way? He turned to look again, and Wainwright was walking unsteadily away across the line where they had been forbidden to go, out into the open where the shells were flying. Cameron watched him for an instant with mingled feelings. To think he called himself a man, and dared to boast of marrying such a woman as Ruth Macdonald. Well, what if he did go into danger ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... reached the point of ecstatic stupor. No state of trance was ever so exquisite. The air was swooning, but how delicate its gasps, as if it fell away into calm! How adorably blue the sky in its debauch of sun-lit ether! The sea, too, although it reeled slightly, unsteadily rising only to fall away, what a radiance of color it maintained! Here in the garden the drowsy air would lift a flower petal, as some dreamer sunk in hasheesh slumber might touch a loved hand, only to let it slip away in nerveless ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... of oars! Still quicker! . . . The eyes of him glared at each of us, as if daring us to fail! The yelp became a scream as we drew level—the Germans still at top speed. "Up! Up! Up!" yells Takia, little yellow devil with a white froth at his lips! "Up! Up! Up!" swaying unsteadily ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... the engine skylights and Barbara moved beneath the bridge. A great rope rose out of the water as the men at the winch hauled up the clumsy hulk. Two or three others, dragging a thin, stiff wire rope, floundered unsteadily ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... want 'er dern money!" Dick Wrinkle snarled, his glance shifting unsteadily. "I don't need anybody's cash. I've got a thousand dollars in my ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... unsteadily. 'You'd better give it to my wife over there. She's his friend. I hardly know him.' I don't know when I'd seen a man I disliked as much at ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the crowd packed as closely as matches in a box. The champagne I had taken had again aroused in me that vivid sense of joy and strength and colour. Again the lights were effulgent, the music witching, the women divine. As I swayed a little I clutched unsteadily at the Youth. He ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... irresistibly to meet it. He turned away and went back quickly toward the Square. It seemed to him that he was followed. He looked over his shoulder furtively. But the girl had disappeared and there was no one in sight but a man who walked unsteadily. Dickie suddenly knew why he had saved that dime. The energy of a definite purpose came to him. He remembered a swinging door back there around a corner, but when he reached the saloon, it was closed. Dickie had a humiliating struggle ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... I rose a trifle unsteadily, and stood before him, with no particular effort to hide my anger and contempt. But apparently I had ceased to be of interest. He was sitting just as I had first seen him that morning, staring into the embers of the fire. As I watched him, even through my anger I felt a vague regret, ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... William, unsteadily, snatching up the tea and toast, 'I had this made for you. It's stone-cold now. I thought you mightn't have anything ready so early. Better ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... aloud—an oath underground being an invitation to the Evil One—but in his heart the muffled curses were audible enough. And when he was at work in the dreary level, with the darkness lying on his shoulder like a hand, and the candles shining unsteadily through the gloom, like little evil winking eyes, he brooded so moodily over his bondage to Poverty, that he desired to break from ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... but brave heart he walked unsteadily along after the trader and his burden. So far, no sound had reached him since that one dreadful cry smote upon his ear, and a hope began to rise in his breast that no immediate danger threatened. A short distance away, embowered among the trees, was the house of Burrowes. The door ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... clicked. O'Reilly had brought in her hat and dropped it on a table. There was no hat-pin, but Clo crushed the soft toque down over her masses of red hair, and hoped she was not untidy enough to be conspicuous. Unsteadily she tottered to another door—the door that led into the corridor. This faced a narrower passage to the kitchen and domestic offices of the flat. Clo would have to take that way because, if she ventured into the lift and showed herself in the hall below, the porter might ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the orange awnings protecting the empty shop-fronts shuddered and flapped, like a gay hat worn unsteadily when the stomach ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... riddles,' said Herrick, unsteadily. 'I do not understand what manner of man you are, nor what you ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... light of a yellow lantern just above (there was also a tiny blue lantern that flung down a caressing ray upon her smooth dark hair and adorable shoulders) she glanced at some loose leaves taken from an old diary. Then, nerving herself for the effort, she began in a low, appealing tone, but rather unsteadily: ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... his head in his hands and groaned aloud. Carmen slipped down from Jose's lap and went unsteadily to ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... managed to free himself, and held her off, pressing her arms down. He looked at her. He had half a suspicion that he was dreaming. Her lips trembled; her eyes wandered unsteadily, always coming back to his face. He saw her the same as ever, in his presence. She appeared startled, tremulous, ready to cry. She did not inspire him with confidence. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... I strove to rise from my bed—and found that I could do so,- -I sat up shiveringly, looking at the terrifying Form that towered above me, enclosing me as it were in its own shadow—and then, managing to stand on my feet, though unsteadily, I mutely prepared to follow where it should lead. It moved on—and I went after it, compelled by some overpowering instinct against which I dared not rebel. Once the vague, half-formed thought flitted through my brain- -"This is Death that summons me ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... are other facts," resumed Edward a little unsteadily, "that I have grasped. One is that she is the most beautiful woman I ever saw; ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... was standing very unsteadily on his legs, muttered in a thick voice but very good-humouredly, "Dear landlord, I could pay you if I had loaded my blunderbuss with money, ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... over, fancied he saw them skulking through the fields at Cedar Creek, closing around the house, and behind them a mass of black faces and bloody bayonets. Floy alone, and he here,—like a rat in a trap! "God keep my little girl!" he wrote, unsteadily. "God bless you, Floy!" He gasped for breath, as if he had been writing with his heart's blood. Folding up the paper, he hid it inside his shirt and began his dogged walk, calculating the chances of escape. Once out of this shed, he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... little and putting his feet down unsteadily, Mr. Trimm left the clearing, heading as well as he could tell eastward, away from the railroad. After a mile or two he came to a dusty ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... of hot colour surged over Mary's face; it was not often she blushed, but now she was crimson. "I don't think I can tell you that," she replied unsteadily. "In any case it is immaterial to the story, except that he once asked me a boon I would not grant; and for that I have been sorry ever since, which shows the contrary-mindedness ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... and jerked the locket from Max's hand. But the moment he saw the contents his jaw fell and he rocked on his heels unsteadily and staggered back ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... walked out, rather unsteadily because his head ached. Probably nobody else, except the Rangar, could have guessed what an ordeal he had passed through or how near he ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... and walked unsteadily forward. He followed her in mute misery. In a moment or two they found themselves on the outskirts of the deserted heath. How beautiful stretched the gorsy rolling country! The sun was setting in great burning ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... like me to do anything? Can I explain anything to him? Can I help you to be happy? I assure you it hurts me awfully, if this will not turn out all right—Zara," for she had risen a little unsteadily from her seat beside him. "You cannot be indifferent to him for ever—he is too splendid a man. Cannot I do anything for you, ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... what you do to her?" asked Graylock, unsteadily. "It's a viler business than that for which you ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... might puff them out like a guttering candle [guttering To melt through the side of the hollow in a candle formed by a burning wick; to burn low and unsteadily; flicker] ...
— Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases • Grenville Kleiser
... in the boat unsteadily, and swung his arms to warm himself. She was a wide and roomy fishing craft, and weatherly enough, if she did make more leeway than one ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... long—ever since his name was spoken at the door—ages ago. He looked hesitatingly around the room. Several students were scrutinizing him curiously, as though expecting something. Oh, yes—that recalled him. He must go—home. He hated to interrupt the lecture, but he must. He got up unsteadily, and started down the stair, groping his way uncertainly, as a man walks in ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... He watched him closely, and he thought he saw the elation of old successes, and emotions of forgotten defeats, flit across his countenance. Granger himself was quite sober, having only pretended to drink; if he sat a trifle huddled on his box and lurched unsteadily, it was only that he ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... had intimated, there was plenty of muscle in Annie's round arms, and she almost lifted him up, but he stood unsteadily. Mr. Walton gave him his arm, and in a few moments he was on the sofa in the sitting-room, where a fire was soon kindled. Zibbie was told to make coffee, and to provide something ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... it was done Arnold stood up unsteadily. "Citizen Rigaud, I presume that, as a high official of the Commune, you can replace the citizen who has ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... to her knees beside him; and while she implored him to stay, her hands worked unconsciously, helping him to go—smoothing and folding his clothes, and laying them in little heaps about the floor, her figure swaying unsteadily ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... weak and dizzy and crazy for a drink. He walked on slowly, unsteadily, his white face set. For he had vowed that if it took the last nerve in his body there should be no more of that until after they had finished with Z. He knew himself too well to vow more. He was not even sure ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... said Bertie; and he rose unsteadily to his feet. "Now, if you please," said he, "you'll go back to Belle, wherever you've left her, and take ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... skull, and once more feel quickening blood in the veins. Proudly men of the passing century look back upon all this worship of animals, upon the Egyptian Anubis, and the intestine genii with their animal heads; but even here, in this field of speculation, where the historian's hand wanders unsteadily about his page, and all wears a mythical air, pulses of human emotion are felt that assure us of the remote past. Strange that the chief chapters of ancient Egypt's history should have been written ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... house in those little-girl days, and it seemed a perfectly normal establishment to her now. It was home, and it was good to get home after the long day. She ran up the flight of stairs that the gas- bead dimly lighted, and up another, where a second gas-jet, this one without a shade, burned unsteadily and opened the door, at the back of the third-floor hall, that gave upon the bedroom that she shared with Mary Lou and Georgianna. The boarding-house was crowded, at this particular time, and Georgie, who flitted about as a rule to whatever room chanced to be empty, was now quartered here and ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... his words with a sob, and walked unsteadily down the stairs. When in the courtyard the lieutenant approached him, and took him by the arm. The sub-lieutenant ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... Well, you are in a nice fix!" and Ben's eyes began to twinkle with mischievous merriment, as well they might, for Sam certainly was a spectacle to convulse the soberest person. Perched unsteadily on the gnarled stump, with his muddy legs drawn up, his dismal face splashed with mud, and the whole lower half of his body as black as if he had been dipped in an inkstand, he presented such a comically doleful object that Ben danced about, laughing like ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... seat under the banyan tree. He passed his hand unsteadily over his brow. Throughout the day the young ascetic had been plunged in profound meditation, and now, returning from heaven to earth, he was dazed like one who awakens in darkness and knows not where he is. All day long before his inner ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... a minute after, for no apparent reason, the crowd around Tristram surged forward to the bulwarks, and he was carried along with the rush. Then he found himself swaying unsteadily down a flight of steps and calling to the men behind not to hustle and precipitate him into one or other of the two longboats that lay below. Into the nearer of these his company swept him, and poured in at his heels until the gunwale was nearly level with the water. The rowers pushed off in the ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the bridge the minute I heard the firing," she confessed, unsteadily. "Oh, yes, I know! I might have been killed. But if you were, I wanted to be. How could you tell, when you stopped me so, Jim, there was a ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... the queue. The sweat was standing in large drops on Inspector Willis's brow as he eagerly asked had the tube been touched since leaving Scotland Yard, and his relief when he found he was still in time was overwhelming. Rather unsteadily he entered the vehicle and ordered the driver ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... it would be impossible to complete his enterprise. Still he pushed forward as far as he could, especially as he began to discern in the darkness something that appeared to stir with an involuntary motion. It looked like a dead body which has hung up many days in the rain and sun, and is waved unsteadily by the wind. It turned out to be a condemned spirit in this first threshold of Hell, sentenced there, with thousands of others, for having been cruel and false in love. Her name was Lydia, and she had been princess of the country so called.[3] Anaxarete was among them, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... to her feet, with perhaps a sudden impulse of flight, but so unsteadily that Du Meresq involuntarily threw a supporting arm round her. At that moment Lola, in search of blackberries, and herself concealed by the bush she was rifling, peeped through the brambles, and remained a petrified ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... sing no more for them, and then, as I made my way, unsteadily enough, from the platform, music struck up that was the sweetest I could have heard. Some pipers had come together, from twa or three regiments, unknown to me, and now, very softly, their pipes began to skirl. They played the tune that I love best, ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... Mollie, getting to her feet rather unsteadily and shaking out her sodden skirts. "I guess this isn't the first time I have taken a dip in cold water. And besides," she added impatiently: "I don't know about you girls, but I would like to know just what that thing was that we ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... unsteadily regarded her. "Point is, where are you going? All dressed up and somewhere to go! I'll bet you have! I've seen you jazzing about the place when you haven't seen me, Dods. And heard about you! There was a chap with me watching you ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... half an hour before she came to herself. The cold wind that streamed through the open window fell on her face, and she sat up to look around her. Then she rose, shut the window, walked unsteadily to the bed, sank down on it, and drawing the cover over herself, ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... switch watching the train going to destruction. Every man in the room had heard somewhat of Nancy's peculiar existence, and they listened with doubly aroused interest to her simple tale. Suddenly an interruption came from a very unexpected quarter. Moore was swaying unsteadily, and but for the timely arm of the officer near him, would have collapsed on the floor. The court immediately adjourned whilst ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... of "watering" was not the only one which had induced the French captain to drop his anchor at this point. It tended however somewhat to abate these suspicions—that, by the flashes of the lanthorns, as they played unsteadily upon the guns, anchors, and tackling of the vessel, he could distinguish the lilies of France: and upon inquiry from the helmsman, who spoke to him however in English, he learned that he was on board a French corvette—Les ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... He rose unsteadily to his feet. The movement, being somewhat complicated, brought him within a yard of his own figure as presented in one of the long mirrors. He stood there, arrested, fascinated, shocked by that person in the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... that he is wholly right in saying so. The difference between the two is an essential one. In Patmore the cadence follows the contours of the thought or emotion, like a transparent garment; in Cowley the form is a misshapen burden, carried unsteadily. It need not surprise us that to the ears of Cowley (it is he who tells us) the verse of Pindar should have sounded 'little better than prose.' The fault of his own 'Pindarique' verse is that it is so much worse than ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... them) the rain falling in cascades from the tops of the roofs on the gleaming flagstones below, rendering everything indistinct and vague through the misty atmosphere. At times we passed by a lady, struggling with her skirts, unsteadily tripping along in her high wooden shoes, looking exactly like the figures painted on screens, tucked up under a gaudily daubed paper umbrella. Or else we passed a pagoda, where an old granite monster, squatting in the water, seemed to make a hideous, ferocious ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... unsteadily. She was horribly frightened, though she did not show it. She had been waiting for days to catch Littimer in this mood. And she did not feel disposed to go back now. The task must be accomplished ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White |
