"Collapse" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Finally, as the result of the accumulated structure of diplomatic relations and precedents, a situation arises to which adjustment, with the machinery that has been developed, is impossible and the whole house of cards collapses. The collapse is a process of dedifferentiation during which the old structures are destroyed, precedents are disavowed, new situations occur with bewildering rapidity, for dealing with which there is no recognized machinery available. Society reverts from a state in which a ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... at one another across the table, whatever Moliere might be able to do, when alone with his aged servant. Nor did it much help the matter, when, with a view to the treasury, which began to threaten a collapse, we made a law, like that of the Medes and Persians which altereth not, whereby it was provided, among other things, that no member should ever talk over five minutes, nor stop short of three, under any circumstances,—the President ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... movements. As he paced the bridge, backwards and forwards, he halted each time just for a moment when he came to where John had propped his back against the binnacle and tilted his stool at an angle that threatened collapse. Syd and I sat quite apart, and left them alone to their semi-private conversation. We noticed, however, that the captain appeared to be uneasy about the vessel's course and progress; he glanced more than once at the compass-card, and several ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might have been successively observed the retreat of the snakes, the transformation of the ferns, the filling of the pools, a rising of fogs, the embrowning by frost, the collapse of the fungi, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... for a long time. We all three knelt at the sofa, I between them. But by this time, to my great exaltation of spirits there had succeeded an equally dismal depression. It was my turn now to weep, and I dimly remember any Father coming into the room, and my being carried up to bed, in a state of collapse and fatigue, by the silent ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... months. Your own would have followed; and you would have come to me in a procession like the last time. But I give you warning—Stasie may weep and Henri ratiocinate—it will not serve you twice. Your next collapse will be fatal. I thought I had told you so, Stasie? Hey? ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the wide street of Amgraben. Had the cannon been fired then and there, the course of the insurrection must, in one way or other, have been changed. That change might have been as Maximilian hoped, the complete collapse of the insurrection; or, as Latour held, the cannon might have swept away the last vestige of loyalty to the Emperor, and the republic might have been instantly proclaimed. But in any case the result ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... it can't collapse. I can't believe it could collapse. Do tell me about something else you made, which you loved—something you sculpted. Oh, it makes my heart burn to hear you!—Do you think I might call you Anabel? I should love to. You ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... and although they were seriously alarmed about my health when I was 12 years old, when I developed symptoms similar to those of Agnes at the same age, I was not ill enough to get at all alarmed. I was annoyed at having to stay away from school for three months. When the collapse came Jessie had a dear friend of some years' standing, and I had one whom had known only for some months, but I had spent a month with her in Edinburgh at Christmas, 1838, and we exchanged letters weekly through the box which ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... Ainslie remained without to give a necessary warning. Whereupon Ainslie was seized with fright, and Brodie, losing his head, called off the others, so that six hundred pounds were left, that might have been an easy prey. Smith, indignant at the collapse of the long-pondered design, laid the blame upon his master, and they swung, as Brodie's grim spirit of farce suggested, for ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... saw him struggling inwardly: would he detonate the anionizers and make good his long awaited plan, or would he retreat and leave the city unharmed, for though I was wearing the electron reflecting suit, the collapse of all the high rise buildings would litter the ground with debris from them, and all on the ground would be crushed. Would he spare me from death, or his people? In that instant his face spoke more than many others' do in their entire lifetime. It was cut through with a contrasting countenance, ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... proved ill adapted to accomplish: for the disappointed aeronauts had not been gone many minutes from the ground, when the heated air inside, which had for some time been gradually growing cooler, reached at length so low a temperature, that the great sphere began to collapse and settle down upon the embers of the pine faggots still glowing red underneath. The consequence was that the inflammable skins, cords, and woodwork coming in contact with the fire, began to burn like so much tinder. The flames ran upward, licking the oily eel-skins ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... this subject, but I think it right and only fair to tell you that owing to the actual noise of the cowl, and perhaps even more (as our doctor says) to the mental strain of listening to hear whether it is going to begin again, my wife is on the verge of a complete nervous collapse, which seems likely to necessitate some weeks' rest cure in a nursing home, and possibly a trip to the Canaries. I am advised by my lawyer that these are contingent liabilities, the burden of which would fall upon you as the owner of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are not creatures of despair. Suicide, I suspect, is very often the outcome of mere mental weariness—not an act of savage energy but the final symptom of complete collapse. The quiet, matter-of-fact attentions of a ship's stewardess, who did not seem aware of other human agonies than seasickness, who talked of the probable weather of the passage—it would be a rough night, she thought—and who insisted ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... collapse of Hamilton's army at Uttoxeter in August 1648, a body of Covenanters assembled at Mauchline, in Ayrshire, to protest against the leniency with which the Engagement had been treated in the Estates, where, indeed, a considerable minority had been inclined openly to countenance ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... empty-handed, and Lily's eye indicated to him her real opinion of the value of a male in a crisis. She asked no questions concerning the events which had ended in Hugo's collapse. She merely dealt with the collapse, and in the intervals of dealing with it she explained to Simon how she had waited and waited in the dome, and then descended and tried in vain to enter the Safe Deposit, and been insulted by the messenger-boy, and had finally drifted to ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... a reverie about nothing by a dark-brown shape, who replaces the clogs, puts his arm around our waist and leads us into an inner hall, with a steaming tank in the centre. Here he slips us off the brink, and we collapse over head and ears in the fiery fluid. Once—twice—we dip into the delicious heat, and then are led into a marble alcove, and seated flat upon the floor. The attendant stands behind us, and we now perceive that his hands are encased in dark hair-gloves. He pounces upon an arm, which he ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... "hurted" unto death also, as we now found, and as he insisted he was not. His hip was severely crushed by the timbers and his legs broken, as well as his internal organs disarranged, although we did not know how badly at the time. Only after we had removed all the weight did he collapse and perhaps personally realize how serious was his plight. He was laid on a canvas tarpaulin brought by the yard-master and spread on the chip-strewn ground, while the doctors from two ambulances worked over him. While they were examining his wounds he took a critical and quizzical ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... settled when the Senate accepted as members the two men appointed by the said legislature; (2) as a matter of policy he urged that the people of Western Virginia should not be forced to run the risk of having the whole State, because of the collapse of the rebellion, repeal the act of the legislature and thereby continue a domination of tyranny over them. The vote was taken and the motion to postpone ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... and their gunners, of the 2nd Lowland Brigade R.F.A., came to live with us. The guns were well dug in, but there was a general feeling that if they fired, most of the trenches, which were only a few feet away, would inevitably collapse. At Hill 70 Captain Wightman and Captain Moir joined the Battalion, with very little to say in favour of the Egyptian climate and obviously feeling ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... recommenced and Winona, with a supreme effort, continued to play. The pain was still acute, but she realized that on her presence or absence depended victory or defeat. Without her, the courage of the team would collapse. How she lived through the time ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... every day by the greatest of politicians-the effect would be equal to a large amount of capital. Generals stood well in Wall Street; generals were excellent men (when endorsed by bishops) to send abroad to effect loans; generals were capital fellows to get well out of a financial collapse; in fact, generals were just the men to get through any sort of difficulty. Society bowed to a general; the people were charmed by a general; a general was every thing to a Young American Banking House like that of Pickle, Prig, & Flutter. No matter how visionary ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... throws him into panic. The sacrifices and pains very young children suffer uncomplainingly, particularly in great cities and factory towns, is a pathetic enough demonstration of what the word means to them. Mere children by the hundreds support families terrified by the thought of their collapse. The orphan forever dreams of the day when a home will be found for him. The child whose parents seek freedom, leaving him to school or servants, never fails to nourish a sense of injustice. Whatever one generation may decide as to the futility or burdensomeness of the home, the ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... side with this were gigantic speculations, like that of John Law and the East India Company, with the helpless ruin of its collapse. The time was ripe for the formulation of some system of economic laws; and two men who had long pondered them, De Gournay and Quesnay, made the first attempt to explain the meaning of wealth and its distribution. After Quesnay and his system, still ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... decision this year, whatever the consequences to himself." The Germans had just called up a fresh class of recruits calculated to place more than half a million of efficient young men in the line. The collapse of Russia had released the vast German armies of the East for use against England and France. It was under such circumstances that the ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... pastures beyond. Yet when the ebb came, and men began to count their losses, there were but few to record. The embankment at the south end of the village had been beaten flat, and the road behind it buried under a silt of shingle; the nearest houses to it had been flooded and threatened with collapse, so that the owners were offering them next day on easy terms; from our hospital, which stood in this quarter, the one patient and his nurse were rescued on the backs of waders; the foundations of a chapel, which was building on lower ground, were reported sapped, and a staunch Churchman of our ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... trouble that's brewing. There's no use in hiding the fact that things are looking bad. Since the Fenian scheme went to pieces, the rats have left their holes. The Irish are demoralized everywhere, fighting themselves as usual after a collapse, and their enemies are quoting them against one another. Here in New York the hired bravos of the press are in the pay of the Livingstone crowd, or of the British secret service. What ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... lying cold and ghastly beneath the winter snow! What had been the use of all his long prepay rations to write great novels? The name of Ansell would now become ingloriously extinct. She wondered whether Our Own would collapse and secretly felt it must. And then what of the hopes of worldly wealth she had built on Benjamin's genius? Alas! the emancipation of the Ansells from the yoke of poverty was clearly postponed. To her and her alone ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... French clergy for his vindication of the early fathers against the most learned of the Jesuits. To an ignorant and narrow-minded man all these things pointed to one conclusion, the instability and want of solidity in the Anglican system. Then there was the astounding collapse of the French Huguenots. Lewis boasted that, in a few months, without real violence, he had effected 800,000 conversions. And James was eager to believe it. He asked himself, says Barillon, why he could not do as much in England. He desired the Roman congregations to examine the question, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... The programme was so entirely a matter of course on the eve of an expedition, and his squadron had absorbed so much of his attention, that he had forgotten to speak of the matter earlier; and the discovery was the last touch needed to upset Evelyn's unstable equilibrium. Her collapse was the more complete by reason of the strain ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... reasons it is Luther's highest object in this treatise to make it perfectly clear what is the essence of good works. Whenever the essence of good works has been understood, then the accusations against him will quickly collapse. ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... would be the last night that he and Fanny were to spend in the house which the Major had forgotten to deed to Isabel. To-morrow they were to "move out," and George was to begin his work in Bronson's office. He had not come to this collapse without a fierce struggle—but the struggle was inward, and the rolling world was not agitated by it, and rolled calmly on. For of all the "ideals of life" which the world, in its rolling, inconsiderately ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... to abandon the notion that biology prescribes in detail how we shall run society. True, this foundation has never received a surplus of intelligent consideration. Sometimes human societies have built so foolishly upon it that the result has been collapse. Somebody is always digging around it in quest of evidence of some vanished idyllic state of things which, having had and discarded, we should return to. This little excursion into biology is made in the full consciousness that social mandates are not to be found there. Human projects ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... thought he was going to collapse, so great was the relief and the slackening of tension. He did laugh out, but caught ...
— The Boy Scouts In Russia • John Blaine
... country are feeling upon this subject, although, indeed, in the midst of a certain clamour in the country, they do not give public expression to their feelings. Your country is not in an advantageous state at this moment; from one end of the kingdom to the other there is a general collapse of industry. Those Members of this House not intimately acquainted with the trade and commerce of the country do not fully comprehend our position as to the diminution of employment and the lessening of wages. An increase in the cost of living ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright
... mind is over matter, but there are some wills so imperial, so dominant over the body, that they keep it from collapse even after its strength ...
— 21 • Frank Crane
... century a great wave of immorality and sexual crime has been passing over Russia. This is not attributable to the laws, old or new, but is due in part to the Russo-Japanese War, and in part to the relaxed tension consequent on the collapse of the movement for political reform. (See an article by Professor Asnurof, "La Crise Sexuelle en Russie," Archives d'Anthropologie ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... said the Onondaga in his precise fashion. "The collapse is coming after our mighty efforts of mind and body. We will not reach shore too soon. The Mountain Wolf and his men build the fire high, so high that it can defy the rain, because they know we will ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... who had nearly swallowed the cigar in his surprise at Iris's unforeseen collapse. "This kind of thing is more in your line than mine, young feller. Just lay 'er out in the saloon, an' ax Watts to 'elp. His missus goes orf regular w'en ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... mean collapse, annihilation and horrors most dreadful for all of us.[72] Our imaginations revolt at such a possibility. Our representatives in the Reichstag have unanimously declared on innumerable occasions that the Social Democrats could not leave their Fatherland ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... had fallen on the crowded and heated store, and in the silence Stingaree was already taking an unguarded interest in Mrs. Clarkson's appearance, which as certainly betokened imminent collapse. "Now!" whispered Radford, and Hilda hesitated no more. She was wearing a black lace shawl between her appearances at the piano; she had the revolver under it in a twinkling, and pressed it to her bosom with both hands, one outside ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... that edicts regarding ceremonial, music, and expeditions to quell rebellion go forth. When it is being ill governed, such edicts emanate from the feudal lords; and when the latter is the case, it will be strange if in ten generations there is not a collapse. If they emanate merely from the high officials, it will be strange if the collapse do not come in five generations. When the State-edicts are in the hands of the subsidiary ministers, it will be strange if in three generations ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... gloom of the shrubbery. Sharp pricks from thorns warned him that he was pressing into a cactus growth, and he protected Mercedes as best he could. She was shaking as one with a sever chill. She breathed with little hurried pants and leaned upon him almost in collapse. Gale ground his teeth in helpless rage at the girl's fate. If she had not been beautiful she might still have been free and happy in her home. What a strange world to live in—how unfair ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... the combustion chamber showed a rent of eighteen inches long by one wide, the result of too rapid cooling; and, lastly, the donkey-engine struck work. Under these happy circumstances bursting was not to be expected; breaking down was, a regular collapse which would have left us like a log upon the stormy waves. A new boiler might have cost, perhaps, L900, and the want of one daily endangered a good ship which could not be replaced for L9000. I therefore ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... permit the transit of foodstuffs destined for the people." He desired no mediation between himself and the Italians. Perhaps the most audacious act of spoliation was the sale of the State stores at Gallipoli, just when the Allied offensive on the Salonica front was leading to the collapse of the enemy. Instead of forwarding the 25,000 greatcoats, the 20,000 kilos of leather, and great quantities of material, medical and other stores, to Montenegro and rendering first aid to the liberated population, the managers ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... accordance with what they knew to be the papal wish, the council might deliberate without being either overawed by the Emperor or menaced by his Protestant adversaries. Soon, however, the case was altered by the manifest collapse of the latter, notwithstanding their expectations of support from England, Denmark, and France, long before their final catastrophe in the battle of Muhlberg, April 24, 1547. The Emperor would not hear of the removal of the council to Lucca, Ferrara, or any other Italian town, and in consequence ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... will help no one," he said, "and it may end in your collapse at just the moment when you ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... page. He began its perusal sitting erect in his chair, and he ended it hunched over its pages spread on his desk with his head in his hands, his fingers desperately clutching his shock of gray-sprinkled hair. Then in a complete collapse he flung himself back in his chair, elevated his feet to the edge of the desk, and began literally to devour the smoke of a small black cigar. For half an hour he sat motionless, as was his habit when fighting all preliminary ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... instinct the three drew near the other skeleton. One of its long arms was resting across what had once been a pail, but which, long since, had sunk into total collapse between its hoops. The finger-bones of this arm were still tightly shut, clutching between them a roll of something that looked like birch-bark. The remaining arm had fallen close to the skeleton's side, and it was on this side that Mukoki's critical eyes searched most carefully, ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... his head wound, and blind with nausea, he stumbled to the rear of the cell to collapse upon a pile of foul straw, littered with equipment which the superstitious captors must have condemned together with ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... circumstances is concealed, makes him conform. At length the hour arrives. He observes the darting puffs of smoke in the distance. He listens to the sounds that are in the air. Perhaps he hears something strike with a thud and sees a soldier near him collapse like a shot pheasant. He realises that it may be his turn next. Fear ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... "If I get any of those wretched A B and C questions I'll collapse, and disgrace the Form. I've many weak points, but mathematics are absolutely my weakest of all. If you frighten me any more, I shan't have the courage to walk into the exam. room. Do I look presentable? Are my hands clean? And is ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... lives, and love each other, always, only, for ever and ever...And yet, to let her defiance go unchecked, to have his authority challenged before his own children—it would be the beginning of dissolution, the first crumblings of collapse. ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... military supplies and railroads did undoubtedly render impossible any great prolongation of the war, if that would otherwise have been possible; but it did not materially hasten the actual collapse of the rebellion, which was due to Grant's capture of Lee's army. Besides, if Grant had not captured Lee, Sherman would. Lee could not possibly have escaped them both. Hence Sherman's destruction of property in Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina did not hasten the ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... flies. When the water rises unusually high, the blossoms never open, but remain submerged, and fertilize themselves. Seen underwater, the delicate leaves, which are little more than forked hairs, spread abroad in dainty patterns; lifted cut of the water these flaccid filaments utterly collapse. In ponds and shallow, slow streams, this common plant flowers from June to September almost throughout the Union, the British Possessions north of us, and in ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... their relative positions and the child had become the protector, guardian, and provider. Then the brutal wrong of Allison's accusation, told her with such well-simulated sympathy and reluctance, but with such exquisitely feminine stab in every sentence; the collapse, the struggle, the suffering, the half-reluctant convalescence—and the sudden sunshine of that afternoon when he turned from the carriage of the girl to whom he was declared engaged, let her drive away without another glance, and stood there, tall and stalwart and manly, ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... earnings. Togo is self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs when harvests are normal, with occasional regional supply difficulties. In the industrial sector, phosphate mining is by far the most important activity, although it has suffered from the collapse of world phosphate prices and increased foreign competition. Togo serves as a regional commercial and trade center. The government's decade-long effort, supported by the World Bank and the IMF, to implement economic reform measures, encourage foreign investment, and bring revenues ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... strike, a quick, decisive series of blows, and the Acquatainians will collapse like a house of paper. Before the Star Watch can interfere, we will be masters of the Cluster. Then, with the resources of Acquatainia to draw on, we can challenge any force in the galaxy—even the ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... on the part of individuals there doubtless were; but, in the general reckoning, they were of small account— insignificant symptoms of the deep disease of the body politic— to the enormous calamity of administrative collapse. ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... And as he spoke a sudden, powerful puff of warm air swept athwart the ship and was gone, causing the topsails to flap violently once, and collapse again. This was quickly followed by a second puff, heavier and rather less transient than the last; indeed, it continued long enough to give the ship steerage-way; for which I was deeply thankful, promptly availing myself of it to order the helm hard up and get our bows pointed in a north-easterly ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... scourged by the cholera, and it was almost appalling to me to find that out of twenty-seven officers present, I could only muster fifteen for the operations of the attack. However, it was done, and after it was done came the collapse. Don't be horrified when I tell you that for the whole of the actual siege, and in truth for some little time before, I almost lived on brandy. Appetite for food I had none, but I forced myself to eat just sufficient to sustain life, and ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... reported for football practice with a comforting knowledge of duties performed. An hour and a half of steady practice, consisting of passing, falling, and catching punts, left the inexperienced candidates in a state of breathless collapse when Blair dismissed the field. West did not turn up at the gridiron, but a tiny scarlet speck far off on the ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... you will be quite well enough to leave to-morrow," the doctor said to him many times. "I expected this momentary collapse. It ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... strove to evade thought by being one of the company. How my cheeks burned as I laughed and talked! I remember pulling a fat man by the sleeve, and whispering in his ear some secret that made us roll back and collapse in laughter. And the coach ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... of collapse; desperately she clung to her remnant of composure. Hardly conscious of her action, she tore open the outer envelope, and read the brief statement that the letter inclosed had been sent to her, care of the Department of State. With some stirring of curiosity not unmixed with dread, ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... a promise of half-pay for seven years, and even this raised an outcry throughout the country, which seemed to dread its natural defenders only less than its enemies. In the fall of 1780, however, in the general depression which followed upon the disasters at Charleston and Camden, the collapse of the paper money, and the discovery of Arnold's treason, there was serious danger that the army would fall to pieces. At this critical moment Washington had earnestly appealed to Congress, and against the strenuous opposition of Samuel Adams had at length extorted the ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... simple method of artificial selection, the silkworm industry has been rescued from what threatened to be a collapse. ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... in a little silence. But there was no appreciative burst of applause from those who heard him. The fine courage of Terence was, to them, merely the iron nerve of the man-killer, the keen eye and the judicious mind which knew that the sheriff would collapse before he fired his second shot. And his courtesy before the first shot was simply the surety of the man who knew that no matter what advantage he gave to his enemy, his own speed of hand would more than make up ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... Maunde, and Tilson, had closed its doors; and on March 23, 1816, Henry Austen was declared a bankrupt: the immediate cause of the collapse being the failure of an Alton bank which the London firm had backed. No personal extravagance was charged against Henry; but he had the unpleasant sensation of starting life over again, and of having caused serious loss to several of his family, especially his brother Edward and Mr. Leigh Perrot, ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... fumes of the great bombardment and the indescribable babbling cries of a beaten army. Before we reached them that maddened horde had swept down on them, men panting and gasping in their flight, many of them bloody from wounds, many tottering in the first stages of collapse and death. I saw the horses seized by a dozen hands, and a desperate fight for their possession. But as we halted there our eyes were fixed on the battery on the road above us, for round it was now sweeping ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... from her syncope of the previous evening, and had offered no elucidation other than that of fatigue. Nevertheless, not a person in the room but felt that there had been another and more immediate cause for the girl's collapse. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... child was almost in collapse. Without a word he dropped the cold, limp little body into our arms, and prostrated himself till his forehead touched the dust. We had not time to think of him, we hardly noted his extraordinary submission, for all ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... transitory. There may be several wars between European powers, prepared and organized to accept the old conventions, bloody, vast, distressful encounters that may still leave the art of war essentially unmodified, but sooner or later—it may be in the improvised struggle that follows the collapse of some one of these huge, witless, fighting forces—the new sort of soldier will emerge, a sober, considerate, engineering man—no more of a gentleman than the man subordinated to him ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... prefatory remarks, we may advise bleeding under certain conditions. The quantity removed must be moderate (7 to 8 pints), and the pulse and other conditions must show no signs of weakness or collapse. ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... are almost invariably cylindrical, and are very commonly internally fired, either by one flue or by two; we owe it to the late Sir William Fairbairn, President of the British Association in 1861, that the danger, which at one time existed, of the collapse of these fire flues, has been entirely removed by his application of circumferential bands. Nowadays there are, as we know, modifications of Sir William Fairbairn's bands, but by means of his bands, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... cuts through leather and wood with the same ease that a Southern Negro's teeth lacerate watermelon. Leave a pair of shoes on the ground over night and you will find them riddled in the morning. These ants eat away floors and sometimes cause the collapse of houses by wearing away the wooden supports. Another frequent guest is the driver ant, which travels in armies and frequently takes complete possession of a house. It destroys all the vermin but the human inmates must beat a retreat while ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... attention had been attracted by the appearance of something floating about a mile away. Paddling in that direction, in the hope that what he saw might be worth picking up, he had at length come alongside the hatchway, with me upon it, in a state of collapse. The negroes on the island had risen in insurrection against the whites only some six years previously, while slavery had been abolished only about four years, the relations between the blacks and the whites on the island were ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... preparations may be mounted either in glycerine or balsam. (Canada balsam dissolved in chloroform is the ordinary mounting medium.) In using glycerine it is sometimes necessary to add the glycerine gradually, allowing the water to slowly evaporate, as otherwise the specimens will sometimes collapse owing to the too rapid extraction of the water from the cells. Aniline colors, as a rule, will not keep in glycerine, the color spreading and finally fading entirely, so that with most of them the specimens must ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... moral concepts began to be shaken. He learned that prostitution might be regarded as an economic evil. He found that sex morality was regarded by some as a useful taboo; psychology taught him that repression could be as harmful as excess; the collapse of the Darwinian optimists, who believed that all curves were upward, left him with the inner conviction that everything, including principle, was in a state of flux. And his intellectual guides, first Shaw, and then, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... Petra took a turn for the worse; during the afternoon she had been conversing spiritedly with her daughters; but this animation had subsided until she was overwhelmed by a mortal collapse. ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... With the collapse of the remaining section of barn wall the danger from sparks was past, and, emptying one final bucket, Mr. Brady, followed by a very wet, very tired and very warm Don, crept back through the skylight and joined the others below. Mr. Brady rescued his coat, led the way ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... for a white man. He wore the war-bonnet of the Sioux, and at his shoulder was a rifle, pointed at someone in the bottom below him. I knew well enough that in another second he would drop one of my friends. So I raised my Yaeger and fired. I saw the figure collapse, and heard it come tumbling thirty feet down the bank, landing with a splash ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... widespread business closures. Including the West Bank, the UN estimates that more than 100,000 Palestinians out of the 125,000 who used to work in Israel or in joint industrial zones have lost their jobs. International aid of $2 billion to Gaza Strip and the West Bank in 2004 prevented the complete collapse of the economy and allowed some reforms in the government's financial operations. Meanwhile unemployment has continued at half the labor force. ARAFAT's death in 2004 leaves open more political options that could ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... out or neutralizing the enemies that are still in the alimentary canal, flush the body with pure water, put it at rest—and trust the liver. Biliousness is a sign of an overworked liver. If it wasn't working at all, we shouldn't be bilious: we should be dead, or in a state of collapse. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... "The child has collapsed. I have done all I could and can do no more." Next came the anxious looks of the other attendants, the footfalls of inquiring neighbours, messages to nearer and further relatives about the pronounced "collapse". ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... slack times when there will be plenty of leisure to write: but at others we are likely to be busy, and you never can be sure of having the necessary facilities. And personally I find my epistolary faculties collapse at about 100 deg. in the shade. I wrote quite happily this morning till it got hot; and only now (4.45) have I found it possible to resume. We get it 102 to 104 deg. every day from about noon to four, and it oppresses one much more than at Agra as there is no escaping from ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... Baptist minister, in a white helmet, drinking chocolate on a terrace, with a guide-book in one fist, a ticket to visit monuments in the other. I heard Scottish soldiers playing, "I'll be in Scotland before ye!" and something within me, a lurking hope, I suppose, seemed to founder and collapse—but only for a moment. It was after four in the afternoon. Soon day would be declining. And I seemed to remember that the decline of day in Egypt had moved me long ago—moved me as few, rare things have ever done. Within half an hour I was alone, far up the long road—Ismail's road—that ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... hence before he can even recommence work on his irrigation system and another year before he will have it completed. Many things may occur during those two years—the principal danger to be apprehended being the sudden collapse of inflated war-time values, with resultant money panics, forced liquidation and the destruction of public confidence in land investments. The worry and exasperation I can hand your respected parent must be as seriously ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... only a brief period, for we cannot but think that the final results of this war—the fruit of the present system of production and distribution—will be the utter collapse of the system itself—making way for a New Society wherein the only aristocracy shall be that of ...
— Women As Sex Vendors - or, Why Women Are Conservative (Being a View of the Economic - Status of Woman) • R. B. Tobias
... hit by mere chance on some pure and tender note of simple and exquisite melody—the lazy vivacity and impulsive inconsequence of style—the fitful sort of slovenly inspiration, with interludes of absolute and headlong collapse—are qualities by which a very novice in the study of dramatic form may recognize the reckless and unmistakable presence of Dekker. The curt and grim precision of Webster's tone, his terse and pungent force of compressed rhetoric, will be found equally difficult to trace in ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... patient may recover, only to suffer another like seizure, or he may die in the first. In another form of this pernicious malaria the symptoms resemble true cholera, and is peculiar to the tropics. In this there are violent vomiting, watery diarrhea, cramps in the legs, cold hands and feet, and collapse. Sometimes the attack begins with a chill, but fever, if any, is slight, although the patient complains of great thirst and inward heat. The pulse is feeble and the breathing shallow, but the ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... as it may, it is very evident that the highest interest of the "poor whites" who bore the brunt of the fighting was to be conserved by the collapse rather than the triumph of the cause for which they fought with unsurpassed gallantry. For, with the downfall of the system of enforced labor, the work of the world became an open market, and the dignity of labor being restored, the "poor whites" had both ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... in some ways a singularly unlucky man. A place for him, and that a high one, ought to have been quite secure in the next Unionist Cabinet. Now he will never hold office under any government, and yet no one can say that his collapse was in ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... Dolly, had been attacked by violent pains early in the evening; and about nine o'clock there had been a sudden rise of temperature, with slight delirium, followed by a complete and alarming collapse. Dr Farquharson had been sent for, hot-foot, from Stridge's platform, and his first proceeding had been ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... should have dreamed about it, schemed for it, bartered my immortal soul for it. But—if I gave it to Matthew, what was there for Moreton? A steam locomotive caught my eye, almost as elaborate. Forcing my way through the doors, I captured a salesman, and from a state bordering on nervous collapse he became galvanized into an intense alertness and respect when he understood my desires. He didn't know the price of the objects in question. He brought the proprietor, an obsequious little German who, on learning ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... admit, but I was coming in after lunch, and she staggered into the hall. I thought she was drunk at first, but it was collapse. I couldn't leave her as she was, so I brought her up here and gave her your lunch. She was fainting from want of food. She went fast asleep ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... less real than it seemed, but helped to steady one who was holding herself together with a struggle, on the verge of nervous collapse. ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... came on the ears of the Dictator and Hamilton. For a moment or two the senses of both were paralysed. It is not easy for most of us, who have not been through the cruel suffocation of a dynamite explosion, to realise completely how the crushed collapse of the nervous system leaves mind, thought, and feeling absolutely prostrate before the mere shrillness of sound. We are not speaking now of the cases in which serious harm is done—of course anyone can understand that—but only of the cases, after all, and in even the best carried ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... of the party showing signs of collapse was the unfortunate Freddie, who, shaken up in his small cage for three days in an ekka, seemed in piteous plight, feathers (what there were of them) ruffled and unkempt, and eyes dim and half closed. Poor dear, it was only sleep he wanted, for ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the disk before Jimmy did. She screamed and pointed skyward, her twin braids standing straight out in the wind like the ropes on a bale of cotton, when smokestacks collapse and a savage howling sends the river ghosts scurrying ...
— The Mississippi Saucer • Frank Belknap Long
... me without my noticing him. I was so petrified by what he had said. I was in such a state of collapse that in less than an hour all the liquids in my body must have escaped. I, a common soldier in the army of a petty sovereign like the duke, who only existed by the horrible traffic in human flesh which he carried on after the manner of the ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... favorable for salamanders, for it was in such sites that we found notably large numbers of the animals and most of the clutches of eggs that we collected; this kind of log is not frequently found, for its wood is saturated with water and completely punky and nearly ready for final collapse. ...
— Natural History of the Salamander, Aneides hardii • Richard F. Johnston
... passion from full bloom to withering since he saw her last. When he went away from her to fulfil his sentence, he had felt that identity with her a man must recognise for a wife passionately beloved. He had left her in a state of nervous collapse, an ignoble, querulous breakdown, due, he had to explain to himself, to her nature, delicately strung. There was nothing heroic about the way she had taken his downfall. But the exquisite music of her, he further ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... of the most vehement fever, from the rigor of the severest cold fit to the fiercest excitement which the heart and brain will bear, succeeded by a perspiration proportionately violent; and hence sometimes inadvertently they lose a patient by the production of a sudden sinking like the collapse of cholera. Some tact and skill, therefore, are requisite for the safe employment of such an agency as ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... they are based ultimately on credit, or faith, rather than the cash of irrefragable conviction. The whole universe is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh: it is meteoric—suspended in midair; ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... on the grease-mud, as there lurk the skid-demon. Press the brake of the foot as you roll around the corners to save the collapse and tie-up. ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... not meet with success, and during the afternoon the men would sit bucking away in their tents, and refuse to adapt themselves to the idea of a siesta. Moreover, the Tommy is obstinate by nature and does not like to give in. He goes on marching in the sun, even though he feels bad, and the collapse is swift ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... long, narrowed at the base into a short stem-like part and usually hairy there, the edges perhaps wavy but entire. The expanse of the flower may be one and one-half to two inches. The brush of stamens, erect in the center, sheds its pollen and the anthers collapse. ...
— The Apple-Tree - The Open Country Books—No. 1 • L. H. Bailey
... our case. We have a rebellion to crush,—a rebellion large in its proportions, threatening in its aspect, but lacking in elements of real strength, and liable to collapse at any moment. To put down this rebellion is the sole object and purpose of the war. We are not fighting to enrich a certain number of army contractors, nor to give employment to half a million of soldiers, or promotion to the officers who command them. Neither are we fighting to emancipate ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... collection of miscellaneous nails and screws out to a bare patch of earth in front of the chicken-yard. They were the Nail People, the most reckless band of mercenaries the world has ever known, led by old General Door-Hinge, who was somewhat inclined to collapse in the middle, but possessed of the unusual virtue of eyes in both ends of him. He had explored the deepest canyons of the woodshed, and victoriously led his ten-penny warriors against the sumacs in the vacant lot beyond Irving ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... after the collapse of an attempt of the people of the "Western District" to set up an independent State by the name of Franklin, the North Carolina Assembly erected the three counties included in the Cumberland settlement into a superior ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... Allied fleet withdrew he was lying beside a short, thickset and dark-haired Associated Press reporter with a German name and tortoise-shell eyeglass and was telling that same reporter that unless REINFORCEMENTS arrived AT ONCE the defenses would collapse!... The next day he was at Headquarters informing the General in command that BUT FOR HIM the Turkish forces would have surrendered!... He is NOW wearing a number of decorations for his military skill and bravery.... Such are the fortunes of ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... suppose, more accurate, language, and it is a statement of the universal law of human history that, after any epoch of great aspirations and strong excitement of the noblest parts of human nature, there has always come a reaction of corruption and a collapse from weariness. What did 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity' end in? A guillotine. What do all similar epochs end in, when they do not take the Christ to march ahead of them? An utter disgust and disillusion, and a despair of all progress. That is why wild revolutionists in their youth are ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Outside upon the deserted deck I was met by a steward who ministered to me until such a time as I was able to leave the rail and with his help to drag my exhausted frame to the privacy of my stateroom where I remained in a state of semi-collapse, and quite supine, for the greater part of the ensuing ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... connection between the man who had and the man who did embody the same personality. The cogitations of the first half hour in the white counterpaned bed that night left Elizabeth in a maze of wonder over his physical as well as mental collapse. ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... the highest refinement. They are far from overrating their children's talents; in fact, they are anxious about Felix's future, and to know whether his gift will prove sufficient to lead to a noble and truly great career. Will he not, like so many other brilliant children, suddenly collapse? I asserted my conscientious conviction that Felix would ultimately become a great master, that I had not the slightest doubt of his genius; but again and again I had to insist on my opinion before they ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... Millions of people do survive as outsiders, as do the planetary colonists who only have limited access so far to social telepathy. The System has built into it defenses against Subscribers who lack confidence in it—if it didn't it would collapse. But people in the System are not forced to remain there. They can will themselves out any time they close their minds to it, as I did. But they don't want to will themselves out of it—you certainly didn't—and their comfortable inertia keeps everything going. ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... Marshall," and he spoke more seriously, "pardon my giving you advice, but you have had a hard morning and you will feel better, later on, for a little food. As for me, I have had nothing since yesterday, and shall collapse without it. Suppose I go to the house and scrape up some sort of a lunch. Won't you come there ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... more balls of Challis's over, for Billy Silver's collapse had occurred at the third delivery. Fenn mistimed the first. Two hours' writing indoors does not improve the eye. The ball missed the leg stump ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... still. He lifted himself upon his elbow and looked at her with wondering eyes. She stood over him, looking on the verge of collapse. Slowly she came down to him, half kneeling, ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory |
