|
|
|
More "Falter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... would advise you to do is what I would unhesitatingly do myself were I in your predicament, what I would even join you in doing were I younger by thirty years than I happen to be, and had no wife or family to think about and make me falter and lose courage on the brink of every extra hazardous adventure; and it is this. I would recommend you to draw the whole of your money out of the bank, buy a good wagon and a team of salted oxen, invest about twenty pounds in beads, copper wire, and ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... born.— To-morrow I intend to leave for ever Her whom I love—the sacred walls I hate, In some far distant land to die unheeded. My Isidora has desired my presence, And strange, admits me in the open day. Within an hour of this she will receive me, Then must I falter out my last adieu. This evening also I must ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... else: "May I smoke?" She met it, for encouragement, with her "My dear!" again, and then, while he struck his match, she had just another minute to be nervous—a minute that she made use of, however, not in the least to falter, but to reiterate with a high ring, a ring that might, for all she cared, reach the pair inside: ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... the arm of flesh had faltered, the strong staff had broken, and broken, too, only a moment, as it were, before it was to have been hers in name as well as in spirit. Naturally, Ester had expected that the young creature, so suddenly shorn of her best and dearest, would falter and faint, and utterly fail. And when, looking on, she saw the triumph of the Christian's faith, rising even over death, sustained by no human arm, and yet wonderfully, triumphantly sustained, even while she bent for the last time over that which was to have ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... "if I did try to turn my words with the Scottish or French ring, I wot that the sight of the Queen's Majesty and my anxiety would drive out from me all I should strive to remember, and I should falter and utter mere folly; and if she saw I was deceiving her, there would be no hope at all. Nay, how could I ask God Almighty to bless my doing with a lie ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their efforts. They throw down between the wall and the tower, pots of burning oil, blazing wood, and Greek fire. They fortify the wall with mattresses of lighted straw until it seems one sheet of flame. The tower approaches this barricade of fire, but the smoke and flame stifle the Crusaders. They falter and fall back. ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... not falter nor her eyes droop. Curiously regarding him, she seemed immersed in the solution of the problem as ...
— Iole • Robert W. Chambers
... which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... life. But here I am drifting into an error against which I warned the reader,—of making an entity of a conception. People are patient or impatient, but not necessarily throughout. There are men and women who fuss and fume over trifles who never falter or fret when their larger purposes are blocked or deferred. Some cannot stand detail who plan wisely and with patience. Vice versa, there are meticulous folk, little people, whose petty obstacles are met with patience ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... eagle soaring high above the mists of the earth, winning its daring flight against a midday sun till the contemplation becomes too dazzling for humanity, and mortal eyes gaze after it in vain." Here the orator was noticed to falter and lose the thread of his speech, and sat down after some vain attempts to regain it; the judge remarking: "The next time, sir, you bring an eagle into Court, I should recommend you ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... do not say so,' exclaimed Miss Temple, very earnestly; 'do not speak in that tone of sacrifice. There is no need of sacrifice; there shall be none. I will not, I do not falter. Be you firm. Do not desert me in this moment of trial. It is for support I speak; it is for consolation. We are bound together by ties the purest, the holiest. Who shall sever them? No! Digby, we will be happy; but I am interested ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... brightness, in the center of which two supple figures swayed and heaved. The red light smiting the faces of the two showed great drops of sweat, the swell of toil-hardened muscles on the corded arms, and the rise of each straining chest. There was not a clash nor a falter, but, flash after flash, the blades came down chunking into the ever-widening notch. Summers had seen sword play in Montreal armories, and had heard the ax clang often on the side of Western firs, but—for Thurston was fighting to stave off ruin—this grim struggle in the face of ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... to his place at the table, still laughing in apparent enjoyment of the jest he had just heard. He saw McKeever's ferretlike glance of interrogation and distrust—a thief's distrust of an honest man—but Ronicky's good nature did not falter in outward seeming for an instant. He swept up his hand, bet a hundred, with apparently foolish recklessness, on three sevens, and then had to buy fresh ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... merely wants me as a desirable addition to his furniture—and I, why sometimes I think I hate him. But, oh! my dear, if you'd seen my Father's face; seen the dawning of a wonderful hope. . . . I just couldn't think of anything except him—and so I went on lying, and I didn't falter. Gradually he straightened up; twenty years seemed to slip ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... Professor. One of them lashed out and took him by the thighs in a crushing grasp. But the Professor had the bird by the throat. Both of his hands were free. Back, he forced its head, back. The mechanism seemed to falter in the attack, as if bewildered. Across the exposed throat the Professor drew the gleaming blade. Flesh, tendons and arteries gave, blood spurted, and in the same moment the tentacles fell away from Talbot and the Professor and withdrew with a dull clang. The Professor released ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... Again, those rags and cloak right tragical, The very garb for sketching beggars in! But sweet Euripides, a boon, I pray thee. Give me the moving rags of some old play; I've a long speech to make before the Chorus, And if I falter, why ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... straightway began writing. For two hours nearly he wrote away steadily, rarely changing or erasing a word, stopping only to repoint the lead of his pencil. Methodically as a machine he covered sheet after sheet with his fine old-fashioned script. Never for one instant did he hesitate or falter. ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... harrowing shape, when they think of loved ones left helpless and destitute behind them. Riches cannot remove the pang of bereavement, but alas! for 'the comfortless troubles of the needy, and because of the deep sighing of the poor.' And yet the brave fellows never hang back and never falter. There ought to be, there is amongst them, a trust in the ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... drapes with duty. Sometimes he waits upon me like a maid, Silent with watchful eyes. Oh, would to Heaven, He used me like a slave bought in the market! Yes, used me roughly! So, I were his own; And words of tenderness would falter in, Relenting from the sternness of command. But I am not enough for him: he needs Some high-entranced maiden, ever pure, And thronged with burning thoughts of God and him. So, as he loves me not, his deeds for me Lie on me like ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... in his grace, in his dignity, in his tenderness, that Evander felt his heart in his mouth and he tried not to falter in his words. ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... wrought He charged the young men to uplift and bind her, As ye lift a wild kid, high above the altar, Fierce-huddling forward, fallen, clinging sore To the robe that wrapt her; yea, he bids them hinder The sweet mouth's utterance, the cries that falter, —His curse ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... had brought a flood of rich colour into her face, and a lively hope sparkled in her eyes, and the sound of her voice was like any peal of marriage bells for gaiety. Yet now and then her tongue would falter, and she would strain a wistful glance along the road before us as fearing she did hope too much. However, coming to an inn, we made enquiry, and learnt that a man such as we described had surely passed the house ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... his faults and failures, there still remains more than enough with which to defy what Lord Rosebery once called 'the body-snatchers of history, who dig up dead reputations for malignant dissection.' If only that he imparted, in a black time, when it appeared but too likely that the Alliance might falter and succumb from mere sick-headache, his own defying, ardent, and invincible spirit to a tired, puzzled, distracted and distrustful nation; if only that he dispelled the vapours, inspired a new hope and resolution, brought the British people to that temper which makes small men great, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... that their pursuers were slowly but surely gaining on them. Barbara saw it too, and she redoubled her prayers to the Virgin, and both she and her lover with words and caresses strove to keep up the courage in their horse's heart. The good steed was of the sort whose spirit does not falter until strength is gone, and he seemed to understand that these people on his back were under some mighty need. For with unwavering pace he kept up his long, swift gallop, notwithstanding his double burden and the distance he had travelled ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... intelligence the method of a deep, patiently pursued course of crime. Her father's claims, to which her deaf ears had been turned in the ardor of youth, came now with terrible force to win instant conviction. She would not falter in the crisis. The man should be given a hearing—brief, to be sure—but ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... however, that the strongest characters will at times falter and fall, and so it was with Mrs. Upton and her resolution finally. There came a time when the pressure was too strong to ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... Party, largely, I believe, through political considerations, had unalterably taken sides with Ulster. The Liberal Party were irresolute, wavering, pusillanimous. Mr Redmond's followers began to be uneasy—they commenced to falter in their blind faith that they had only to trust Asquith ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 5 The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes abroad ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... never falter when the close comes round, Or leave the substance to preserve the sound; You never wander after words that fly, For all the words you need before you lie. But I, who—smarting for my sins of late— With itch of rhyme ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... soon," she said, "Who wouldst not hear the rede I read For thine and not for my sake, sped In vain as waters heavenward shed From springs that falter and depart Earthward. God bids not thee believe Truth, and the web thy life must weave For even this sword to close and cleave Hangs ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... station. And, as the sensitive cells in the head received the signals from the visor-screens and the radio-speakers the arms shot about the key-boards and pressed the proper buttons just as our men are doing now. The work of the world went on, without a falter, with only the master machine to direct it. Yet a year ago, when I first spoke to you of the idea, you ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... God is God and right is right, Right the day shall win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin." ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... colour dies, the fervid morning glow Is gone from off the foreland; slow, slow, Even slower than the fount of human tears To empty, the consuming shadow nears That Time is casting on the worldly show Of pomp and glory. But falter not;—below That thought is based ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... been dearer to her than at that moment, when his brilliant eyes seemed to search her soul and magnetize her; yet she did not falter and the aching of her heart was a goad ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... one supreme, sublime encounter? His heart was high, his voice rang clear and exultant, his eyes flashed joy and fire and defiance in the face of a thousand deaths two weeks ago. But here in the presence of a slender girl he can do naught but falter and stammer ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... thing I haven't a heart to fail me," murmured the Scarecrow, glancing up fearfully and clinging more tightly to the pole. "Though I fall, I shall not falter. But where under the earth am I falling to?" At that minute, a door opened far below, ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... up!" howled the excited little man, growing still worse, as the colonel seemed to shrink and falter. "Why, I can lick you in a fraction of no time! You've been making lots of fighting talk, and now it's my turn. Get up and put up ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... prospect to us poor travelers worn out with the fatigue of the journey." The cold was beginning to be severe, and many of the men were suffering from scurvy and unfit for service, which increased the hardship for all; yet they did not falter but pressed bravely on, and on the 26th emerged from the mountains by the Arroyo Seco, which they named the Canada del Palo Caido[24] (Valley of the Fallen Tree), and camped on the Salinas river, which they christened Rio de San Elizario. From ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... their shortened muskets, appeared before the fort and asked admission, they were taken aback to find the whole garrison under arms. On their way from the gate to the council house they were obliged to march literally between rows of glittering steel. Well might even Pontiac falter. With uneasy glances, the party crowded into the council room, where Gladwyn and his officers sat waiting. "Why," asked the chieftain stolidly, "do I see so many of my father's young men standing in ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... did not falter; they plodded on as steadily as before. Then, after two hours of rapid marching, came the sudden command to halt. A moment later and a squadron of British cavalry came into view, retreating before a ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... steady regard held, nothing moved about the man, not even the hand into which the poor disfigured chin had fallen. Ransom suppressed a sigh. His task was likely to prove a blind one. He had a sense of stumbling in the dark, but the gaze he had hoped to see falter compelled him to proceed, and he told his story without subterfuge ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... seemed to her that they must. And so she bewailed them, as women will even when their hearts are brave and when their devotion is untarnished and undimmed. She yearned for the dawning of the Day of Peace, of the Reign of Love, but her courage did not falter. Still amid her tears she clung to the idea that those whom the Cause ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... with Brandelaar's suggestion, Edith glanced at the man whom he had indicated with a movement of his head. Externally this robust old sea-dog was certainly not attractive, but his alarming appearance did not make Edith falter in her ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... have them; but I know not any tone So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow: Dost think men would go mad without a moan, If they knew any way to borrow A pathos like ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... the face of the universe, Never to falter and never to swerve; Toil for it!—bleed for it!—if there be need for it, Stretch every sinew and ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... stemm'd the tide, And, thus, they dealt the combat, side by side; Just in this place, the mouldering walls they scaled, Nor bolts, nor bars, against their strength avail'd; Here PROBUS came, the rising fray to quell, And, here, he falter'd forth his last farewell; And, here, one night abroad they dared to roam, While bold POMPOSUS bravely staid at home;" 180 While thus they speak, the hour must soon arrive, When names of these, like ours, alone survive: Yet a few years, one general ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... the King! Two days later his throne began to tremble and it took all the King's horses and all the King's men to keep him in state[1064]." On April 1, the flurry of speculation had begun to falter and the loan was below par; on the second it dropped to 3-1/2 discount, and by the third the promoters and the Southern diplomats were very anxious. They agreed that someone must be "bearing" the bonds and suspected Adams of supplying Northern funds for that purpose[1065]. Spence wrote ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... to lower Our standards in the dust; To meet a savage enemy Whose words the world can't trust. To guard our foolish tempers— Or keep them out of sight! To never falter, doubt, or fear ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... inclination, nor to contend in wine, nor to bind my temples with fresh flowers, delight me [any longer]. But why; ah! why, Ligurinus, does the tear every now and then trickle down my cheeks? Why does my fluent tongue falter between my words with an unseemly silence? Thee in my dreams by night I clasp, caught [in my arms]; thee flying across the turf of the Campus Martius; thee I pursue, O cruel one, through ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... joined him; and he began to think of returning, and publishing the invitation he had received from those lords, as his justification for having come at all. At this crisis, some of the gentry joined him; the Royal army began to falter; an engagement was signed, by which all who set their hand to it declared that they would support one another in defence of the laws and liberties of the three Kingdoms, of the Protestant religion, and of the Prince of Orange. From that time, the cause received no check; the greatest towns in England ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... herself evidently intended to conceal. But he knew why Ethne wished to conceal it. She wished him never to suspect that she retained any love for Harry Feversham. On the other hand, however, he did not falter from his own belief. Marriage between a man crippled like himself and a woman active and vigorous like Ethne could never be right unless both brought more than friendship. He turned ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... known what caused the sharpness in his master's voice, he would not have been so grieved—or, rather, he would have been grieved for a different reason. As it was he could only falter miserably: ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... begun, the girl became absorbed in the game. All memory of Sayre, if there indeed had been any to make her falter in her purpose, now departed. She was a huntress pure and simple, silent, furtive, adroit, intent upon her quarry. There came a kind of fierceness into her concentration; the joy of the chase thrilled her as she crept noiselessly through the woods, describing a circle, crossing the ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... be abolished, and must eventually be abolished; and that the only question about its abolition is a question of time. [192] But here is the peril,—that a good many persons in Congress and out of Congress will falter in their conviction before the determined stand of the South,—the determination, that is to say, to break off from the Union rather than submit to the Wilmot Proviso. And I do most seriously fear, for my part, that they would hold to that determination. But ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... Traveling Salesman's hand shook slightly with the memory, and his joggled mind drove him with unwonted carelessness to pin price mark after price mark in the same soft, flimsy mesh of pink lisle. But the grin on his lips did not altogether falter. ...
— The Indiscreet Letter • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... His free grace doth cover, My sins He doth wash away; These feet which shrink and falter Shall enter the ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... greatest of men; sometimes our voices falter, and sentences are not finished. We have found many things alike about the Great Ones. First they had mothers who dreamed, and then they had poverty to acquaint them with sorrow. They came up hard, and they were ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... her happy lot. The women run up to her to receive her blessing, and she knows that afterward crowds of votaries will daily frequent her shrine. The Brahmans compliment her on her heroism. (Sometimes drugs are administered to stifle her fears.) She knows, too, that it is useless to falter at the last moment, as a change of heart would be an eternal disgrace, not only to herself but to her relatives, who, therefore, stand around with sabres and rifles to intimidate her. In short, with satanic ingenuity, every possible ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... no matter how low she has fallen, who cannot find a dupe ready to defend against the world an honour of which no vestige remains. A man who doubts the virtue of the most virtuous woman, who shows himself inexorably severe when he discovers the lightest inclination to falter in one whose conduct has hitherto been above reproach, will stoop and pick up out of the gutter a blighted and tarnished reputation and protect and defend it against all slights, and devote his life to the ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... returning late from a lodge meeting which had wound up with a little supper in the banquet hall, felt a queer stir through his members to see the Higgins place alter its usually placid countenance, falter, turn half round, and get down on its knees with an apparently disastrous collapse of its four walls and of everything within them. The short wide windows narrowed and lengthened with an effect of bodily agony as the ribs of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... carefully and tenderly, and while he repeated the three or four broken words in which Mistress Alison had tried to send a last message to Paul—for the end had come very suddenly—Mark himself found his voice falter, and his eyes fill with tears. Paul had, at that sight, cried a little; but his life at the House of Heritage seemed to have faded swiftly out of his thoughts; he was living very intently in the present, scaling, as it were, day by day, with earnest effort, the steep ladder ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... seems to ye Not so much strife as certain victory— A glory ending in eternity. Life is before ye—oh! if ye could look Into the secrets of that sealed book, Strong as ye are in youth, and hope, and faith, Ye should sink down, and falter, "Give us death!" Could the dread Sphinx's lips but once disclose, And utter but a whisper of the woes Which must o'ertake ye, in your lifelong doom, Well might ye cry, "Our cradle be our tomb!" Could ye foresee your spirit's broken wings, Earth's brightest triumphs what despised things, Friendship ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... her captive Martyrs shed; By each pale Orphan's feeble cry for bread; 30 By ravag'd Belgium's corse-impeded Flood, And Vendee steaming still with brothers' blood!' And if amid the strong impassion'd Tale, Thy Tongue should falter and thy Lips turn pale; If transient Darkness film thy aweful Eye, 35 And thy tir'd Bosom struggle with a sigh: Science and Freedom shall demand to hear Who practis'd on a Life so doubly dear; Infus'd the unwholesome anguish drop by drop, Pois'ning the sacred stream they could not stop! 40 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... heavy work going through the drifts and keeping the right way over a plain that had the similarity of the sea, but the men did not falter. Jimmy Grayson was always looking into the darkness, striving to see the darker line or blur that would mark the hills, but he asked no questions. The snow ceased, and after a while low, black slopes appeared against the ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... oranges—responsibilities which Miss Gostrey took over with an alertness of action that matched her quick intelligence. She had before this weaned the expatriated from traditions compared with which the matutinal beefsteak was but the creature of an hour, and it was not for her, with some of her memories, to falter in the path though she freely enough declared, on reflexion, that there was always in such cases a choice of opposed policies. "There are times when to give them their ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... him for a moment with a look of honest inquiry in her eyes. His own did not falter. Their expression combined confidence ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... of oneself it is enough to think that one is becoming so. . . . Your hands tremble, your steps falter, tell yourself that all that is going to cease, and little by little it will disappear. It is not in me but in yourself that you must have confidence, for it is in yourself alone that dwells the force which can cure you. My part simply consists ...
— Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion • Emile Coue
... 'shall I Such riches lose, and still not die? Shall I not hang?—as I, in fact, Might justly do if cord I lack'd; But now, without expense, I can; This cord here only lacks a man.' The saving was no saving clause; It suffer'd not his heart to falter, Until it reach'd his final pause As full possessor of the halter,— 'Tis thus the miser often grieves: Whoe'er the benefit receives Of what he owns, he never must— Mere treasurer for thieves, Or relatives, or dust. But what say we about the trade In this ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... Edgington, noting a tendency to falter. "And now for the names and addresses of a few witnesses, and ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... up at him fearfully, but her voice did not falter. "I came to tell you that Derry loves you. He doesn't want your money, oh, you know that he doesn't want it. But he is going away to the—war, and he may be killed, so many ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... mourn, A foreign ancestry, had lately pledged His daughter to this brave, and now the village Made preparations for the marriage. There By the warm sea the maidens paid their court To Taka, who so soon would leave their gay Indifferent frolic lives to wed the grave Stern chief. She did not falter at the choice. Love which the maidens sang was but a word; She wished no better fate than to be mated To a strong warrior whom her heart held dear As friend to kind Akau. So she waited. In her ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... Fletcher's Hengo, Webster's Giovanni, and Landor's Caesarion. Of this princely trinity of boys the "bud of Britain" is as yet the most famous flower; yet even in the broken words of childish heroism that falter on his dying lips there is nothing of more poignant pathos, more "dearly sweet and bitter," than Giovanni's talk of his dead mother and all her sleepless nights now ended for ever in a sleep beyond tears or dreams. Perhaps ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... resemblance to no one she remembered, so she concluded she must be like the father, physically, whom they must all ignore absolutely. Try as she valiantly did, the old lady felt her quick-beating heart falter before Joan's earnest, searching gaze. It was a relief to turn to Nancy and permit her ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... island so as to penetrate at once into a section of luxuriant tropical nature, where we see the cactus in great variety, flowering trees, and ever-graceful palms, with occasional trees of the ceba family grown to vast size. Vegetation here, unlike human beings, seems never to grow old, never to falter in productiveness; crop succeeds crop, harvest follows harvest; it is an endless cycle of abundance. Miles upon miles of the bright, golden sugar-cane lie in all directions; among the plantations here and there is seen the little cluster of low buildings constituting the laborers' ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... part these ever-changing ideals play in our lives we shall never know, but certainly the part is not an insignificant one. And happy the youth who is able to look into the future and see himself approximating some worthy ideal. He has caught a vision which will never allow him to lag or falter in the pursuit of the flying goal which points the direction of ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... keenness of sense, too bitterly, the impotence of the hand and the vainness of the colour to catch one shadow or one image of the glory which God has revealed to him. He has dwelt and communed with Nature all the days of his life: he knows her now too well, he cannot falter over the material littlenesses of her outward form: he must give her soul, or he has done nothing, and he cannot do this with the flax, the earth, and the oil. 'I cannot gather the beams out of the east, ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... long, long night Is on me, and I've borne with pain So long, and hoped for help in vain. So frail am I, and blind and dazed; With scurvy sick, with silence crazed. Beneath the Arctic's heel of hate, Avid for Death I wait, I wait. Oh if I falter, fail to fight, Can you, dear comrade, blame me quite?" ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... anything else. But I think the explanation is that the Scotch are essentially such a devout people and live so closely within the shadow of death itself that they may without irreverence or pain jest where our lips would falter. Or else, perhaps they don't care a cuss whether Sandy MacDonald died or ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... It will now be my duty, in this part of my history, to tell what has hitherto remained untold, and to state the real motives and origin of the actions which I have already recounted. But, when undertaking this new task, how painful and hard will it be, to be obliged to falter and contradict myself as to what I have said about the lives of Justinian and Theodora: and particularly so, when I reflect that what I am about to write will not appear to future generations either credible or probable, especially when a long lapse of years shall ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... would establish them as an Affiliated Species ... and that would settle everything the way they would want it settled, without trouble. Some of them believed me. They decided to wait until I could talk to you. If it works out, fine! If it doesn't"—she felt her voice falter for an instant—"they're going ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... and the sheer cliff crumble, Till terrace and meadow the deep gulfs drink, Till the strength of the waves of the high tides humble The fields that lessen, the rocks that shrink, Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... her resolution would falter, Teresa drew her writing-desk towards her, and wrote a note so rapidly, and with so unsteady a hand, that there was little resemblance to her usual writing, and then sought for sleep-but in vain-and at the earliest possible hour she ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... double tongue may with a mortal touch Throw death upon thy sovereign's enemies. Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords. This earth shall have a feeling, and these stones Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king Shall falter under ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... ineligible to the Presidential chair, and he did not consequently feel hampered by what he might add in debate to his "record." He was a stalwart, farmer-like looking man, with that overcharged brain which made his tongue at times falter because he could not utter what his furious, fiery eloquence prompted. Entirely different in personal appearance and manner was Senator Pendleton, of Ohio, whose courteous deportment had won him the appellation of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... looking each other squarely in the face, and shook hands in silence. Tears were in the eyes of both men. But each felt that he was heeding the call of duty, and neither had ever been known to falter. Belton returned to his room and retired to rest. Bernard called his messenger and sent him for every man of prominence in ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... and swaying and swinging, like blossoms that bend to the breezes or showers, Now wantonly winding, they flash, now they falter, and, lingering, languish in radiant choir; Their jewel-girt arms and warm, wavering, lily-long fingers enchant through melodious hours, Eyes ravished with rapture, celestially panting, what passionate bosoms ...
— The Golden Threshold • Sarojini Naidu
... understand," replied the woman who had known happiness. And she closed her lips quickly, as if she feared that they might falter. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... interested by his agreeable small talk. It is so charming to hear great names mentioned familiarly by one personally acquainted with them; to learn that Palmerston and Lord John can breakfast like ordinary mortals. By and by, with a blush and a falter (for the mere matter of his personal provision for life seemed so paltry among these world-famed characters and their great deeds, that he was almost ashamed to allude to it), Robert Wynn ventured to make his request, that ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... as a matter of calculation, he is willing to aim at on such terms. No man flies to the gaming-table in a paroxysm. The first visit requires the courage of a forlorn hope. The first stake will make the lightest mind anxious, the firmest hand tremble, and the stoutest heart falter. After the first stake, it is all a matter of calculation and management, even in games of chance. Night after night will men play at rouge et noir, upon what they call a system, and for hours their attention never ceases, any more ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... after all, and Nancy's work was rectified, and Rose Anstey blew her nose and looked disagreeable, and some of them talked; so that presently all became more animated, and the sky lightened, and the day was less trying. Only Sally's head continued to ache, and her spirits to falter. But she no longer sighed for Toby. A curious dread of him came into her consciousness, which she could not understand. She was afraid. She felt defensive towards him, and explanatory. Under her ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... he thought, "thou art too weak To try the Kills and drown, or falter, The while from shore their marksmen seek My heart. (Once o'er the Chesapeake I paddled oarless.) Lest the halter Be ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... shot at her innermost fastnesses could hardly have been made. Robbed of breath and senses by the suddenness of it, and with dry lips, Harriet could only falter ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... falter'd?—I'll swallow such inpudent flams When the ears of the sow yield us purses of silk; When there's no Devil's Dust in the Cotton Lord's shams, And the truck-master's pail holds unmystified milk. Not a Tory, I swear, Will be forced to declare In the face of the Nation's assembled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Sister Constance saw at once that the child's health had deteriorated in these last months. She sat down, and with Angela on her lap, questioned anxiously. Cherry had no complaints—she always was like this in the spring. How was her foot? As usual, a falter. Was it really? Well, yes, she thought so. And then, as the motherly eyes looked into hers, there came a burst of the ready tears; and 'Oh, please don't talk ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Orangeman swore, "Orange and Green must carry the day!" Orange! Orange! Bless the Orange! Tories and Whigs grew pale with dismay, When from the North Burst the cry forth, "Orange and Green will carry the day!" No surrender! No Pretender! Never to falter and never betray— With an Amen, We swear it again, ORANGE AND ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... edge of the tracks, thought of Emily and a terrible consciousness of the sorrow she would feel if anything were to happen to him compressed his heart. But he did not falter. He was aware of the jangle of a fiercely rung bell, the hiss of steam, and a blinding glare; he could feel on his cheek the breath of the iron monster. With set teeth he threw himself forward, stooped, and reached out over the rail: in ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... hoofs outside, but no one looked round, and none came in. A shadow fell across the open door. At a Dominus Vobiscum you might have seen the ministrant falter; there might have been a second or two of check in his chant, but he mastered it without effort, and turned again with displayed hands to his affair. The choir of white hoods, however, watched the shadow at the west door. Isoult saw nothing and heard ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... been killed. The plague propagated itself; for the only hope for those cried out upon was to confess their guilt and turn informers. Thus no one was safe. Mr. Willard, pastor of the Old South, who began to falter, was threatened; the wife of Mr. Hale, pastor of Beverly, who had been one of the great leaders of the prosecutions, was denounced; Lady Phips herself was named. But the race who peopled New England had a mental vigor which even the theocracy could not ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... lawless disregard of fair elections, both north and south, the criminal gangs that disgrace our cities, and its low tone on all questions affecting good order and morals. In my view the choice is as plain as the sunlight of heaven in favor of the Republican party. It may falter for a time in meeting new questions, it may be disturbed by passing clouds, and, like all human agents, may yield to expediency or be tarnished with the corruption and faults of individuals, yet it is ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... national and individual difficulties it is indispensable, in order that courage may not waver, that hope may not falter—it is indispensable that there should be, as already urged, a clear intellectual comprehension of the full nature of the good thing for which battle is waged. The brilliant vision of attainable good must be preserved undimmed—ever present in sharp and radiant outline to the mental ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... "Then tell me what your business is, before I give you leave to go." "Lady, my father, before he departed this life and died, begged me not to fail to go to Britain as soon as I should be made a knight. I should not wish for any reason to disregard his command. I must not falter until I have accomplished the journey. It is a long road from here to Greece, and if I should go thither, the journey would be too long from Constantinople to Britain. But it is right that I should ask leave from you to whom I altogether belong." Many a covert sigh and sob marked the ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... the glory, and the ear had fed upon the harmony and the praise, then I thought and felt very differently. Sorrow and compassion for these gay multitudes were at my heart; prophetic forebodings of disaster, danger, and ruin to those, to whose sacred cause I had linked myself, made my tongue to falter in its speech, and my limbs to tremble. I thought that the superstition, that was upheld by the wealth and the power, whose manifestations were before me, had its roots in the very centre of the earth—far too deep down for a few like myself ever to reach them. I was like one, whose last hope ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... occurrences of the past day, and yet each thought of nothing else. They knelt down, side by side, as they had done from infancy, repeating the usual prayers as they had been accustomed to do. Helen's voice did not falter, but continued its unvaried tone to the end: Rose (Helen thought) delivered the petition of "lead us not into temptation" with deeper feeling than usual; and instead of rising when Helen rose, and exchanging with her the kiss of ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... last door,' said Clara—'the last we can reach. There are more in the towers, but they are higher up. What shall we do? Unless we go down a chimney, I don't know what's to be done.' Still her voice did not falter, and my courage did not give way. She stood for a few moments, silent. I stood regarding her, as one might listen for a ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... Then only did Arthur falter for an instant, and the hound was at his throat. The powerful jaws closed with a snap upon his shoulder, and you might have heard the sharp fangs grate against the bone. The shock of the spring brought Arthur to the ground, and man and brute rolled over together, ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... Court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day. This Court was not created by the Constitution for such purposes. Higher and graver trusts have been confided to it; and it must not falter in the path of duty!" Would to God it had not faltered in the path of duty, that it had been true to those higher and graver trusts! Would that it had not been the mere reflex of popular opinion or the passion of the day, that it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... serpent rolled over into the ditch, and Siegfried was covered by the folds of his huge body. He did not fear or falter. He thrust Balmung, his wonderful sword, deep into the monster's body. The blood poured forth in such torrents that the ditch began ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... conscience you have, in your passions and your prides. And this, I will add, that I die a Queen, but I would rather have died the wife of my cousin Culpepper or of any other simple lout that loved me as he did, without regard, without thought, and without falter. He sold farms to buy me bread. You would not imperil a little alliance with a little King o' Scots to save my life. And this I tell you, that I will spend the last hours of the days that I have to live in considering ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... steadily on with the work. M. Simon was breathless with excitement, and her father hardly knew where he was. In his haste, he turned two leaves of the music-book at once. What a dreadful disaster! It was all over now. She would break down at once, if the accompaniment should falter. ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... battle flame, In fortress and in field, Our war-cry is thy holy name, Thy love our joy and shield! And if we falter, let thy power Thy stern avenger be, And God forget us in the hour We cease to ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... them to revolt, when the solemn farce of trying them for a crime which posterity will account a virtue had terminated, and when the verdict of "guilty" had gladdened the hearts of their accusers. The circumstances under which they spoke might well cause a bold man to falter. They were about parting for ever from all that makes life dear to man; and, for some of them, the sentence; which was to cut short the thread of their existence, to consign them to a bloody and ignominious death, to leave their bodies mutilated corpses, from which the rights of Christian burial ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... the quake messages were stacked yards high in all the telegraph offices waiting to be sent throughout the world. Conditions warranted utter despair and panic, but through it all the people were trying to be brave and falter not. ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... you, although I have always from my earliest youth had an awe and love of Homer, which even now makes the words falter on my lips, for he is the great captain and teacher of the whole of that charming tragic company; but a man is not to be reverenced more than the truth, and therefore I ...
— The Republic • Plato
... townspeople stood up against a wall and shot; they saw their townspeople killed by shells. The cornucopia of war's horrors was emptied at their door. And women of a provincial town, who had led peaceful, cloistered lives, they did not blench or falter in the presence of ghastliness which only men are supposed to have ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... caught the music, as it softly floats along— Ah! the soul-entrancing music of sweet Lula Johnson's song! If my feet shall ever falter, it shall cheer me on my way; Ay, sustain and give me comfort,—make my feeble spirit gay. All we need to have, my brothers, in our war of peace 'gainst strife, Is the cadence of sweet music sprinkled in to sweeten ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... all kinds of people, they so uniformly favor education? Why, if they must err, do they err so pertinaciously in one direction? How does it happen, that, summon as many witnesses as you please, and cross-question them as severely as you can, they never falter in this testimony, that, where intelligence abounds, there physical vigor does much more abound? that, where education is broad and generous, there the years are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This like thy glory, Titan! is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... and right is right, And truth the day must win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... fear to lose her way; Nay, could go near the precipiee, nor dread A failing caution or a giddy head; She'd fix her eyes upon the roaring flood, And dance upon the brink where danger stood. 'Twas nature all, she judged, in one so young, To drop the eye and falter in the tongue; To be about to take, and then command His daring wish, and only view the hand: Yes! all was nature; it became a maid Of gentle soul t'encourage love afraid; - He, so unlike the confident and bold, Would ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... have, in your passions and your prides. And this, I will add, that I die a Queen, but I would rather have died the wife of my cousin Culpepper or of any other simple lout that loved me as he did, without regard, without thought, and without falter. He sold farms to buy me bread. You would not imperil a little alliance with a little King o' Scots to save my life. And this I tell you, that I will spend the last hours of the days that I have to live in considering of this simple ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... his incapacity for hope or goodness cast a shadow upon the courage of those who bear their burdens as if they were privileges? The optimist cannot fall back, cannot falter; for he knows his neighbor will be hindered by his failure to keep in line. He will therefore hold his place fearlessly and remember the duty of silence. Sufficient unto each heart is its own sorrow. He will take the iron claws of circumstance ...
— Optimism - An Essay • Helen Keller
... onslaught, made a feeble effort to get off, and then ran their boats ashore and fired them. They had but one chance, and that a desperate one, to bear down with reckless speed on the oncoming ships and ram them. Failing to do this, and beginning to falter, the ships came among them like dogs among a flock of sheep, willing enough to spare, had they understood the weakness of their foes, but thinking themselves to be in conflict with formidable iron-clad rams, an impression the Confederates had ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... building falter Can thy God thy griefs despise? 'Mid the ruins dark, an altar Fashion'd by His hands, ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... here and keenly watching everything, the light began to falter, and the latest gleam of sunset trembled with the breath of Spring among the buds and catkins. But the tall man continued his long, firm stride, as if the watch in his pocket were the only thing worth heeding. Until, as the shadows lost ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Mark told him very carefully and tenderly, and while he repeated the three or four broken words in which Mistress Alison had tried to send a last message to Paul—for the end had come very suddenly—Mark himself found his voice falter, and his eyes fill with tears. Paul had, at that sight, cried a little; but his life at the House of Heritage seemed to have faded swiftly out of his thoughts; he was living very intently in the ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Its direst agonies and meanest fears, For that one kiss. Away with fond remorse! Here, on the brink of ruin, we two stand; Lock hands with me, and brave the fearful plunge! Thou canst not name a terror so profound That I will look or falter from. Be bold! I know thy love—I knew it long ago— Trembled and fled from it. But now I clasp The peril to my breast, and ask ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... mountain goat, as good a climber almost as a cat, Buck followed the flying horseman over perilous rock rims and across deep-cut creek beds. Pantherlike he climbed up the steep creek sides without hesitation, for the round-up had taught him never to falter at stiff going so long as his rider put him ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... as certain victory— A glory ending in eternity. Life is before ye—oh! if ye could look Into the secrets of that sealed book, Strong as ye are in youth, and hope, and faith, Ye should sink down, and falter, "Give us death!" Could the dread Sphinx's lips but once disclose, And utter but a whisper of the woes Which must o'ertake ye, in your lifelong doom, Well might ye cry, "Our cradle be our tomb!" ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... were the deeds of men and the deeds of men always have an inward significance. In distant Philadelphia, on this very day, the Continental Congress had chosen as the Commander of their Army, General George Washington, a man whose clear vision looked into the realities of things and did not falter. On his way to the front four days later, dispatches reached him of the battle. He revealed the meaning of the day with, one question, "Did the militia fight?" Learning how those heroic men fought, he said, "Then the liberties of ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... to the house. He was not baffled. He knew that the struggle was yet to come; that, when she was alone, her faith in the far-off Christ would falter; that she would grasp at this work, to fill her empty hands and starved heart, if for no other reason,—to stifle by a sense of duty her unutterable feeling of loss. He was keenly read in woman's heart, this Knowles. ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... her own, had starved and sickened for the love which is their rightful food;—with senses bleared and deadened, she had heard them piteously wailing but for a morsel of that bread of life without which even the footsteps of the self-reliant, the strong and brave of heart, faint and falter by the way, and she had cruelly denied them that precious nutriment; she had given them life, but had robbed them of all that makes life endurable. Life's duties unfulfilled, life's high and holy aims trampled under the foot of sensual indulgence, living to blight instead of to bless! O woman, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... unhesitatingly do myself were I in your predicament, what I would even join you in doing were I younger by thirty years than I happen to be, and had no wife or family to think about and make me falter and lose courage on the brink of every extra hazardous adventure; and it is this. I would recommend you to draw the whole of your money out of the bank, buy a good wagon and a team of salted oxen, invest about twenty pounds in beads, copper wire, and Kafir 'truck' ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... go ahead of me in sacrificing yourself, Josiah. No, I will go fur ahead of what you or anybody else would do; it will most probable kill me, but I shall not falter." ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... MAN never grows so old as to be come either stale, juiceless, or unpalatable. The older he grows, the mellower and riper he becomes. His eyes may fail him, his step falter, and his big- mouthed shoes—"a world too wide for his shrunk shank"—may cluck and shuffle as he walks; his rheumatics may make great knuckles of his knees; the rusty hinges of his vertebrae may refuse cunningly to ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... to talk to you about." A fiery blush burned through her deep tan, but her low, clear voice did not falter and her eyes held his unflinchingly. "I know you better than you know yourself, as I've said before. You are killing yourself, but it isn't the work, frightfully hard and disheartening as it is, that is doing it—it's your anxiety for me and the uncertainty of everything. You haven't been able ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... have nests and the foxes holes, but the son of man hath nowhere to lay his head." The noblest thing He ever did was this—to walk from the house of Pilate to the crest of Calvary, with the cross upon His back and the railing mob behind Him and before, and never once to falter and complain. Hated and hooted by the multitudes who at one time followed Him gladly, deserted even by the twelve who had pledged to Him their lives, misunderstood, despised, condemned, spat upon—a stranger ...
— Heroes in Peace - The 6th William Penn Lecture, May 9, 1920 • John Haynes Holmes
... thinkest it better that we should serve thee needy than rich. What is more odious than such a wish? What more senseless than such a counsel? We recognise these as the treasures of our own homes, and having done so, shall we falter to pick them up? We were on our way to regain them by fighting, we were zealous to win them back by our blood: shall we shun them when they are restored unasked? Shall we hesitate to claim our own? Which is the greater ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... also falter here, as to the stating of the proposition; for in the beginning of your book, you state it thus: That the enduing men with inward real righteousness, or true holiness, was the ultimate end of our Saviour's coming into the world, still meaning the holiness we lost ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Arthur had been tempted to play the coward's part, to write to Lady Clementina for the pill, and to let the marriage go on as if there was no such person as Mr. Podgers in the world. His better nature, however, soon asserted itself, and even when Sybil flung herself weeping into his arms, he did not falter. The beauty that stirred his senses had touched his conscience also. He felt that to wreck so fair a life for the sake of a few months' pleasure would be a wrong thing ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... where is your idol's supplement? Who will be his lieutenant, who will be heir to his heritage of a cross bar and a rope? You are not so brisk as you were. Does your devotion falter? Were you ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... start along a new line of endeavour we resort to the distinctly obvious, and then announce that he brushed away the tears and laughed as gaily as any of them over the surprises that followed the one which momentarily caused him to falter. He was not given to looking upon the dark side of things. Even as he sat there at the head of the long table, he jocosely remarked to Diggs that he would have to borrow a saw from the janitor the next day and reduce the size of his board by five feet at least. Moreover, he could practice ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... to falter for a moment. She looked speculatively at the indignant old face opposite, then made a vague little gesture toward her hair, and dropped her eyes. "No," she said softly. "Don't—please." She raised her eyes once more and looked straight into Mrs. Oglethorpe's. The two women stood ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... that a cue was being pressed on her; but it was put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so incredible an air of ignoring what it led up to, that she could only falter out doubtfully: "Anything upsetting?" ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... all the vows ye've sworn At holy Becket's altar— Remember all the ills ye've borne, And scorn'd to shrink or falter— Remember every laurel'd field, Which saw the Crescent waving— Remember when compell'd to yield, Uncounted numbers braving: Remember these, remember too The cause ye strive for, ever; The Cross! the Holy Sepulchre! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... did not surrender; there were devotions, Count Hamilcar appeared at breakfast, pale and weary, but his conversation with the Professor did not falter. They spoke of the yellow race, and, as if even that were not sufficiently remote, of the Bismarck Archipelago. Embarrassed silence burdened the remaining company. Egon's and Moritz's places were vacant, for at the news of Billy's disappearance they had ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... came upon the good gray. His sight began to fail—his knees to falter. His teeth were entirely ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... of his train. At the siege of Illora, 1486, he obtained permission to lead the storming party. As his followers pressed onwards to the breach, they were received with such a shower of missiles as made them falter for a moment. "What, my men," cried he, "do you fail me at this hour? Shall we be taunted with bearing more finery on our backs than courage in our hearts? Let us not, in God's name, be laughed at as mere ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... fierce, contending forces. All that is egoistic in his nature cries out for a life of pride and power and joy. At best it is but little that he could ever do to serve the suffering multitude. And yet should he falter because he cannot gain for them the results of time? Is it not his part to take the single step in their service, though it can be no more than a step? In the excitement of this supreme hour of inward strife Sordello dies; but he dies a victor; like Paracelsus he also has "attained"; ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... in writing the lines. Why should my voice falter in repeating them? Depend on it, Shirley, no tear blistered the manuscript of 'The Castaway.' I hear in it no sob of sorrow, only the cry of despair; but, that cry uttered, I believe the deadly spasm passed from his heart, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... noting a tendency to falter. "And now for the names and addresses of a few witnesses, and we'll ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... this opportunity of detecting him in the midst of his fancied security. Do you know this, Sir, this pocket-book?'—'Yes, Sir,' returned he, with a face of impenetrable assurance, 'that pocket-book is mine, and I am glad you have found it.'—'And do you know,' cried I, 'this letter? Nay, never falter man; but look me full in the face: I say, do you know this letter?'—'That letter,' returned he, 'yes, it was I that wrote that letter.'—'And how could you,' said I, 'so basely, so ungratefully presume to write this letter?'—'And how came you,' ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... answers Surge and Deep doth call on Deep; This Line in Foam and Thunder issues forth, Spurred by the West or smitten by the North, Sombre in all its sullen Deeps, and all Clear at the Crest, and foaming to the Fall, The next with silver Murmur dies away, Like Tides that falter to ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... me not grow old. Ah, let Me not grow old, and falter In my delusion, or forget My heart was once an altar. Let me still think myself a star With these my rays about me; Pretend these green perspectives are ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... and bind her, As ye lift a wild kid, high above the altar, Fierce-huddling forward, fallen, clinging sore To the robe that wrapt her; yea, he bids them hinder The sweet mouth's utterance, the cries that falter, —His ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... moments before I could overcome my surprise enough to falter out, "You know my language? How? Who and ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... for all the Israelites and gathered the prophets together at Mount Carmel. Then Elijah came to the people and said, "How long are you going to falter between worshipping Jehovah or Baal? If Jehovah is the true God, follow him, but if Baal, then follow him." But the people were silent. Then Elijah said to the people, "I, even I only, am left as a prophet of Jehovah, but there are four hundred and fifty ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... my Dolly, You know, little daughter, Whom I love to dress neat, and see good), Suppose in my care of you, I were to falter, And let you get ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... build your temples on the wreck of Empire! Ha! do you start? and does some touch of shame redden the sallow cheeks that courage had left bloodless? and do ye grasp your daggers, and rear your drooping heads? are ye men, once again? Why should ye not? what do ye see, what hear, whereat to falter? What oracle, what portent? Now, by the Gods! methought they spoke of victory and glory. Once more, what do ye fear, or wish? What, in the name of Hecate and Hades! What ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... merely shooting arrows promiscuously, is actually improving for all that. He must strive to remember that not only is each and every point important in itself, but that all must coordinate, must be working well together. No matter how crisp the release, it avails not an [sic] the bow arm falter or the back muscles relax. Again like golf, one day one thing will be working well, and another day another; but it is only when they are all working well that the ball screams down the fairway ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... now, in proportion as the king should falter, the Commons would grow bold. The House immediately began to attack Laud and Strafford in their speeches. It is the theory of the British Constitution that the king can do no wrong; whatever criminality at any time attaches to the acts of his administration, belongs to his ...
— Charles I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... laudable undertaking. It is well we should understand each other, at once and forever, or even I some day might be tempted to make a fool of myself. Your excellent counsels, my dearest cousin, will be invaluable to me, should my lagging footsteps falter by the way. Edith! where have you learned to be so hard, so worldly, so—if you ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... appalled at the squalor of the neighborhood in which she finally found herself. Disgusted and revolted at the filth of Old Meg's abode, still not for an instant did she falter or hesitate. She ran down the steps to Old ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... well, both as my assistant and as thy partner, and thou mayest see that her comeliness is in no degree changed—And did the babe falter in this weary passage, or did she retard thy movements by her fretfulness? But I know thy nature, man; she hath been borne over many long miles of mountain-side and treacherous swamp, in thine own vigorous arms. Thou answerest not, Dudley!" exclaimed Ruth, taking the alarm, ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... must thou soon," she said, "Who wouldst not hear the rede I read For thine and not for my sake, sped In vain as waters heavenward shed From springs that falter and depart Earthward. God bids not thee believe Truth, and the web thy life must weave For even this sword to close and cleave Hangs heavy round ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... climbed and never stopped. It did not seem steep. His feet might have had eyes. He surmounted the wall, and, looking down into the ebony gulf pierced by one point of light, he lifted a menacing arm and shook it. Then he strode on and did not falter till he reached the huge shelving cliffs. Here he lost the trail; there was none; but he remembered the shapes, the points, the notches of rock above. Before he reached the ruins of splintered ramparts and jumbles of broken walls the moon topped the eastern slope of the mountain, ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... "He obeyed her summons, and brought me with him. And she was here only last night—and where has she gone? This must be the 'notorious,' the 'handsome.' Ah, Lucian Davlin, this is well; this nerves me for the worst! I shall not falter now. This is the first link in the chain that shall yet make your life ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... suggestion may be; lacking all flavour of the extraordinary as it does; without novelty and confessedly old-fashioned; we have but this to commend to all who waver and doubt, to all whose voices falter as they seek to utter the mighty affirmations of the Gospel:—That the way to win again the old assurance is to come back to the source of their sublime vocation, determined, whatever may befall, there to ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... blotting out his sight in scorching vapour, closing over his head, merciless and deadly. When she spoke of the deception as to Dain's death of which he had been the victim only that day, he glanced again at her with terrible eyes, and made her falter for a second, but he turned away directly, and his face suddenly lost all expression in a stony stare far away over the river. Ah! the river! His old friend and his old enemy, speaking always with the same voice as he runs from ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... her, or he would have seen her cheek white as wax, and her eye seeking his in dismayed inquiry. There was a pause; then she forced herself to falter—'Yes. I suppose it is very right—very ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a human life is saved, but it would prove a sad misfortune, indeed, should it cause you to falter in your high resolve and ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... all things issues from the original womb, For Nature works with a master hand in her own inner depths; She is art, alive and gifted with a splendid mind. Which fashions its own material, not that of others, And does not falter or doubt, but all by itself Lightly and surely, as fire burns and sparkles. Easily and widely, as light spreads everywhere, Never scattering its forces, but stable, quiet, and at one, Orders ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... comfort? Go to the Maiden's Chapter on the Main, I counsel you, go to your cousin Thurn. Seek in the hills a boy, light-curled as I, Buy him with gold and silver, to your breast Press him, and teach his lips to falter: Mother. And when he grows to manhood, show him well How men draw shut the eyelids of the dead. That is the only joy that lies ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... slowly came back. His face was stamped with quivering resolution. He did not falter. He had made up his mind to take his punishment. And mark you, the punishment was not for the original offence, but for the offence of running away. And in this, that tribal chieftain but behaved as behaves the exalted society in which he lived. We punish ...
— The Road • Jack London
... before Heaven, and in face of the world, I swear eternal fealty to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love. And who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt that oath that I take? Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if after all we should fail, be it so. We still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and adored of our hearts, in ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Northampton or Greenfield to see some person whom he called Tom, Dick, or Harry, but who knew the local feeling there; and after a week or two spent in that way, never giving his own opinion, talking as if he were all things to all men, seeming to hesitate and hesitate and falter and be frightened, so if you had met him and talked with him you would have said, if you did not know him well, that there was no more thought, nor more steadiness of purpose, or backbone in him than in an easterly cloud; but at length, ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... under the correction of the principles such motives could best produce. Her woman's love for Roswell Gardiner, alone troubled her otherwise happy and peaceful existence. That, indeed, had caused her more than once to falter in her way; but she struggled with the weakness, and had strong hopes of being able to overcome it. To accept of any other man as a husband, was, in her eyes, impossible; with the feelings she was fully conscious of entertaining towards him, it would ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... close and nestle yet, Ere, with faint breath, they falter out good-night, Her hand in his upon the coverlet Lies in the silver pathway ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... yon varlet could escape coming over some of them. Add this to the fact that yon varlet has got the king's navy after us, and marry! methinks we have full work cut out for us. Not that stout heart should falter, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... into the jungle Kirby pushed, and never for a moment did his companions falter. But the way was not so easy now, for nerves were jaded, muscles sore, and no human will could have been powerful enough to cast aside the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... seasons, You gave us reasons For splendid treasons To doubt and fear; Bade no foot falter, Though weaklings palter, And friendships alter ...
— More Songs From Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... of the First Rhode Island Regiment, as a part of the history of your own gallant state and as an emblem of the glory of your dearly loved country. Love the one flag and revere the others. Many dark hours we have already passed through, and many more are yet to be undergone. But let no man of us falter as to the success of our glorious cause. In all our work, however dangerous or arduous, we shall be followed by the prayers of loved friends at home and of the true and loyal of all our country, and of the good and true of every land. The great God above may chasten us in his wisdom, but ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke
... tests may come on the sunny day. A nation's supreme tests may come in its prosperity. The sunshine may do more damage than the lightning. The soul may falter even in Beulah land, where "the ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... despondency; I pledge you my word I will meet the future with a strong heart. Only remain with me, my dearest Louisa; look at me with your cheering eyes, and inspire my heart with hope. Whenever I falter, remind me of this hour in which I vowed to you to struggle to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the Present. Lo, Even as a child I hide my face and moan— A little girl that may no farther go; The path above me only seems to grow More rugged, climbing still, and ever briered With keener thorns of pain than these below; And O the bleeding feet that falter so ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... and to crown their desire who was found but the Wren? To the high heaven he came, from the Sun stole he flame, and for this has a name in the memory of men! {7} And in India who for the Soma juice flew, and to men brought it through without falter or fail? Why the Hawk 'twas again, and great Indra to men would appear, now and then, in the shape of a Quail, While the Thlinkeet's delight is the Bird of the Night, the beak and the bright ebon plumage of Yehl.{8} And who for man's need brought the famed Suttung's mead? why 'tis ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... required to produce them; leaving a handsome surplus to be devoted to carrying forward the work on a still larger scale; in regions less promising and more remote, even within the borders of the arid lands. With this lesson before us, how can we hesitate or falter in our efforts to successfully carry forward this ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... not, nor shrink from the race I must run; I've peace and repose for the heart-stricken one, And strength for the weary who fail in the strife, And falter before the great warfare of Life. I've love for the friendless; a morrow of light For him who is wrapped in adversity's night; With trust for the doubting, a field for the soul, That has dared from its loftier purpose to stroll, To haste ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... lag, slug, drawl, linger, loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c (be inactive) 683; grovel, worm one's way, steal along; job on, rub on, bundle on; toddle, waddle, wabble^, slug, traipse, slouch, shuffle, halt, hobble, limp, caludicate^, shamble; flag, falter, trotter, stagger; mince, step short; march in slow time, march in funeral procession; take one's time; hang fire &c (be late) 133. retard, relax; slacken, check, moderate, rein in, curb; reef; strike sail, shorten sail, take in sail; put on the drag, apply the brake; clip the wings; reduce the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... concession; the South should not have a hair's-breadth of concession from him; but he would maintain, to the utmost of his power, and in the face of all danger, the rights, under the Constitution, of the South as well as of the North; "and God forsake me and my children, if I ever be found to falter in one or the other." He gave a sketch of the historical relations of slavery to the Constitution; and insisted that the meaning and intent of the clause providing for the return of fugitives from labor, was so plain and evident, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... repugnance to his leadership, then taunt us with incapacity for self-government. These flambeaus and rockets directed with unerring precision, taking effect in the very centre of our magazine, did not cause, in those for whom it was intended, a falter nor a wince in their course, but steadily and determinedly they pressed their way to the completion of their object under prosecution. In this design the ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... reading his face, would momentarily falter in her gay talk, only to begin again with renewed vivacity. On one topic, however, she had no difficulty in holding Barry's attention. It was when she told of the organising and despatching of the American Red Cross units to France, and more especially ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... up her mind that it was right and wise to let Ronnie go, Helen did not falter. She immediately took control of all necessary arrangements. Nothing was forgotten. Ronnie's outfit was managed with as little trouble to himself as possible. They dealt together, in a gay morning at the Stores, with all interesting items, but those ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... me, put out, I think, the flickering fire that remained, instead of fanning it into flame. You cannot know how I watched you, how I prayed! I think it was prayer—I am sure it was. And it was because you did not falter, because you risked all, that you gained me. You have gained only what you yourself made, more than I ever was, more than I ever expected ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... out her sorrows in prayer. She laid all her troubles at the feet of her Saviour, and besought Him to strengthen her and give her wisdom for her appointed task. Again and again she asked for faith, earnest faith, which should never falter, although the future might look dark to her mortal eyes, and again and again she gave all her darlings into the Lord's hand. "Give me strength to do my best," she prayed, "and faith to leave the rest to Thee,"—and gradually there came ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... single instant's hesitation, and the only sign of embarrassment she gave was that she got up from her chair, passing in this manner a little out of Olive's scrutiny. It was easy for her not to falter, because she was glad of the chance. She wanted to be very simple in all her relations with her friend, and of course it was not simple so soon as she began to keep things back. She could at any rate keep back as little as possible, and she felt as if she were making up for a dereliction when ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... clashing of his fall, Suddenly came, and at his side all pale Dismounting, loosed the fastenings of his arms, Nor let her true hand falter, nor blue eye Moisten, till she had lighted on his wound, And tearing off her veil of faded silk Had bared her forehead to the blistering sun, And swathed the hurt that drain'd her dear lord's life. Then after all was done that hand could do, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... this may be undertaken in the interest of true progress, as well as that of honest inquiry. For what so frequently checks progress, causes its advocates to falter, and produces what we call a reaction towards the old doctrines, as something shallow in the reform itself? Christians have relapsed into Judaism, Protestants into Romanism, Unitarians into Orthodoxy—because something true and good in the old system had dropped out of ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... him to know this. I want him to get such comfort as he can out of my belief and my desire to serve him. I want to sacrifice myself. But I can't, I can't," she moaned. "You don't know how mother frightens me. When she looks at me, the words falter on my tongue and I feel as if it would be easier to die than to acknowledge what is in ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... horizon; slough of Despond, cave of Despair; immedicabile vulnus[Lat]. V. despair; lose all hope, give up all hope, abandon all hope, relinquish all hope, lose the hope of, give up the hope of, abandon the hope of, relinquish the hope of; give up, give over; yield to despair; falter; despond &c. (be dejected) 837; jeter le manche apres la cognee[Fr]. inspire despair, drive to despair &c. n.; disconcert; dash one's hopes, crush one's hopes, destroy one's hopes; hope against hope. abandon; resign, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... often feel that the drought of Kadesh is more real than the grapes of Eshcol? Are we not sometimes tempted to bitter comparisons of the fair promises with the gloomy realities? Does our courage never flag, nor our faith falter, nor swirling clouds of doubt hide the inheritance from our weary and tear-filled eyes? He that is without sin may cast the first stone at these men; but whoever knows his own weak heart will confess that, if he had been ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... say that my steps did not falter when we came to whence we could see the mound. But it was lonely and still and silent; no shape of warrior waited ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... sometimes they fall— The words that burn and falter; And is it true they too must ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... on, my knights, and smite the foe! And falter not, I pray; For by the grace of God, I trow, The town is ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... of the Bronx, and spreading from man to man, accompanied with certain mutinous looks and discontented murmurs. For once in his life, and only for once, did the great Peter turn pale; for he verily thought his warriors were going to falter in this hour of perilous trial, and thus to tarnish forever the fame of the province of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... realized the nature of that which brought him out here, to pretend to read a book. He wanted to be near her. And there was something of the pathetic faithfulness of a dog about him—a dog that is beaten and repulsed but never falters, or can falter, in devotion to his master. She had begun to know what that unreasoning ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... depressed, and my spirits were miserably low. I had all that feeling of sadness which leave-taking inspires, and no sustaining prospect to cheer me in the distance. For the first time in my life, I had seen a tear glisten in my poor uncle's eye, and heard his voice falter as he said, "Farewell!" Notwithstanding the difference of age, we had been perfectly companions together; and as I thought now over all the thousand kindnesses and affectionate instances of his love I had received, my heart gave way, and the tears coursed slowly down my cheeks. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... the Federation which would establish them as an Affiliated Species ... and that would settle everything the way they would want it settled, without trouble. Some of them believed me. They decided to wait until I could talk to you. If it works out, fine! If it doesn't"—she felt her voice falter for an instant—"they're ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... Mr. Hastings mail had been delivered as usual, the boy hesitated, and finally asked with an unusual falter ...
— Three People • Pansy
... them; but I know not any tone So fit as thine to falter forth a sorrow: Dost think men would go mad without a moan, If they knew any way to borrow ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... face of this catastrophe, where a less love must have been destroyed utterly, Dick remained loyal. His passionate regard did not falter for a moment. It never even occurred to him that he might cast her off, might yield to his father's prayers, and abandon her. On the contrary, his only purpose was to gain her for himself, to cherish and guard her against every ill, to protect with his love from every ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... and lies; On it is many a strong spirit broken, And with it many a good purpose dies. It springs from the lips of the thoughtless each morning And robs us of courage we need through the day: It rings in our ears like a timely-sent warning And laughs when we falter and fall ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... a little falter in his voice. Could he have pleaded better in a thousand fine speeches, he who had seen his men wither about him on the Somme, than by that little timorous quaver in his voice? "Joan, I have something to ask of you to-night. I meant to ask it during a dance, when you couldn't run ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... the beaten track! thought Spurlock. A forgotten island beyond the ship lanes, where that grim Hand would falter and move blindly in its search for him! From what he had read, there wouldn't be much to do; and in the idle hours he ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... upon Mark was stupendous. His jaw dropped and a slow fire seemed to gleam in his pale eyes. Part of his nature rose in gladness because the girl could speak in that fashion. She had no knowledge within her to cause her to falter or stand abashed. But the tired man, in the poor fellow, cried out to this strong, brave creature to aid him understandingly where his own knowledge and slowness of nature made him a coward. And so they stood looking in ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... would bless and benefit the centuries yet to come. She was the most beautiful of women—he the greatest of artists. It was an opportunity sent from the gods! Instantly she half-ran, seeking the painter. She found him standing apart, alone. She spoke eagerly and hotly, fearing her courage would falter before she could make known her wish: "Ecco, Messer Sandro," she whispered, casting a furtive look about—"who is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... that I may not neglect my soul in trying to fathom immortal life. If I may be hesitating between comfort and work, remind me of the greatness of the place which I started to reach. May I not grow weary of climbing and falter on the stair. Breathe upon me thy inspiration and love, that I may continue in ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... heard him turn quickly round and come back. He stood behind her; she could see his shadow thrown across the bar of sunlight on the carpet; but he did not speak. Clarice became anxious that he should, and yet afraid too. The music began to falter again; once she stopped completely, and let her fingers rest upon the keys, as though she had no power to lift them and continue. Then she struck a chord with a loud defiance. If only he would move, she thought—if only he would come round and stand in front of her! It would be ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... them. It was Mr. Downing, who, when this last incident occurred and created some sensation, had had the temerity to intimate that he thought the Doctor was entirely in the right; though, to be sure, he had afterwards been led to falter in this opinion and subside into craven silence, being a little gentleman of timorous and yielding nature, and rather overborne by a large and powerful feminine majority in his own household. Mr. Larkin was, it is to be regretted, the worst of the recreant party, being younger and more ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... husbands for his sisters. Ah, my dear Rameau, that man looked upon this period as the happiest in his life; he had tears in his eyes when he spoke to me of it, and even as I tell you the story, I feel my heart beat faster, and my tongue falter for sympathy. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... little falter in his voice. Could he have pleaded better in a thousand fine speeches, he who had seen his men wither about him on the Somme, than by that little timorous quaver in his voice? "Joan, I have something to ask of you to-night. I meant to ask it during a dance, when you ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... iron-works and followed entirely the fortunes of the king. He was sworn surveyor of the Mews or Armoury in 1640, but being unable to pay for the patent, another was sworn in in his place. Yet his loyalty did not falter, for in the beginning of 1642, when Charles set out from London, shortly after the fall of Strafford and Laud, Dud went with him.[8] He was present before Hull when Sir John Hotham shut its gates in the king's face; at York when the royal ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... maiden modesty or yield my hand coyly and by degrees, or droop my lashes, or falter with ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... this "den of thieves," and gaining the street below, Elwood's first thought was of home and his shamefully neglected family, and he turned his steps in that direction. But, before proceeding far, he began to hesitate and falter in his course. He became oppressed with the feelings of a criminal. He was ashamed to meet his family; for, fully conscious that his looks must be haggard, his eyes red and bloodshot, and his whole appearance disordered, he knew his return ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... he said this, and, glancing at her, saw her pale lips falter. It shook the cruelty of his purpose a little, and he had a vague feeling that he was doing wrong. Not without a proud struggle, during which no word was spoken, could he beat it down. Meanwhile, the phantom had advanced a pace toward the centre of ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... mind, and his struggles against fearful odds, not for selfish ends, but for his country's independence. Did Wallace give up the fight, or ever think of giving up? Never! It was death or victory. Bruce and the spider! Did Bruce falter? Never! Neither would he. "Scots wa hae," "Let us do or die," implanted before his teens, has pulled many a Scottish boy through the crises of life when all was dark, as it will pull others yet to come. Altho Burns ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... necessary parting from Cornelia was only a phase of this wonderful gladness; for Love never fails of his token, and, though Arenta's sharp eyes could not discover it, Hyde received the silent message that was meant for him, and for him only. That one thought made his heart bound and falter with its exquisite delight—for him only—for him only, was that swift but certain assurance; that instantaneous bright flash of love that held in it all heaven and earth, and left him, as he told himself again and again, the happiest man in ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... leaf, the barge-like open cars close up into well-warmed saloons, and falter to hourly intervals in their course. But we are still far from the falling leaf; we are hardly come to the blushing or fading leaf. Here and there an impassioned maple confesses the autumn; the ancient ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... out, perished and past away. Till the last bitterness of life go by, Thou shalt not slay him; till those last dregs run dry, O thou last lord of life! thou shalt not slay. Let the lips live a little while and lie, The hand a little, and falter, and fail of strength, And the soul shudder and sicken at the sky; Yea, let him live, though God nor man would let Save for the curse' sake; then at bitter length, Lord, will we yield him to thee, ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... which create the lyric) are used therein with mastery; and the ease with which he writes is not more remarkable than the exultant pleasure which accompanies the ease. He has, as an artist, a hundred tools in hand, and he uses them with certainty of execution. The wing of his invention does not falter through these twelve books, nor droop below the level at which he began them; and the epilogue is written with as much vigour as the prologue. The various books demand various powers. In each book the powers are proportionate ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... conviction that the cause could never prosper, he was the last man that should have been the general of an army whose ardour, when not engaged in action, he invariably restrained. All contending opinions seem to hesitate and to falter when they relate to the retreat from Derby, the grand error of the enterprise; the fatal step, when the tide served, and the wind was propitious, and an opportunity never to be regained, was for ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... she said, "Who wouldst not hear the rede I read For thine and not for my sake, sped In vain as waters heavenward shed From springs that falter and depart Earthward. God bids not thee believe Truth, and the web thy life must weave For even this sword to close and cleave Hangs heavy round ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and does some touch of shame redden the sallow cheeks that courage had left bloodless? and do ye grasp your daggers, and rear your drooping heads? are ye men, once again? Why should ye not? what do ye see, what hear, whereat to falter? What oracle, what portent? Now, by the Gods! methought they spoke of victory and glory. Once more, what do ye fear, or wish? What, in the name of Hecate and Hades! What ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... sand-bank, steep yet aslope to the gleaming Waste of the water without, waste of the water within, Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin. Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover, Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud: Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud. Faintly the ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... interest too—the old story was a quaint one. Mary stood at the back of the group, smiling triumphantly. How had he disposed of—everything? She had not been wrong in her unlimited confidence in his ingenuity. She did not falter in her faith in his word pledged ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... lack of fine array Best fits a sacrificial altar; Her man to-morrow joins the fray, And yet she does not falter; Simple her gown, but still we see The bride in all ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... desert march or battle flame, In fortress and in field, Our war-cry is thy holy name, Thy love our joy and shield! And if we falter, let thy power Thy stern avenger be, And God forget us in the hour We ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... company was October, 1880, when you were sixteen. You and Laura flashed like meteors on to a dreary scene of empty seats at the luncheon table (the shooting party didn't come in) and filled the room with light, electrified the conversation and made old R—y falter over his marriage vows within ten minutes. From then onwards, you have always been the most loyal and indulgent of friends, forgetting no one as you rapidly climbed to fame, and were raffled for by all parties—from ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... experience I have recorded in this volume. All these years, with their months, weeks, and days have passed by, and have found me continually rejoicing in the work of the Lord—often wearied in it, but never of it—often tempted to falter, but al ways enabled to persevere. I have seen many rise and start well, who have collapsed or retired; many who have blazed like a meteor for a short time, and ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... line instead of hastening away from it. A kind-hearted soldier directs her toward a place of safety. But now the rebel lines are within rifle range. Volley after volley is poured into them, and their ranks melt before the terrible fire. In our front they falter; but toward the right they see a chance for victory. They will swing around our flank, and crush us as they did but an hour before. With exultant yells, their left comes sweeping on, wheeling to envelop ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... sons!" we cry. "Just look at the Pitts, the Adamses, the Walpoles, the Beechers, the Booths, the Bellinis, the Disraelis!" and here we begin to falter. And then the opposition takes it up and rattles off a list of great men whose sons were spendthrifts, gamblers, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... Sappho. Into how fair a fortune hath man's life Fallen out of the darkness!—This bright earth Maketh my heart to falter; yea, my spirit Bends and bows down in the delight of vision, Caught by the force of beauty, swayed about Like seaweed moved by the deep winds of water: For it is all the news of love to me. Through paths pine-fragrant, ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... him. Mark told him very carefully and tenderly, and while he repeated the three or four broken words in which Mistress Alison had tried to send a last message to Paul—for the end had come very suddenly—Mark himself found his voice falter, and his eyes fill with tears. Paul had, at that sight, cried a little; but his life at the House of Heritage seemed to have faded swiftly out of his thoughts; he was living very intently in the present, scaling, as it were, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... quick gesture running to the picture above them, and filling out his words. He had gathered the story of the child as the mother had gathered his—and his voice trembled a little, but it did not falter in ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... attention to what he was saying or not. What his plan might have been can only be guessed; for the Fates ordained that they should be interrupted at this critical moment by the one person on earth who could make Yates' tongue falter. ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... for clemency the short, stocky bearded man who, to so few, had the bearing of a great general, faced Lieutenant Harris and gave him a look which made the young officer's bravery falter for a ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... was Jimmy Wallace himself. He released, too, a little sigh of relief when he saw her off in her stride again after that momentary falter. But he hardly looked at the stage after that; stared absently at his program instead, and, presently, availed himself of the dramatic critic's license and left ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... leading Jim in the direction of the river, but toward the forest beyond Kedsty's bungalow. Not for an instant did she falter in that drenched and impenetrable darkness. There was something imperative in the clasp of her fingers, even though they tightened perceptibly when the thunder crashed. They gave Kent the conviction that there ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... not find it, and the door will be shut; I concede nothing. But I say that I will maintain for them, as I will maintain for you, to the utmost of my power, and in the face of all danger, their rights under the Constitution, and your rights under the Constitution. And I shall never be found to falter in one or the other. It is obvious to every one, and we all know it, that the origin of the great disturbance which agitates the country is the existence of slavery in some of the States; but we must meet the subject; we must consider it; we ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... thus he drapes with duty. Sometimes he waits upon me like a maid, Silent with watchful eyes. Oh, would to Heaven, He used me like a slave bought in the market! Yes, used me roughly! So, I were his own; And words of tenderness would falter in, Relenting from the sternness of command. But I am not enough for him: he needs Some high-entranced maiden, ever pure, And thronged with burning thoughts of God and him. So, as he loves me not, his deeds for me Lie on ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... when the fairy was beginning to falter and echo was quite out of breath, the man took ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... I falter where I firmly trod, And falling with my weight of cares Upon the great world's altar-stairs That slope thro' ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... an easy task to pass through so wily an enemy or the danger and difficulty much lessened, when even beyond the besiegers; owing to the obscure and mountainous way, it was necessary to pass, through a foe scattered in almost every direction. But Captain Logan was not a man to falter where duty called, because encompassed with danger. With two companions he left the fort in the night and with the sagacity of a hunter, and the hardihood of a soldier, avoided the trodden way of Cumberland Gap, which was most ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... is a critical year in the defense effort of the whole free world. If we falter we can lose all the gains we have made. If we drive ahead, with courage and vigor and determination, we can by the end of 1952 be in a position of much greater security. The way will be dangerous for the years ahead, but if we put forth our best efforts ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... for in you." And now the rich, deep voice was tremulous, and the kind old eyes were dim with unshed tears. "The hand of the Lord has been laid in heaviness upon you, but 'those whom He loveth He chasteneth.' Even could I lift the burden of your sorrow as easily as I raise this hand, I should falter, because, as I believe in God, so do I believe that through trial even such as this your light shall yet shine before men so pure and strong that men themselves shall be purer and stronger because ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... at what happened then. He saw Jeanne falter for a moment. He noticed that she was now dressed like the others about her, and that Pierre, who stood at her shoulder, was no longer the fine gentleman of the rock. The half-breed bent over her, as if whispering to her, and then Jeanne ran out from those about her to Eileen, her beautiful ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... close to the opposite shore with venturous tourists, but it was only a film of water that wound, bubbling, near the land. With the deep-throated rumble only half a mile away, Belding felt his pulse falter for a second, then pound viciously on. And in that second, with the bravado of early manhood, he threw discretion overboard, and set the slim bow of his Peterboro' for the middle span. Twenty seconds, later he knew that he was about to run ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... sure?' said her uncle, in a tone of disappointment that made her falter, as she added, 'I think so.' At the same time the stranger turned the paper round, and she knew it for the cheque that had so long resided in her desk, but with dilated eyes, she exclaimed, 'But—but— that was ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... what succeeds Fitly as silence? Falter forth the spell,— Act follows word, the speaker knows full well; Nor tampers with its magic more than needs. Two names there are: That which the Hebrew reads With his soul only: if from lips it fell, Echo, back thundered by earth, heaven and hell, Would own, "Thou didst create us!" Naught impedes ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... have been more good-humoured than usual with Lord Alfred in discussing those empty seats. But for spilt milk there is no remedy. The blow had come upon him too suddenly, and he had faltered. But he would not falter again. Nothing should cow him,—no touch from a policeman, no warrant from a magistrate, no defalcation of friends, no scorn in the City, no solitude in the West End. He would go down among the electors to-morrow and would stand his ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... sun seeks out my garden, No nook is left in shade, No mist nor mold nor mildew Endures on any blade, Sweet rain slants under every bough: Ye falter, and ye fade. ...
— Renascence and Other Poems • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... fair-weather friends, bereft of her looks, poverty-stricken, and ravaged by an insidious illness, the situation of Lola Montez was, during that winter of 1860, one to excite pity among the most severe of judges. Under duress, even her new found trust in Providence began to falter. Was prayer, she wondered forlornly, to fail her like everything else? Suddenly, however, and when things were at their darkest, a helping hand was offered. One bitter evening, as she sat brooding in the miserable lodging where she had secured temporary shelter, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble so? Far happier than her Lady, as her Lady has often thought, why does she falter in this manner and look at ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... woman with an incomparable love; this woman who from the eminence of her wealth, rank and beauty, in the utter abandonment of her passion cast herself at his feet, Joseph was man enough to bend and sway and falter before her temptations, but for friendship's sake, for honor's sake, for the sake of her he loved, divine ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... was Carnaby's unexpected reply. He was as red as fire, but his glance did not falter. Mrs. de Tracy rose. Not a muscle of ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... None of the halting weakness remained that had made it falter once when Mardonius asked him, "Will your Hellenes fight?" He spoke as might one returned crowned ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... the serpent rolled over into the ditch, and Siegfried was covered by the folds of his huge body. He did not fear or falter. He thrust Balmung, his wonderful sword, deep into the monster's body. The blood poured forth in such torrents that the ...
— Bertha • Mary Hazelton Wade
... ejaculations and bolted mouthfuls, between his "Non c'e male," his "Buono, buono!" his "Ancora un po'," or "Dammi da here," he could find time to ask her what this new alacrity of hers meant on such a hot night of summer, with a touching falter of the voice I heard her reply, "It is because—it is because—I have not always been good to you, Porfirio. It is because—of late—this evening—I have much wished for you to be here. It ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... they led [-them-] {him} to the pyre. They had torn out the tongue of the Transgressor, so that they could speak no longer. The Transgressor were young and tall. They had hair of gold and eyes blue as morning. They walked to the pyre, and their step did not falter. And of all the faces on that square, of all the faces which shrieked and screamed and spat curses upon them, [-their-] {theirs} was the calmest and [-the-] ...
— Anthem • Ayn Rand
... continually of the greatest of men; sometimes our voices falter, and sentences are not finished. We have found many things alike about the Great Ones. First they had mothers who dreamed, and then they had poverty to acquaint them with sorrow. They came up hard, and they were always different from ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... it have? Was she—is she very badly upset?" The sharp falter in the words betrayed more ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... mire is coming too near me," Dion angrily responded, "and I might really stick fast, as I was warned; for I do not envy the ready presence of mind of any person whose tongue would not falter when the basest slander scattered its venom over him. You all know, fellow-citizens, through how many generations the Didymus family has lived to the honour of this city, doing praiseworthy work in yonder ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the notes, and curb'd them to a sigh, And when they falter'd most, I made them leap Fierce from my bow, as from a summer sleep A young she-devil. I was fired thereby To bolder efforts—and a muffled cry Came from the strings as if a ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... had dropped before my look, how she had yielded to my embrace, how she had stood still and unresisting in my arms! No, no, they were wrong! De Berquin had lied, Blaise and Frojac were stolid fools, capable of making only the most obvious inference, and I was a contemptible wretch to falter in my faith in her for an instant! She was the victim of a set of circumstances. She had reason for her hasty departure, she would make all clear in a few words. On, on, my horse, that I may hear those words, that my heart may ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... straying of a single animal. Raven was in great spirits, singing, shouting, and occasionally sending Nighthawk open-mouthed in a fierce charge upon the laggards hustling the long straggling line onwards through the whirling drifts without pause or falter. Occasionally he dropped back beside Cameron, who brought up the rear, bringing a word of ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... work were in my hand. But now I must relinquish something that I could only keep by being false to myself—to you—to the right. And I must go uphill—'yes, uphill to the very end'—accepting poverty, loneliness, the great need of love, unanswered. But I won't falter or forget, darling father. As long as I live I will fight our fight. Even if the way is through great darkness, I carry the light ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... last, under wrinkled brows. "That's what I wanted. Good! Now then! Now then! Good! Good! Oh, by God, that's good!" His voice rose and he spoke rightly and fully without a falter:— ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... instead of her usual sixpence, to be devoted to the organist and choir fund. The Padre, it is true, had changed the hour of services to suit the heresy of the majority, and this for a moment made her hand falter. But the hope, after this convincing sermon, that next year morning service would be at the hour falsely called twelve decided her not to ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... nurtured. Throughout the whole of a ceremony, which is ever solemn and admonitory, the squatter had maintained a grave and serious deportment. His vast features were visibly stamped with an expression of deep concern; but at no time did they falter, until he turned his back, as he believed for ever, on the grave of his first-born. Nature was then stirring powerfully within him, and the muscles of his stern visage began to work perceptibly. His children fastened their eyes on his, as if to seek a direction to the strange emotions ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... do not falter," it read, "for the seeming is not always the true. The path leads down twice the length of a man's body, then ten paces to the left. Again the seeming is not true, for it ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Anne did not falter now. She was past that stage. All her nerves were strung to meet his pressing need. Again and again as he hung upon her, half-fainting, she stopped to support him more adequately till he had fought down his exhaustion and was ready to struggle on again. She ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... Unconsciously you have fully explained your mood and feeling. It's in truth your nature, your sensitive, delicate organism, that shrinks from this wild tumult that is coming. In the higher moral tests of courage, when the strongest man might falter and fail, you would ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... or the wisdom to falter. I regret it now. I regret that she did not go on and reveal her whole soul to me in one fell burst of feeling. As it was, I trembled with jealousy and passion, but I did not cast her ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... enormously to its moral strength, that is, to its confidence and courage. Men have a sort of instinctive respect and fear for constituted authorities of any kind, and, though often willing to plot against them, are still very apt to falter and fall back when the time comes for the actual collision. The feeling that, after all, they are in the wrong in fighting against the government of their country, weakens them extremely, and makes them ready to abandon the struggle in panic and ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... hastened about the room, donning her few requirements of masquerade, yet Keith noted with appreciation that she became perceptibly cooler as the moment of departure approached. With cheeks aflame and eyes sparkling, yet speaking with a voice revealing no falter, she pressed his arm and declared herself prepared for the ordeal. The face under the shadow of the mantilla was so arch and piquant, Keith ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... the President of the Confederacy, this concealed line opened a destructive fire with repeating carbines; and at the same time the batteries of horse-artillery, under Captain Robinson, joining in the contest, belched forth shot and shell with fatal effect. The galling fire caused the enemy to falter, and while still wavering Wilson rallied his men, and turning some of them against the right flank of the Confederates, broke their line, and compelled them to withdraw for security behind the heavy works thrown up for the defense ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... cunning of these horses surprised me. On one very steep pitch, for instance, I saw before me two logs across the path, two feet and more in diameter, and what was worse, not two feet apart. How the brown cob meant to get over I could not guess; but as he seemed not to falter or turn tail, as an English horse would have done, I laid the reins on his neck and watched his legs. To my astonishment, he lifted a fore-leg out of the abyss of mud, put it between the logs, where I expected to hear it snap; clawed in front, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... he would hurl back such thunder across the great lakes, that would cause them to tremble in their strong holds. Said he, "I will stand my ground. Somebody must die in this cause. I may be doomed to the stake and the fire, or to the scaffold tree, but it is not in me to falter if I can promote the work of emancipation." He did not leave the country, but was soon laid in the grave. It was the opinion of many that he was hurried out of life by the means of poison, but whether this was the case or not, the writer ...
— Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life - And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America • David Walker and Henry Highland Garnet
... the least embarrassed; they were perfectly natural—like born aristocrats. And you may be sure that if the plutocracy that now owns the country ever sees fit to take on the outward signs of an aristocracy —titles, and arms, and ancestors—it won't falter from any inherent question of its worth. Money prizes and honors itself, and if there is anything it hasn't got, it believes it ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... your laudable undertaking. It is well we should understand each other, at once and forever, or even I some day might be tempted to make a fool of myself. Your excellent counsels, my dearest cousin, will be invaluable to me, should my lagging footsteps falter by the way. Edith! where have you learned to be so hard, so worldly, so—if ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... and labor required to produce them; leaving a handsome surplus to be devoted to carrying forward the work on a still larger scale; in regions less promising and more remote, even within the borders of the arid lands. With this lesson before us, how can we hesitate or falter in our efforts to successfully ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... his voice I saw the determination of their resistance begin to falter and relax. President Woodruff called on me to speak, and I felt that it was my duty to represent the needs, the hopes, and the opportunities of the hundreds of thousands of the undistinguished mass who would make no decision for themselves, but whose fate was trembling on the event. ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... ground of rejection was usually the youthfulness of the applicants; a sufficient reason, doubtless, in most cases, since the enthusiasm, mingled in some instances, perhaps, with romance, which had prompted the offer, would often falter before the extremely unpoetic realities of a nurse's duties, and the youth and often frail health of the applicants would soon cause them to give way under labors which required a mature strength, a ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... O weary head! This is not Troy, about, above— Not Troy, nor we the lords thereof. Thou breaking neck, be strengthened! Endure and chafe not. The winds rave And falter. Down the world's wide road, Float, float where streams the breath of God; Nor turn thy prow ...
— The Trojan women of Euripides • Euripides
... should be granted in order to show its efficacy, I would say—take the worst sinks of intemperance in the city, give them the sanction of the Law, and let them run to overflowing. But shut up the gilded apartments where youth takes its first draught, and respectability just begins to falter from its level. Close the ample doors through which enters the long train of those who stumble to destruction and reel into quick graves, and let the flood overwhelm only the maimed and battered conscripts that remain. Besides, it ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... left his instrument with some of his subordinates, probably Black and Stanton, and relied upon them to protect it; and it stung him to think that the American should believe a German officer would falter at such odds—a couple ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... full fill'd of drunkenness, Strong is thy breath, thy limbes falter aye, And thou betrayest alle secretness; Thy mind is lorn,* thou janglest as a jay; *lost Thy face is turned in a new array;* *aspect Where drunkenness reigneth in any rout,* *company There is ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the interest of her child, she is on the right road, and we hope to encourage her in the good intention. We would however tell her that her effort must be thorough, and that she must be patient and persevering. If she does not falter in well doing she will succeed beyond her expectation, and the satisfaction she will experience in noting the evidences of returning health and strength in the appearance and conduct of her child, should be ample recompense ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... the dust of life from off their feet. Neither will be wise. But precisely because they are not wise, they will seek the company of wise men. Their own attitude will not wear. The ecstasy will fail, the will to renunciation falter; the gray reality which permits no one to escape it altogether will filter like a mist into the vision and the cell. Then they will turn to the wise men. They will find comfort in the smile to which they could not frame their own lips, and discover in it more ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... of course to its former possessors. The command of the English Channel, which Napoleon wished to obtain when maturing his invasion project, was only temporary. It is possible that a reminiscence of what had happened in Egypt caused him to falter at the last; and that, quite independently of the proceedings of Villeneuve, he hesitated to risk a second battle of the Nile and the loss of a second army. It may have been this which justified his later statement that he did not really mean to invade ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... land below, for there is never one with the barest minute to spare that does not pause and try to be clever over Higgins Farm. You may see one industriously climbing the clouds over the Enchanted Forest, evidently trying hard to be intent on its destination. You may see it falter, struggling with its sense of duty, and then break weakly into a mild figure eight. The ragged rooks of Faery at once hurry into the air to show their laborious imitator how this should be done. The spirit of frivolous competition enters into the aeroplane, its duty is flung ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... was fired just as the fox sprang up the slight embankment on which, as is usual, the line of fence was placed. For an instant he seemed to falter, then leaped the top rail, and disappeared ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... certain victory— A glory ending in eternity. Life is before ye—oh! if ye could look Into the secrets of that sealed book, Strong as ye are in youth, and hope, and faith, Ye should sink down, and falter, "Give us death!" Could the dread Sphinx's lips but once disclose, And utter but a whisper of the woes Which must o'ertake ye, in your lifelong doom, Well might ye cry, "Our cradle be our tomb!" Could ye foresee your spirit's broken ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... sifting, sifting, Came to the gates of sleep. Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep, Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling: The gates of sleep fell a-trembling Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter yes, Shaken with happiness: The gates of sleep ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... violently, and with her cheeks on fire began to falter out, "I did look on Gerard as my husband—we being betrothed-and he was in so sore danger, and I thought I had killed him, and I-oh, if you were but my mother I might find courage: you would question me. But ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... mistakes His free grace doth cover, My sins He doth wash away; These feet which shrink and falter Shall enter the ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... their thoughts. Curled within their minds, like an endless scroll, are the marvellous scriptures of millenniums, and yet their brain-surfaces are fresh for earth's newest concept.... What are they whispering? Their voices falter with emotion over vague bits of dreaming. They ask no greater stimulus to fly to the uttermost bounds of their limitations—than each other and the night. Reason dawns upon their stammered expressions, and farther they fly—thrilling ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... was answered at once, and right humiliatingly. For Bruce did not falter in his swinging stride as he came abreast of the group. Not by so much as a second glance did he notice Mahan's hail ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... dropped into other streets or gone home. Kate and her former lover were coming home alone. And, furthermore, Kate would not be glad to see her sister at the gate. This last thought came with sudden conviction, but Marcia did not falter. ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... summit while the sun Yet shone upon his conquer'd track: Nor falter'd till the goal was won, Nor struggling upward, ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... steady hum of their powerful motor the young aviators found consolation in that lonely ride through the billowing fog-banks. At all events, there was no sign of a falter or skip there. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... in all its parts, is to be supreme, or else the nation must die. One or other of these things must result. Let him who can hesitate between them write himself down a traitor; for he is one. No patriot can hesitate. No lover of his country can falter in a time like this. And if three years of war have not taught a man that this is the alternative, that man does ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... what Ethne herself evidently intended to conceal. But he knew why Ethne wished to conceal it. She wished him never to suspect that she retained any love for Harry Feversham. On the other hand, however, he did not falter from his own belief. Marriage between a man crippled like himself and a woman active and vigorous like Ethne could never be right unless both brought more than friendship. He ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... In any event, there is a venerable adage concerning the buttering of parsnips. So I content myself with asking you to remember that I have not ever faltered. I shall not falter now. You loathe me. Who forbids it? I have known from the first that you detested me, and I have always considered your verdict to err upon the side of charity. Believe me, you will never loathe Ahasuerus as I do. And yet I coddle this poor ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... infuriated tiger. Again and again Frank's fist cracked on his face, and still he did not falter, but continued to stand up and ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... ancestry, had lately pledged His daughter to this brave, and now the village Made preparations for the marriage. There By the warm sea the maidens paid their court To Taka, who so soon would leave their gay Indifferent frolic lives to wed the grave Stern chief. She did not falter at the choice. Love which the maidens sang was but a word; She wished no better fate than to be mated To a strong warrior whom her heart held dear As friend to kind Akau. So she waited. In her slim hands she held a polished cup, The shell of cocoanut, which caught the light Like a brown pool. ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... I'm thine wi' a passion sincerest, And thou hast plighted me love o' the dearest! And thou'rt the angel that never can alter— Sooner the sun in his motion would falter. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... white dots descended more thickly; a gauze seemed to be floating in the air, falling to earth thread by thread. Not a breath stirred as the dream-like shower sleepily and rhythmically descended from the atmosphere. As they neared the roofs the flakes seemed to falter in their flight; in myriads they ceaselessly pillowed themselves on one another, in such intense silence that even blossoms shedding their petals make more noise; and from this moving mass, whose descent ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... come! and witness thou, If terror be upon me; if I shrink To meet the storm, or falter in my strength 610 When hardest it besets me. Do not think That I am fearful and infirm of soul, As late thy eyes beheld: for thou hast changed My nature; thy commanding voice has waked My languid powers to bear me boldly on, Where'er the ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... going inside; I cannot escape you, you are too many for me. Leave me to myself for a short time." The man brandished a spear in her face, and said: "See, that is the blood of your friends; yours will soon cover it." But she did not falter, and the savages probably left her untouched for this reason. They are very superstitious, and must have thought that there was something supernatural about her. Shortly after this she heard the tramp of feet outside, and an English voice calling to ask if there ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 24, June 16, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... they were well provided with money and that the boards of canvassers contained many unscrupulous men. Nor is it likely that politicians who lived in the days of the Credit Mobilier and the Whiskey King would falter at a bargain which would affect the election of a president. Republicans looked upon the Democrats as being so wicked that they were justified in "fighting the devil with fire." Democrats looked upon the election as so clearly theirs that no objection ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... chance for life. The Duke also heard the sound, and instantly guessed its meaning. "Dog!" he exclaimed to Ewan as he landed, "where is your prisoner?" and, without waiting to hear the apology which the terrified vassal began to falter forth, he fired a pistol at his head, whether fatally I know not, and exclaimed, "Gentlemen, disperse and pursue the villain—An hundred guineas for him that ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... taught me the name of Col. Bigelow, long before I was able to articulate his name. Many have been the times, while sitting on my father's lap around the old hearthstone, now more than fifty years since, that I listened to affecting reminiscences of Col. Bigelow and others, until his voice would falter, and tears would flow down his aged and careworn face, and then my mother and elder members of the family would laugh, and inquire, "what is there in all of that, that should make you weep?" but I always rejoiced with him, and wept when I saw him weep. After the death of my father, having ...
— Reminiscences of the Military Life and Sufferings of Col. Timothy Bigelow, Commander of the Fifteenth Regiment of the Massachusetts Line in the Continental Army, during the War of the Revolution • Charles Hersey
... expressed some doubts as to the truth of his own teaching and intimated the possibility of some life beyond the grave. This was the only public occasion of which I have any knowledge in which Robert G. Ingersoll seemed to falter in his course. ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... saw the first little limp when she began to falter. He was watching backward constantly, his whole nature eager to protect her—save her from hurt, from this merciless toil across the desert. He longed to take her in his arms and carry her thus, securely. He was torn between the wish to hasten her along, for her own greater ease of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... along the wall, he drew back, and reached forward with a lunge. This time he got his wrist on the window-ledge. Thus leaning, he finally secured a hold on the fragment of glass with his fingers, and pulled on it. A crackle caused him to falter. Munson's breathing continued undisturbed. At the next pull the piece came free. The next moment Alex was sitting on the cot-end, sawing at the rope with the sharp edge of ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... utterance direct, Obscure no more, was brought to Inachus— A peremptory charge to fling me forth Beyond my home and fatherland, a thing Sent loose in banishment o'er all the world; And—should he falter—Zeus should launch on him A fire-eyed bolt, to shatter and consume Himself and all his race to nothingness. Bowing before such utterance from the shrine Of Loxias, he drave me from our halls, Barring the gates against me: loth he was To do, ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... despot and victim; farewell, Asia, land of satrap and slave; farewell, Europe, land of monarch and subject: welcome, broad, varied, exhaustless New World, spreading inviting fields before longing eyes that falter while they gaze. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... his strong feeling, Philip began vehemently; but the consciousness of the attention of all the company, and of the searching look of Mirza, made the ardent young man falter. He was a stranger, unaccustomed to the ways of these folk who had come together to play with the highest truths as they might play with tennis-balls. He felt a sudden chill, as if upon his hot enthusiasm ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... On the mission field it is not the enduring of hardships, the lack of comforts, and the roughness of the life that make the missionary cringe and falter. It is something far less romantic and far more real. It is something that will hit you right down where you live. The missionary has to give up having his own way. He has to give up having any rights. He has, in the words of Jesus, to "deny himself." ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... character of this court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day. This court was not created by the Constitution for such purposes. Higher and graver trusts have been confided to it, and it must not falter in the path ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... a fair start along a new line of endeavour we resort to the distinctly obvious, and then announce that he brushed away the tears and laughed as gaily as any of them over the surprises that followed the one which momentarily caused him to falter. He was not given to looking upon the dark side of things. Even as he sat there at the head of the long table, he jocosely remarked to Diggs that he would have to borrow a saw from the janitor the next day and reduce the size of his board by five feet at least. Moreover, he could practice ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... Presbytery, Texas, recently, a black man was examined for two days on Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and on all that is required by our Book of Government for ordination, and he did not falter once. So the ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various
... this life ye bear: Look on it, lift it, bear it solemnly, Stand up and walk beneath it steadfastly. Fail not for sorrow, falter not for sin, But onward, upward, ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... Phelim," she said; "this is my swan-song; listen;" and she began to sing. She sang bravely, at first, with her head held high, and then, suddenly, her voice began to falter. ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... men, Heed ye not the nation's sin? Heaven's blessing can ye win If ye falter now? Men of blood now ask your vote, O'er your heads their banners float; Raise, Oh raise the warning note, God and ...
— The Liberty Minstrel • George W. Clark
... fatal weakness. No one, looking upon his pale, scholarly face, and noting his faultlessly neat apparel, and easy, graceful manners, would have thought of such a thing. Yet he was a—I falter in writing it—a drunkard. At times he drank deeply and madly. When half intoxicated he was almost as brilliant as Hamlet, and as rollicking as Falstaff. It was said that even when fully drunk his splendid intellect never entirely ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... thou soon," she said, "Who wouldst not hear the rede I read For thine and not for my sake, sped In vain as waters heavenward shed From springs that falter and depart Earthward. God bids not thee believe Truth, and the web thy life must weave For even this sword to close and cleave Hangs ...
— The Tale of Balen • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... with nothing but such sentimental stuff to stand between these muscles of mine and those papers which you have about you, and which I want and mean to have: suppose I, with the prize within my grasp, were to falter and sneak away with my hands empty; or, what would be worse, cover up my weakness by playing the magnanimous hero, and sparing you the violence I dared not use, would you not despise me from the depths of your woman's soul? Would any woman be such a fool? ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... before, with all his delightful, passionate frankness, Lionel had clasped Waife's reluctant hand in both his own, and, with tears in his eyes, and choking in his voice, was pouring forth sentences so loosely knit together that they seemed almost incoherent; now a burst of congratulation—now a falter of condolence—now words that seemed to supplicate as for pardon to an offence of his own—rapid transitions from enthusiasm to pity, from joy to grief—variable, with the stormy April of a young, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the questions of politics are to be more and more moral questions. And I invoke those whom God made to be peculiarly conservators of things moral and spiritual to come forward and help us in that work, in which we shall falter and fail without woman. We shall never perfect human society without her offices and her ministration. We shall never round out the government, or public administration, or public policies, or politics itself, until you have ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... picture itself will, on foreign soil, plead the cause of American civilization, and tend to assure those who look with dismay at the tumultuous upheavings of freedom's home, that imperishable Art still maintains her placid sway in this distracted land, and that her votaries falter ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ahead and the fire behind and on either side. The great mass of flame had not yet rolled abreast the boat, but the blazing brands were already falling in advance. It was not a moment to hesitate; nor was he a man to falter when action was ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... almost as a cat, Buck followed the flying horseman over perilous rock rims and across deep-cut creek beds. Pantherlike he climbed up the steep creek sides without hesitation, for the round-up had taught him never to falter at stiff going so long as his rider put him ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... replied the woman who had known happiness. And she closed her lips quickly, as if she feared that they might falter. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... consisted of a comfortable bed, a table with some books on it, three chairs, a small looking-glass on the wall, a guitar and some articles of men's clothing hanging here and there. A heap of dull embers smouldered in the fireplace. Alice did not falter at the threshold, ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... other, "as long as I have a prospect of large profits; why should I falter or hesitate at so ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... merit To choke it in the utterance. So our virtues Lie in the interpretation of the time: And power, unto itself most commendable, Hath not a tomb so evident as a cheer To extol what it hath done. One fire drives out one fire; one nail, one nail; Rights by rights falter, strengths by strengths do fail. Come, let's away. When, Caius, Rome is thine, Thou art poor'st of all; ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... by paths we do not know; Upward he leads us, though our steps be slow; Though oft we faint and falter by the way; Though clouds and darkness oft obscure the day, And still ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... sin a duty; and if, as I rightly understand thee, thou lookest to the gospel as that higher vocation for which thy spirit yearneth, then would I say to thee, arise, and gird up thy loins; advance and falter not;—the field is open, and though the victory brings thee no worldly profit, and but little worldly honor, yet the reward is eternal, and the interest thereof, unlike the money which thou puttest out to usury in the hands of men, never fails ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... that hast all thy lyfe tyme dealt in fyre-woorks, Stoves and hott bathes to sweet in, nowe to have Thy teethe to falter in thy head for could Nimbler ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... whether, riding on the balls of mine, Seem they in motion?—Here are sever'd lips, Parted with sugar breath: so sweet a bar Should sunder such sweet friends.—Here, in her hair, The painter plays the spider, and hath woven A golden mesh, t' entrap the hearts of men Falter than gnats in cobwebs.—But her eyes— How could he see to do them! having made one, Methinks it should have power to steal both his, And leave ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... woman he had chosen Gustave Lenoble never wavered. He worked for her, he endured for her, he hoped against hope for her sake; and it was only when bodily strength failed that this nameless foot-soldier began to droop and falter in life's bitter battle. Things had gone ill with him. He had tried his fate as an advocate in Paris, in Caen, in Rouen—but clients would not come. He had been a clerk, now in one counting-house, now in another, and Susan and he had existed somehow during the ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... is God and right is right, Right the day shall win; To doubt would be disloyalty, To falter would be sin." ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... at him for a moment with a look of honest inquiry in her eyes. His own did not falter. Their expression ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... indeed. To cut off all commerce with England and foreign countries would bring utter ruin upon the planters, for their tobacco crop would then be without a market. Even now, however, the Governor did not falter in his loyalty. He felt, no doubt, that Parliament would have difficulty in enforcing this act, and he looked to the Dutch merchantmen to ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... the foot of the ramparts: most of those who had mounted on the rolling towers were hors de combat; the remainder, covered with sweat and dust, overwhelmed with heat and the weight of their armour, began to falter. The Saracens who perceived this raised cries of joy. In their blasphemies they reproached the Christians for adoring a God who was unable to defend them. The assailants deplored their loss, and believing themselves ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... that way, Miss Watkins," screamed Mitchell. "It is we that are the blind and the halt. You are ever fresh, but we falter and faint. You see it's you that go out, but it's we that you get ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... and build your temples on the wreck of Empire! Ha! do you start? and does some touch of shame redden the sallow cheeks that courage had left bloodless? and do ye grasp your daggers, and rear your drooping heads? are ye men, once again? Why should ye not? what do ye see, what hear, whereat to falter? What oracle, what portent? Now, by the Gods! methought they spoke of victory and glory. Once more, what do ye fear, or wish? What, in the name of Hecate and Hades! ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... consequence whenever he became puzzled about facts that were being read to him or that he heard he would instantly appeal to Van, whom he was sure could right every sort of dilemma that might arise. But too often the unlucky Van was forced to blush and falter that he would have to look it up; and when he did so he frequently learned something himself. For Tim never forgot. No sooner would Van be inside the gate than the shrill little voice would pipe: "And did you find out how far away ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... little Michmash," she whispered. "Stumble not nor falter on the way. Thou carriest the Light of all the world, the Hope of every heart upon ...
— Christmas Light • Ethel Calvert Phillips
... Our courage to relax. Arouse ye then! A brave man's spirit its vigour soon regains. That ye, the best and bravest of the host, Should stand aloof thus idly, 'tis not well; If meaner men should from the battle shrink, I might not blame them; but that such as ye Should falter, indignation fills my soul. Dear friends, from this remissness must accrue Yet greater evils; but with gen'rous shame And keen remorse let each man's breast be fill'd; Fierce is the struggle; in his pride of strength Hector has forc'd the gates and massive bars, And raging, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... 'Tis well. But now, yea, even while I reel And falter, one poor hope, as hope now is, I clutch at in this coil of miseries; To save some honour for my children's sake; Yea, for myself some fragment, though things break In ruin around me. Nay, I will not shame The old proud Cretan castle whence ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This like thy glory, Titan! is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... to get up!" howled the excited little man, growing still worse, as the colonel seemed to shrink and falter. "Why, I can lick you in a fraction of no time! You've been making lots of fighting talk, and now it's my turn. Get up and put up ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... from his covert and started again, although he felt that he was growing weaker. Such intense exertion, under such conditions, was bound to tell even upon a frame like his, but he would not let himself falter, passing from island to island, resting a little at every one, bearing toward the southeast, and intending to enter the forest about a mile from the fire on that side. Meanwhile, the chill of the deadly cold and elation over his escape fought for the mastery of him. He reached ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... afterthoughts shall tempt you to falter; that happen what may in the changing years, you will not hesitate; that though your interests and affections should intervene, you will not suffer them to retard you in your purpose; that no effort, no sacrifice, no privation, no suffering of mind or body ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... delight of her own achievements full upon her face, which was pretty, although untutored, regarded her visitor with an expression which almost made Margaret falter. It was probably the absurd dressing of the girl's hair which restored Margaret's confidence in her scheme. Martha Wallingford actually wore a frizzled bang, very finely frizzled too, and her hair was strained from the nape of her neck, and it seemed impossible that a young woman who knew ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... by rugged paths like these they go That scale the heights of immortality, Unreached by those that falter ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... chose—never to know the rest and sweetness of forgetting even for a little while? Why must she be mastered by a voice that did not care at all whether its cadence and its fall were marked by her or not? Why must she tremble and falter even in her prayer, if a foot came up the aisle that she could not bear to miss, and yet that was treading down, and doomed, if this went on, to tread down all reviving joy, and every springtide flower that was budding ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... pure sensitive darling! How much longer must we be separated? Will the time ever come when the only earthly rest that remains for me can be taken in her soft clinging arms? Patience—patience. If it were not for her—for my baby—I might falter even now,—but she must, she shall be righted—at any sacrifice, at every cost; and may the widow's and the orphan's God be ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... front of the Confederate, and, pulling out a revolver, pointed it at Lightfoot's head. "Unless you promise not to have us followed, you shan't leave this room alive!" he cried with the tone of a man daring everything for liberty. George fully expected to see the officer falter, for he had seen that the Major ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... doing? Why—why did you come here?" she questioned, a falter in her voice; and he noticed that her eyes were dark and large, yielding a marked impress of ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... blew her nose and looked disagreeable, and some of them talked; so that presently all became more animated, and the sky lightened, and the day was less trying. Only Sally's head continued to ache, and her spirits to falter. But she no longer sighed for Toby. A curious dread of him came into her consciousness, which she could not understand. She was afraid. She felt defensive towards him, and explanatory. Under her attention all sorts of impulses were at work. Pictures of ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... overwhelming; but she resents no injury, harbours no resentment, feels no spite, murmurs at no misfortune. From every blow of evil she recovers with a gentle patience that is infinitely pathetic. Passionate and acutely sensitive, she yet seems never to think of antagonising her affliction or to falter in her unconscious fortitude. She has no reproach—but only a grieved submission—for the husband who has wronged her by his suspicions and has doomed her to death. She thinks only of him, not of herself, when ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... and she found that she was still singing—mechanically her voice had answered to the long training of years. But the audience had heard the great prima donna catch her breath and falter in her song. For an instant it had seemed almost as though she might break down. Then the tension passed, and the lovely voice, upborne by a limitless technique, had floated out again, golden ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... I must never falter. Work, my boy, work unweariedly. I swear that all the thousand miseries of this hard fight, and ill-health, the most terrific of them all, shall never chain us down. By the river Styx it shall not! Two fellows from a nameless spot in ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... stunned. When they reached the church, and the men, after searching for a time without result, appealed to him to save trouble by pointing out the spot where the pocket-book was concealed, he could only stammer and falter unintelligibly, and finally ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... toyed with them instead of allowing myself to embrace them. I shrunk from them as it were like a cold lover who fears the too ardent caresses of his mistress. I could not believe that the supreme happiness I had so long pined for was at last so near. Might not M. le Duc d'Orleans falter at the last moment? Might not all our preparations, so carefully conducted, so cleverly planned, weigh upon his feebleness until they fell to the ground? It was not improbable. He was often firm in promises. How often was he firm in carrying them out? All these questions, all these restless ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... sifting, Came to the gates of sleep. Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon-keep Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of Sleep, Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling: The gates of sleep fell a-trembling Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter 'Yes,' Shaken with happiness: The gates of sleep ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... into the army?" said Mrs. Brice, Stephen did not remark the little falter in her voice. He laughed over the recollection of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... stated, before the war, where he was properly cared for until he was partially recovered. Although the wound, in process of time, seemed to have healed, yet its deep-seated injury caused him to falter in his walk during the remainder of his life. The reason he assigned for refusing to be taken from his horse when severely wounded does honor to his exalted patriotism. He said if he had complied his men would neglect to load and fire as often as they should; would gather around ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... Do you know any friend of mine? Do you know a man named Mountjoy? Do you know two men named Mountjoy? No: you don't. One of them is dead: killed by those murdering scoundrels what do you call them? Eh, what?" The doctor's voice began to falter, his head dropped; he slumbered suddenly and woke suddenly, and began talking again suddenly. "Would you like to be made acquainted with Lord Harry? I'll give you a sketch of his character before I introduce him. Between ourselves, he's a desperate wretch. Do you know ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... gladly hear The words I hardly dare to breathe,— The words that falter in their fear To tell what ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... breathed, but they did not falter. Mutely, with parted lips, she seemed to search ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Todd and Mr Beauclerk, and should have been more good-humoured than usual with Lord Alfred in discussing those empty seats. But for spilt milk there is no remedy. The blow had come upon him too suddenly, and he had faltered. But he would not falter again. Nothing should cow him,—no touch from a policeman, no warrant from a magistrate, no defalcation of friends, no scorn in the City, no solitude in the West End. He would go down among the electors to-morrow ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... servant did as his master had commanded him, and so went to France; and coming one day to Monsieur Fayel's house, he suddenly met him with one of his servants, who knowing him to be Captain Coney's servant, examined him; and finding him timorous, and to falter in his speech, he searched him, and found the said box in his pocket, with the note which expressed what it contained; then he dismissed the bearer, with injunction that he should come no more thither. Monsieur Fayel, going in, sent for his cook, and delivered him the powder, charging him to make ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... a lodge meeting which had wound up with a little supper in the banquet hall, felt a queer stir through his members to see the Higgins place alter its usually placid countenance, falter, turn half round, and get down on its knees with an apparently disastrous collapse of its four walls and of everything within them. The short wide windows narrowed and lengthened with an effect of ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... wandering about with a girl's frock in his hands. It was old, but he did not remember that he had ever touched it before or noticed its material or pattern. He looked at it fondly now, as he held it ready to renew the dog's memory if his purpose should falter. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... the question Which my heart has asked before? Then I falter, "Can you love me, Darling?" I can ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... it pleased, ran to the coffin, ducked under the pole and started with the others on the jog-trot, while the man whose place he had taken caught his horse. Never once in a carry of 150 miles did that coffin stop, and never once did that jog-trot falter. The cortege followers ate at the various ranches they passed, nobody thinking of refusing them food. The 150 mile journey to San Luis was necessary in order to reach a priest who would bury the dead woman. All the dead were ...
— Arizona's Yesterday - Being the Narrative of John H. Cady, Pioneer • John H. Cady
... after I had given him a hint of it; and to encourage them, rode through their ranks and spoke cheerfully to them, and used what arguments he thought proper to settle their minds. I remembered a saying which I heard old Marshal Gustavus Horn speak in Germany, "If you find your men falter, or in doubt, never suffer them to halt, but keep them advancing; for while they are going forward, it ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... search Colwyn had cherished the hope that Ronald, if captured, would declare his innocence and gladly respond to his overture of help. But, instead of doing so, Ronald had taken up an attitude which was suspicious in the highest degree, and one which caused the detective to falter in his belief that the Glenthorpe murder case was a much deeper mystery than the police imagined. Ronald's attitude, by its accordance with the facts previously known or believed about the case, belittled ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... to get rid of her. If I objected to having my bed made at five o'clock in the afternoon—which I do still think an uncomfortable arrangement—one motion of her hand towards the same nankeen region of wounded sensibility was enough to make me falter an apology. In short, I would have done anything in an honourable way rather than give Mrs. Crupp offence; and she was the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... know not how many bottles carrying messages. It were only by mere chance yon varlet could escape coming over some of them. Add this to the fact that yon varlet has got the king's navy after us, and marry! methinks we have full work cut out for us. Not that stout heart should falter, ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... found his money—missing! 'O Heavens!' he cried, 'shall I Such riches lose, and still not die? Shall I not hang?—as I, in fact, Might justly do if cord I lack'd; But now, without expense, I can; This cord here only lacks a man.' The saving was no saving clause; It suffer'd not his heart to falter, Until it reach'd his final pause As full possessor of the halter,— 'Tis thus the miser often grieves: Whoe'er the benefit receives Of what he owns, he never must— Mere treasurer for thieves, Or relatives, or dust. But ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now—-now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail; if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it, but sooner or later the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... valiantly. Inspired by high and honourable resolve, a man must stand to his post, and die there, if need be. Like the old Danish hero, his determination should be, "to dare nobly, to will strongly, and never to falter in the path of duty." The power of will, be it great or small, which God has given us, is a Divine gift; and we ought neither to let it perish for want of using on the one hand, nor profane it by employing it for ignoble ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... chamber where Tithonus lies. But through his window there the eastern skies Fall palely fair to the dim ocean's end. There, in blue mist where air and ocean blend, The lazy clouds that sail the wide world o'er Falter and turn where they can sail no more. There singing groves, there spacious gardens blow — Cedars and silver poplars, row on row, Through whose black boughs on her appointed night, Flooding his chamber with enchanted light, Lifts the full moon's immeasurable sphere, Crimson ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... then! Fate hath endow'd him with an ardent mind, Which unrestrain'd still presses on for ever, And whose precipitate endeavour Earth's joys o'erleaping, leaveth them behind. Him will I drag through life's wild waste, Through scenes of vapid dulness, where at last Bewilder'd, he shall falter, and stick fast; And, still to mock his greedy haste, Viands and drink shall float his craving lips beyond— Vainly he'll seek refreshment, anguish-tost, And were he not the devil's by his bond, Yet must his ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... halted, her arms behind her, looking him fixedly in the face. He had made a movement to advance, and offer his hand in greeting, but her posture checked the impulse. His courage began to falter under her inspection. ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... fireside and for home, For heritage, for altar; And, by the God of yon blue dome, Not one of us shall falter! ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... third revolt against her authority; and it remains to be seen how the Church of Rome will deal with it. Will she now adopt half measures? Will she now falter and draw back,—she that never before feared enemy or spared foe? Will that Church that quenched in blood the Protestantism of the Waldenses,—that put down the Reformation in France by one terrible blow,—that by the help of dungeons and racks banished the light from Italy and Spain,—will ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... his father. He now began to falter in his story, and to change his statements. The examination had lasted long, and it was seen that the feeble intellect of the boy was wearied out, so the case was adjourned. When next confronted with the elder Grenier, ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... who came!" he said, his keen eyes on her. But her look did not falter. "You waited because the gods willed that I should come to you," he said, speaking rapidly, since she showed signs of nervousness. "And I have come, to plead my love, and to ask yours in return. Once before were we interrupted when I tried to speak; now the chance is mine at ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... gray to the lips, but his nerve did not falter. "It had to come some time. And it was Luck ought to have done it too." He waved aside Sweeney, who was holding a flask to his lips. "What's ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... quick to see and interpret Charley's action, and their guns were quickly turned upon his frail craft. As he drew nearer the drifting dugout and came within range, a perfect hail of bullets splashed the water into foam around him. He did not falter or hesitate, but with long clean strokes of the paddle, sent his light little craft flying towards his goal. Perhaps it was this very speed that saved his life. Bullet after bullet pierced the thin canvas sides and one ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... remains in dressing station and hospital, the white-faced, wild-eyed women waiting at home, and back of all, safe, snug and cynical, the selfish, ambitious promoters of war. Steady as a marching column without pause or falter, in a tone monotonous yet thrilling with a certain subdued passion, he gave forth his indictment of war. He was on familiar ground for this had been the theme of his prize essay last winter. But to-night the thing to him was vital, terrifying, horrible. He was delivering no ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... barb deeper, may try to shake the dust of life from off their feet. Neither will be wise. But precisely because they are not wise, they will seek the company of wise men. Their own attitude will not wear. The ecstasy will fail, the will to renunciation falter; the gray reality which permits no one to escape it altogether will filter like a mist into the vision and the cell. Then they will turn to the wise men. They will find comfort in the smile to which they ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... though fearful her resolution would falter, Teresa drew her writing-desk towards her, and wrote a note so rapidly, and with so unsteady a hand, that there was little resemblance to her usual writing, and then sought for sleep-but in vain-and at the ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... not at liberty to make this comparison. If a youth were to begin his career in such an assemblage, with such examples to guide and to animate, it will be pleaded, there would be no cause for apprehension; he could not falter, he could not be misled. But ours is, notwithstanding its manifold excellences, a degenerate age; and recreant knights are among us far outnumbering the true. A false Gloriana in these days imposes worthless services, which they who perform them, in ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... power of speech on the rack in Portugal, and could only falter a few unintelligible words, when greatly excited, but her hearing had remained, and her husband understood how to read the expression of her eyes. A great sorrow had drawn a deep line in the high, pure brow, and this also was eloquent; for when she felt happy ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... to see the revengeful trend of the Indian's thought. The hints of the evil intention of the Potlatch troubled him, but his faith in the old chief and the influence of his own integrity did not falter. ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... they befriend, but they add enormously to its moral strength, that is, to its confidence and courage. Men have a sort of instinctive respect and fear for constituted authorities of any kind, and, though often willing to plot against them, are still very apt to falter and fall back when the time comes for the actual collision. The feeling that, after all, they are in the wrong in fighting against the government of their country, weakens them extremely, and makes them ready to abandon the struggle ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... true, then, to a stout heart and ready hand, a way might open even aboard the bark to protect her from the final closing of the devil's jaws. I had nothing to risk but my life, and it had never been my nature to count odds. I would act as the heart bade, and so I drove the temptation to falter away, and strode on up the bank into the black shadow ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... ate up the energies of the men. As if by agreement, the leaders began to slacken their speed. The volleys directed against them had had a seeming windlike effect. The regiment snorted and blew. Among some stolid trees it began to falter and hesitate. The men, staring intently, began to wait for some of the distant walls of smoke to move and disclose to them the scene. Since much of their strength and their breath had vanished, they returned to caution. ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... the kind old eyes were dim with unshed tears. "The hand of the Lord has been laid in heaviness upon you, but 'those whom He loveth He chasteneth.' Even could I lift the burden of your sorrow as easily as I raise this hand, I should falter, because, as I believe in God, so do I believe that through trial even such as this your light shall yet shine before men so pure and strong that men themselves shall be purer ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... finally came in hand- in-hand. Then they made use of their war clubs. At this time the Squawkihows summoned to their aid their reserved company, which they kept in the rear. The young women came on the flank of the Senecas' ranks, and beat them with clubs, which made the Senecas falter for a while. Finally they called on their reserved warriors, who made a desperate charge on the enemy and made them retreat. The Senecas began taking prisoners. They tied their hands behind them to trees. In this way they took a great many prisoners, particularly the females. The warriors ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... raving words, about the blessed dead: And then he rose, and in the moonshade stood, Gazing upon its light in solitude; And smote his brow, at some idea wild That came across: then, weeping like a child, He falter'd out the name of Agathe; And look'd unto the heaven inquiringly, And the ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... the moving years; Youth's colour dies, the fervid morning glow Is gone from off the foreland; slow, slow, Even slower than the fount of human tears To empty, the consuming shadow nears That Time is casting on the worldly show Of pomp and glory. But falter not;—below That thought is based a deeper ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... was going to do. She said: "I am going inside; I cannot escape you, you are too many for me. Leave me to myself for a short time." The man brandished a spear in her face, and said: "See, that is the blood of your friends; yours will soon cover it." But she did not falter, and the savages probably left her untouched for this reason. They are very superstitious, and must have thought that there was something supernatural about her. Shortly after this she heard the tramp of feet outside, and an English voice calling to ask if there was anybody inside; running ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 24, June 16, 1898 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... rarely satisfy me. Is it not remarkable that soldiers who could face the shells with an excellent imitation of indifference should falter in their books, intimidated by the opinions of those who stayed at home? They rarely summon the courage to attack those heroic dummies which are not soldiers but idols set up in a glorious battlefield that never ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... the splendor of the part he was being called upon to play flowed through him like some elixir; he felt that he was transcending himself, that his inspiration was drawn from the hidden springs of the spirit, and that he could neither falter nor go astray. "You don't know what you are meddling with! This man has plotted to lay the South in ruins—he has been arming the negroes—it—it is incredible that you should all know this—to such I say, go home and thank God for your escape! For the others"—his shaggy brows met in a menacing ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... ten days or more, since time measurement had lost its meaning, Cal lived among the colonists, watched their complete retrogression into a state of unawareness. Even the speech which they had retained seemed now to thin and falter as the simplifying of their idea-content no longer ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... many a long day, and after a few moments more of earnest conversation with Josephine, too sacred for revelation. It may be believed that she who had gone so far for the young girl's happiness and that of her "brother" Richard, would not falter now in finishing her task; and the truth is that had she had no benevolence extending further, she had the fox-hunter's anxiety to be "in at the death," and the feminine fancy for her own peculiar "reward," which could only be obtained at the end of ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... You never falter when the close comes round, Or leave the substance to preserve the sound; You never wander after words that fly, For all the words you need before you lie. But I, who—smarting for my sins of late— With itch of rhyme am visited by fate, Expend on air ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... went on with less virulence, "you have, as her companion, the happy life I wish for you, Ah, your old father does not grudge you that, my liebschen! And, after all, you do not falter in your love. My poverty does not make ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... she answered low, "Across the world upon a quest for me? And will you falter not, nor swerve, nor fail, Nor turn aside from seeking, night nor day, Until you conquer with your prowess rare The prize for me? And may I choose ...
— Under King Constantine • Katrina Trask
... I had intended to rush on here in a loud bullying voice, but 'Along this path came a woman' I read, and stop. Did I hear a faint sound from the other end of the bed? Perhaps I did not; I may only have been listening for it, but I falter and look up. My sister and I look sternly at my mother. She bites her under-lip and clutches the bed with both hands, really she is doing her best for me, but first comes a smothered gurgling sound, then her hold on herself relaxes and ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... senses came back to her so that she could grasp one of the wires. Hand over hand she was able to pull herself slowly to the nearest pole, where she rested before again making the trial. This time she did not falter, but when she was picked up by the rescuers at the farthest pole toward safety she was limp from ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... and social morality. But what of that? He professes to take his cue from the elemental laws. "I reckon I behave no more proudly than the level I plant my house by." The question is, Is he adequate, is he man enough, to do it? Will he not falter, or betray self-consciousness? Will he be true to his ideal through thick and thin? The social gods will all be outraged, but that is less to him than the candor and directness of nature in whose spirit he ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... time and will. And presently the glance that watched me, as at distance and in doubt, began to flutter and to brighten, and to deepen into kindness, then to beam with trust and love, and then with gathering tears to falter, and in shame to turn away. But the small entreating hands found their way, as if by instinct, to my great projecting palms; and trembled there, ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... passion, than yours. You suppose, however, that you can act as a make-weight, a drag on the chariot-wheel; that you will be able to keep and steady the pace; and that, when you like, you may arrest the onward progress. Ah, it is not so! Herodias will have her way with you. You may be reluctant, will falter and hesitate, will remonstrate, will resist, but ultimately you will drift into doing the very sins, the mention of which in your presence brings the red blood ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... visionary tints the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 5 The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... undertaking. It is well we should understand each other, at once and forever, or even I some day might be tempted to make a fool of myself. Your excellent counsels, my dearest cousin, will be invaluable to me, should my lagging footsteps falter by the way. Edith! where have you learned to be so hard, so worldly, so—if you will pardon ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... but creatures of the night Led forth by day, Who needs must falter, and with stammering steps Spell out our paths in syllables ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... is your idol's supplement? Who will be his lieutenant, who will be heir to his heritage of a cross bar and a rope? You are not so brisk as you were. Does your devotion falter? Were you mocking me ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... molten lead, blotting out his sight in scorching vapour, closing over his head, merciless and deadly. When she spoke of the deception as to Dain's death of which he had been the victim only that day, he glanced again at her with terrible eyes, and made her falter for a second, but he turned away directly, and his face suddenly lost all expression in a stony stare far away over the river. Ah! the river! His old friend and his old enemy, speaking always with the same voice as he runs from year to year bringing fortune or disappointment happiness ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... were like other folk; And, when Platonic flights were over, The tutor turn'd a mortal lover! So tender of the young and fair! It show'd a true paternal care— Five thousand guineas in her purse! The doctor might have fancied worse.— Hardly at length he silence broke, And falter'd every word he spoke; Interpreting her complaisance, Just as a man sans consequence. She rallied well, he always knew: Her manner now was something new; And what she spoke was in an air As serious as a tragic player. But those ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... The step may falter, eye be dim—the brow may wrinkles wear, And underneath the crumbling mould our friends be sleeping there— But oh, these visions come to us as to the rose the dew, And while with raptured gaze we look the ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... are directly affected by its arguments, or avowedly adopt its conclusions. It is hard to hold by a creed which so many influential voices tell you it is a sign of folly and of being behind the age to believe. The consciousness that Christian truth is denied, makes some of you falter in its profession, and fancy that it is less certain simply because it is gainsaid. The mist wraps you in its folds, and it is difficult to keep warm in it, or to believe that love and sunshine are above it all the same. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... at the hypostyle of the temple of Amen, and a sensation of fear makes me hesitate at first on the threshold. To find himself in the dead of night before such a place might well make a man falter. It seems like some hall for Titans, a remnant of fabulous ages, which has maintained itself, during its long duration, by force of its very massiveness, like the mountains. Nothing human is so vast. Nowhere on earth have men conceived such dwellings. Columns after ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... my heart upon Thy altar, But can not get the wood to burn; It hardly flares ere it begins to falter, And ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... Brookfield, went down, the very last of June, last year, and purchased three calves of Mr. Chenery, of Belmont. He brought these calves up in the cars to Brookfield. On their way from the depot to his house, about five miles, one of the calves was observed to falter, and when he got to his house, it seemed to be sick, and in two or three days exhibited very great illness; so much so, that his father came along, and, thinking he could take better care of it, took the calf home. He took it to his own barn, in ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... he feared neither God nor hell; yet again, at times, his soul is even drowned with terrors. If one knew the wicked, when they are under warm convic-tions, then the bed shakes on which they be; then the proud tongue doth falter in their mouth, and their knees knock one against another. Then their conscience stares, and roars, and tears, and arraigns them. O! none can imagine what fearful plights a wicked man is in at times!-(Bunyan's Desires of the Righteous, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... inscrutable, Till, at the last, an utterance direct, Obscure no more, was brought to Inachus— A peremptory charge to fling me forth Beyond my home and fatherland, a thing Sent loose in banishment o'er all the world; And—should he falter—Zeus should launch on him A fire-eyed bolt, to shatter and consume Himself and all his race to nothingness. Bowing before such utterance from the shrine Of Loxias, he drave me from our halls, Barring the gates against me: loth he was ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... of their own. Eben had died; and the church—strange how long and longer still the walk to the church had grown each time she had walked it this last year! After all, perhaps it did not matter; there were new faces at the church, and young, strong hands that did not falter and tremble over these new ways of doing things. For a time there had been only the house that needed her—but how great that need had been! There were the rooms to care for, there was the linen to air, ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... she resolves to "do something" in the interest of her child, she is on the right road, and we hope to encourage her in the good intention. We would however tell her that her effort must be thorough, and that she must be patient and persevering. If she does not falter in well doing she will succeed beyond her expectation, and the satisfaction she will experience in noting the evidences of returning health and strength in the appearance and conduct of her child, should be ample recompense for the effort made and ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol 2 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... in his acquaintance with her, that brave spirit seemed to falter: she became a burden, bereft for a little of all ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... school, and he had liked it immensely. Warrender had been a word to conjure withal, named by lower boys with awe, fondly cherished in the records of Sixth Form. But the glimmer in the Head Master's eye as he said good-bye, the little falter in his tutor's voice,—did these mean no more than an appreciation of his progress, and an anticipation of the honour and glory he was to bring them at the university, a name to fling in the teeth of the newspaper fellows next time they demanded ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... had become used to what had at first appeared innovations. Mr. Dusautoy, in thanking Mr. Kendal, begged him to allow himself to be nominated his churchwarden next Easter, and having consented while his blood was up, there was no danger that, however he might dislike the prospect, he would falter when the time ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... have been deterred by the supplications of his young wife from going in person to destroy them.[1074] At length, when the alternative of death or the Bastile was the only one presented, the courage of the Bourbons began to falter. Navarre was the first to yield, and his sister, the excellent Catharine de Bourbon, followed his example. On the thirteenth of September the ambassador Walsingham wrote: "They prepare Bastile for some persons of quality. It ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... be remembered that the raspberry is a Northern fruit. I am often asked in effect, What raspberries do you recommend for the Gulf States? I suppose my best reply would be, What oranges do you think best adapted to New York? Most of the foreign kinds falter and fail in New Jersey and Southern Pennsylvania; the Cuthbert and its class can be grown much further south, while the Turner and the black-caps thrive almost ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... Throughout the whole of a ceremony, which is ever solemn and admonitory, the squatter had maintained a grave and serious deportment. His vast features were visibly stamped with an expression of deep concern; but at no time did they falter, until he turned his back, as he believed for ever, on the grave of his first-born. Nature was then stirring powerfully within him, and the muscles of his stern visage began to work perceptibly. His children fastened their eyes on his, as if to seek a direction ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... garden of our joy, and palled with empire, how often hast thou sighed for some sweet isle unknown to man, where thou mightst pass thy days with no companion but my faithful self, and no adventures but our constant loves? O my beloved, that life may still be thine! And dost thou falter? Dost call thyself forlorn with such fidelity, and deem thyself a wretch, when Paradise with all its beauteous gates but woos thy entrance? Oh! no, no, no, no! thou hast forgot Schirene: I fear me much, thy ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... glad to hear that Anthony, though he did shirk the welcome on the quay, behaved admirably, with the simplicity of a man who has no small meannesses and makes no mean reservations. His eyes did not flinch and his tongue did not falter. He was, I have it on the best authority, admirable in his earnestness, in his sincerity and also in his restraint. He was perfect. Nevertheless the vital force of his unknown individuality addressing him so familiarly was enough to fluster Mr ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... the thorn bushes. Eleanor could think of but one person coming to that spot of the ruins; and in sudden terror she sprang from the window and rushed round the other corner of the wall. The tune ceased; Eleanor heard no more; but she dared not falter or look back. She was in a thicket on this side too, and in a mass of decayed ruins and rubbish which almost stopped her way. By determination and perseverance, with some knocks and scratches, she at last got free and stopped to breathe and think. Why was ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... the French troops falter under fire; nor did the Germans, for that matter. Never was there greater bravery, loyalty and devotion. Called upon for tasks that seemed well nigh impossible, the men did not hesitate. They met death in such numbers as ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... backwards and hurt herself. On the other hand, her bearing was certainly calculated to check familiarity. Even stockbrokers' clerks—young men as a class with the bump of reverence but poorly developed—would in her presence falter and grow hesitating. She had cultivated the art of not noticing to something approaching perfection. She could draw the noisiest customer a glass of beer, which he had never ordered; exchange it for three of whiskey, which he had; take ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... oppression had driven them to revolt, when the solemn farce of trying them for a crime which posterity will account a virtue had terminated, and when the verdict of "guilty" had gladdened the hearts of their accusers. The circumstances under which they spoke might well cause a bold man to falter. They were about parting for ever from all that makes life dear to man; and, for some of them, the sentence; which was to cut short the thread of their existence, to consign them to a bloody and ignominious death, to leave their bodies ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... and now you feel like setting to work again with earnest good-will. That's right. But don't try to do to much at first. Better start easily and keep up the pace, than make a quick run for a while only to falter and grow weary ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... complained to me of certain Christian witnesses who had given evidence in a case recently conducted by him in Madura. "I hate to have your Christians as witnesses in any of my cases," he says; "for whenever they venture to give false evidence they instantly falter and stumble and are caught by the opposing counsel. A Hindu, when he gives false evidence, will tell a straight and a plausible story. But your Christians are too much affected by twinges of conscience." What was embarrassing and annoying to him was encouraging to me! That our Christians should ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... the Pulpits obliged with an "O God who art in Heaven girthed in shining armor before Thee Thy cause Liberty Humanity Democracy Thy blessing inspire light of sacrifice brave women and hero men give us strength O Lord not falter see way of Righteousness stern hearts bear great burden Thou has given us carry on till powers of darkness routed virtue again triumphant. Thy will done on earth ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... helpless, clinging to her code, and justifying all the trouble she gave to others by a reference to the impalpable, elusive and possible non-existent immortal and inner self she had held so dear. She was ashamed. Ah, now at last she would give ungrudgingly. Her feet should not falter, nor her eyes be dimmed by any shadow of fear or of regret, though she went by perilous ways ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... O Jeddak, and judge us with leniency. We followed the two slaves to the apartments of O-Mai the Cruel. We entered the accursed chambers and still we did not falter. We came at last to that horrid chamber no human eye had scanned before in fifty centuries and we looked upon the dead face of O-Mai lying as he has lain for all this time. To the very death chamber of O-Mai the Cruel ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... from the Bon Homme Richard. At length Paul found himself in violent storms beating off the rugged southeastern coast of Scotland, with only two accompanying ships. But neither the mutiny of his fleet, nor the chaos of the elements, made him falter in his purpose. Nay, at this crisis, he projected the most ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... began to remark that things were going badly, the city falling into a state of anarchy, and that some strong remedy was required, everyone felt amazed. Some of his colleagues began to murmur, others to cough; and at last he began to falter and became so confused that he could not go on with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... It danced elfishly, and trippingly—for very joy it made one laugh. The tear rolled down Joyce's face, as the smile replaced it, and dropped upon the thin cheek of the baby. He did not flinch, and the staring eyes did not falter, but something drew the mother's attention. As the final tripping notes ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... intelligence. She had before this weaned the expatriated from traditions compared with which the matutinal beefsteak was but the creature of an hour, and it was not for her, with some of her memories, to falter in the path though she freely enough declared, on reflexion, that there was always in such cases a choice of opposed policies. "There are times when to give them ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... and comedian, or true man and no pretender, his eyes did not falter. They were absorbed, as if in eager ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that it ought to be abolished, and must eventually be abolished; and that the only question about its abolition is a question of time. [192] But here is the peril,—that a good many persons in Congress and out of Congress will falter in their conviction before the determined stand of the South,—the determination, that is to say, to break off from the Union rather than submit to the Wilmot Proviso. And I do most seriously fear, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... before Augustus. And what had he to oppose against the seasoned veterans of the English army, thrice armed in the consciousness of their unparalleled achievement?—Five weak and astounded battalions, and a horde of inchoate peasants. But Montcalm did not falter; by ten he had taken up his position, and by eleven, after some ineffectual cannonading, to allow time for the arrival of re-enforcements which came not, he led the charge. The attack was disordered by the uneven ground, the fences and the ravines; ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... in the count's body seemed rushing to his heart. He trembled. The ingenuous smile on his friend's countenance, and his features so sweetly marked with frankness, made his resolution falter. ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... sir, you must believe; There is one language never can deceive The lover knew it when the maiden smiled; The mother knows it when she clasps her child; Voices may falter, trembling lips turn pale, Words grope and stumble; this will tell their tale Shorn of all rhetoric, bare of all pretence, But radiant, warm, with Nature's eloquence. Look in our eyes! Your welcome waits you there,— North, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Never to submit or falter; To arms! etc. Till the spoilers are defeated, Till the Lord's work is completed. To arms! etc. Advance the flag of ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... MacDonald that I can't think of anything else. But I think the explanation is that the Scotch are essentially such a devout people and live so closely within the shadow of death itself that they may without irreverence or pain jest where our lips would falter. Or else, perhaps they don't care a cuss whether Sandy MacDonald died or ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock
... uncle, in a tone of disappointment that made her falter, as she added, 'I think so.' At the same time the stranger turned the paper round, and she knew it for the cheque that had so long resided in her desk, but with dilated eyes, she exclaimed, 'But—but— that was for ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... approach, and it was with the same air of deference that he had welcomed the Marquis, as he took care to call him; but he affected to be so overcome by the honor of this visit that he could only falter out,— ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... as the fox sprang up the slight embankment on which, as is usual, the line of fence was placed. For an instant he seemed to falter, then leaped the top rail, and disappeared beyond ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... spot where she had just renounced her last hope of earthly happiness. Her eyes followed Philip in his frenzied flight, and, when he disappeared, she stretched out her hands with a gesture of mingled longing and despair. But the weakness that had made this courageous soul falter for an instant soon vanished. She lifted her eyes toward Heaven as if imploring strength from on high and then walked slowly in the direction of the chateau. Suddenly, at a turn in the path, she met Coursegol. She had not time to conceal ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet
... marry a woman and she shares his desire, or if on her becoming pregnant he desires to marry her, he speaks with her parents and with his. If either of her parents objects, no marriage occurs; but he does not usually falter, even though his parents do object. They say the advent of a babe seldom fails to win the good will of the young man's parents. In the case of the girl's pregnancy, marriage is more assured, and her father builds or gives her a house. The olag is no longer for ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... necessary that we reduce St. Johns, and as it is our first real battle you must each be responsible for your men. Don't let any falter. At the first sign of retreat, unless I order it, shoot the leader; that will prevent the others from running. It is harsh, but necessary. Now remember that our country depends on us for victory. We must prove ourselves worthy. ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... And presently the glance that watched me, as at distance and in doubt, began to flutter and to brighten, and to deepen into kindness, then to beam with trust and love, and then with gathering tears to falter, and in shame to turn away. But the small entreating hands found their way, as if by instinct, to my great projecting palms; and ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... by the people for the people perish earth" ... And the Pulpits obliged with an "O God who art in Heaven girthed in shining armor before Thee Thy cause Liberty Humanity Democracy Thy blessing inspire light of sacrifice brave women and hero men give us strength O Lord not falter see way of Righteousness stern hearts bear great burden Thou has given us carry on till powers of darkness routed virtue again triumphant. Thy will done on earth as it ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... lead to the total defeat of the few that are left, and the best endeavours of a dwindling remnant may be wholly nugatory. There is needed a sense of community and solidarity, without which the assurance necessary to the work is bound to falter and dwindle out; and there is also needed a degree of popular countenance, not to be had by isolated individuals engaged in an unconventional pursuit of things that are neither to be classed as spendthrift decorum nor as merchantable goods. In this connection an isolated one does not count ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... had left Cherry Court School, having given all possible directions for his little girl's comfort and well-being, and had gone away sorely broken down, crushed to the earth himself, but leaving Kitty with a courage which did not falter during the days which were to come. For the Major knew that, strong as he was, he was going to a part of India where brave men as strong as he are stricken down year after year by the unhealthy climate, and three years even at the best was a long time to part with a girl like Kitty, ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... things. The idea terrified her beyond words. Her mind, undisciplined and never very clear, became quite confused, and only her long preparation and expectation of this talk enabled her to keep on at all, although now she could but falter ahead blindly. "Why, Paul dear—don't look at me so! I never dreamed of blaming you for it! It's just because I want things better for you that ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... and croak As he ever caws and caws, Till the starry dance he broke, Till the sphery paean pause, And the universal chime Falter out of tune ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... was wrought He charged the young men to uplift and bind her, As ye lift a wild kid, high above the altar, Fierce-huddling forward, fallen, clinging sore To the robe that wrapt her; yea, he bids them hinder The sweet mouth's utterance, the cries that falter, —His ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... Wise Finn, who spake forth firm and slow— "Goll, son of Morna, peerless man, The keen desire of every clan, Far-famed for many a valiant deed, Strong hero in the time of need. I vaunt not Conn ... nor deem that thou Dost falter, save with meekness, now— But why shouldst thou not take the head Of this bold youth, as of The Red, ...
— Elves and Heroes • Donald A. MacKenzie
... came forth columns of infantry, supported by field batteries, and in a moment these had opened upon the advancing Russian horsemen; but in spite of this hail of death, the Cossacks did not falter nor pause. Straight up to the mouth of the field guns they rode—sabering the gunners right and left—and in a few moments these had ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... his steps. He slouched but did not stagger, a circumstance which caused Simmy a sharp twinge of uneasiness. He was not intoxicated. Simmy's good sense told him that he would be more dangerous sober than drunk, but he did not falter. At the second shout, young Tresslyn stopped. His hands were thrust deep into his ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... disturbing ache would climb up to the back of her neck, and her half-baked power of concentration falter at the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... by any means expected gratitude, but neither had they expected any such rudeness as this, so Sindri determined to give Loki a lesson. Going to one corner of the smithy he picked up a pig-skin and taking the hammer in his hands, told his brother to blow steadily, neither to falter nor to fail until he passed the word that the work was done. Then with strength and gentleness he wrought with his tools, having cast nothing into the heat but the pig-skin; with mighty blows and delicate touches he brought thickness and substance ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... a sufficient length of time to allow our bodies to recuperate from the struggle with the torrent; also, we began to feel the want of food. Harry was the first to falter, but I spurred him on. Then he stumbled and ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... saw resemblance to no one she remembered, so she concluded she must be like the father, physically, whom they must all ignore absolutely. Try as she valiantly did, the old lady felt her quick-beating heart falter before Joan's earnest, searching gaze. It was a relief to turn to Nancy and permit her ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... dearer to her than at that moment, when his brilliant eyes seemed to search her soul and magnetize her; yet she did not falter and the aching of her heart was ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... child I hide my face and moan— A little girl that may no farther go; The path above me only seems to grow More rugged, climbing still, and ever briered With keener thorns of pain than these below; And O the bleeding feet that falter so And ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... that what you have acted by me; and that with a premeditation and contrivance worthy only of that single heart which now, base as well as ungrateful as thou art, seems to quake within thee.—And well may'st thou quake; well may'st thou tremble, and falter, and hesitate, as thou dost, when thou reflectest upon what I have suffered for thy sake, and upon the ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... to be joined to the Roman Catholic Church. There is a conviction which lies deeper than all thought or speech, which moves me with an irresistible influence to take this step, which arguments cannot reach, nor any visible power make to falter. Words are powerless against it and inexpressive of it; to attempt to explain, or give to the intellectual mind the reasons why and wherefore, would be as impossible as to paint the heavens or to utter the eternal Word, the centre of all existence. It would be ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... figure of Hugh Clifford, her uncle's neighbour at table, who in company with Mr. Hammersley was still hesitating in the doorway. As Mr. Sedgwick stopped his useless talk, the two passed in and the sound of her fluttering breath as she finally turned a listening ear his way, caused him to falter as he repeated his ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... something so manly and straightforward in his tone and manner that she could not choose but allow him to sit down beside her, although she did falter out something about the propriety of talking on her uncle's business ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... seen thy building falter Can thy God thy griefs despise? 'Mid the ruins dark, an altar Fashion'd by His ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... commercial career opening before him. Above all, he was a foreigner, and unpopular in the city. Yet he did not hesitate to take the post from which others shrank. He and Helm were regarded as doomed men, but they did not falter from their self-imposed task. They went to work at once. Girard chose the post of honor, which was the post of danger—the management of the interior of the hospital. His decisive character was at once ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... father hardly knew where he was. In his haste, he turned two leaves of the music-book at once. What a dreadful disaster! It was all over now. She would break down at once, if the accompaniment should falter. ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... brave, and now the village Made preparations for the marriage. There By the warm sea the maidens paid their court To Taka, who so soon would leave their gay Indifferent frolic lives to wed the grave Stern chief. She did not falter at the choice. Love which the maidens sang was but a word; She wished no better fate than to be mated To a strong warrior whom her heart held dear As friend to kind Akau. So she waited. In her slim hands she held a polished cup, The shell of ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay
... involves the welfare, happiness and progress of many millions of people. The history of civilization in Europe has reached a new page, one which must be written by those who have in keeping the Divine destiny of the Germanic race. It is not a time to falter before the graveness of our responsibility and the magnitude of our undertakings. I spoke of these things at Eckartsau. I ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... both national and individual difficulties it is indispensable, in order that courage may not waver, that hope may not falter—it is indispensable that there should be, as already urged, a clear intellectual comprehension of the full nature of the good thing for which battle is waged. The brilliant vision of attainable good must be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... well, but we can do better. A thousand years shall not erase from the pages of history the part that we have played upon the American stage of action. Do not falter now, my brethren, but rush to the help of the Negro Department with your banners floating in the breeze. We are pronounced an unsolved problem. We are quoted as a vexatious question, and the eyes of the world are ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... them; or the Real Lady, or the Ladylike Lady, or the Titled Lady, the portraits of whom—one or other of them—sweep in curves about their folio pages; and, while they fascinate you, make you feel that you would falter on the threshold of matrimony if only because they couldn't possibly take nourishment. Would not the discomfort of meals eaten with a companion who could swallow nothing justify a ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... that never falter, Before God's altar Rehearse their paeans of unceasing praise; Their theme the boundless love By which God rules above, Mysteriously engrafted On grace divine, and wafted Into every soul of ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... dweller in the valley longs for the height, and sets forth, heeding not the eager hands that, selfishly, as it seems, would keep him within their loving reach. Having once turned his face upward, he does not falter, even for the space of a backward look. He finds that the way is steep, that there is no place to rest, and that the comfort and shelter of the valley are unknown. The sun burns him, and the cold freezes ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... dismal tune, Music that ghosts delight in—and now heed Yon beauteous nymph, who must unmask the deed. See! with majestic sweep she swims alone Through rooms, all dreary, guided by a groan, Though windows rattle and though tap'stries shake And the feet falter every step they take. Mid groans and gibing sprites she silent goes To find a something which will soon expose The villainies and wiles of her determined foes, And having thus adventured, thus endured, Fame, wealth, and ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... child's health had deteriorated in these last months. She sat down, and with Angela on her lap, questioned anxiously. Cherry had no complaints—she always was like this in the spring. How was her foot? As usual, a falter. Was it really? Well, yes, she thought so. And then, as the motherly eyes looked into hers, there came a burst of the ready tears; and 'Oh, please don't talk about ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... when I told you that the way thither was only through the earth,—that it was long and difficult and narrow,—that many troubles must make you strong to walk in it,—did you not long to go, promising not to complain? Do you so soon falter? Have I not told you that the book you carry in your hands there must first be formed on the earth?—that there you shall pick up one by one the shining letters which compose it? Why do you complain?—have you forgotten that your home ...
— The Angel Children - or, Stories from Cloud-Land • Charlotte M. Higgins
... makes me falter In writing of this wicked brute; Although he has escaped the halter, He wears for life a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... glance of his grey eyes—he had a slight cast in them; nor the grim suavity of his manner, and the harsh threatening voice that permitted of no disguise. It was the sum of these things, the great brutal presence of the man—that was overpowering—that made the great falter and the poor crouch. And then his reputation! Though we knew little of the world's wickedness, all we did know had come to us linked with his name. We had heard of him as a duellist, as a bully, an employer of bravos. At Jarnac he had been the last to turn ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... began in silence, and then Mrs. Winstanley began to falter forth small remarks, feeble as the twitterings of birds before the coming storm. How very warm it had been all day, almost oppressive: and yet it had been a remarkably fine day. There was a fair at Emery Down—at least not exactly a fair, but a barrow of nuts and some horrid pistols, and a swing. ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... Lily felt sure that a cue was being pressed on her; but it was put forth with such startling suddenness, and with so incredible an air of ignoring what it led up to, that she could only falter out doubtfully: ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... whining for fire, and to crown their desire who was found but the Wren? To the high heaven he came, from the Sun stole he flame, and for this has a name in the memory of men! {7} And in India who for the Soma juice flew, and to men brought it through without falter or fail? Why the Hawk 'twas again, and great Indra to men would appear, now and then, in the shape of a Quail, While the Thlinkeet's delight is the Bird of the Night, the beak and the bright ebon plumage of Yehl.{8} And who for ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... on inside him. She realized the nature of that which brought him out here, to pretend to read a book. He wanted to be near her. And there was something of the pathetic faithfulness of a dog about him—a dog that is beaten and repulsed but never falters, or can falter, in devotion to his master. She had begun to know what that ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... turned triumphantly away, the color suddenly left her cheek and there was an instant's falter. As though he had heard her words, Stanley Armstrong too had suddenly turned and stood looking sternly into ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... a third revolt against her authority; and it remains to be seen how the Church of Rome will deal with it. Will she now adopt half measures? Will she now falter and draw back,—she that never before feared enemy or spared foe? Will that Church that quenched in blood the Protestantism of the Waldenses,—that put down the Reformation in France by one terrible blow,—that by the help ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... you are about to be escorted forth where the elusive cigar-butt lurks in the gutter and scraps of paper litter the pavement. As an exponent of this particular brand of discipline you will see that no small item escapes you. Should you be so remiss, or should you falter in doing your full duty, you will be returned at once to this room, where retribution waits with heavy hands. Ho, Worthy Buddies! Invest the candidate with the sacred insignia of ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... your heroism and all the rest of it? Suppose I, with nothing but such sentimental stuff to stand between these muscles of mine and those papers which you have about you, and which I want and mean to have: suppose I, with the prize within my grasp, were to falter and sneak away with my hands empty; or, what would be worse, cover up my weakness by playing the magnanimous hero, and sparing you the violence I dared not use, would you not despise me from the depths of your woman's ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... free, Upon my forehead and along my spine. At thy command eschewing pleasure's cup, With the hot grape I warm no more my wit; When on thy stool of penitence I sit I'm quite converted, for I can't get up. Ungrateful he who afterward would falter To make ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... St. Augustine was one of the prime oracles of Antiquity; here then Antiquity was deciding against itself. What a light was hereby thrown upon every controversy in the Church! not that, for the moment, the multitude may not falter in their judgment,—not that, in the Arian hurricane, Sees more than can be numbered did not bend before its fury, and fall off from St. Athanasius,—not that the crowd of Oriental Bishops did not need to be ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... relation. He who has this loyalty dominant in his nature never pronounces anything false which subsequent investigation, or the investigation by others, proves true. He never becomes an obstacle to the spread of any truth. He is always the first to welcome a new truth and the last to falter in sustaining it. He is always ready to recognize the same sincerity and fidelity in others, and to give a kindly welcome to the labors and discoveries of other followers of truth. As brave men readily recognize ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... arrest; [Footnote: Idem, p. 110.] even two dogs had been killed. The plague propagated itself; for the only hope for those cried out upon was to confess their guilt and turn informers. Thus no one was safe. Mr. Willard, pastor of the Old South, who began to falter, was threatened; the wife of Mr. Hale, pastor of Beverly, who had been one of the great leaders of the prosecutions, was denounced; Lady Phips herself was named. But the race who peopled New England had a mental vigor which even the theocracy could not subdue, and Massachusetts had among ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... eyes and his did not falter in their steady gaze. "Please do not excite yourself," he said very gently, "and—I think I will go in now. It ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... multitudes feel, And we feel deep to Earth at her heart, We have her communion with men, New ground, new skies for appeal. Yield into harness thy best and thy worst; Away on the trot of thy servitude start, Through the rigours and joys and sustainments of air. If courage should falter, 'tis wholesome to kneel. Remember that well, for the secret with some, Who pray for no gift, but have cleansing in prayer, And free from impurities tower-like stand. I promise not more, save that feasting will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and they arose to part. They stood up, looking each other squarely in the face, and shook hands in silence. Tears were in the eyes of both men. But each felt that he was heeding the call of duty, and neither had ever been known to falter. Belton returned to his room and retired to rest. Bernard called his messenger and sent him for every man of prominence in the Congress of ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... duty. Sometimes he waits upon me like a maid, Silent with watchful eyes. Oh, would to Heaven, He used me like a slave bought in the market! Yes, used me roughly! So, I were his own; And words of tenderness would falter in, Relenting from the sternness of command. But I am not enough for him: he needs Some high-entranced maiden, ever pure, And thronged with burning thoughts of God and him. So, as he loves me not, his deeds for me Lie on me like a sepulchre of stones. Italian lovers love not so; but he ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... dark for dim eyes to discover The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder, Though the hills beheld shadows, and the sea a dark wonder And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over, Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter; The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter These lips and these eyes of the loved and ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... asked admission, they were taken aback to find the whole garrison under arms. On their way from the gate to the council house they were obliged to march literally between rows of glittering steel. Well might even Pontiac falter. With uneasy glances, the party crowded into the council room, where Gladwyn and his officers sat waiting. "Why," asked the chieftain stolidly, "do I see so many of my father's young men standing in the street with their guns?" "To keep ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... was sent to cover a Socialist meeting in New York. I tip-toed down the stairs, although I might have fallen down and landed with a thud without having been heard. The din came from the direction of the dining room. Well, come what might, I would not falter. After all, it could not be worse than that awful time when I had helped cover the teamsters' strike. I peered ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... shall with rites of reverent piety Approach this strong Sad soul of sovereign Song, Nor fail and falter with the intimidate throng; If such there be, These, these are only they Have trod the self-same way; The never-twice-revolving portals heard Behind them clang infernal, and that word Abhorr-ed sighed of kind mortality, As ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... some warm thing she had waked there with her magic breathed, moved, sprang into complete life. I could not see her die! I must get into that place that I saw was doomed, even as I now saw two of the great ships above falter in flight, turn and slide downward at increasing speed. The concussion had broken them, perhaps destroyed the life within them. I realized that in a short time the same thing was going to happen to ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... misery. Among us, we know no unrest from it; we love, indeed, each other and all things lovely, but ages pass on, and love changes us not. Yet they say it fevers the blood of mortals, pales the cheek, makes the heart beat, and the voice falter, when it comes; yet it is eternal, mighty, and entrancing. Alas! I cannot understand it! Ada, I must leave thee to other guidance than my own. I love thee more than self, still I can be no longer ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... the water without, waste of the water within, Lights overhead and lights underneath seem doubtfully dreaming Whether the day be done, whether the night may begin. Far and afar and farther again they falter and hover, Warm on the water and deep in the sky and pale on the cloud: Colder again and slowly remoter, afraid to recover Breath, yet fain to revive, as it seems, from the skirt of the shroud. Faintly the heartbeats shorten and pause ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... does not exist. We shall find a whole new world of those who despise the honours and prizes of the commercial machine, and who care not for the shows, diversions, pleasures, and gambles provided for commercial slaves. But it will not cause those of that world to falter if the great multitude of their fellow-men scoff at them or ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... fair start along a new line of endeavour we resort to the distinctly obvious, and then announce that he brushed away the tears and laughed as gaily as any of them over the surprises that followed the one which momentarily caused him to falter. He was not given to looking upon the dark side of things. Even as he sat there at the head of the long table, he jocosely remarked to Diggs that he would have to borrow a saw from the janitor the next day and reduce the size of his board by five feet ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... which follow: "O thou ale, thou drink delicious, Let the drinkers not be moody! Urge the people on to singing, Let them shout, with mouth all golden, Till our lords shall wonder at it, And our ladies ponder o'er it, For the songs already falter, And the joyous tongues are silenced. 270 When the ale is ill-concocted, And bad drink is set before us, Then the minstrels fail in singing, And the best of songs they sing not, And our cherished guests are silent, And the cuckoos ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... incapacity for self-government. These flambeaus and rockets directed with unerring precision, taking effect in the very centre of our magazine, did not cause, in those for whom it was intended, a falter nor a wince in their course, but steadily and determinedly they pressed their way to the completion of their object under prosecution. In this design ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... was in their religion rather than in God felt their spirit falter, and believed that the universe grew dark. This is ever the weakness of disciples, and thus it is that while many flocking to the new standard see all things made plain, others whose hopes are entwined about the displaced creeds ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... State men began to falter and to ask each other, "Is it not best to try the Governor, and see if he will be as good as his word?" And from this time forward there began to appear a division in the Free State ranks; which sometimes grew to be bitter and acrimonious. This division had indeed ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... the week," he went on with less virulence, "you have, as her companion, the happy life I wish for you, Ah, your old father does not grudge you that, my liebschen! And, after all, you do not falter in your love. My poverty does ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... she had a plan, one that had been in her mind ever since the day that she had talked with Ben Barton. What she had really lacked was courage to put it into execution. Yet now, as she drew the cloak about her and pulled down her hood, her hands did not even tremble, nor did her determination falter. The house was absolutely still as she stole noiselessly down the stairs and slipped ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... linger and loiter, O most sweet? Why do you falter and delay, Now that the insolent, high-blooded May Comes greeting and to greet? Comes with her instant summonings to stray Down the green, antient way— The leafy, still, rose-haunted, eye-proof street!— Where true lovers each other may entreat, Ere the gold hair turn gray? ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... hand in a fatherly manner—a fatherly manner that was as much of a sham as anything else about him—I don't know whether I was more incensed at him or his victim, who received it with evident pride and satisfaction. Nevertheless he ventured to falter out:— ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... little Regina! my pure sensitive darling! How much longer must we be separated? Will the time ever come when the only earthly rest that remains for me can be taken in her soft clinging arms? Patience—patience. If it were not for her—for my baby—I might falter even now,—but she must, she shall be righted—at any sacrifice, at every cost; and may the widow's and the orphan's God ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... placed on a separate table in the alcove by the great window overlooking the lawn. Having performed this duty, the servants did nothing more; but one could not help feeling that they were just outside the door, like a group of prompters, ready to render instantaneous assistance should the amateurs falter. ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... his power, And learned how weak are mortal men When brought into temptation's hour, And "storms arise and tempests lower?" The strong may even falter then. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... he offered his arm over the crossing, she did not like to refuse. On gaining the side of the way on which her house was situated, she had recovered sufficiently to blush for having accepted such familiar assistance from a perfect stranger, and somewhat to falter in returning thanks ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the harp of the minstrel. But I am not at liberty to make this comparison. If a youth were to begin his career in such an assemblage, with such examples to guide and to animate, it will be pleaded, there would be no cause for apprehension; he could not falter, he could not be misled. But ours is, notwithstanding its manifold excellences, a degenerate age; and recreant knights are among us far outnumbering the true. A false Gloriana in these days imposes worthless services, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... Indian and give him a better chance of escape. The savage passed heedlessly by it. Morgan then threw his shot pouch and coat in the way, to tempt the Indian to a momentary delay. It was equally vain,—his pursuer did not falter for an instant. He now had recourse to another expedient to save himself from captivity or death. Arriving at the summit of the hill up which he had directed his steps, he halted; and, as if some men were approaching from the other side, called aloud, "come on, come on; here is one, make ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... "Do not falter, senor, for the love of God; for no Californian will go to her rescue. She has been disgraced and none will marry her. But you can take her far ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... if we do. Fate to our deserts is true; If we fail, or falter not, Every life deserves his lot; Every human, small or great, Buys with current coin his fate; What's the odds to me and you, If we don't ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide, Take not thy thunder from us, But take away ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... shut as his pocket, without bringing back something to remember to the end of his days—something to make his eyes grow dim when he meditates on it, his lips tremble when he speaks of it, his hand falter when he writes of it. For in this system of traveling he is forced, while in a mood of mind highly susceptible of impressions, into contact with all sorts of characters and incidents; and if he has a spark of nature in him, it must be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... leaping to their feet, for Roberts caught the long pass high in the air, dodged a frantic Claflin end and raced straight toward the goal line. Only the fact that he slipped near the ten-yard line prevented a score then and there. That instant's falter brought the enemy down on him and, although he managed to squirm forward another yard, he was stopped. But it looked a short distance from the nine yards to the final white line, and Brimfield implored ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... brief sketch, which I fear falls short of doing its subject justice, I will only add, that in the remarkably fine achievements he has made under circumstances and against difficulties that would have caused many to falter, indeed, to yield in despair,—chief among these difficulties being the hateful, terrible spirit of color-prejudice, that foul spirit, the full measure of whose influence in crushing out the genius often born in children of his race it is difficult to estimate,—in ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... Millner" falter in her race. Like an unbitted horse, all restraint shaken off, she ran free toward the ocean as to her pasture-land. She came nearer, nearer, rising and rolling with the seas, her bowsprit held due west, pointing like a finger out to sea, to the west—out to the world of romance. And ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... for an instant, though. His life had not been one to teach him to falter long in the face of an emergency. Quickly he ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... so does not know what to do with the facts, will ever do much in the world, or will ever touch men? Let us liberalise our Christianity by all means, but do not let us evaporate it; and evaporate it we surely shall if we falter in saying with Paul, 'I declare, first of all, that which received,' how that the death and resurrection were the death and resurrection of the Christ, 'for our sins, according to the Scriptures.' These are the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... could!' thought Jehane, and sighed. There were tears in her eyes, also, as she remembered what generosity in him must be frozen up, and what glory of her own. But she did not falter in what she had to do, while he, too exalted to be pitied, began to sing ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... it aloud from beginning to end, nor did she falter much when Caleb greeted the postscript with a shout of joy. Caleb was most high-spirited those days, for the line in regard to the progress of Steve's work was in truth an under-statement if anything, even though the assurance of his happiness might have ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... grow old. Ah, let Me not grow old, and falter In my delusion, or forget My heart was once an altar. Let me still think myself a star With these my rays about me; Pretend these green perspectives ...
— Twenty • Stella Benson
... There is no courtesan, no matter how low she has fallen, who cannot find a dupe ready to defend against the world an honour of which no vestige remains. A man who doubts the virtue of the most virtuous woman, who shows himself inexorably severe when he discovers the lightest inclination to falter in one whose conduct has hitherto been above reproach, will stoop and pick up out of the gutter a blighted and tarnished reputation and protect and defend it against all slights, and devote his life to the attempt ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... I want to talk to you about." A fiery blush burned through her deep tan, but her low, clear voice did not falter and her eyes held his unflinchingly. "I know you better than you know yourself, as I've said before. You are killing yourself, but it isn't the work, frightfully hard and disheartening as it is, that is doing it—it's your anxiety for me and the uncertainty of everything. ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... thoughts, and never disturbed her perception or accurate remembrance of external things, I see no reason to doubt it, except it be the tinge of absurdity in the fact. But, in this apparently prosperous state of things, her own convictions began to falter. A doubt stole into her mind whether she might not have mistaken the depository and mode of concealment of those historic treasures; and after once admitting the doubt, she was afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting the stone ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... and more laboured. It seemed to Dan's dim consciousness that some of the spring was gone from that glorious stride which swept on and on with the slightest undulation, like a swallow skimming before the wind; but so long as strength remained he knew that Satan would never falter in his pace. As the delirium swept once more shadow-like on his brain, he allowed himself to fall forward, and wound his fingers as closely as possible in the thick mane. His left arm jerked horribly against the bonds. Black ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... The fault was not the plan as conceived by the former. The near success of the latter proved a vindication of that. The originator of the plan was not at fault personally, for at no time during the battle did he falter or prove unequal to his command. When called on to give up his plan of the offensive and assume the defensive to save his army, the wonderful power of Rosecrans as a general over troops was never displayed to a greater advantage. With the ...
— The Army of the Cumberland • Henry M. Cist
... without contemplating consequences, before Heaven, and in face of the world, I swear eternal fealty to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love. And who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt that oath that I take? Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if after all we should fail, be it so. We still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... for the day's business when the postman brought her a letter in a green envelope with the imprint 'On Active Service'. Her heart leapt only to falter as her eyes took in the unfamiliar writing. Then under the 'Certificate' on the left-hand side she perceived the signature—'W. Thomson.' Something dreadful must have happened! She sat down and gazed ...
— Wee Macgreegor Enlists • J. J. Bell
... Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; For whom each year we see Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day— Ah! do not we, ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... moment. If the supreme question should arise of submitting to rebellion or of crushing it in a common ruin with the wrong that engendered it, we believe neither the Government nor the people would falter. The time for answering that question may be nearer than we dream; but meanwhile we would not hasten what would at best be a terrible necessity, and justifiable only as such. We believe this war is to prepare the way for the extinction ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... off like a mermaid's singing, on high like an angel's; it called with the same deep appeal to sense and soul alike. The sailors stood rapt; Dunham kept up a show of singing for the church's sake. The others made no pretense of looking at the words; they looked at her, and she began to falter, hearing herself alone. Then Staniford struck in again wildly, and the sea-voices lent their powerful discord, while the girl's contralto ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... mob of fathers, mothers, lovers and maidens—howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood. Well may the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well may his heart, the gentler, falter ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... this speech upon Mark was stupendous. His jaw dropped and a slow fire seemed to gleam in his pale eyes. Part of his nature rose in gladness because the girl could speak in that fashion. She had no knowledge within her to cause her to falter or stand abashed. But the tired man, in the poor fellow, cried out to this strong, brave creature to aid him understandingly where his own knowledge and slowness of nature made him a coward. And so they stood looking ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... the fairy was beginning to falter and echo was quite out of breath, the man took ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... remark, that it was this jealousy, which first convinced him that he was in love. You cannot open your lips to speak against him, who has impressed your heart. You will inwardly, although not probably in words, defend him from the attacks of others. To blush and falter under such circumstances would indicate love, much more surely ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... to take note of the pursuers; and it was only Biddy, looking over her shoulder for Monny, who even saw that they were followed. She cried out to her friend to hurry, that some one was coming, that they must get to the gate or all would be ended; then feeling Mabel falter, she held her more tightly ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... casting reflections on others,—it is nobler! Befriend those who have no power to befriend themselves; and when the world forgets you, do not forget yourself. There is no step of return for those who falter in poverty. To-night I shall leave for the city; in a few days you will know all." Thus saying, he conducted Franconia back to rejoin the party, already making ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Her self-sacrifice was wonderful. You don't realize all that she has undergone for you; I, myself even, was deceived by her; she was her own accuser, yet all the time was innocent. Only one moment did she falter; but darting a rapid glance at Jules, she suddenly rallied, a blush took the place of pallor on her countenance, and we felt that she had saved her lover; in spite of the risk she was running, she repeated once more before ...
— Pamela Giraud • Honore de Balzac
... arise in meeting and pray that they may be baptized with the Holy Spirit, and if you should go afterwards to the one who offered the prayer and put to him the question, "Did you receive what you asked? Were you baptized with the Holy Spirit?" it is quite likely that he would hesitate and falter and say, "I hope so"; but there is none of this indefiniteness in the Bible. The Bible is clear as day on this, as on every other point. It sets forth an experience so definite and so real, that one may know whether or not he has received the baptism with the Holy Spirit, ...
— The Person and Work of The Holy Spirit • R. A. Torrey
... to fight out his battle alone. To save him from the struggle would be to save him from the strength. If it were only possible for a father to save his boy by assuming his burden, how thankful he would be, was Mr. Phelps' reflection, but he was too wise a man and too good a father to flinch or falter now, and, though his heart was heavy, he resolutely kept on his way leaving Will to fight his own battle, and hoping that the issue would be as he ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... the room at last, and Franklin came on the early train. With his coming, mother regained some part of her lost courage. She grew rapidly stronger before night came again, and was able to falter a few words in greeting and to ask ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... loved ones left helpless and destitute behind them. Riches cannot remove the pang of bereavement, but alas! for 'the comfortless troubles of the needy, and because of the deep sighing of the poor.' And yet the brave fellows never hang back and never falter. There ought to be, there is amongst them, a trust in ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... had maintained all day; and spite of all, unscared by the thunder of the artillery, which hurled death from the English line, the dark column prest on and up the hill. It seemed almost to crest the eminence, when it began to waver and falter. Then it stopt, still facing the shot. Then at last the English troops rushed from the post from which no enemy had been able to dislodge them, and the Guard ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... same thing with me," rejoined Darrin. "You just keep your eye on me, Dan! Do you see me shaking? Do you hear my voice falter? See ...
— Dave Darrin's First Year at Annapolis • H. Irving Hancock
... The falter in the words spoke to the tenseness of his suspense. The doctor answered instantly, with more of kindliness than judgment. "Faith, no! It's not so bad as that. But ye'll have to pretend ye are for the present, or, egad, ye will be before ye've done. We brought ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... palms, besides occasional ceibas of immense size. Though the landscape, somehow, was sad and melancholy, it gave rise to bright and interesting thoughts in the observer: doubtless the landscape, like humanity, has its moods. Vegetation, unlike mankind, seems here never to grow old, never to falter; crop succeeds crop, harvest follows harvest; nature is inexhaustible,—it is an endless cycle of abundance. Miles upon miles of the bright, golden-green sugar-cane lie in all directions, among which, here and there, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... immensely. Warrender had been a word to conjure withal, named by lower boys with awe, fondly cherished in the records of Sixth Form. But the glimmer in the Head Master's eye as he said good-bye, the little falter in his tutor's voice,—did these mean no more than an appreciation of his progress, and an anticipation of the honour and glory he was to bring them at the university, a name to fling in the teeth of the newspaper fellows next time they demanded what were the results of the famous public school ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... them, especially when they are under warm convictions that the day of judgment is at hand, or when they feel in themselves as if death was coming as a tempest, to steal them away from their enjoyments, and lusts, and delights; then the bed shakes on which they lie, then the proud tongue doth falter in their mouth, and their knees knock one against another; then their conscience stares, and roars, and tears, and arraigns them before God's judgment-seat, or threatens to follow them down to hell, and there to wreck its fury on them, for all the abuses and affronts this wicked wretch offered to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... had passed the door of the shop, waiting for a dull moment in its traffic. Now but two women were left, and they seemed to be waiting only for change. Her resolution did not falter; she was merely practising a trained discretion. She was going to buy a pair of satin dancing slippers though the whole world should look upon her as lost. Too long, she felt, had she dwelt among the untrodden ways. As she ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... have no choice—she must marry you, or debase her pride of soul before the iron sway of poverty. Her mother is old—infirm; and for her sake, the daughter will listen to your proffers of love. Take your destiny into your own hands. Cowardly soul! why falter now? It is but completing your own work. He is your victim—you know it, and feel it in every pulse of your throbbing heart. Years of usefulness might have been his, but for you; then complete the sacrifice without hesitation. What avails it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... little pause Jane West came out from the opposite wing, walking slowly, dressed in her green gown, jewels on her neck and in her hair. She did not look toward the audience at all, nor bow, nor smile, and for some reason the applause began to falter as though the sensitive mind of the crowd was already aware that here something must be wrong. She came very slowly, her arms hanging, her head bent, her eyes looking up from under her brows, and she stood beside Prosper Gael, whose forced smile had stiffened on his lips. ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... tempt you to falter; that happen what may in the changing years, you will not hesitate; that though your interests and affections should intervene, you will not suffer them to retard you in your purpose; that no effort, no sacrifice, no privation, no suffering of mind or body shall be spared, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... to deal roundly and resolutely. Her troops had already gone in considerable numbers. She wrote encouraging letters with her own hand to the States, imploring them not to falter now, even though the great city had fallen. She had long since promised never to desert them, and she was, if possible, more determined than ever to redeem her pledge. She especially recommended to their consideration General Norris, commander of the forces ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... began a butchery.... Some fifty men, women, and children were cooped together in that narrow space.... And yet Hypatia's countenance did not falter. Why should it? What were their numbers, beside the thousands who had perished year by year for centuries, by that and far worse deaths, in the amphitheatres of that empire, for that faith which she ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... not regret her decision. She did not falter. Her resentment of Bruce's attitude stiffened the backbone of her purpose. She was going straight ahead, bear the bitterness, and live the life she had planned ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... it death to falter, not to die.' It was under to-day's date, and it was the first thing I saw when I went to the desk where Father used to sit, and it was his voice that read it to me. It was very wonderful and queer. It sort of made me ashamed of the way I was taking it, and I went out to begin again,—that's ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... upon the River! Cold snow upon the mountains, The Lotus leaves turned yellow And the water very grey. Our kisses faint and falter, The clinging hands unfasten, The golden time is over And our ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... you then? Did I say one word to hold you back?" (Fay's heart swelled as she wrote those words. She saw, bathed in a new light, her own courage and uprightness in the past. She realised her extraordinary strength of character. She had not faltered then.) "I did not falter then. I will not do so now, though this time is harder than the first." (It certainly was.) "You have to come to my little party on Thursday with your chief. I cannot speak to you then. I am closely watched. When the others have gone ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... and three-quarter minutes by the clock she spoke, and never for one instant did she pause or falter; and in the whole of that onslaught there ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" Yes, cold and bitter as that cup was, pressed next to his very lips, he had learned to drink it. God had given him strength, and no more did he falter, no more did he groan-save once, for a moment, when, upon the cross, drooping, and racked with intense pain, he cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But that passed away in the triumphant ejaculation, ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... first glow of hope began to pale. She tried to banish all other thoughts except that Mr. Houghton was very ill or as obdurate as ever. On the last day of August, however, she heard a rumor that the invalid was better, and that his son was soon to take him North. Then her faith began to falter. If George should go away without seeing her, without a word or a line, what must she think? The tears would come at this possibility. She had noted that her father and cousin had ceased to speak ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... a moment's breathless pause. I saw Mrs. Van Reinberg falter, and I saw something which I did not understand flash across ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the firmest, where duty led, He hurried without a falter; Bold as the boldest he fought and bled, And the day was won — but the field was red — And the blood of his fresh young heart was shed ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... fair blooming thereunder; Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder, And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over, Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter, The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter These lips and these eyes of the ...
— Poems By The Way & Love Is Enough • William Morris
... the greatest of men; sometimes our voices falter, and sentences are not finished. We have found many things alike about the Great Ones. First they had mothers who dreamed, and then they had poverty to acquaint them with sorrow. They came up hard, and they were always different from other children. They ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... flung ejaculations and bolted mouthfuls, between his "Non c'e male," his "Buono, buono!" his "Ancora un po'," or "Dammi da here," he could find time to ask her what this new alacrity of hers meant on such a hot night of summer, with a touching falter of the voice I heard her reply, "It is because—it is because—I have not always been good to you, Porfirio. It is because—of late—this evening—I have much wished for you to be here. It ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... to be contemplative about. After my experience, if I should see any misguided person making friendly advances to one of these horned demons, I should cry, "Whoa!" as Cassandra did to the wood horse of the Greeks, and probably with the same result. They would not falter until they had gathered bitter ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... and the sincere admiration that shone in his eyes caused her to falter momentarily, almost made her weaken in her purpose, but she made an effort and secured a firmer grip on herself, for she must play a role that would crush to earth the air castles this young secretary was building, a role that would crush the ideals of this ...
— A Gentleman from Mississippi • Thomas A. Wise
... a mark for enemy fire. Seven times fresh wounds gushed forth with his life's blood. He was staggering a little now, but never a falter; on and on he went, the ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... free grace doth cover, My sins He doth wash away; These feet which shrink and falter Shall enter ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... lady seemed to falter for a moment. She looked speculatively at the indignant old face opposite, then made a vague little gesture toward her hair, and dropped her eyes. "No," she said softly. "Don't—please." She raised ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... father's bitterest enemy. Daumon, concealed behind the window curtain, had watched his approach, and it was with the same air of deference that he had welcomed the Marquis, as he took care to call him; but he affected to be so overcome by the honor of this visit that he could only falter out,— ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... goods, whether men or women, were carried off and flung into dungeons and tortured till they yielded up their wealth. No ghastlier picture of a nation's misery has ever been painted than that which closes the English Chronicle whose last accents falter out amidst the horrors of the time. "They hanged up men by their feet and smoked them with foul smoke. Some were hanged up by their thumbs, others by the head, and burning things were hung on to their feet. They put knotted strings ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... one more look at the silvery sea: One thought of the lark in its musical glee; One breath of the sweet breeze, balmy and free; One prayer from two hearts that falter; And Lo! in reply to a mortal's nod, From the gibbet-tree dangle two pieces of clod, Their souls standing face-to-face with their God, Each wearing ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... away with a sad heart, but his purpose did not falter. Following straight down the river road to the sea, he then kept up along the coast, asking here and there, cautiously, if persons answering to the description of Alessandro and Ramona had been seen. No one had seen ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... and candle, and I was glad indeed when the light burned up bright enough to show that no one, at any rate, was standing by my side. But then there was the passage, and who could say what might be lurking there? Yet I did not falter, but set out on this adventurous journey, walking very slowly indeed—but that was from fear of pitfalls—and nerving myself with the thought of the great diamond which surely would be found at the end of the passage. What should I not be able to do with such wealth? I would buy a nag for ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... Desire was intensely interested in sermons. She had so seldom heard any that the weekly doling out of truth by the Rev. Mr. McClintock had all the fascination of a new experience. Mr. McClintock was of the type which does not falter in its message. He had no doubts. He had thought out every possible spiritual problem as a young man and had seen no reason for thinking them out a second time. What he had accepted at twenty, he believed at sixty, with this difference that ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... who does not feel that the system is wrong, that it ought to be abolished, and must eventually be abolished; and that the only question about its abolition is a question of time. [192] But here is the peril,—that a good many persons in Congress and out of Congress will falter in their conviction before the determined stand of the South,—the determination, that is to say, to break off from the Union rather than submit to the Wilmot Proviso. And I do most seriously fear, for my part, that they would hold to that determination. ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... his burden high in the air, holding it in his strong talons; and he did not falter once in his steady flight, although the load weighed nearly as much as he did, and he carried it two ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... daughters Should find not whither alive to flee. And we know not yet of the word unwritten, [Ant. 1. The doom of the Pythian we have not heard; From the navel of earth and the veiled mid altar We wait for a token with hopes that falter, 160 With fears that hang on our hearts thought-smitten Lest her tongue be kindled with no good word. O thou not born of the womb, nor bred [Str. 2. In the bride-night's warmth of a changed God's bed, But thy life as a lightning was flashed from the light ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... proper direction. She could tell them stories of Belgians who had had to fire upon their own women and children who were being marched in front of German troops. The power of Germany had to be crushed. The spirit of England and Wales was one in this great war, and they would not falter until they had emerged ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... the girl. She seemed to falter, as she walked, and it was apparently with great effort that she neared the door of the big department store. Baxter ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... your task now; never flinch nor hesitate, never begin to question now; thrust your right hand deep into your heart's treasury, bring forth its costliest, purest justice, and lay its immeasurable bounty into this sable palm, bind its blessing on this degraded brow. Ah, but America did falter and question. "How can I?" it said. "This is a Negro, a Negro! Besides, he is PROPERTY!" And so America looked up, determined to ignore the kneeling form. With pious blasphemy it said, "He is here providentially; God in His own ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... feeling instinctively that she was framed of softer stuff, and asked her if the path were a private one. It was a question that had never met her ear before, and she was too dull or too discreet to deal with it on the instant. To our amazement, she did not even manage to falter, 'I ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... longs, more than ever, that eloquence and inspiration were his to employ in the healing of the man who has raised himself almost from the dead. But he can only falter something about the inscrutable designs of Providence, and not a sparrow falling to the ground unnoticed. And he expresses, somewhat tritely, the hope that Saxham's friend was prepared to ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Hanover, And Protestant succession, To these I do allegiance swear While they can keep possession: For by my faith and loyalty I never more will falter, And George my lawful king shall be Until the time shall alter. And this is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... fought like a live thing. In vain he strove to wrench the tentacles free of the Professor. One of them lashed out and took him by the thighs in a crushing grasp. But the Professor had the bird by the throat. Both of his hands were free. Back, he forced its head, back. The mechanism seemed to falter in the attack, as if bewildered. Across the exposed throat the Professor drew the gleaming blade. Flesh, tendons and arteries gave, blood spurted, and in the same moment the tentacles fell away from Talbot and the ...
— The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds • Francis Flagg
... their course, let them not falter. Give to Thine aged servants rest. If short their race, let by Thine altar Them like the swallows ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... him in. Soon he emerges, with scarce breath to say, "I'm to be dip—dip—dipt—." "We know it," they Reply; expostulation seemed in vain, And over ears they souse him in again, And up again he rises, his words trip, And falter as before. Still "dip—dip—dip"— And in again he goes with furious plunge, Once more to rise; when, with a desperate lunge, At length he bolts these words out, "Only once!" The villains crave his pardon. Had the dunce But ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of the missionary, Oowikapun asked for the privilege of saying a few words. At first he seemed to falter a little, but soon he rose above all fear, and most blessedly and convincingly did he talk. We need not go over it again; it was the story of his life, as it has been recorded in these chapters. Because of the words and resolves of Astumastao, ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... in constant observation this almost universal hospitality to the solemn nonsense of hereditary rank and unearned distinction, my faith in practical realization of republican ideals is small, and I falter in the work of their maintenance in the interest of a people for whom they are too good. Seeing that we are immune to none of the evils besetting monarchies, excepting those for which we secretly yearn; that inequality of fortune and unjust allotment of honors are as conspicuous among us as elsewhere; ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... "Dear sister, think not of me. Do not fear or falter; I shall not. I would rather die a hundred deaths than see you the wife of such a ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... things, which I think cannot interest deeply, So I hold back in my heart its dear and wonderful secret (Which I must tell you at last, however I falter to tell you), Fain to keep it all my own for a little while longer,— Doubting but it shall lose some part of its strangeness and sweetness, Shared with another, and fearful that even you may not find it Just the marvel that I do—and thus turn ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... King! Two days later his throne began to tremble and it took all the King's horses and all the King's men to keep him in state[1064]." On April 1, the flurry of speculation had begun to falter and the loan was below par; on the second it dropped to 3-1/2 discount, and by the third the promoters and the Southern diplomats were very anxious. They agreed that someone must be "bearing" the bonds and suspected Adams of supplying Northern funds for that purpose[1065]. Spence wrote from Liverpool ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... United state, whose traditional policy of non-interference in European disputes was submitted so unexpectedly to the fierce test of Right versus Expediency. And how splendidly did President, Senator, Congress and the People respond to the test! Never for one instant did America's clear judgment falter. The Hun was guilty, and must be punished. The only issue to be solved was whether France, Britain, Italy and Russia should convict and brand the felon unaided, or the mighty power of the Western World should join hands with the avengers of outraged ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... Vincent, Collingwood, Howe, Duncan, the noble list proceeds, each name illuminated with its only splendid story of desperate enterprise and deathless honor, till the proudest name of all is reached, {337} and praise itself seems to falter and fall off before the lonely grandeur of Nelson. Never was a little life filled with greater achievements; never was a little body more compact of the virtues that make great captains and brave men. The life that began in the September of 1758 and that ended in the October of 1805 ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to Peter Ruff. He took hold of the lapel of the other's coat with his left hand, and his right hand was clenched. But Peter Ruff did not falter. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... natural contempt for the Negro and repugnance to his leadership, then taunt us with incapacity for self-government. These flambeaus and rockets directed with unerring precision, taking effect in the very centre of our magazine, did not cause, in those for whom it was intended, a falter nor a wince in their course, but steadily and determinedly they pressed their way to the completion of their object under prosecution. In this design the enemy ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... be too dark for dim eyes to discover The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder, Though the hills beheld shadows, and the sea a dark wonder And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over, Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter; The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter These lips and these eyes of the loved ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... turned themselves to bravely leveling with road-scrapers and teams the hummocks where the sagebrush grew, bringing in surveyors to strike the level for them in the river-shore, plotting ditches to carry the water to their fields. Many of them would falter before the fight was done; many would lose heart in the face of such great odds before the green blessing of alfalfa should rise out ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... domicile, home. Harmful, injurious, detrimental, pernicious, deleterious, baneful, noxious. Have, possess, own, hold. Headstrong, wayward, wilful, perverse, froward. Help (noun), aid, assistance, succor. Help (verb), assist, aid, succor, abet, second, support, befriend. Hesitate, falter, vacillate, waver. Hide, conceal, secrete. High, tall, lofty, elevated, towering. Hint, intimate, insinuate. Hopeful, expectant, sanguine, optimistic, confident. Hopeless, despairing, disconsolate, desperate. Holy, sacred, hallowed, sanctified, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... planted on an eternal foundation, that our position is sublime and glorious, that our faith in God is rational and steadfast, that we have exceeding great and precious promises on which to rely, THAT WE ARE IN THE RIGHT, we shall not falter nor be dismayed, "though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea,"—though our ranks be thinned to the number of "three hundred men." Freemen! are you ready for the conflict? Come what ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... was tremulous, and the kind old eyes were dim with unshed tears. "The hand of the Lord has been laid in heaviness upon you, but 'those whom He loveth He chasteneth.' Even could I lift the burden of your sorrow as easily as I raise this hand, I should falter, because, as I believe in God, so do I believe that through trial even such as this your light shall yet shine before men so pure and strong that men themselves shall be purer and stronger ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... thought came to Buzz as his father flayed him with his abuse. But there was something unusual, surely, in the non-resistance with which he allowed the storm to beat about his head. Something in his steady, unruffled gaze caused the other man to falter a little in his tirade, and finally to stop, almost apprehensively. He had paid no heed to Ma Werner's attempts at pacification. "Now, Pa!" she had said, over and over, her hand on his arm, though he shook it off again and again. "Now, Pa!—" But he stopped now, fist ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Then, in that storm centre, around which the roar of battle raged, there was a flash of steel and the swords crossed. But in the fury of the battle duels are short and fierce, and I saw Ramsay, who was already covered with wounds, falter for a moment, as the other lunged, and then he was down among ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... the year puts on, When falling leaves falter through motionless air Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone! How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 5 The bowl between me and those distant hills, And smiles and shakes ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... Court School, having given all possible directions for his little girl's comfort and well-being, and had gone away sorely broken down, crushed to the earth himself, but leaving Kitty with a courage which did not falter during the days which were to come. For the Major knew that, strong as he was, he was going to a part of India where brave men as strong as he are stricken down year after year by the unhealthy ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... Hanover, And Protestant succession, To these I do allegiance swear— While they can keep possession: For in my faith and loyalty I nevermore will falter, And George my lawful king shall be— Until the times do alter. And this is law that I'll maintain Until my dying day, sir, That whatsoever king shall reign, Still I'll be the Vicar ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... uncle and aunt would never believe that aught but compulsion had bound her to the rude outlaw, and her habit of submission was so strong that, only when her aunt was actually rising to go and consult her gossip, she found breath to falter, ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... journals with a surfeit of pictures in them; or the Real Lady, or the Ladylike Lady, or the Titled Lady, the portraits of whom—one or other of them—sweep in curves about their folio pages; and, while they fascinate you, make you feel that you would falter on the threshold of matrimony if only because they couldn't possibly take nourishment. Would not the discomfort of meals eaten with a companion who could swallow nothing justify a divorce ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... is not evoked by anything in His creatures, then it is universal, and we do not need anxiously to question ourselves whether we deserve that it shall fall upon us, and no conscious unworthiness need ever make us falter in the least in the firmness with which we grasp that great central thought. The sun, inferior emblem as it is of that Light of all that is, pours down its beams indiscriminately on dunghill and on jewel, though it be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... his will likewise falter, if his resolution fail, and his spirit bend its neck to the yoke of this new enemy! Idleness and a disturbed imagination will gain the mastery of him, and let loose their thousand fiends to harass him, to torment him into madness. Alas! the bondage of Algiers is freedom compared with this of the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... ceremony, which is ever solemn and admonitory, the squatter had maintained a grave and serious deportment. His vast features were visibly stamped with an expression of deep concern; but at no time did they falter, until he turned his back, as he believed for ever, on the grave of his first-born. Nature was then stirring powerfully within him, and the muscles of his stern visage began to work perceptibly. His children fastened their ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... He is dead, wiped out, perished and past away. Till the last bitterness of life go by, Thou shalt not slay him; till those last dregs run dry, O thou last lord of life! thou shalt not slay. Let the lips live a little while and lie, The hand a little, and falter, and fail of strength, And the soul shudder and sicken at the sky; Yea, let him live, though God nor man would let Save for the curse' sake; then at bitter length, Lord, will we yield him to thee, ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the elixir is thus but the deadliest poison. Amidst the dwellers of the threshold is ONE, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her tribe,—one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does thy courage falter?" ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... things issues from the original womb, For Nature works with a master hand in her own inner depths; She is art, alive and gifted with a splendid mind. Which fashions its own material, not that of others, And does not falter or doubt, but all by itself Lightly and surely, as fire burns and sparkles. Easily and widely, as light spreads everywhere, Never scattering its forces, but stable, quiet, and at one, Orders and disposes of ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... fellow-creatures, who, like themselves, are accountable beings, and with the same capacity for enjoyment or suffering. Indeed, none of us are always happy. We all have our hours of trial, when even the strongest-hearted will falter, and the dreamless slumber of the grave seem so sweet to our world-weary spirits. When it seems so hard to say, "Thy will be done," perhaps Death enters and robs us of some earthly idol. We see the dear one droop and die. It may be some ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... were parted in a smile that softened wondrously the harshness of his face, and his eyes seemed then to her alight with kindness. A moment's pause there was, during which she sought her voice, and when she had found it, all that she could falter was: ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... the wolf with the sheep to falter, and presently it dropped its burden and limped away for the nearest patch of firs. As it did this the second and the third wolf ranged up by the side of the two young Americans. Roger fired three shots in succession and Dave fired twice, but the animals were so quick that but little damage was ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer
... of masquerade, yet Keith noted with appreciation that she became perceptibly cooler as the moment of departure approached. With cheeks aflame and eyes sparkling, yet speaking with a voice revealing no falter, she pressed his arm and declared herself prepared for the ordeal. The face under the shadow of the mantilla was so arch and piquant, Keith could not ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... as this may be undertaken in the interest of true progress, as well as that of honest inquiry. For what so frequently checks progress, causes its advocates to falter, and produces what we call a reaction towards the old doctrines, as something shallow in the reform itself? Christians have relapsed into Judaism, Protestants into Romanism, Unitarians into Orthodoxy—because something ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... Youth's colour dies, the fervid morning glow Is gone from off the foreland; slow, slow, Even slower than the fount of human tears To empty, the consuming shadow nears That Time is casting on the worldly show Of pomp and glory. But falter not;—below That thought is based ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... happened to interfere, events began to move rapidly. The Tory Party, largely, I believe, through political considerations, had unalterably taken sides with Ulster. The Liberal Party were irresolute, wavering, pusillanimous. Mr Redmond's followers began to be uneasy—they commenced to falter in their blind faith that they had only to trust Asquith ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... left to time," said I to myself. And, reviewing all that had happened, I let a wild hope thrust tenacious roots deep into me—the hope that she did not quite understand her own mind as to me. How often ignorance is a blessing; how often knowledge would make the step falter and the heart quail. Who would have the courage, not to speak of the desire, to live his life, if he knew his ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... cheerfully, confidently. He had never heard her whine, had never seen her falter save ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... not go with her to her home. He would wait in San Francisco till she had seen her husband and was free. They parted with eager yet hesitating hearts in that city. Claire found it harder than she had imagined to go alone, but her will was master and she did not falter. To Lawrence, waiting for word from her, time was dead and moved not ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... must smile at the entrance of so lovely a woman, but it was an abstracted smile, and Doris, seeing it, felt her courage falter for a moment, though her steps did not, nor her steady compassionate gaze. Advancing slowly, and not answering because she did not hear some casual remark of his, she took her stand by his side and then slowly and with her eyes on his face, sank down upon her knees, still ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... responsibilities were so great, and burdens so crushing, that I was almost ready to falter. My greatest anxiety was to guide my dear children aright. The four older ones had resolved to follow the dear Redeemer, but the slippery paths of youth were theirs to walk in. The consideration of these multiform cares at one time seemed of crushing ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... Shoe. His cayuse, the fleetest Buffalo horse of all the Blood tribe, galloped with the full fear in his heart of the danger that was behind. Low over his neck crouched Eagle Shoe; one false step—a yawning badger hole, a swerve at a white rock, a falter, and crunching hoofs would grind the Redskin ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... be lost. Either the Union is to be made stronger, or it is to perish; and the sooner every man's position is defined, the better. If you are opposed to the war, say so, and step over to Secession, but do not falter and equivocate, croak and grumble, and play the bat of the fable. The manly, good, old-fashioned Democrats, at least, are above this, and are rapidly dividing from the copperheads. The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... postcards to look at him, the lines of laughter remained over his face like a mask. She glanced at his eyes for a sign; his facial expression told her nothing; his eyes were just as inscrutable, which made her falter with dismay. ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... girl; so good, that I falter even in the telling of it. You shall know all anon. And see, our friend yonder grows impatient. Are there any stirring? We must bestow a meal upon him, and that forthwith: he is one of those who ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... things change? Shall childish galleries That deemed you once Apollo's minister, Say, "Garn, old monkey!" Shall colossal salaries Reward the Muse and not the dulcimer? Not gleaming eyeballs, not the soul illuminate? Shall old faiths falter and Antonio's heart Sicken the while he churns, and chilly ruminate, "This is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... that offered by the fever-stricken victims of the South and were determined to make the most of their opportunity. But the open country once reached we lengthened out our steps and struck into a six-mile gait. Soon my companion began to falter and fall behind. But I could not afford to wait, telling him I presumed he was all right, but I could not run any risks, I stood him up by a tree and taking his gun, marched off a couple hundred yards, then laying it down I shouted ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... with her, that brave spirit seemed to falter: she became a burden, bereft for a little of ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... evident that his determination made her falter, and seeing this he followed up his advantage and so far improved it that at last, after a few more arguments, she rose slowly and picked up ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... make you an offer for which I neither demand nor expect any sort of gratitude," I said; "you shall repay the money when convenient, and . . ." "Awfully good of you," he muttered without looking up. I watched him narrowly: the future must have appeared horribly uncertain to him; but he did not falter, as though indeed there had been nothing wrong with his heart. I felt angry—not for the first time that night. "The whole wretched business," I said, "is bitter enough, I should think, for a man of your kind . . ." "It ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... divine life which has been given as our model, if only we can ponder it, and read in it the lessons, the hopes, the inspirations it contains for us, we shall not be weary of our burdens and cares, we shall not falter in any of life's battles. Rather, rejoicing at our opportunities, eternal as they are, and with feelings of exultant gratitude over our condition, as heirs with Christ to the kingdom of Heaven,(11) we shall bravely welcome all the conflicts of life, being assured with St. Paul that "that which ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... voice which she knows they can hear, and if, as frequently happens, they hesitate for a moment, look at her and then decide to disobey her command, she should follow them up, still calling on them to come to her, but now in a severer tone, and the disobedient ones will generally falter and take refuge in any available place. Then is the time to punish them with a few sharp cuts of whip or cane. There will be no howling, as the pups know very well that they have transgressed, and will show it on the way home by ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... heroism and all the rest of it? Suppose I, with nothing but such sentimental stuff to stand between these muscles of mine and those papers which you have about you, and which I want and mean to have: suppose I, with the prize within my grasp, were to falter and sneak away with my hands empty; or, what would be worse, cover up my weakness by playing the magnanimous hero, and sparing you the violence I dared not use, would you not despise me from the depths of your woman's soul? Would any woman ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw
... of Ave Maria! the uncertainty as to whether our heavy carriage could be dragged across, the horses struggling and splashing in the boiling torrent, and the horrible fate that awaited us should one of them fall or falter!... The Senora ——- and I shut our eyes and held each other's hands, and certainly no one breathed till we were safe on the other side. We were then told that we had crossed within a few feet of a precipice over which ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... ache would climb up to the back of her neck, and her half-baked power of concentration falter at the arid monotony of, ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... pleasure he offered Elise his hand, but hers remained calm and cold, and her voice did not tremble or falter as she said: "I am a bride, but not yours, Prince Stratimojeff;" and extending her hand to Bertram, she continued: "This is my husband! To-day, for the third time, he has saved ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... the sight of his terrible enemy caused even Merodach to falter, but plucking up courage he advanced to meet her, caught her in his net, and, forcing an evil wind into her ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... your own without complaint, while attending to our various lesser hurts and scratches. Wherefore, just because we feel you are above us in this and many other things, we have set you amongst us as a warning Figurehead, which cries shame upon us if we falter, and reminds us that you, a woman, can do, and probably will do, what we men cannot. Imagine it! You would bear all things for love's sake!—and, frankly speaking, we would bear nothing at all, except for our own immediate and particular pleasure. For that, of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... steed trampling down Men whose deeds this day are worthy of a kingdom and a crown. Prithee hasten, Uncle Jared, what's the bullet in my breast To that murderous storm of fire raining tortures on the rest? See! the bayonets flash and falter—look! the foe begins to win; See! oh, see our falling comrades! God! the ranks ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... bishopric, suddenly over and over came his horse, that his very face (which was then thought a very good one) ploughed up the earth where he fell. This fall was ominous, and no question he was apt to consider it so." But Raleigh did not falter, notwithstanding the omen. He begged and obtained the grant of the castle from Queen Elizabeth, and then married Elizabeth Throgmorton and returned there, building himself a new house surrounded by ornamental gardens and orchards. He settled the estate ultimately upon his ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... not drag me to the bridal altar; This hand shall slay me first (draws a dagger.) It will not falter. ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... treacherous; our fondest desires, perchance, have faded, and sorrows may encompass us about;—yet above us the voice of Hope crieth aloud, "Press on!"—through tears and the cross must thou win the crown; be patient, trustful, in every duty and grief; "press on," and falter not; and its words linger like the music of a remembered dream in our ear, until, at the borders of the grave, we lay down the burden of our sinfulness and care, and, through the open gate of death, ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... Death should claim me for her own to-day, And softly I should falter from your side, Oh, tell me, loved one, would my memory stay, And would my image in your heart abide? Or should I be as some forgotten dream, That lives its little space, then fades entire? Should Time send o'er ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Oh, father, father, I want to kiss the clouds from your brow. I wanted to caress your white locks and make you forget the sorrows that whitened them. I wanted to support you when your steps began to falter—Oh! forget what I have said—open your arms [falls on her knees] and take me to your heart. Look at me tenderly—just once before it is too late. Speak one word—[springs to her feet] Oh, your glance freezes me! You will not! I shall pray for power to love you. [Bursts into ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... But I am not at liberty to make this comparison. If a youth were to begin his career in such an assemblage, with such examples to guide and to animate, it will be pleaded, there would be no cause for apprehension; he could not falter, he could not be misled. But ours is, notwithstanding its manifold excellences, a degenerate age; and recreant knights are among us far outnumbering the true. A false Gloriana in these days imposes worthless services, which they who perform them, in their blindness, know not to be such; ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the ridge he could not tell. Would any one of the party live to return to Courmayeur and tell the tale? But Garratt Skinner knew the risk he took, had counted it up long before ever he brought Walter Hine to Chamonix, and thought it worth while. He did not falter now. All through the morning, indeed, he had been taking risks, risks of which Walter Hine did not dream; with so firm and yet so delicate a step he had moved from crack to crack, from ice-step up to ice-step; with so obedient a response of his muscles, he had drawn himself up over ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... her father by her caresses, till he mounted his mule to return to the castle at dinner-time, and she promised to come early in the afternoon to follow up the stroke he was to give. She had never seen him falter before,—he had followed out his policy with a clear head and unsparing hand,—but now that Berenger's character was better known to him, and the crisis long delayed had come so suddenly before his eyes, his whole powers seemed to ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were not hurried, one had no sense of points being skipped to accommodate our unworthiness, it required a previous familiarity with the church to know (as I did) that there was, indeed, more and more skipping; yet the little lady played her part so evenly and with never a falter of voice nor a change in the gentle courtesy of her manner, that I do not think—save for that moment at the window-sill—I could have been sure what she thought, or how much she noticed. Her face was always so ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... they fall— The words that burn and falter; And is it true they too must fade Upon Love's ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... "Nay, never falter; no great deed is done By falterers who ask for certainty. No good is certain but the steadfast mind, The undivided will to seek the good: 'T is that compels the elements and wrings A human music from ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... and we, Light half-believers of our casual creeds, Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd, Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds, Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd; 175 For whom each year we see Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new; Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day— Ah! do not we, wanderer! await ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... the lovely moonlight, pursuing these remembrances and these thoughts. A new ardor burned in me. "No!" I said to myself. "Neither relations nor friends shall prevail on me to falter and fail in my husband's cause. The assertion of his innocence is the work of my life; I will ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... beautiful than I am. That is why you are drawn away. Her face has not grown familiar. Everything that is new or strange you follow. The passing cheeks are ruddier than the pale face which has shared your troubles. What you know is weariness, and you leave it to learn what you do not know. The Ultonians falter while you are absent from duty in battle and council, and I, whom you brought with sweet words when half a child from my home, am left alone. Oh, Cuchullain, beloved, I was once dear to thee, and if today or tomorrow were our first meeting I should ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... a halt or falter. Nose to the ground, she had leaped from the bandit's car and made straight across a field in the direction that Garrick had suspected they would take, only a ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... upon, to look to. It is true that in case of real danger none such could be a real protection,—and yet not so neither, for strength and decision can live and make live where a moment's faltering will kill, and weakness must often falter of necessity. "All the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth" to his people; she thought of that, and yet she feared, for his ways are often what we do not like. A few moments of sick-heartedness and ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... delight. It was so then, as Sylvia went to him; for though she did not touch nor smile upon him, he felt her nearness; and the parting assured him that its power bound them closer than the happiest union. In her face there shone a look half fervent, half devout, and her voice had no falter ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... and palled with empire, how often hast thou sighed for some sweet isle unknown to man, where thou mightst pass thy days with no companion but my faithful self, and no adventures but our constant loves? O my beloved, that life may still be thine! And dost thou falter? Dost call thyself forlorn with such fidelity, and deem thyself a wretch, when Paradise with all its beauteous gates but woos thy entrance? Oh! no, no, no, no! thou hast forgot Schirene: I fear me much, thy over-fond Schirene, who doats upon thy ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... who cannot find a dupe ready to defend against the world an honour of which no vestige remains. A man who doubts the virtue of the most virtuous woman, who shows himself inexorably severe when he discovers the lightest inclination to falter in one whose conduct has hitherto been above reproach, will stoop and pick up out of the gutter a blighted and tarnished reputation and protect and defend it against all slights, and devote his life to the attempt ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... his carriage geared up, and went coolly forth to meet the invaders. He had heard much of their savage ferocity, and was by no means ignorant of the danger which he ran in thus going voluntarily into their clutches. Nevertheless he did not falter. He had great reliance in his personal presence. So he dressed with care, and arrayed in clean linen and a suit of the finest broadcloth, then exceedingly rare in the Confederacy, and with his snowy hair and ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... Regiment, as a part of the history of your own gallant state and as an emblem of the glory of your dearly loved country. Love the one flag and revere the others. Many dark hours we have already passed through, and many more are yet to be undergone. But let no man of us falter as to the success of our glorious cause. In all our work, however dangerous or arduous, we shall be followed by the prayers of loved friends at home and of the true and loyal of all our country, and of the good and true of ...
— History of Company F, 1st Regiment, R.I. Volunteers, during the Spring and Summer of 1861 • Charles H. Clarke
... North had always held, but the formulation of it as the platform of a party, and a party which must draw its members almost entirely from the North, was bound to raise in an acute form questions on which very few men had searched their hearts. Men who hated slavery were likely to falter and find excuses for yielding when confronted with the danger to the Union which would arise. Men who loved the Union might in the last resort be ready to sacrifice it if they could thereby be rid of complicity with slavery, or might be unwilling to ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... way" proved to be a good two miles; but the three girls did not falter. They saw the big farmhouse and the great barns and snow-filled paddocks a long ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... burning oil, blazing wood, and Greek fire. They fortify the wall with mattresses of lighted straw until it seems one sheet of flame. The tower approaches this barricade of fire, but the smoke and flame stifle the Crusaders. They falter and fall back. ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... astronomical lecture, delivered at the Lyceum. The "At Homes" of Mathews were of course taxed, a "slight sketch and title" being submitted to the Examiner, the actor professing to speak without any precise text, but simply from "heads and hints before him to refer to should his memory falter." In an attempt to levy a fee on account of an oratorio performed at Covent Garden, Colman failed, however; it was proved that the libretto was entirely composed of passages from the Scriptures. After great discussion ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Princes fly their blazing thrones and hasten towards the sea! The boding eagles leave the land—the lion's claws are shorn— The sovereign People, roused and bold, await the Future's morn! Now, till the wakening hour shall strike, we keep our scorn and wrath For you, ye Living! who have dared to falter on your path! Up, and prepare—keep watch in arms! Oh, make the German sod, Above our stiffened forms, all free, and blest by Freedom's God; That this one bitter thought no more disturb us in our graves: "They once were free—they fell—and now, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... drawl, linger, loiter, saunter; plod, trudge, stump along, lumber; trail, drag; dawdle &c (be inactive) 683; grovel, worm one's way, steal along; job on, rub on, bundle on; toddle, waddle, wabble^, slug, traipse, slouch, shuffle, halt, hobble, limp, caludicate^, shamble; flag, falter, trotter, stagger; mince, step short; march in slow time, march in funeral procession; take one's time; hang fire &c (be late) 133. retard, relax; slacken, check, moderate, rein in, curb; reef; strike sail, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... they falter, Thy hand hath struck them down. Their woof the Parcae alter, Beware thy mother's frown! What such as I in glory Compared with such as thee? Would, in the conflict gory, That ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... mere suggestion makes me falter In writing of this wicked brute; Although he has escaped the halter, He wears ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... of the little rotunda. Naylor examined it with interest too—the old story was a quaint one. Mary stood at the back of the group, smiling triumphantly. How had he disposed of—everything? She had not been wrong in her unlimited confidence in his ingenuity. She did not falter in her faith in his word ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... or if we do. Fate to our deserts is true; If we fail, or falter not, Every life deserves his lot; Every human, small or great, Buys with current coin his fate; What's the odds to me and you, If we ...
— Oklahoma and Other Poems • Freeman E. Miller
... happiness of which I was ignorant. Courage, dear, courage; in default of a fortunate and smiling destiny, let us seek our satisfaction in the accomplishment of the serious duties that fate imposes. Let us be indulgent to one another; if we falter, let us regard the cradle of our child, let us concentrate on her all our affections, and we shall yet have some ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... confused circling brightness, in the center of which two supple figures swayed and heaved. The red light smiting the faces of the two showed great drops of sweat, the swell of toil-hardened muscles on the corded arms, and the rise of each straining chest. There was not a clash nor a falter, but, flash after flash, the blades came down chunking into the ever-widening notch. Summers had seen sword play in Montreal armories, and had heard the ax clang often on the side of Western firs, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... discourse before the Historical Society. I felt so much misgiving about reading it before the large assemblage at the State House, that I had arranged with a literary and legal friend to put it in his hands the moment I began to falter. For this purpose he occupied the secretary's desk; but I found myself sufficiently collected to go on and read it through, not quite loud enough for all, but in a manner, ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... owe more to their perseverance than to their natural powers, their friends, or the favorable circumstances around them. Genius will falter by the side of labor, great powers will yield to great industry. Talent is desirable, but perseverance is ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... replied the other, "as long as I have a prospect of large profits; why should I falter or hesitate at so slight a thing ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... through the gangway, gained the open deck, crouched close to the bulwarks on the port side, and thus reached unscathed the foot of the companion down which the wounded men had crawled. The zinc plates on the steps were slippery with their blood, but she did not falter at the sight. Up she went, stooped over Hozier, and placed her strong ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... position, was fresh and ready for the word of command. Webster having overcome the Americans of the second line in his front advanced upon the third and was received by Gunby's Maryland regiment with a most galling fire which made his troops falter. Gunby advanced, charging bayonets, when ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... "thou art too weak To try the Kills and drown, or falter, The while from shore their marksmen seek My heart. (Once o'er the Chesapeake I paddled oarless.) Lest the halter Be ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... 3%-4% of Russia's 74-million-person labor force; many people, however, are working shortened weeks or are on forced leave. Moscow's financial stabilization program got off to a good start at the beginning of 1992 but began to falter by midyear. Under pressure from industrialists and the Supreme Soviet, the government loosened fiscal policies in the second half. In addition, the Russian Central Bank relaxed its tight credit policy in July at the behest of new Acting Chairman, Viktor ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... it that these evening fireside meetings with the doctor's lovely daughter, once such unalloyed delight, were now only a keenly pleasing pain? Why did his face burn and his heart beat and his voice falter when obliged to speak to her? Why could he no longer talk of her to his mother, or write of her to his friend, Herbert Greyson? Above all, why had his favorite day dream of having his dear friends, Herbert and Clara married together, grown so abhorrent as ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... contrasts, Fetuao's freshness, purity, and beauty shone with a sort of angelic brightness. No, by God, she should never come to harm through him; and, clenching his huge hands together, he would repeat these words to himself when he sometimes felt his resolution falter. For the sailor, who never until then had known a modest woman, who had starved his whole life long for what his money could never buy, whose heart at thirty was as virgin as a boy's, now found himself moved by a sublime passion for the only creature ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... friar, a Carmelite, by name Fra Battista, with a pair of brown dove's eyes in his smooth face. These he lifted towards Vanna's with an air so timid and so penetrating, so delicate and hardy at once, that when he was gone it was to leave her with the falter of a verse in her mouth, two hot cheeks, and a ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... danced elfishly, and trippingly—for very joy it made one laugh. The tear rolled down Joyce's face, as the smile replaced it, and dropped upon the thin cheek of the baby. He did not flinch, and the staring eyes did not falter, but something drew the mother's attention. As the final tripping notes died away, she ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... North Brookfield, went down, the very last of June, last year, and purchased three calves of Mr. Chenery, of Belmont. He brought these calves up in the cars to Brookfield. On their way from the depot to his house, about five miles, one of the calves was observed to falter, and when he got to his house, it seemed to be sick, and in two or three days exhibited very great illness; so much so, that his father came along, and, thinking he could take better care of it, took the calf home. He took it to his own barn, in which there were ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... self-criticism falter, militant minorities must urge and initiate those revolutionary changes which are necessary for the health and well-being of any ailing human community. This is one of the contradictions that faces every human enterprise, ...
— Civilization and Beyond - Learning From History • Scott Nearing
... of fingers to put the sheet back within its envelope, and so thrust it, a crumpled mass, into his pocket. It was as if her hand was at his shoulder, her voice in his ear, but he did not falter. To go back now would be but a renewal of his torture. There could not come a better time to go—to go and leave no suspicion ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... trenches came forth columns of infantry, supported by field batteries, and in a moment these had opened upon the advancing Russian horsemen; but in spite of this hail of death, the Cossacks did not falter nor pause. Straight up to the mouth of the field guns they rode—sabering the gunners right and left—and in a few moments these had ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... October, 1880, when you were sixteen. You and Laura flashed like meteors on to a dreary scene of empty seats at the luncheon table (the shooting party didn't come in) and filled the room with light, electrified the conversation and made old R—y falter over his marriage vows within ten minutes. From then onwards, you have always been the most loyal and indulgent of friends, forgetting no one as you rapidly climbed to fame, and were raffled for by all ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... fight for fireside and for home, For heritage, for altar; And, by the God of yon blue dome, Not one of us shall falter! ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... Socialist movement? It is true that these are anxious, trying days for us all, testing those who are upholding the banner of the working class in the greatest struggle the world has ever known against the exploiters of the world; a time in which the weak, the cowardly, will falter and fail and desert. They lack the fibre to endure the revolutionary test. They fall away. They disappear as if they had ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... to all this with a painful, strained intensity, would catch the six-key words, and would falter forth a trembling ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... muse's bantlings halt. Again, those rags and cloak right tragical, The very garb for sketching beggars in! But sweet Euripides, a boon, I pray thee. Give me the moving rags of some old play; I've a long speech to make before the Chorus, And if I falter, why the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... fan with her hands, and Mrs. Dennistoun let the knitting with which she had gone on in spite of all fall at last in her lap. There was a little pause. John Tatham's voice itself had began to falter, or rather swelled in sound as when a ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... afraid: but he was particularly appalled by his consciousness that he was not going to falter. "What, you who have been duke and prince and king and emperor and pope! and do such dignities content a Jurgen? Why, not ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... looked at him for a moment with a look of honest inquiry in her eyes. His own did not falter. Their expression combined ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... his home, unburied, and cut off From all his race, even as I cut this curl. There, hold him, child, and guard him; let no hand Stir thee, but lean to the calm breast and cling. (To CHORUS) And ye, be not like women in this scene, Nor let your manhoods falter; stand true men To this defence, till I return prepared, Though all cry No, to give ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... a weary smile, but did not falter; the Doctor thought they would not be able to get up to the top, and proposed returning; the others declined; whereupon the Doctor slowly sauntered back to the Hermitage. Mr. Figgs, whom the ride had considerably shaken, expressed a desire to ascend but felt doubtful ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... straining, Nuneaton is gaining, Neither will falter nor flinch; Whips they are plying and jackets are flying, They're fairly abreast to an inch. 'Crack em up! Let 'em go! Well ridden! Bravo!' Gamer ones never were bred; Jo Chauncy has done it! He's spurted! He's won it!' The ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that old-world reasoning. She would not have dared to ask him, for all the frank tenderness of their companionship. On that subject Dr. Derwent had no word to say, no hint to let fall. She knew only that, in speaking of her they had lost, his voice would still falter; she knew that he always came into this churchyard alone, and was silent, troubled, for hours after the visit. Instinctively, too, she understood that, though her father might almost be called a ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" Yes, cold and bitter as that cup was, pressed next to his very lips, he had learned to drink it. God had given him strength, and no more did he falter, no more did he groan-save once, for a moment, when, upon the cross, drooping, and racked with intense pain, he cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" But that passed away in the triumphant ejaculation, ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... This is all that we have got by reassembling here.' Do we not often feel that the drought of Kadesh is more real than the grapes of Eshcol? Are we not sometimes tempted to bitter comparisons of the fair promises with the gloomy realities? Does our courage never flag, nor our faith falter, nor swirling clouds of doubt hide the inheritance from our weary and tear-filled eyes? He that is without sin may cast the first stone at these men; but whoever knows his own weak heart will confess that, if he had been among that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... eyes were full of weeping, He falter'd in his walk; Tom never shed a tear, But onwards he did stalk, As pompous, black, and solemn, ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Craftily she pictured the Mexican enterprise, how instead of enhancing his prestige at home, it but turned him into a sorry and ridiculous figure. And so she won the child of Destiny. Yet, when in a sudden fervent outburst he came and sat beside her, and would have taken her hand, she still did not falter. Napoleon would have the glory, and she a shame unexplained, but for all that her country would have Mexico. Her country would have Mexico! Would have a vast expanse of empire, greater and more enduring than any won for her by ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... foreigners, or else the families of such government officials as were obliged to show themselves there. Last summer, however, before the Franco-Italian convention for the evacuation of Rome revived the drooping hopes of the Venetians, they had begun visibly to falter in their long endurance. But this was, after all, only a slight and transient weakness. As a general thing, now, they pass from the Piazza when the music begins, and walk upon the long quay at the sea-side of the Ducal Palace; or if they remain in the Piazza they pace up and down under the arcades ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com
|
|
|
